MORAL BANKRUPTCY: PAKISTAN & THE WEST

By Maliha Masood, Matrix Correspondent






















In all the upheaval and turmoil ensuing over the crisis in Pakistan, it would make for a more balanced debate to turn to the West’s own bankruptcy in dealing with this fractured country and its lackluster General. Despite George W Bush's rhetoric about freedom and democracy, the struggle against terrorism has been producing a pattern startlingly familiar from the Cold War and if history serves as a guide, then what is currently happening in Pakistan is but a prelude to what happened roughly two decades earlier.

For starters, let’s revert to the old ways of talking business as recently quoted in London’s Daily Telegraph that General Pervez Musharraf is "our sonofabitch" who has failed to stamp out extremist groups and shut down the nurseries that inspire them. He has eliminated the judiciary knowing the Supreme Court would declare illegal his re-election as president last month. He has curbed the country’s thriving independent media. Last but not least, General M has been unable to control Pakistan’s unruly tribal areas bordering Afghanistan that host a hodgepodge of militant groups, the disgruntled and bored out of their minds so let’s stir up some trouble types, the feuding old clans holding onto grudges from medieval times as well as the nouveau riche ego maniacs using Islam as a power trip. All this is a tall order for anybody to comply with.

If General M were a CEO and Pakistan were a publicly held corporation, chances are that the board of directors, investors and stockholders would have booted him out long ago. Why then, in the face of such clear incompetence, do America and its allies continue to back the General as head of state? Is it because they need him more than he needs them? And because the Bush Administration knows that General Musharraf is still their best bet against religious extremists, just like the Americans under the Carter and Reagan Administrations knew that Pakistan’s then General Zia ul-Haq was their only hope in fighting the Communists occupying next door Afghanistan?

The parallels are too close to ignore. Both Zia and Musharraf trace the beginnings of their careers in the Army. Both leaders seized power in a military coup. Both have installed martial law. In terms of personality and character, Zia and Musharraf might as well be polar opposites. Zia was a somewhat charismatic figure with his mega watt smile and espresso colored eyes, capable of shifting from warm to icy cold in fractions of a second. Zia was also a devout Muslim with unshakeable faith, an ardent believer in the Quran and just cause. He looked rather dashing with his pomaded combed back hair and a buttoned up sherwani in contrast to Musharraf’s drab khaki duds and spectacled poker face.

Thanks to Zia’s courage and shrewdness against impossible odds, the Red Army was brought to a standstill by an impoverished, backwater, third world nation. With help from American money and arms pouring into its coffers to support the mujahedin resistance, along with a cozy alliance between the CIA, MI6 and Pakistan’s ISI intelligence, the Soviets were defeated and fully withdrew from Afghanistan after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. The demoralizing loss eventually led to the breakup of the Soviet Union and the fall of its Communist Empire, which may not have happened so readily without the blows struck by the Pakistani General Zia ul-Haq in battling one of the world’s most ruthless land powers toward victory. Shortly afterwards, Zia was mysteriously killed in a plane crash, rumored to have been sabotaged, and the new Pakistani government of Benazir Bhutto moved in swiftly. The year was 1988.

Fast forward two decades. Unlike General Zia, General Musharraf does not have to contend with a hostile foreign occupier. He has forces closer to home threatening instability. Many of these forces are offshoots of what happened during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the way it was overcome. The Americans have unfinished business in Pakistan. They need to hold onto Musharraf in order to do their bidding.

To broaden the General’s political base, the plan is to enter into a power-sharing arrangement with the country’s prodigal daughter returned from exile, Benazir Bhutto and her Pakistan’s People’s Party, after general elections in February 2008. If all goes well, Pakistan will get a soldier with bare minimum popularity and a politician with a dubious past laden with corruption, a woman whose standing is not so secure given the recent assassination attempt on her life. The two of them ruling the country together will be like some surreal political spoof of the Odd Couple.

And what will the West, notably, the United States, get in return? A valued ally turned bittersweet nemesis, yes. A worrisome nuclear power reigned in by short-term policies, yes. A fragile Islamic state in the world’s most strategic geopolitical crossroads, yes. And moral bankruptcy all around, most certainly, yes.

Maliha Masood is an award-winning writer and the author of Zaatar Days, Henna Nights. A former policy analyst at the International Crisis Group in Islamabad, she is the founder and president of The Diwaan Project, a Seattle-based cultural institute geared toward public education on global affairs. Maliha teaches a course on women and Islam at the University of Washington and is currently at work on her first novel set in contemporary Pakistan.

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