Pakistani Exceptionalism

Prizing “stability” over democracy: That doesn’t sound like a rhetorical trope of President Bush, does it? Certainly not when he’s waxing apologetic about the Arab and Muslim worlds. “We must shake off decades of failed policy in the Middle East,” Bush told a British audience at London’s Whitehall Palace in November of 2003. “Your nation and mine, in the past, have been willing to make a bargain: to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability. Longstanding ties often led us to overlook the faults of local elites. Yet this bargain did not bring stability or make us safe. It merely bought time, while problems festered and ideologies of violence took hold.”

This has also become a favorite talking point of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “For 60 years,” she said at the American University in Cairo last June, “my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East–and we achieved neither. Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people.”

What about Pakistan? Following the 1947 partition, India’s neighbor spent over a half century alternating between periods of martial law, sham democracy, and corrupt kleptocracy. Sure, Pakistan technically falls just outside the “Middle East” proper, but it also boasts the world’s second largest Muslim population and has long been both a breeding ground and a transit point for anti-American terrorists, such as 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and for rogue arms dealers, such as A.Q. Khan. For that matter, Pakistani intelligence incubated al Qaeda and orchestrated the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in the 1990s. If ever there was a nation that seemed to affirm George W. Bush’s guiding precept that dysfunctional political systems fuel radicalism, it was Pakistan.

Since 9/11, however, the president has all but carved out an immunity clause for Pakistan in his push for Islamic democracy. Call it the Musharraf factor. The embattled Pakistani strongman has been, a few blips aside, a fairly reliable ally in hunting down al Qaeda fighters, assisting U.S. military forces, and promoting a moderate form of Islam. No, Musharraf is not a democrat; nor has he done enough to stanch the flow of Pakistani terrorists into Kashmir and Afghanistan; nor has he doffed his military uniform for civilian threads, as he once pledged. Critics squealed loudly in 2002 when he cooked up a bogus referendum to “win” another five-year term as president, tinkered with the constitution to expand both his and the army’s powers, and then tried to doctor parliamentary elections. But as the Economist, hardly a cheerleader for the Pakistani general, admitted last week, “Mr. Musharraf has shown great courage” in combating terrorism. Indeed, he has survived multiple assassination attempts. As Pakistan expert Marin Strmecki has written, Musharraf crossed the Rubicon after 9/11: He could either side with the Taliban, whom Pakistani agents had helped install, or join the Americans in routing them out of Kabul. He chose the latter. He also took the battle to al Qaeda elements within his own borders. That explains why he was one of only two foreign leaders (the other was Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai) President Bush mentioned by name in his January 2002 State of the Union address. During his recent trip to South Asia, Bush reiterated his support for Musharraf (whom he has called “my buddy”) and touted the “broad and lasting strategic partnership” between the United States and Pakistan.

Here we see the limits of Bush’s idealism and the crucial short-term obstacles to his vision of spreading democracy. True, Bush spoke more than usual in Islamabad about Musharraf’s obligation to “spread freedom,” “lay the foundations of democracy,” and hold clean elections in 2007. But he glossed over the general’s squelching of Pakistan’s secular opposition. Bush’s ever so gentle prodding of Musharraf underscores the salient realism of his Pakistan policy. To wit: Musharraf’s willingness to kill and capture terrorists matters far more than his questionable commitment to restore Pakistani democracy. As Bush put it in August 2002, when asked by a reporter about Musharraf’s rewriting of the Pakistani constitution, “He’s still tight with us on the war against terror, and that’s what I appreciate.”

Critics see this as proof of White House hypocrisy, or as proof of the essential shallowness of the administration’s democracy project. On the one hand, these charges seem more than a tad unfair. Pakistan remains a volatile powderkeg of Taliban remnants, bloody insurgencies, nuclear weapons, Islamist political parties, and pervasive anti-Americanism. (Witness this month’s bombing near the U.S. consulate in Karachi and the ongoing war between Pakistani soldiers and jihadists in the tribal regions along the Afghan border.) In such combustible conditions, Musharraf strikes a reassuring pose. He may have little taste for civilian rule or a democratic transition, but he is clearly a Pakistani leader with whom Washington can do business. Unlike, say, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Musharraf can still plausibly claim to be “our SOB”–a deeply flawed yet critically important friend of America, at least for now.

Then there are the empirical difficulties of leveraging Pakistani reform. “Short of invading Pakistan,” says Heritage Foundation scholar Dana Dillon, “we can’t force them to become democratic.” So, for the time being, backing Musharraf is “the only practical policy to follow.” Teresita Schaffer, director of the South Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, notes that Pakistan’s domestic political scene is far from inspiring. “The problem of extremism is real,” Schaffer says, though she adds that “you’re not likely to see an extremist government take over–unless it does so with the army.” (Pakistan’s armed forces have traditionally considered themselves the guardians of Islam.)

All of which argues in favor of Bush’s temporary “coddling” of Musharraf. But the critics also make a convincing point: Pakistan remains a fountainhead of terrorism and, over the long haul, promoting civil society and democratic governance is the only viable antidote. Musharraf’s track record here is woeful. He has hobbled the country’s two biggest secular opposition parties. This enabled Pakistan’s chief Islamist political alliance, known as the MMA, to capture two provincial governments in 2002. To be sure, the Islamist parties do not command broad popular support. “They will succeed only if the field is cleared for them,” says Marvin Weinbaum of the Middle East Institute. The trouble is, Musharraf did just that four years ago. He has used the MMA as a crutch–a bulwark against murderous fanatics at home and a convenient bogeyman with which to frighten the Americans.

While Musharraf tosses sops to his homegrown mullahs, the Bush administration does precious little to bolster secular democrats and religious reformers. This is shortsighted. Absent a moderate, mainstream opposition, the Islamists will be the only alternative in a free Pakistani election. Such an election is due next year. Musharraf has hinted he may postpone it. What if he does? Or what if he stages the poll but once again rigs the voting? “We would have a great deal of difficulty coming to his defense,” says Weinbaum.

Might there be a third way for Pakistan–a path between permanent military government and an Islamist theocracy? Dana Dillon points to the Indonesian model. Jakarta had an authoritarian military regime until 1998. Six years later, Indonesians were voting freely to elect their president–a remarkable capstone in their thorny yet relatively swift evolution from dictatorship to democracy. Military reform still has a long way to go. Ditto legal, economic, and corruption reforms. But in democratic Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, support for terrorism and “confidence” in Osama bin Laden have both fallen off significantly, according to a Pew Global Attitudes survey released last summer.

For now, U.S.-Pakistan diplomacy is consumed by such prickly matters as nuclear power, India, Kashmir, terrorists in the Afghan border region, and the interrogation of A.Q. Khan. Democracy may be on the table, but it’s clearly a side dish–not the main course. That’s just how the general likes it. “Musharraf doesn’t want to leave, and we can’t make him,” says Dillon. “His vision of Pakistan does not really include democracy.” If we believe his recent rhetoric, George W. Bush’s vision of Pakistan does. The president did a notable bit of pro-democracy cajoling this month. He should keep up the drumbeat.

Duncan Currie is a reporter at The Weekly Standard.