The Administration is wrestling with policy toward Pakistan. The
intelligence estimate about al Qaeda using the border areas of Pakistan as a
safe haven has put Pakistan's role in Afghanistan on the front pages. The
United States would much prefer to address this problem with Pakistan rather
than mounting a military intervention that would surely turn all of
Pakistan, including its army, against the U.S. President Bush and the
administration's key personalities still believe Pakistani President Pervez
Musharraf is the best hope for U.S. interests in the region. But thus far,
policy toward Pakistan clearly has not delivered what they had hoped for on
the Afghan front.
At the same time, Musharraf is in trouble, with three interlocking domestic
issues in play. First is the wave of political protest unleashed by his
decision to suspend Supreme Court Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudry, who
Musharraf thought might be unfriendly. The Supreme Court has now reversed it
in an unusual display of judicial independence. This episode weakened
Musharraf and sharply reduced his moral authority.
Second, the Supreme Court decision shoots a hole in Musharraf's election
strategy. He faces an indirect election for the Presidency and direct
elections for the National and Provincial Assemblies in the next five
months. Both the sequence of these elections and his desire to retain the
dual posts of Army Chief and President are legally and politically
contested, and will be challenged in the courts. The courts could well rule
against the government.
Finally, the government's action against the defiant law-breaking by the
staff and students of Islamabad's Red Mosque raised Musharraf's standing
briefly, but the high death toll during and since that operation, and the
continued fighting in the frontier regions, has made the action -- and
Musharraf -- even more controversial.
The administration has maintained a highly personal policy for the past five
years, centered on Musharraf. This balance has shifted slightly in recent
weeks. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, testifying July 25 before
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, did not discuss Musharraf personally
until the last few minutes of his statement. The administration has welcomed
the Pakistani Supreme Court decision (as did the Pakistani government). The
United States has also reiterated its call for free and fair elections. But
Musharraf is still the embodiment of U.S. policy toward Pakistan; Burns's
testimony referred to him as "the partner we need."
Prescriptions on offer from Washington's think tanks include more careful
targeting of aid, especially military; various thoughts about policy
conditionality, again especially regarding military supply; a major effort
to develop a joint strategy for Afghanistan; general support for the
Administration's proposed economic aid package for the Federally
Administered Tribal Areas; and across the board, strong opposition to U.S.
military intervention in the tribal areas. Everyone favors strengthening the
political side of Pakistan's government and holding free elections, but
there are disagreements about how important an issue this should be for the
United States.
The most difficult area of policy is how to reconcile the dominant role the
Pakistani Army has played in politics for much of Pakistan's history with
the army's track record in dealing with extremist organizations. In the
past, the army has generally designed its occasional crackdowns on extremist
organizations to bring them under better control, not to put them out of
business. Some people believe this is the best that can be hoped for. I
think this fine balance is unsustainable.
Partly as a result, and especially in light of the Pakistani Supreme Court
decision, I believe the U.S. needs to strengthen its call for genuinely free
elections, quietly urging Musharraf to choose between heading the army and
running for President. Empowered political leadership will have greater
legitimacy than what Musharraf now enjoys. If it plays its cards right, it
will have a better shot at suppressing the extremists who have been brazenly
flouting the most basic authority of the state.
But there is a catch. If a future leader of Pakistan -- and there
will be one some day regardless of what happens in the elections -- wants to
shift from controlling violent extremist groups to suppressing them, he or
she will need to use the army for this purpose. The army will need to be a
participant in this decision, and the new leader will need to command the
army, in fact and not just in name. The army is more likely to be persuaded
if the campaign is based on the extremist groups' violent challenge to state
authority rather than on their religious character. The trick will be to
sustain the effort for as long as necessary, to create a political consensus
behind the new policy, and to change the hedging policies that have looked
on violent groups as a foreign policy asset. The recent shocking events in
both Islamabad and the Northwest Frontier Province makes clear that they are
now a pressing domestic danger.
Ambassador Teresita C. Schaffer is
the South Asia Program Director at the Center for Strategic & International
Studies (CSIS). From 1989 to 1992, she served as deputy assistant secretary
of state for South Asia; from 1992 to 1995, she was the U.S. ambassador to
Sri Lanka.
