Can Pakistan’s Leader Hold On?

COLUMN READING:

With Pakistan's pro-Taliban policy buried in the wreckage of the World Trade Center, President Pervez Musharraf has struggled to put Pakistan back on track and restore the badly bruised relationship with the United States.

Joining the antiterrorist coalition may prove to be a fateful choice, one that opens onto a future of more difficult choices. Gen Musharraf's declaration yesterday that no extremist activity will be tolerated in any quarter of Pakistan came in response to serious anti-American protests. On the same day, one radical Pakistani Islamist leader vowed to send 10,000 warriors against US and all the infidel forces.

Soldiers were deployed and sandbag bunkers set up here in the capital. A poll showed 62 percent of Pakistanis opposing involvement in the war against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. Even Gen Musharraf's grip on his own armed forces has been called into question. Yet Gen Musharraf has tried to give an optimistic view of Pakistani support for the American-led effort.

Pakistani politics has been a delicate game for many years, but never more so than now. During the past decade, Pakistan's policies were driven by the pursuit of an elusive balance. A basically friendly government on its west (Afghanistan) was seen as countering the perceived threat from the east (India). With a weak economy and a polarized citizenry, Pakistan spread itself thin, simultaneously seeking to preserve its security, promote an isolated Afghan regime and protect Pakistan's long-standing claim on Kashmir. Now, with the bombing campaign in Afghanistan, Mr. Musharraf has to separate the war on terrorism from any perception of supporting an attack against fellow Muslims.

The backlash from the religious right was expected. Most of the Taliban leaders had studied at seminaries in Pakistan. They share an ideological affinity with many Pakistani clerics and an ethnic bond with Pakistan's 20 million Pashtuns. The biggest anti-American demonstrations have taken place in Peshawar and Quetta. These cities, capitals of the provinces where most of Pakistan's Pashtuns reside, also have the largest concentration of Afghan refugees, who number about 2.2 million.

Pakistan's aversion to the Northern Alliance is rooted in this demographic reality, since the alliance is made up of non-Pashtun groups. Gen Musharraf also has to contend with other critics, including skeptics in his own military constituency. They see an American pattern of shifting alliances, short memories and a pronounced tendency to forget its friends when it tires of them.

In this campaign against terrorism, the prospects for Pakistan are as hazardous as those for Afghanistan. Pakistan's real nightmare concerns the war's aftermath. Once the Americans are done with Afghanistan and depart, will Pakistan again be left to clear the debris? Refugees and a sprawling culture of Kalashnikovs, narcotics, sectarian terrorism: all these were the unwelcome gifts of the last Pakistani-American effort in Afghanistan. Serving as the frontline state from 1979 to 1989, Pakistan helped engineer an American triumph in the last battle of the cold war. But with the mission accomplished, the United States left in an unseemly hurry. The 1990 sanctions - intended to prevent Pakistan from acquiring a nuclear capability - were the parting kick.

Gen Musharraf hopes, as do most Pakistanis, that America's rediscovery of Pakistan will be different, resulting in a resilient relationship. In his two years in office since the military coup of Oct. 19, 1999, Musharraf has combined flexibility with a willingness to make tough decisions. He stunned Pakistanis by making a deal with Nawaz Sharif, whom he had deposed, by allowing the former prime minister and his family to move to Saudi Arabia. And the general, initially perceived as a hawk, surprised his detractors by reaching out to India's prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, at the Agra summit last July. Now he has radically reshuffled his core military team, off-loading a number of the men who installed him in power and bringing in a new head for the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which had been the most important conduit for Pakistan's support of the Taliban.

Gen Musharraf has distanced Pakistan from the Taliban and even invited Afghanistan's former king, Zahir Shah, to help cobble together a new coalition to govern Kabul. Pakistan's change of direction needs sustained international support if the country is to be an effective defender of Muslim moderation. The American-led coalition can help in various ways: by providing economic relief, particularly a debt write-off, to help stabilize the country; by brokering a compromise with India over Kashmir; and by holding Gen Musharraf to his promise of elections. In a country where none of the free elections from 1970 to 1997 have given the religious political parties more than 5 percent of the popular vote, democracy remains the best bulwark against extremism. Only when democratic life has been stabilized will Pakistanis, and the region, taste the fruit of enduring freedom rather than enduring instability.