So Pakistan’s latest coup isn’t anything to worry about, right? Wrong. If Nawaz were a democrat, Pakistan at least would have a leader to rally behind and an ideal to aim for. Now cynicism prevails. The country of 148 million has the proven ability to build a nuclear bomb, but it can’t master the more subtle science of effectively managing its own affairs. It’s got a violent history with India, and it’s also on a grim list of post-cold-war countries listing dangerously toward lawlessness. Pakistan can still avoid the fate of Afghanistan and Somalia, where warlords rule. But it could also turn to extreme nationalism or Islamic fundamentalism to hold itself together. “There is every danger of Pakistan becoming a failed state,” exiled opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, who faces corruption charges at home, told NEWSWEEK last week in New York. “Many Pakistanis have been talking about this–that we need to wake up and save our own nation because the rest of the world can’t save us” (interview).
The generals now in charge probably share that concern. It seems the coup last week was not the result of meticulous planning by the military, but rather an immediate reaction to threats to its own interests. Musharraf was on a plane when Nawaz unceremoniously fired him; only then did the Army step in. Units loyal to Musharraf took over the state television station and the airports. Other soldiers arrested Nawaz, his brother and Lt. Gen. Khawaja Ziauddin, the head of the shadowy Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. (Nawaz had planned to replace Musharraf with Ziauddin.) Not a shot was fired.
But the generals were stumped about what to do next. They apparently tried to persuade Nawaz–who was incommunicado–to resign and dissolve Parliament. If Nawaz had agreed, the Army could have appointed a government of technocrats, as it did in 1993, when World Bank executive Moeen Qureshi led the country for 90 days. Two days passed before Musharraf finally suspended the Constitution, imposed a state of emergency and made himself “chief executive.” (A more benign title, Pakistanis noted hopefully, than “chief martial law administrator,” which was used by military dictators past.) Late last week the generals were huddled in consultations about how to form an “interim government.”
U.S. intelligence analysts furiously shuffled through field reports of the past several weeks to look for missed signals. They were well aware of tensions between Nawaz and the military. In recent months Pakistani opposition politicians had warned of an impending crisis, as had Nawaz’s own brother during a visit to Washington in September. (The Pakistani brass was steamed, in particular, because Nawaz–under American pressure–had forced their soldiers and proxy guerrillas to retreat from territory in Kashmir.) On Sept. 21, the U.S. State Department took the unusual step of warning all parties against “extraconstitutional measures.”
The worst of the tension seemed to pass, particularly after Sept. 29, when Nawaz formally confirmed Musharraf as Army chief until fall 2001. But then last week Nawaz inexplicably moved against Musharraf. Senior officials in Washington seemed exasperated. Tellingly, nobody took up Nawaz’s cause once he was under house arrest. Instead the message to the generals in Islamabad, in the words of Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth, was that Washington expects “democracy and civilian government will be restored as soon as possible.” Note the omissions: not Nawaz or his government restored, and not even at once or immediately. The White House canceled a $1.7 million health program, but left open–at least for the moment–plans for President Bill Clinton to visit Pakistan and India early next year.
If Clinton does make the trip to Islamabad, he’ll have plenty to talk about: Pakistan’s nuclear program, its volatile standoff with India and its substantial role in Afghanistan, a haven for Islamic extremists, gunrunners and drug producers. During the cold war, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency used Pakistan for transshipment of weapons to Afghan guerrillas and Islamic volunteers fighting the Soviet occupation. Rebel arms were partly paid for by heroin grown in Afghanistan and the tribal areas of northern Pakistan. Now, Washington wants Pakistan’s help to stamp out the drug trade. The problem only seems to get worse: last month the United Nations announced that Afghanistan had become the world’s largest producer of raw opium, accounting for three quarters of global output.
Pakistan has reasons of its own to contain the heroin trade. Gangs devoted to it have descended on the big cities, flooding them with guns and drugs. Karachi, once a peaceful port, is now one of the most violent cities in the world, with an annual murder rate exceeding 2,000. Yet certain officers in Pakistan’s military and intelligence services, aiming to maintain a political alliance with their chaotic neighbors, also have tight links to the Taliban militia that rules much of Afghanistan. Some analysts, who note the spread of radical fundamentalist values across the border from Afghanistan, now worry about the “Talibanization” of Pakistan.
So what can outsiders do to encourage stability? Washington has been forced to recognize that, thanks to years of sanctions to protest Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons program, the United States has virtually no influence within the Pakistani military. Back in the 1980s, roughly half of the senior leadership of the Pakistan Army had been through U.S. training schools. Now the figure is 10 percent or less. “We have lost touch with a generation of Pakistani military leaders,” says Inderfurth.
Musharraf himself is an unknown quantity. The conventional wisdom in Washington and Islamabad is that he’s a soldier’s soldier. Many analysts expect that he’ll be pro-Western and pragmatic. But on what basis do they make that judgment? Musharraf has a married son living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also a brother resident in the United States. He’s well traveled, and trained for a time in Britain. But he’s also viewed as a hawk on India–the assault on Kashmir last spring was widely seen to be his idea–and some believe he could fall under the influence of Islamic fundamentalists.
Ordinary Pakistanis only hope that Musharraf is pro-Pakistan, and they seem willing to give him a chance to prove himself. These include people like newspaper editor Najam Sethi, who was arrested, beaten and held incommunicado by intelligence goons earlier this year because of articles he had written about Nawaz-family corruption. “It was bound to end like this,” he says. “I think the general attitude, even among people like myself who don’t like the thought of Army intervention in the democratic process, is to say, ‘It’s unfortunate, but someone had to clean up this mess, and the politicians obviously couldn’t or wouldn’t do it’.”
Can the military? The country Musharraf took over last week is violent and broke–foreign-currency reserves currently are less than $2 billion. It is entirely dependent on foreign loans to keep it from defaulting, and foreign investors treat it like a plague zone.
“Not a single tear has been shed for Nawaz Sharif,” former president Farooq Leghari told NEWSWEEK. The priorities now are simple, he says, even if implementation is not: “First people want public order restored… Then they want accountability–they want to see all these politicians and judges and bureaucrats who have looted the country brought to justice. And they want to see the economy turned around–which you can only do under the rule of law.” Only then can Pakistan move to patch up relations with India. “I think Pakistan still has a chance,” Leghari adds, “but we have very little time left.” The alternative is something that everyone–inside and outside Pakistan–should worry about.
