WASHINGTON -
Forty-eight hours after Pakistani voters
overwhelmingly repudiated the Bush
administration's "man in Islamabad", President
Pervez Musharraf, Washington seemed uncertain
about whether the election results marked a
setback to US strategic interests or an advance.
On the one hand, Washington will have to
deal with a new government, some of whose likely
leaders have publicly denounced US policy in
Pakistan. This makes administration officials -
who as recently as last month described Musharraf
as "indispensable" to the "war on terror" -
uneasy.
Given the administration's staunch
backing for Musharraf - particularly over the past
year as he dismissed the supreme court, altered
the constitution, and cracked down against the
secular opposition - Monday's
vote seemed to be almost as much a rebuff to
Washington as to Musharraf himself.
On the
other hand, the crushing defeat of Islamist
parties, particularly in some key border areas,
including the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP),
marks a major advance for US hopes to contain the
spread of the Taliban insurgency beyond the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) where
it is based.
"[The Islamist parties] have
been replaced by secular Pashtun nationalist
parties who are hostile to the Taliban and who, at
a minimum, will not allow the institutions of
these provincial governments to be used by
collaborators of the Taliban," Steve Coll, a South
Asia expert and president of the New America
Foundation, told an interviewer on public
television Tuesday.
Moreover, if a
functioning government willing to work with
Washington can be quickly cobbled together by the
two leading opposition parties - the Pakistan
People's Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim
League-N (PML-N) - the "war on terror" could gain
renewed legitimacy in the country. Many analysts
here describe Pakistan as the "central front" in
that war.
"The counter-terrorism effort
that we are doing there is going to be much
strengthened when it has the support of the
people," said Wendy Chamberlin, who served as US
ambassador in Islamabad under both presidents Bill
Clinton and George W Bush. "I think we are
actually in a stronger position to work together
[with Pakistan] to eliminate extremist elements in
Pakistan."
While the Bush administration
praised the vote and pledged to continue working
with both Musharraf and any new government that
emerges from ongoing negotiations between the two
main opposition parties, independent voices called
on Bush to drop his support for the former
military chief in favor of a stronger embrace of
the country's democratic forces.
"The
administration should urge its
not-so-indispensable ally to step down," advised
the Washington Post, in a reference to the
insistence last month by a senior State Department
official that Musharraf was "indispensable" to the
pursuit of Washington's "global war on terror".
"Monday's election means that [the Bush
administration] can continue to transition from
what is often described as a 'Musharraf policy' to
a broader Pakistani one," wrote the Wall Street
Journal's neo-conservative editorial board. The
newspaper also published a column by Hussein
Haqqani - an adviser to the late PPP leader,
former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto - demanding
that Musharraf "work out an honorable exit or a
workable compromise with the opposition."
The Bush administration had tried to work
out precisely such a compromise between Musharraf
and the then-exiled Bhutto beginning late last
summer. Musharraf's plunging popularity not only
threatened Washington's anti-terror campaign in
Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also the collapse of
the Pakistani state in the face of a rapidly
spreading indigenous Taliban movement closely tied
to al-Qaeda.
But that strategy fell apart
amid growing evidence - after Bhutto's return in
October - that Musharraf was trying to rig
elections. It collapsed entirely in the aftermath
of Bhutto's assassination in late December in
Rawalpindi - reportedly by a Taliban-linked
suicide bomber.
In the wake of Monday's
elections results, the Bush administration
suggested that such a co-habitation might still be
possible, although the strong showings of both the
PPP and the PML-N - which together will likely
hold two thirds of the new parliament's seats -
would make it highly unlikely that PML-N leader,
former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, could be
excluded from such an arrangement.
Unlike
the de facto leader of the PPP - Bhutto's husband
Asif Ali Zardari - Sharif, who was overthrown and
exiled by Musharraf in a military coup d'etat in
1999, has called on Musharraf to resign.
"We are going to continue our work with
President Musharraf and whatever that new
government may be on goals of our national
interest," said State Department spokesman Sean
McCormack on Tuesday.
Most independent
analysts here, however, believe that Washington
should not insist with any new government that
Musharraf retain his position. Indeed, most
experts say the US would be best served by letting
Pakistan's internal politics take their course.
"We should allow the process to play
itself out," said Karl Inderfurth, who served as
assistant secretary of state for South Asia under
Clinton. "I don't believe that it is up to the
United States to hold on to Musharraf."
While Musharraf may not be "indispensable"
in Washington's war on terror, close co-operation
with the Pakistani military - which came under the
command of General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani after
Musharraf became president last fall - remains
essential, according to Inderfurth.
"There
can be no solution to what's taking place in
Afghanistan today if we don't have Pakistan's
co-operation, and that means the Pakistani army,''
Inderfurth said.
Some observers credit
Kayani - who has issued a series of directives
designed to drastically reduce the military's role
in the civil service and the economy - with also
ensuring that the election was carried out more
cleanly than most analysts here and in Pakistan
had expected.
The Pentagon, which is eager
to sharply increase its aid and training program
for the Pakistani military - and has even proposed
to carry out joint operations in FATA - clearly
hopes that any civilian government that emerges
from the elections will not try to impose any
obstacles to enhanced co-operation.
But
some experts believe that given Washington's war
on terror's widespread unpopularity in Pakistan
such hopes may be in vain.
"There is this
notion that if a coalition can be stitched
together, this will strengthen the war on terror,"
said Rajan Menon, a South Asia expert at Lehigh
University. "It will not, because the war has
very, very little support among Pakistanis,
regardless of social class, ethnic background, or
religious commitment who feel that it has only
spread the violence without translating into any
tangible benefit for average Pakistanis.
"If you have a democratic government
headed by the PPP or Sharif, it will have to
reflect this popular sentiment," Menon said,
noting that Zardari has already called for more
dialogue with militant Islamists in the tribal
areas than military confrontation.
But
Chamberlin insisted that a new US approach could
help reverse negative perceptions of Washington's
war on terror. The new approach would feature
sharply increased economic and other non-military
aid, particularly to frontier regions; strong
support for civil society and the justice system;
and enhanced US diplomatic involvement in
negotiating a resolution of the long-running
Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan.
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