Musharraf made to pay for “war on terror”
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has suffered the wrath of the electorate for his commitment to the war on terror, seen by many voters as an imported conflict.
The ruling party that backs the president suffered a heavy defeat in Monday’s elections, with the two main opposition parties securing a majority of seats in parliament. Despite the poor result, Musharraf has refused to resign.
Pakistan experienced something of a democratic revolution on polling day. Musharraf, who had a firm grip on power in the morning, looked like yesterday’s man by evening. Despite delivering on his promise of free and fair elections, he will now have to contend with a hostile parliament.
Marc Bouvier is familiar with the complexities on the ground in Pakistan. The Swiss is head of a large delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) at Peshawar in the unstable Northwest Frontier Province.
The security situation is so bad in the tribal zones along the Afghan border that the ICRC is reluctant to send aid to the displaced people in the valleys. At the beginning of the month, two of its local employees who were accompanying a convoy in the Khyber Agency region were kidnapped.
Backlash
Although the provincial capital, Peshawar, seems peaceful, it is also a risky place. Very few women appeared at polling stations on Monday. The Taliban made it known that women who defied their order not to vote would be in danger.
The results of the elections in the troubled Pashtun province held some surprises for candidates and observers.
In 2002, an alliance of Islamist parties achieved a spectacular breakthrough at the polls. Six years later, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), the most prominent of these movements, suffered a backlash. Its leader, Fazal ur-Rehman, a national figure, lost his seat in his fiefdom of Dera Ismail Khan, southwest of Peshawar.
But this reversal of fortune cannot be taken at face value. The leader of the JUI, which acted as a breeding ground for the Taliban in the first Afghanistan war, moved closer to Musharraf in more recent years, and he even held talks with the Americans.
Jamiat is now sharing the same defeat as the Muslim League faction loyal to the president. This is because Pakistanis reject en masse what they see as an imported war, which has crossed over the Afghan border and reached as far as the cities.
Counter-productive
Since the beginning of the year, the United States has increased pressure on Islamabad for the Pakistani army to do more to hunt down al-Qaida and the Taliban in the border zone.
Mike Mullen, US joint chief of staff, and Michael Hayden, director of the CIA, have both made the journey to Rawalpindi to convince Musharraf’s former army colleagues. The president relinquished his role as head of the army last autumn.
The Americans have gone even further, executing a lieutenant of Osama bin Laden near the Afghan border but on Pakistani territory, with a Hellfire missile shot from a drone. Pakistani army chiefs did not approve the operation and had not even been informed about it.
The pressure the US has exerted in the country has been counter-productive, ultimately undermining its ally. One hundred retired senior officers signed a petition in January calling on Musharraf to resign.
Their main argument was that their old boss had made a grave error in involving Pakistan in an external conflict on its own territory.
The generals’ move reflects public opinion, which is massively opposed to the war, if partly based on irrational arguments. It is not unusual to hear Pakistanis explain that the “Talibanisation” – which is a real phenomenon in the northwest – is a US fabrication to break up their country.
Backfired
For Musharraf, his change in military policy has backfired. When he came to power in 1999, the general was completely behind army intervention, open or clandestine, in Kashmir and Aghanistan, to give Pakistan “strategic depth”.
After September 11, 2001 the US – which wanted to destroy the Taliban regime in Kabul and its al-Qaida guests – secured Musharraf’s agreement to fight against those he had previously helped arm.
The war crossed the border very quickly. And last year, when the Red Mosque was taken over by an extremist group, which ultimately had to be crushed by force, the external conflict touched the very heart of the capital.
In the crackdown that followed, the president emerged as a quasi-dictatorial figure. The opposition to what was purported to be a leadership of “enlightened moderation” was radicalised.
On Monday, Musharraf paid the price for his actions. The surprising fact is that the sanction came through peaceful and fair elections, something Musharraf promised but few believed would come to pass.
swissinfo, based an article in French by Alain Campiotti, who has returned from Peshawar
Switzerland recognised the independence of Pakistan when it was created in 1947. The two states established diplomatic relations in 1949.
In 1966, they signed an agreement of technical cooperation in the event of a catastrophe, completed by an accord in 1975.
After Pakistan was chosen as a priority country for Swiss development aid, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation opened an office in Islamabad in 1977.
During the Bangladesh War of Independence and the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 Switzerland represented Pakistani interests in India and vice versa.
Today, Pakistan is an important Swiss partner in Asia. A series of economic agreements underpins their collaboration. Development aid continues to play a significant role.
Swiss exports to Pakistan are worth Sfr300 million ($273.75 million), ten times higher than imports.
For Switzerland, Pakistan is a country that needs to be handled with care. Recently, the cabinet suspended an arms contract for anti-air defence systems following growing conflict in the Northwest Province on the Afghan border.
Switzerland has also had a taste of the corruption that is endemic in Pakistan. Swiss representations in Islamabad and Karachi had to be reorganised after a major case of visa trafficking was discovered.
In 2007, former President Benazir Bhutto and her husband Asif Ali Zardani faced a money-laundering trial in Switzerland after being accused of receiving multi-million dollar kickbacks in exchange for handing a contract to a Swiss firm. The charges against Bhutto were dropped following her death but a parallel investigation into Zardari continues.
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