Postponing the elections is the latest misguided decision by Pakistan's dictator. The west should not support him any longer
Thu 3 Jan 2008 12.15 GMT
It is bad enough that the assassination of Benazir Bhutto at an election rally on 27 December has robbed Pakistan of the leader most likely to deliver stability and political progress in that troubled nation. To compound Pakistan's misery, it now seems that the very democratic process designed to deliver those benefits is in jeopardy given Tuesday's decision by the electoral commission to postpone the elections due for 8 January until 18 February. We should be under no illusion as to the level of danger Pakistan now finds itself in as a consequence of the delay in polling. The excuse given was that elections would be impossible to conduct in the febrile atmosphere that has followed Bhutto's assassination, and which included attacks on polling stations in Sindh province. In reality, as the opposition parties have recognised, the decision stems more from President Pervez Musharraf's desire to avoid a crushing defeat at the hands of Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples party (PPP) than from any safety issues. After all, the security situation has returned to a pre-assassination level - although it is likely to worsen again now that the election date has been postponed. Advertisement In taking this flawed decision, the electoral commission has dealt the latest in a long series of hammer blows that have affected Pakistan's stability. Regrettably from the point of view of western foreign policy, the source of this instability is the very appeasement of President Musharraf that western countries have long indulged in. There has always been a glaring inconsistency in the west's desire to prop up Pakistan's military dictator while seeking to spread the light of democracy in the neighbouring Middle East. Some recognised the incongruence of this position from the standpoint of ethics. It has now also been damned from the strategic point of view used to justify the policy in the first place. For the fact is that under Musharraf, Pakistan has declined from the status of a mild irritant to its immediate neighbours into a major threat to regional and perhaps world security, where Islamists run riot, terrorist insurgents seek shelter, and nuclear proliferation has received its greatest fillip. It is worth recounting the sorry state of affairs that has led to this to illustrate the folly that the west has subscribed to. President Musharraf has long traded on the reputation of being the best guarantor of a stable, peaceful and non-Islamist Pakistan. This reputation is wholly undeserved. Having usurped Pakistan's democracy through military coup in 1999, Musharraf proceeded to push traditional Pakistani foreign policy objectives in Afghanistan and Kashmir by backing the Taliban administration in the former and terrorist groups in the latter. Even after 9/11, when he supposedly signed up to the "war on terror", in reality, his major commitment proved to be keeping himself in power. In the rigged elections of 2002, Musharraf's Pakistan Muslim League Quaid-e-Azam party was able to secure victory through the hobbling of the ability of the democratic parties to contest the election. But also through his engineering of a record 12% vote for the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), a coalition of six Islamist parties which became his supporters in government and rulers of the North-West Frontier Province, a territory bordering Afghanistan. Even as Musharraf was supporting the defeat of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, al-Qaida fighters found themselves welcomed with open arms in this MMA-controlled province. Moreover, radical madrasas began mushrooming here and across Pakistan, encouraged by Musharraf's accommodating attitudes to an Islamism that had never before gained political credibility in Pakistan, even if it had enjoyed support from a previous military dictator in the form of General Zia ul-Haq. Even when Musharraf officially broke with his Islamist allies in 2004 and pledged to combat Islamic extremism, his commitment proved skin deep. His reluctance to openly challenge reactionary forces - for fear of sparking further opposition to his rule - was graphically illustrated by the fact that it took until July 2007 for him to face down what was effectively an Islamist enclave in the Lal Masjid in Islamabad, but a stone's throw away from the presidential palace. In the meantime, large swathes of Pakistan had been infiltrated by al-Qaida and Taliban sympathisers, not only in North-West Frontier Province but also in Waziristan, where the Pakistani military is fighting a losing battle to regain control of the province from insurgents. And under Musharraf's watch, Pakistan has of course also become a major source of radicalisation for the export of terror abroad, as Britain discovered only too well through the horror of the 7 July bombings in 2005. And for this shambles, Musharraf has been awarded well over $10 billion in military aid since 2001. Nor does the extent of Musharraf's duplicitous approach stop in the sphere of Islamism. While he may have finally recanted his tolerance of radical Islam, there are no signs that this supposed friend of the west has acknowledged the damage that the work of Dr A Q Khan - responsible for much of the nuclear proliferation seen in the world during the last decade - has caused. Khan was of course responsible for the development of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, but as has been subsequently proven, his network also disseminated technology and information to North Korea, Libya and Iran. His punishment for these infractions? A period of house arrest which has now been relaxed. Musharraf will not allow his interrogation by Western intelligence agencies, no doubt for fear of discovery of the extent of the collaboration of Pakistan's feared Inter-Services Intelligence with Khan's activities. The final indictment of Musharraf has been the manner in which his desperate attempts to maintain power has resulted in domestic turmoil in Pakistan over the past year. With both presidential and parliamentary elections due in late 2007 early 2008, and with his popularity in freefall, Musharraf needed to find a way of ensuring that he could be re-elected civilian President while still in military uniform, something he had previously pledged not to do. Having clamped down on press freedom and the independence of the supreme court by seeking to suspend the chief justice - only to be countermanded by the court on the latter course - Musharraf found himself being forced to engage in negotiations with the exiled Benazir Bhutto. He could have reached an arrangement with Bhutto to conduct free and fair parliamentary elections in exchange for her support for the presidency once he had stepped out of uniform. Instead he took the coward's approach: declaring martial law, and dismissing the supreme court in exchange for a more pliant version which then ratified an election which saw Musharraf confirmed as president. Only then did he retire from the army. It is the chaotic aftermath of that decision which Pakistan now lives with today. A Pakistan where Bhutto is dead, the elections she desperately wanted to contest have been postponed, and where it is entirely unclear whether Musharraf will once again resort to vote-rigging in order to perpetuate his rule. Surely in the light of this latest action by pro-Musharraf forces, it is time for the west to say that enough is enough. Benazir Bhutto was not perfection by any means. Her two premierships were dogged by corruption charges, and her widower, new PPP joint leader Asif Ali Zardari, retains the moniker of "Mr Ten Per Cent". The Taliban first came to prominence in Afghanistan on her watch. However, she was clearly a committed democrat and secularist, who understood that only the restoration of a working democracy could restore stability to Pakistan, as it would allow for the expression of the popular will and a safety valve for the growing frustration with the lack of political progress. While there can be no guarantees that a democratic Pakistan will fare any better than the rule of Musharraf in promoting stability, it is clear that democracy deserves a chance to succeed where military dictatorship has failed. Certainly Islamist insurgents regarded Bhutto as the greatest threat to their continued rise in Pakistan, which is why she was targeted. The west must now stand firm and tell President Musharraf that the prospects for Pakistani democracy must not be terminated with her. If the elections are to be delayed then they must be free and fair. Anything less will be a final betrayal not just of Benazir Bhutto's legacy but of Pakistan itself.
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