Benazir's second homecoming

By M K Bhadrakumar

The house that the Bush administration has built in Islamabad is imposing and has many possibilities. But now it is up to the politicians of Pakistan to lead their country towards sanity and development. There is little doubt that Benazir Bhutto has a significant role to play but in the fractured polity of that country her acid test lies ahead when she tests the waters of Punjab.

By any reckoning, a very unusual moment comes when a politician is called upon to pass the test of public support under intense glare of the world community. For the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, that fateful Thursday posed one such dramatic test - crucial even by the extraordinary yardstick of her tumultuous life.

She passed the test, as the bemused world stood by and curiously watched. She still possesses traces of that rare magic when a politician connects with the people, when a politician comes alive and ignites public imagination. The eight years of absence and the numerous scandals surrounding her track record in power, including charges of personal corruption, do not seem to have dented her ability to inspire.

The Pakistani province of Sindh, Bhutto's political base, went into raptures on her homecoming. At the same time, she provokes strong feelings of hostility among powerful sections of opinion within Pakistan as the twin bomb blasts on her convoy in Karachi testify. It is even possible that her attackers include "rogue" elements within the Pakistani establishment. Agent provocateurs are surely actively putting roadblocks in her campaign to mobilize support.

Obviously, her political opponents take her seriously despite their saying that her charisma is much diminished. Now comes another test. As she travels to the province of Punjab in the coming days, what will be her reception? Will it match another homecoming - no less fortuitous, no less breathtaking - two decades ago?

Punjab's reaction will be keenly watched. Without Punjab's support, or its acquiescence at the very least, it will be difficult for her to be the monarch of all she surveys as a national leader. No Pakistani politician can hope to make a serious bid for power without mobilizing support in Punjab. But the powerful Choudhury clans in feudal Punjab, which ruled the roost there under the Pervez Musharraf regime, cannot be expected to surrender

political space easily to Bhutto. They're surely spoiling for a fight. A scuffle may ensue which could be rough and, in turn, it will significantly determine the calculus of political power in Islamabad in the coming few years.

The element of uncertainty still remains whether the "powers that be" – the establishment, which includes the armed forces - will be prepared to accommodate Bhutto. Her return to Pakistan has been almost completely choreographed by Britain and the United States. The Musharraf regime needed to be dragged by the collar to the promised land of political cohabitation with Bhutto. Top officials of the George W Bush administration, laden with rich experience in making brutal despots in Latin America behave, repeatedly

intervened with the Musharraf regime to play ball - at times cajoling, at times threatening, at times blackmailing.

But beyond a point, Washington cannot act as Bhutto's mentor. From now onward, she must perform mostly on her own. In the past, Pakistani armed forces viewed her leadership with distaste. She may be somewhat better off now, as the new incumbent Vice Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Pervez Kiani, who is expected to succeed Musharraf as military chief, is known to her previously as her military secretary in her first government in 1988.

For the present, though, Washington's focus will be on two other fronts. First and foremost, Washington would expect the new dispensation in Islamabad to ensure that popular fury within Pakistan doesn't engulf that country, leave alone assume the nature of an uprising, in the event of a US military attack on Iran in the coming months.

Equally, the Bush administration will expect the incoming military-cum-civilian regime to forcefully crack down on the extremist forces getting entrenched in Pakistan's lawless tribal agencies bordering Afghanistan. The Pakistani Army would have no more excuses to avoid undertaking such an operation.

Washington will expect the civilian components of the new regime – the Pakistan Muslim League faction led by the Choudhury clan, Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) led by Maulana Fazlur Rahman and the Awami Nationalist Party (ANP) - to hold the fort of public opinion whilst the army cracks down on the militants in the tribal border tracts.

In this risky adventure that is about to commence, Bhutto has a vital role to play. Her presence is expected to help consolidate the inchoate majority opinion in Pakistan, which militates against radicalism and views the rising tide of militant Islam with extreme disquiet bordering on abhorrence. Even if they do not share Bhutto's brand of secularism, and are devout Muslims, she can galvanize Pakistan's silent majority and thereby help isolate the forces of extremism, which despite their loud clamor and muscle are still a marginal phenomenon in Pakistan's polity.

But this would make her enemy number one for the terrorist squads, diffuse and aplenty in today's Pakistan. Similarly, the JUI can provide a useful bridge to the Taliban camp. Though the JUI forms a part of the Deobandi Muslim movement and may pose as ideologically rigid, Rahman himself is in practice a man of many parts. He got along comfortably with Bhutto during her second prime ministership in 1993-96, even heading the Pakistan Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. His inclusion in the new regime will throw the Islamic platform in Pakistani party politics into great disarray and almost certainly reduce them to noisy rubble with no real capacity to bite. Rahman is no stranger to the US security establishment, either - having been a significant protagonist in the Taliban saga.

The house that the Bush administration has built in Islamabad, therefore, is not bereft of logic altogether. It looks imposing. But the main uncertainty lies in its durability. Pakistani politicians are extremely quarrelsome. Coalition politics is a very sophisticated form of governance that requires tact and accommodation. The pervasive anti-Americanism in Pakistani public opinion may seem a problem. But then, the US has not been traditionally upset over its popularity ratings in similar circumstances when the end justified the means. In the entire Middle East and the Persian Gulf, Washington impassively enforced US dominance decade after decade. A key ally like South Korea seethed with anti-Americanism in the 1970s and into the 1980s until democracy gained foothold and began tempering the public mood.

Meanwhile, there are three main directions in which the US can help Pakistan. First, by remaining focused on the central point that it is a long haul to bring Pakistan back from its present slide into an increasingly ungovernable country. That requires commitment in intrinsic terms, both in resources and in political capital. Nor can it be a piecemeal approach. It must also take place in a conducive regional environment. But the US has no proven record in nation building. Washington's attention span is usually limited.

Second, the "war on terror" in Afghanistan needs to be redefined. The Afghan insurgency is not a marginal phenomenon that can be eliminated by force. It is well rooted within Afghanistan and in parts of Pakistan. (Arguably, it is relatively stronger within Pakistan). The Taliban should not be confused with al-Qaeda. A negotiated solution to the insurgency is possible.

But, on the other hand, the US (and Britain) should not be cynical by loading the Afghan settlement with a geopolitical agenda. Any attempt to finesse the irredentist Islamist elements in the region as an instrument of geopolitics aimed at perpetuating the Western military presence in the region or for encircling Iran or for advancing the US's so-called "Great Central Asia" strategy will be resented and eventually opposed by other regional powers. At the moment, though, the Anglo-American intentions are far from clear - to say the least. The first step in transparency should have been by widening the gyre of regional involvement in a genuine intra-Afghan dialogue. But the tendency to monopolize an Afghan settlement is what is on continued display. The present selective involvement of the United Nations is not a substitute.

Third, Pakistan must be provided with a guarantee of peace and tranquility in its Pashtun borderlands. Only by legitimising the Durand Line as a proper, duly accepted international border can this be achieved. Again, Pakistani hegemony over Afghanistan is inconceivable, but Islamabad should nonetheless be given the confidence that Pakistan's legitimate influence in Afghanistan will not come under challenge.

Finally, any enduring peace in Afghanistan will remain predicated on that country's neutrality in the geopolitics of the region. The bottom line is the vacation of the Western military presence. But, unfortunately, Afghanistan has come to be the playpen where the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's gumption to assume a global security role is being put to the test. Reducing the NATO forces' casualty figures for assuaging European public opinion should not turn out to be the core objective of engaging the Taliban in negotiations.

Continued, open-ended military presence in Afghanistan increases Western dependence on Pakistan, which, in essence, increases the role of the Pakistani military. Incrementally, the army has developed a vested interest in the Western military presence in the region. But that only contributes to the assertiveness of the army in Pakistan's political arena, and,

paradoxically, it serves to undermine the foundations of the very same comely architecture that the Bush administration has erected in Islamabad in the recent days and weeks.

The bomb blasts in Karachi do have an ominous ring about them. Admittedly, nerves are on edge in Pakistan. It is a sign of the times that in an early impromptu comment, Asif Ali Zardari, husband of Bhutto, blamed the Pakistani intelligence agencies for the bomb blasts. Bhutto herself demanded the sacking of the intelligence chief. The government promptly assured that there is no move to postpone the elections due in Pakistan in January, but suggested all the same that Bhutto eschew public contacts for the sake of her own security.