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Before and after the Musharraf-Bush
meeting
By B Raman
Before
Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf embarked on
his current high-profile four-nation visit to the United
Kingdom, the United States, France and Germany, there
were three significant developments in Pakistan.
The first related to the tussle between him and
the six-party Islamic fundamentalist coalition called
the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) regarding his
continuing to hold charge as the Chief of the Army Staff
(COAS) long after his tenure ended and after having
himself elected as president in a controversial
referendum. As the MMA and other opposition parties
supporting it showed no signs of relenting in their
demand that he quit as the COAS and re-contest election
as the president according to the procedure laid down in
the constitution, a private individual filed a public
interest petition before a court challenging the
legality of an order issued by the Election Commission,
at the instance of Musharraf before last October's
elections, that the certificate of Islamic studies
issued by the madrassas (religious schools) would
have the equivalence of a university degree for the
purposes of elections. Under an amendment to the
electoral laws and the constitution introduced by
Musharraf, only graduates can contest an election.
It was this order of the Election Commission
combined with another order issued at Musharraf's
instance withdrawing the cases against them under the
Anti-Terrorism Act which enabled many fundamentalist
politicians, who had never been to a university, to
contest the elections and return in large numbers to the
provincial assemblies of North West Frontier Province
(NWFP) and Balochistan and the National Assembly in
Islamabad. There was speculation in Pakistan that it was
the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) that made this
individual file the petition in order to convey a
warning to the MMA leaders that if they continued to
oppose Musharraf continuing as the COAS and demanded
fresh presidential elections, the president could get
their election declared null and void by the judiciary,
without the need for dissolving the National Assembly.
This speculation has since been strengthened by
the appearance of the attorney-general of the government
before the court, during which he gave it as his expert
opinion that the Election Commission's order was
illegal. The court is expected to give its order on June
30. It remains to be seen whether it would declare the
commission's order as null and void and set aside the
election of all fundamentalist politicians without a
university degree.
According to well-informed
sources, Musharraf decided to ask the attorney-general
to give this opinion to the court in order to warn the
MMA of the consequences of it continuing to oppose him
and to re-assure the US before his Camp David meeting
with President George W Bush on June 24 that the
situation was well under control and that he would be
able to get rid of the fundamentalist politicians from
the elected assemblies without causing a setback to the
democratic process.
The second development
relates to General Mohammed Aziz, a Kashmiri officer
belonging to the Sudan tribe of Pakistan-Occupied
Kashmir (POK), who is very close to the Jamaat-e-Islami
(JEI) of Qazi Hussain Ahmed. Coinciding with the
beginning of the US air strikes in Afghanistan on
October 7, 2001, Musharraf removed Aziz, then a
lieutenant-general, from the post of commanding officer
of one of the two Corps in Lahore. He kicked him
upstairs by appointing him as the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Committee, a post without real power,
and promoting him as a general. It was alleged in
Pakistan that Musharraf took this action at the instance
of the US, which was nervous over Aziz's links with the
JEI and other fundamentalist parties.
Aziz, who
remained low all these months, has, of late, become
active again. Accompanied by Major General (retd) Mohd
Anwar Khan, the president of the POK, who is related to
him, he has been travelling in the POK and the NWFP,
addressing military officers and the people in remote
villages in the tribal belt. His speeches have been
virulently critical of India and Hinduism, and also give
hints of his disapproval of Musharraf's refusal to shed
the post of COAS and of the army continuing to play a
political role. This has given rise to speculation that
it was he who has been egging on the MMA not to relent
in its opposition to Musharraf. If Musharraf had not
given himself an extended tenure, Aziz would, most
probably, have been the COAS by now.
The third
development relates to the security of Pakistan's
nuclear arsenal and its collusion with North Korea in
helping it acquire an uranium enrichment capability in
return for its supply of medium and long-term missiles
to Pakistan. The US concerns in this regard have been
aggravated by allegations that rogue Pakistani
scientists of its nuclear establishment had played a
role in assisting Iran set up an uranium enrichment
facility at Natanz, with or without the approval of the
Pakistan government in the past. Even though the
Musharraf government has been collaborating with the US
for a year now in the clandestine collection of
intelligence about Iran, and Musharraf seems open to the
idea of further expanding this cooperation in the face
of opposition from some officers such as Aziz, there are
apparently elements in his government and the scientific
establishment which have been clandestinely helping Iran
by keeping Tehran informed of the presence and
activities of the US armed forces and intelligence
community in Pakistan and by sharing nuclear expertise
with it. Allegations of a Pakistani role in assisting in
the construction of the Natanz enrichment facility have
also caused concern in Saudi Arabia, which, along with
Libya, had in the past funded Pakistan's military
nuclear program.
Before Musharraf's visit to the
US, Shaukat Aziz, his confidante and finance minister,
visited the A Q Khan Research Laboratories at Kahuta
against which sanctions had been imposed by the US
earlier this year because of its collusion with North
Korea in the field of missiles. In the past, the
military maintained total control over Pakistan's
nuclear and missile establishments and never allowed any
of its civilian leaders to visit them, even during years
when an elected government was in power. Neither former
premiers Benazir Bhutto nor Nawaz Sharif had ever been
taken into confidence by the military and the scientific
community rigidly controlled by it and allowed to visit
any of the sensitive nuclear and missile establishments.
Against this background, the visit of Shaukat
Aziz caused a great sensation in Islamabad. Many asked
questions such as what was the reason for the visit? Why
did Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali himself
not go there? Was Shaukat Aziz sent to the establishment
to allay US fears of ineffective control over the
nuclear and missile facilities? Jamali tried to
pooh-pooh the speculation by projecting it as a routine
visit on his orders to ensure that the accounts of
Pakistan's nuclear and missile establishments were in
order, but this did not satisfy those posing
inconvenient questions.
According to Pakistani
media, Shaukat Aziz, who used to work for Citibank in
the Gulf and the US before being invited by Musharraf to
become his finance minister after he seized power in
October, 1999, is a US citizen and enjoys the confidence
of both the US and Saudi Arabia. After last October's
elections, Musharraf insisted that Shaukat Aziz should
remain as the finance minister and the elected
government had to accommodate his demand by getting
Shaukat Aziz elected as a member of the senate, the
upper House of the federal parliament. Many Pakistanis -
and particularly the religious fundamentalist elements -
suspect that the US has been using Shaukat Aziz to keep
a watch on the goings-on in the nuclear and missile
establishments.
Surprisingly, the intriguing
composition of the small entourage which has accompanied
Musharraf to the US has not received the attention of
many analysts. Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, the foreign
minister, has been kept out of it, bringing to mind the
fact that when Musharraf went to the US on his first
bilaterlal visit in February last year, he did not take
with him Abdul Sattar, his then foreign minister. It was
reported at that time that this was because of Sattar's
misgivings over the ISI agreeing to cooperate with the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for monitoring
developments in Iran. Sattar resigned a few months
later, ostensibly on health grounds.
The
exclusion of Kasuri this time has given rise to
speculation that differences have cropped up between the
two due to Kasuri's unhappiness over the belligerent
interview given by Musharraf to an Indian TV channel
which, Kasuri reportedly feels, has threatened to derail
the process for the resumption of the bilateral dialogue
with India. However, sources close to the president have
claimed that the omission of Kasuri was due to the
keenness of the general that he should attend the
meeting of the Asian Cooperation Dialogue group at
Chiang Mai in Thailand, which coincided with Musharraf's
visit to the US. Both India and Pakistan are members of
this group.
No popularly-elected minister of the
Jamali government went with Musharraf to the US. Shaukat
Aziz is the only minister to accompany him, ostensibly
to assist the general during discussions on the question
of future US assistance to Pakistan and to be present
during the signing of a bilateral investment and trade
promotion agreement. Another person, with cabinet
status, but not a member of the cabinet, who reportedly
accompanied him is Sharifuddin Pirzada, who is
designated as adviser on foreign policy and national
security.
In Pakistani political circles,
Pirzada is viewed as an evil genius. He acted as the
constitutional adviser to former dictator Zia ul-Haq and
helped him control the judiciary and tamper with the
constitution. After seizing power on October 12, 1999,
one of the first acts of Musharraf was to appoint
Pirzada as his adviser to perform a similar role. He
made the judiciary approve Musharraf's seizure of power
under the doctrine of necessity, reject petitions
against Musharraf's referendum and uphold his right to
amend the constitution.
And Pirzada is even
closer to the ruling families of Saudi Arabia than
Shaukat Aziz and has in the past played an active role
in persuading Saudi Arabia to fund the Pakistani
military nuclear development program. The inclusion of
Aziz and Pirzada in the entourage indicates that
Musharraf anticipated that US suspicions over the
security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and concerns over
Pakistani collusion with North Korea and alleged
activities of pro-Iran rogue elements in the nuclear
establishment might figure in his discussions with
President George W Bush at Camp David, and hence wanted
them to assist him.
The joint press conference
addressed by Bush and Musharraf after the meeting was
silent on this issue, but media reports and a subsequent
media briefing by US officials indicated that Pakistan's
role in the proliferation of nuclear and missile
technologies, its cooperation in the "war against
terrorism" and the need for the restoration of genuine
democracy in the country were the three principal
subjects of the discussions between the two leaders.
Commenting on the US$3 billion aid package -
half in economic and half in military assistance -
spread over five years announced by Bush, an unnamed
senior administration official tried to dampen any
Pakistani euphoria by stating as follows during the
media briefing, "This is a multi-year program, Congress
has to approve it, we have to make sure that it makes
sense ... and for Congress to appropriate the funds -
and, indeed, for the government to seek the funds - I
think we're going to have to be satisfied that Pakistan
is indeed working vigorously with us in the war against
terrorism, is working vigorously to ensure that there is
no onward proliferation and is moving smartly towards
democracy. I'm not calling those conditions, but let's
be realistic, three years down the road, if things are
going badly in those areas, it's not going to happen.
We're not going to request it, Congress won't
appropriate it. And that is a bargain that the
Pakistanis are entering into with their eyes wide open."
In Pakistan, religious and other opposition
parties have ridiculed the over-projected results of
Musharraf's meeting with Bush and made unfavorable
comparisons of the readiness with which Musharraf
accepted the new aid offer despite the conditions
attached and the contempt with which Zia rejected a US
aid package as peanuts and refused to accept any
conditions.
In a background briefing for the
Pakistani media, Shaukat Aziz has claimed that no
conditions are attached to the package and that even
though the US has not accepted for the present the
supply of new F-16 aircraft, the military component of
the package could be used for the upgradation of
Pakistan's existing F-16 holdings.
Despite the
praise showered on Musharraf by Bush for his
"courageous" role in the "war against terrorism", the
duplicity in Musharraf's stance on this issue became
evident in his statements during last year's visit as
well as during the current visit. His last year's visit
took place at a time when the ISI had already informed
him that Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, had been
murdered by his kidnappers and that Omar Sheikh, who
master-minded the kidnapping, had surrendered. But
Musharraf chose not share this information with his
hosts lest it affect the atmospherics during the visit.
He gave them the impression that Pearl was alive and
that he was hopeful of finding him alive. He also stated
that Osama bin Laden could not be alive.
During
the current visit, he has admitted the possibility of
bin Laden being alive and claimed that the difficulty
faced by his security agencies in smoking out al-Qaeda
remnants was due to the fact that they were operating
from the inaccessible localities of the
Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) where,
according to him, no army, either of the British or of
Pakistan, had ever set foot in the past 100 years. He
further claimed that for the first time in history he
had sent his army into those areas to hunt for al-Qaeda
remnants.
Nobody pointed out to him that all the
important arrests made so far were not in the FATA, but
in the main cities of Pakistan. Abu Zubaidah was
captured in Faislabad in Punjab, Ramzi Binalshib and
Walid bin Atash in Karachi and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in
Rawalpindi where he was living right under the army's
nose in a house at walking distance from Musharraf's.
These arrests showed that the terrorists were operating
right from the heart of Pakistan and not from
inaccessible areas where no Britisher or Pakistani
soldier had ever gone, as claimed by Musharraf. Even bin
Laden, injured and partially paralyzed by shrapnel, was
reportedly undergoing treatment in the Binori
madrassa of Karachi and was shifted from there to
the NWFP only after the arrest of Binalshib in Karachi
in September last year.
Also the praise showered
by Bush on Musharraf for his efforts to reform the
madrassas and modernize the Pakistani education
system made one wonder how well briefed he is on the
state of affairs in Pakistan. Last year, Musharraf did
proclaim an ordinance making it obligatory for the
madrassas to register themselves and to take the
prior permission of the government before admitting
foreign students. When the fundamentalists protested, he
made the registration and the adoption of the curriculum
prescribed by the government voluntary, and said that
those who did would be entitled to government financial
assistance. Out of the about 8,000 madrassas,
only about 1,000 have registered and the remaining 7,000
have refused. According to media reports, there was a
record rush of students to join the madrassas
this year as compared to the previous year. The flow of
foreign students, particularly from Iraq, has also
increased. What modernization of the education system by
Musharraf was Bush talking of?
(The writer is
Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt.
of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For
Topical Studies, Chennai, and Convenor, Observer
Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter. E-Mail:
corde@vsnl.com )
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