PAKISTAN AT THE
POLLS A growing voice for
militants By Syed Saleem
Shahzad
KARACHI - In the initial stages,
the runup to Pakistan's elections scheduled for
February 18 was characterized by politicians
jockeying to present themselves as the best
candidates to fight the United States-led "war on
terror".
US officials paid dozens of
visits last year to Pakistan in efforts to forge a
coalition of liberal and secular parties that
would conform to Washington's idea of democracy in
the country, and, more importantly, follow the
US's regional agenda.
However, at least
five major and bloody suicide attacks since
November - including the high-profile
assassination of former
premier Benazir Bhutto - have
changed the country's political dynamics. The
issue now is who will be best to make peace with
the Taliban after the country's links with them
were severed in the post-September 11, 2001,
environment.
The elections are for 272
seats in the Lower House of Parliament (National
Assembly) and assemblies in the four provinces.
The polls were postponed from January 8 following
the killing of Bhutto on December 27. This is not
a presidential election - President Pervez
Musharraf won a second five-year term from the
outgoing Parliament last October.
The
former ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) was the
first to make a u-turn by announcing "Islam first,
Pakistan second" as its manifesto, a change from
Musharraf's Pakistan first policy. The leading PML
figure in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP),
Ameer Muqam, whom Musharraf once called "my
brother struggling against terror", has
disappeared from the political scene since a
suicide attack at his residence last November
killed his brother.
Bhutto's Pakistan
People's Party (PPP), now co-chaired by her
widower, Asif Zardari, is trying to avoid any
direct clash with militants. "I don't believe that
Baitullah Mehsud [a Pakistani Taliban leader]
sitting in the mountains would have ordered Mrs
Bhutto's murder," Asif Zardari said in a
statement.
Since Bhutto's death, the PPP
has focused on the Bhutto family's legacy, son
Bilawal is a co-chairman, and more mundane but
important topics such as water and power projects,
as well as poverty alleviation. This is in stark
contrast to Bhutto's rallying when she returned
from exile; she railed against Islamic militancy.
Similarly, one of the PPP's main rivals, the
Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) led by former
premier Nawaz Sharif, has almost overnight
softened its hard line against militancy.
Sharif's party now openly condemns last
year's raid on the radical Lal Masjid (Red Mosque)
in Islamabad to root out militants based there.
The PML has listed the Lal Masjid operation as one
of three key mistakes it made while in power. The
other two were sending the military into the
Waziristan tribal areas to root out militancy, and
similar operations in Balochistan province.
The main architect behind the storming of
the Lal Masjid and former interior minister, Aftab
Sherpao, has come out in the media to say that his
former government mishandled the Taliban issue.
Sherpao, considered a liberal and secular Pashtun
who has been at the forefront of opposition to
Islamic fundamentalism since the 1970s and who
survived a suicide attack last December, now says
he is opposed to military offensives in the
Waziristans and has called for dialogue with the
militants.
However, one of the biggest
surprises is the about-turn of the Awami National
Party (ANP), a secular party of ethnic Pashtuns
seen as a rival to Pakistani Taliban groups and a
compulsive opponent of fundamentalism in the
region.
In the past year, the ANP has come
to the fore in the tribal areas to challenge the
Talibanization of the area, and anti-Taliban
rhetoric has been the theme of its election
campaigning.
Afrasiab Khattak, the fierce
anti-Taliban face of the ANP and a friend of
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, was targeted in a
suicide attack last week during an election rally
in NWFP. Khattak narrowly escaped, and soon after
the ANP publicly softened its tone, issuing a
statement saying it did not have any clash with
the Taliban.
But on Monday, another
suicide attack killed several people in North
Waziristan attending a rally of an ANP-supported
candidate. The rise of new
kingmakers The US-based International
Republican Institute found in a recent survey that
public support for Musharraf had plunged to an
all-time low - 75% want him to quit - and that
opposition parties appeared poised to score a
landslide victory in the elections.
With
the change in attitude among the leading political
parties on militancy, neo-nationalists, who have a
strong representation in the military, have become
emboldened.
This power group consists of
pragmatists. They are not necessarily practicing
or traditional Muslims - in some instances they
are very Westernized. But, unlike Musharraf and
his secular and pro-West allies in the top four of
the military, the neo-nationalists consider Islam
as the soul of the country and the only binding
force.
They want to reverse the changes
brought about by Pakistan joining the "war on
terror", which would involve maintaining peace
with the militants and the revival of Pakistan's
struggle to regains that part of Kashmir which is
under Indian administration.
At the same
time, the neo-nationalists do want cordial ties
with the US and Europe. Beyond the military, their
influence extends to academia, think-tanks, the
business world, politicians and the media, where
they are steadily trying to undermine blind
support for the "war on terror".
With this
in mind, the neo-nationalists have impressed on
Sharif that he should "rehabilitate" people such
as former federal ministers and once close aids of
Musharraf, Sheikh Rasheed and Ejaz ul-Haq, who had
acted as messengers of peace with the militants
and advocated dialogue with the Taliban.
The neo-nationalists would like to see the
formation of a government composed of an alliance
of moderate right-wing political parties that
could work with the establishment, rather than
secular and liberal parties in power.
The
rise of the neo-nationalists does not necessarily
mean the end of Musharraf and his allies. But it
might force him to redefine himself to what he was
pre-September 11. Then, despite his liberal and
secular approach, his Islamic-minded commanders in
the military were his main support and
trouble-shooters and he was forced to listen to
them.
Across the political spectrum, thus,
Pakistan appears to be drifting away from the "war
on terror", and with it out of Washington's tight
grip.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is
Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can
be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
