President Pervez Musharraf’s ”second coup” amounted to a serious personal blow for Condoleezza Rice, the United States Secretary of State, and American counterterrorism and nation-building policies in the Pakistan-Afghanistan badlands.
Whatever his other failings, the Pakistani leader is a gentleman of the English colonial school. But good manners did not prevent him rejecting Rice’s latest calls for restraint — and then ignoring her phone calls during a fraught weekend that saw him tear up a host of solemn undertakings.
Musharraf’s calculation that the White House would tacitly go along with his putsch looks correct in the short term. As always his fealty, however conditional, to the ”global war on terror” is Washington’s first priority.
Not coincidentally, the general’s emergency declaration made great play of the threat posed by jihadis and Pakistani Taliban.
The US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, duly responded on Tuesday, saying that while ”we are reviewing all our assistance programmes, we are mindful not to do anything that would undermine ongoing counterterrorism efforts” Musharraf knows that when faced by such weighty domestic considerations Rice is outgunned.
All the same, Islamabad seems to have been taken by surprise by the international condemnation, which saw Britain’s Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, join his European Union counterparts in demanding that Musharraf rescind his action and quit as army chief.
There was speculation on Tuesday that elections scheduled for January, and put off indefinitely, could be reinstated. But for now the state of emergency remains in place.
The chaotic sequence of events strongly suggests that Musharraf’s time is running out. It will be said of him now that he could not even organise a coup in a barracks. His credibility is shot; his popularity and political capital are draining away.
American and Pakistani analysts suggest the democracy-security trade-off that has kept him in power since 9/11 cannot be sustained much longer.
Perhaps another general will in time replace him. Perhaps the elections, if they proceed unhindered (and that is a big ”if”), will produce a genuine democratic alternative.
Much depends now on the strongest opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto. Her power-sharing plans disrupted, she may feel obliged to campaign all out against the military regime.
The ensuing confrontation could be unpredictable and bloody both for her and the general. For that reason perhaps, there are indications that the government-opposition dialogue will be salvaged.
”What history has taught us is that in Pakistan the military cannot rule without the backing of civilians — and civilians cannot rule without the backing of the military,” a senior Pakistani official said. Despite everything, the two remained sides of the same coin. They must find ways to work together.
And from the point of view of the US, Pakistan’s paymaster, geopolitical guide, and strategic dominatrix, a Bhutto-Musharraf deal still seems the best way of avoiding various nightmare scenarios all pointing towards the same uncomfortable question: who ”lost” Pakistan?
These are gloomy days for the US power and interest in the wider region. — Â