IN the Bush administration’s first analysis of what went wrong in the years leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, it quickly arrived at a relatively simple conclusion: The Clinton administration was sleepwalking as Al Qaeda strengthened its safe haven in Afghanistan.
After the attacks on American embassies in Africa and the U.S.S. Cole, the Clinton White House determined that invading a sovereign state to rid it of Osama bin Laden was fraught with too many difficulties. So it relied on pinprick attacks, hoping that covert actions and a cruise-missile attack on a training camp might do the trick. Only after nearly 3,000 Americans had died, did the United States invade.
Now, as a National Intelligence Estimate released last week makes clear, the Bush White House finds itself in a similar predicament. Al Qaeda has reconstituted itself in the wild west tribal areas of Pakistan. It is stronger than at any time in years, and it is actively plotting new attacks.
There is a chance, however, that events in Pakistan in recent weeks have at last presented the opportunity for a serious campaign against Islamic radicals in Pakistan, if it’s not already too late. The breakdown of a cease-fire between elders in the tribal lands of Pakistan and the government of President Pervez Musharraf, combined with the determination that General Musharraf showed earlier this month when he ordered an assault on the Red Mosque complex in Islamabad, may have finally given President Bush something his predecessor never had: a partner who may at long last be persuaded to go after an entrenched terrorist haven.
Pakistan experts argue that if General Musharraf were to begin an aggressive campaign against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, it wouldn’t be to please Washington. Moreover, coming elections in Pakistan could be the impetus for action as General Musharraf tries to look forceful before his countrymen go to the polls.
“There is recognition on Musharraf’s part that he has an opportunity now that may not exist in a future political configuration because his power may wane,” said Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations, who previously worked on Pakistan issues at the State Department.
A challenge to that power rose again on Friday when the country’s Supreme Court restored the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, to his post after being suspended by General Musharraf. Mr. Chaudhry, now a hero to an anti-Musharraf movement, could end up ruling on whether the leader can remain the head of the army as he seeks re-election as president.
Washington is captivated by General Musharraf because he is a secular moderate, which is not to be confused with a civil libertarian. John D. Negroponte, the deputy secretary of state who until late last year tracked the gathering Qaeda threat as the director of national intelligence, ended a trip to Pakistan a month ago convinced that General Musharraf’s government had, at long last, gotten the message about the tribal areas in the northwest officially known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
“I found that one of the really decisive factors driving the Pakistani government’s response to the situation is the fact that violence has spread from the FATA to what they called the settled territories,” he said. In the past week alone, he noted, roughly 100 Pakistani soldiers have been killed, largely in bombing attacks, and the army has vowed to stop what General Musharraf calls the “Talibanization” of the country.
While Washington is officially optimistic, it has received promises from General Musharraf before. It was more than two years between the time that he sidelined Abdul Qadeer Khan, the head of the Khan Nuclear Laboratories, and the time he actually put him under house arrest for running the world’s largest nuclear technology smuggling network. In the interim, a lot of damage was done.
On the Afghan border, General Musharraf has promised to pursue and break up the Taliban, but in case after case the Taliban leaders have moved unimpeded between the tribal areas and Afghan villages, while Pakistani troops looked the other way. No one believes that Pakistan’s intelligence service has been purged of Taliban sympathizers.
So when Americans hear General Musharraf’s promises, they are once burned, and twice skeptical. “I’ve heard all this before,” one recently departed senior C.I.A. official with extensive experience in Pakistan and Afghanistan said last week about the administration’s official optimism........
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Pakistan isn’t ready for the democracy yet.
With the current political unrest intensifying by the day, Pakistan has come full circle by trying to oust the existing government by force. The change of government by force is a time honored tradition which the people of Pakistan have followed religiously since the time of their independence. Based on its history, one can easily predict a mass political unrest which might lead to yet another military take over before the end of this year. The departure of President Musharraf at this juncture will add severely to Pakistan’s political woes. He may not be the best leader; he is much better than the ones Pakistan has had so far. The country has done relatively well under his rule. He can be credited for making good decisions overall, save one (restore democracy) which might cost him his government. President Musharraf should have known that Pakistan is not ready for the kind of democracy he is being forced by the West and the Pakistani political parties to implement. The democratic system of government is based on the principal of the majority rule. Since a majority of the Pakistani population (66%), that lives in the rural areas is either Taliban influenced or religious fundamentalist; asking for democracy would mean asking for a Taliban type of government. Have the West and the Pakistani opposition parties forgotten the outcome of the recent election in Palestine? Do they want similar election results in Pakistan? If asked behind the closed doors, these very political groups who are clamoring for the restoration of democracy would answer this question with a resounding no. Why? Because they know the consequences. However, despite knowing the consequences, they pretend to uphold the principles of majority rule in public only to achieve their selfish political goals.
Pakistani political parties that are now clamoring for the majority rule are the ones mainly responsible for the failure of democracy in Pakistan. They never allowed the democracy to take roots in Pakistan. Once in power, they acted mostly in contravention of the democratic principles. In order to keep the reins of power securely in their hands, it appears that they deliberately kept the populace impoverished and uneducated so as to prevent them from thinking beyond the satisfaction of their basic needs, i.e. food, shelter and clothing. This is what all of them wanted, and this is what they've got; an impoverished nation with the literacy rate below 50%. Due to their greed for power, they have turned a large portion of the Pakistani population into uneducated, hard headed militants who are completely devoid of the concepts of political freedoms and liberties. It is due, in large part, to each successive government’s disregard for the establishment of a modern education system that Pakistan is now witnessing a rise in the numbers of Madressas in the rural areas. The curriculum used in these Madressas is based on the religious fundamentalism that promotes hatred and violence against those who oppose their brand of lifestyle and religious philosophy. Unfortunately, the number of Madressa educated people have grown to an extent that in a fair and freely held elections, they will be able to take control of the government with considerable ease.
The control of government by such elements will spell disaster for Pakistan’s integrity and solidarity. It is with such dire prospects in mind that I oppose the implementation of democracy in Pakistan. Pakistan does not need democracy. It needs economic progress and prosperity. Democracy is not the panacea to Pakistan’s ills, as some would have us believe. To restore its health, Pakistan needs to invest all of its efforts and energies into the development of its economic and education system. In other words, Pakistan must make economic development its top priority. Political reforms can wait until such time as Pakistan has achieved a high degree of parity with the developed nations with regards to the literacy and economic development.
To do that, Pakistan must take a page from China's recent advances on the economic front. Despite international pressures for the democratic reforms, China remained strictly focused on its economic development. Under the leadership of the late Deng Xiaoping, China in a short period of time, emerged on the world stage as the economic power to be reckoned with. China is now well on its way to becoming a super economic and military power, not just in the region, but on the world stage. The main factor responsible for China’s ascend to the super power status is its rapid progress in the economic and technological fields. If Chinese can achieve such a feat in span of few decades, so can Pakistan. However, to do that, Pakistan needs a sincere, honest and strong leadership that has the will and courage to lead the country on path to economic progress with unwavering determination.
It will be only after the accomplishment of the above objectives that Pakistan should turn to implementing the democratic reforms. Until then, Pakistan must not succumb to the pressures from the West for the introduction or implementation of democracy. The notion of the Western democracy being feasible for every culture and society is not only erroneous but utterly absurd at best. Pakistan needs to develop its own form of democracy that not only takes its traditional, cultural and religious sensitivities into account but that it also conforms to the psyche of its people. Though it will be a long and arduous process; it will be doable nonetheless. It will need the cooperation and collaboration of the academic and religious scholars over a long period of time to draw up a constitution based on the universal as well as religious principals of democracy. Until that happens, Pakistan does not need to rush into implementing the Western concept of the democracy which the Pakistani masses in general neither fully accept nor understand.
Keeping in view the present political realities in Pakistan, it appears that the above proposed task cannot be accomplished through the democratic process. Though it might sound like an extremely controversial proposition, I do not hesitate to suggest that Pakistan under the present circumstances needs a benevolent dictator who will have to accomplish the above task with the iron fist. That is the only way Pakistan can join the ranks of the highly developed and advanced nations in the world.
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