How far should the west go in propping up a Musharraf-Bhutto partnership in Pakistan, assuming that it comes to pass in the next few weeks? In Washington and London, there is a new urgency behind this question. Pakistan, with its militant mullahs and prickly, nuclear-backed nationalism, has always had the potential to cause the world a headache. But its domestic situation is now more fragile than at any time since the 1970s.
The army is fighting insurgencies along Pakistan's northwestern frontier with Afghanistan, where al Qaeda and the Taliban have successfully regrouped. These regions, the "federally administered tribal areas," have traditionally been governed outside the normal constitutional arrangements through a combination of government representatives and local tribal leaders. That system has broken down, and the Pakistan government can no longer impose its will. When trouble brews, as at present, the army, which has many troops from these regions, will not turn on its own people.
A second factor behind the instability is the rise of militant Islam. Pakistan has a long history of adherence to an Indian Deobandi worldview which derives from purist, Wahhabi thinking. In the past, these literalist positions were confined to pious believers within small cities and fringe political parties. After the restoration of civilian government in 1988, Islamist parties polled no more than about 6 per cent of the vote. But when Musharraf barred Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, leaders of the two main parties, from the 2002 election, the vacuum was filled by the Islamist MMA, which doubled its vote and took control of two of Pakistan's four provinces. (It was also able to exploit the hostility of Pakistan's Pashtun minority to western intervention in Afghanistan.) The MMA has used its new clout to stymie Musharraf's attempts to modernise Pakistani Islam.
Pakistan also has a history of unhappy relations with its neighbours. The 1979 Iranian revolution and the Shia revival were viewed with concern in a mainly Sunni country that has experienced its own sectarian divisions. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan shortly thereafter made Pakistan the western bulwark against the spread of communism in south Asia. The backdrop throughout was the dispute with India over Kashmir. These external factors all contributed to the strengthening of the military and intelligence services, eventually leading to Pakistan, with help from China, becoming a nuclear state. The combination of insecure borders, a territorial dispute leading to repeated war and a kleptomaniac political class would render any country unstable; in the case of Pakistan, with its record of exporting Islamist terrorism and nuclear proliferation, this instability matters a lot.
The Pakistan question therefore cannot be avoided. But we should not see it in simple terms of military vs mullahs. Indeed, the west may have to accept that its own form of liberal democracy is not fit for all places at all times, especially in Islamic countries straddling feudalism and modernity. Some form of "managed" democracy with a special role for the military (as in Turkey for many decades), may be the best option for Pakistan after parliamentary elections in January 2008.
The pessimists fear that Bhutto will lose credibility after being seen as striking a shabby deal to reclaim power, and so lose ground to the Islamists and Nawaz Sharif. Optimists hope that Musharraf, in cohabitation with Bhutto, can take on the Islamists and restore confidence in a military-civilian transition. We may get neither option.
If the courts allow General Musharraf to stay president despite his contravention of the two-year cooling-off rule, which is mandatory before public servants, including army officials, can take political office, Bhutto will still have to overturn the constitutional clause barring prime ministers from standing for a third term. Assuming the legal challenges are dismissed, and an election goes ahead, the political arithmetic may still prove unhelpful in the two recalcitrant western provinces, where Islamists and nationalists are strong. The army, while remaining superficially pro-western, cannot be relied upon to contain civil wars. And the quagmire that is Afghanistan may throw up other problems if Nato or US forces decide to operate more openly in Pakistan's troubled regions.
So what is to be done? One possibility is to tie the military and the political parties into a new power-sharing constitutional settlement. This might involve creating tripartite structures taking into account civil society (including a more independent judiciary), politicians and the generals. The greatest resistance would come from the military, which is nervous about being pushed out by what it sees a narrowly self-interested political class. But creative use of a constitutional veto could allay this anxiety, especially if such a deal was backed by the west. And as part of a new settlement, the troublesome regions could also be given a stake in the nation—at present they do not even have a vote in the elections.
Since its founding 60 years ago, Pakistan has seen several leaders assassinated, fought three major wars, been ruled by the military for more than half its life and suffered chronic underdevelopment and corruption. The old remedies have not worked; we need new ones.
