Better the devil you know


That seems to be the line of thinking among many Westerners.


Umar

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http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\10\12\story_12-10-2006_pg3_1
EDITORIAL: General Musharraf is still riding high

After a one-hour-long meeting with President Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday, General David Richards, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, was careful not to repeat the sentiments of his subordinates in Afghanistan regarding Pakistan’s alleged support to the Taliban infiltrators. Indeed, he praised Pakistan’s “excellent cooperation” in the fight against terrorism. An official statement attributed to him noted that “the ISAF fully appreciates that a vast majority of the problems of Afghanistan emanate from within the country and have deep roots due to the fact that it has been highly unstable for over two decades”.

General Richards clarified that he was not mincing words and sending out lateral messages. He dismissed front-page reports in the foreign media that he had come to Islamabad to roll out some home truths — with proof — to President Musharraf. “That is not the reason for one moment that I came here,” he said, “I came here to further develop our relationship with the Pakistan Army. I don’t know of many countries that could possibly be doing more. Could Pakistan do more still? Yes, we all want to do more because we still have a problem”. For good measure, he also defended President Musharraf’s “agreement” in North Waziristan.

That’s exactly what happened when President Musharraf was in Washington recently. When he said tough things to his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, he didn’t reap many PR dividends with American audiences. But then President Bush unequivocally plumped for him and praised Pakistan for doing more than anyone else against terrorism. Thus, while the conservative Washington press thought Mr Karzai had presented a better case for his country than General Musharraf did for Pakistan, the official verdict was clearly in favour of general Musharraf. Now NATO, led by a British general, has abstained from criticising him, apart from a picayune reference to “we could all do more”, which can hardly be construed as criticism only of General Musharraf.

Interestingly, one reason for this divergence between media and official thinking in the West may have to do with the perception that Pakistan is so thoroughly rebellious and out of tune with required ground realities that dumping General Musharraf may be the most dangerous option of all. He is, after all, the only Pakistani leader who still speaks his mind about the backwardness of some of the retrogressive practices many Pakistanis insist on hugging. And he is the only one who is at least promising to fight Islamic radicalism, even though he has failed to deliver on any of the “enlightened” projects he started some years ago. After the fiasco of the anti-women and anti-minorities hudood laws, it has become clear to the world that not even the ruling PMLQ, which agrees with General Musharraf’s 2001 volte face against the Taliban, has the will to initiate lawmaking that can save Pakistan from being engulfed by the black hole of a medieval worldview.

The United States acknowledges that it is General Musharraf who has surrendered hundreds of Al Qaeda terrorists to it and gone into Waziristan to flush out foreign terrorists, even though the campaign hasn’t succeeded as envisaged. Therefore if we look closely at what the general run of thinking in Pakistan is, the US and its allies are probably agreed that letting General Musharraf fall may, far from leading to an improvement, worsen the situation in Pakistan. In short, there is no immediate and workable ‘alternative’ to General Musharraf in the country. And judging from his last outing in the United States as well as his memoir, we are compelled to think that he knows this too. After all, General Abizaid of CENTCOM came and went away singing General Musharraf’s praises; now General Richards of NATO has more or less repeated his act.

But at home the reactions among President Musharraf’s erstwhile supporters have been dipping into the negative. A group of “neutral” members of the ruling party got together with some respectable citizens recently and wrote him a letter asking him to make his presidency legal by doffing his uniform. The “dual office” act has overshot its obsolescence date by two years. Then a group of retired generals who sincerely supported his efforts to pull Pakistan back from the precipice wrote to ask him to change his “forward” policy before the provinces become totally alienated from the central government. This alienation at home — demonstrated by the PMLQ’s gradual and muffled revolt — is in sharp contrast to the plaudits he is getting in the West.

The fact is that President Musharraf’s external supporters are being relativist about what to do with him. They compare him to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states that may be in sympathy with what the radical Arab street thinks, whereas General Musharraf seems to be walking in the opposite direction of modernity, compromise and moderation. They feel the heat of popular hatred rising from the whole region and are scared of having to face conflict with Iran while Afghanistan and Iraq are still on fire and steadily killing American troops. What if Pakistan were to join the conflagration? Everyone in Pakistan is predicting it, but no one is offering leadership that can save the country if it comes about. That is why General Musharraf is still the best option in the eyes of many Westerners and Pakistanis abroad even though his popularity at home is at its lowest.