Eurasia Insight:
MUSHARRAF'S CONTORTIONS REVEAL THE GENERAL AS POLITICIAN MUSHA
Arif Jamal: 4/03/02
A EurasiaNet Commentary

General Pervez Musharraf's alliance with the United States has so endangered his political legitimacy that he finds himself compelled to disown his successes. Despite a productive police raid on March 29 that delivered al Qaeda leader Abu Zubayda into American custody, Musharraf is scrambling to win over his citizens without spurring American reprisals.

In Kabul on April 2, Musharraf publicly claimed to be able to find al Qaeda operatives without American military support. This gesture appears to be politically motivated - particularly since his regime has failed to arrest any terrorists behind a long series of sectarian killings, which include a March 17 church grenade attack in Islamabad that killed the wife and daughter of an American diplomat. And while Pakistani police tracked and arrested Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh for the kidnapping and murder of journalist Daniel Pearl, reports indicate that they botched negotiations with Pearl's kidnappers and may have squandered a chance to save the reporter. It is thus alarming to see Musharraf spurn US military aid.

Talk of al Qaeda officers slipping from Afghanistan into Pakistan has eroded American confidence in Musharraf's regime. It has also led to the widespread impression that the security agencies of the country are largely sympathetic toward al Qaeda members and the Taliban movement, which Pakistanis have had associations with for 20 years.

Musharraf, despite putting his career and perhaps his life at risk by allying with the United States, has not always worked hard to counter that impression. Certainly he wishes to maintain military sovereignty over the country. As American-led bombers began striking Afghan targets on October 7, Musharraf told a press conference that the campaign would be short. Later, General Musharraf complained on several occasions that the Americans were not taking him into confidence about their war on terrorism. And he recently broke with the official stance of the anti-terrorism coalition, announcing that Osama bin Laden had probably died and al Qaeda had fallen into disarray.

These observations were interpreted as clear signals to the United States to declare success and pull out. But Americans dismissed the idea of bin Laden being subdued and pressed on, even saying that they might send soldiers into Pakistan. So Musharraf's pronouncements in this vein have failed both to deter American military efforts and to appease the rising tempers among his associates as well as the Pakistani jihadis.

Musharraf's present bind began with the attack on the Protestant International Church that left five dead and 40 injured. The attack coincided with the already scheduled visit of US army's Central Command General Tommy Franks, who reached Islamabad that night. Americans raced to Pakistan to assess the situation: Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca cancelled all her scheduled meetings in New Delhi and dashed to Islamabad on the next day without telling her hosts. According to a senior Pakistani official who refused to be named, "The terrorist attack on the church in Islamabad has only exposed the United States' lack of trust in Pakistan."

Indeed, the United States sent all non-essential diplomatic staff and their families home from Pakistan five days after the attack. Diplomats and their families had just gotten the green light to return to Pakistan after the Afghan war when the church attack took place. According to a US diplomat who did not want to be named, around two-thirds of the staff and their family members are scheduled to leave. Many, the diplomat said, are leaving for good this time.

The church attack changed American-Pakistani relations in a larger sense. It gave American officials a good excuse to increase their pressure on Musharraf. General Franklin Hagenbeck of the 10th Mountain Division told The New York Times on March 21 that US forces might cross the border into neighboring Pakistan to capture or kill al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, under certain circumstances. Pakistan's Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar reportedly approved the idea in a March 27 interview with the Washington Times. Although the government tried to suppress these comments in the national press, some journalists expressed outrage. A leading Urdu newspaper, Nawa-i-Waqt, called Sattar an American agent, saying that "his statements were harming the national interest."

But they helped the American war effort, at least in the short term. Within hours of Sattar's remarks, US agents and commandos joined Pakistani police and intelligence agencies, raiding several places in Faisalabad to arrest members of the al Qaeda organization. US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld confirmed on April 2 that Abu Zubayda, one of bin Laden's top two aides, was arrested in this raid. Although neither the United States nor Pakistan revealed much more about the raid, sources say the joint teams arrested 65 al Qaeda cadres and killed two of them. All suspects have also been flown to an unknown place in an American airplane.

By following this successful raid with a sudden trip to Kabul, General Musharraf may well be playing to his electorate: he has promised to hold general election in or before October 2002, although he has clearly expressed the desire to remain the President and the Chief of the Army Staff for at least another five years. Only recently, the government partially lifted curbs on political activities leading up to the coming elections. On March 29, most of the opposition parties kicked off what is effectively their electoral campaign by lashing out at Musharraf's pro-US policies. The acting president of the Pakistan Muslim League, Makhdoom Javed Hashmi accused the government of selling off sovereignty. Qazi Hussain Ahmed, chief of the Jamat-i-Islami party, described the American alliance as a "direct attack."

Hence, four days after a putative triumph, Musharraf publicly distanced himself from the United States by rejecting future American military assistance. Many observers expect candidates to exploit popular anti-American feelings in the next six months. Anti-American campaigning played well in Pakistan's cities in the past and figures to resonate even more now. Musharraf's commitment to official democracy, then, is clashing with his allegiance to the US-led coalition. If the coalition manages to cleanse Afghanistan of al Qaeda and the Taliban, it may nonetheless stain Musharraf's political fortunes.

Editor’s Note: Arif Jamal is a freelance journalist based in Pakistan.