Good Bye Musharraf

27. August 2008 _ Ole Frahm
Musharraf is leaving. Maybe he is going to exile like so many politicians and generals before him in Pakistan’s short, brutal history. Maybe he will one day return to the political scene - also like so many others before him. While it’s too early to write an epitaph on the decade-long leader of the second biggest Muslim country in the world, it is high time to consider what Musharraf’s exit means for the future of international relations in the "Asiatic hemisphere”.

Pakistan

Pervez Musharraf is leaving. His successor’s name is at stake in painstaking negotiations between the two governing parties – the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) headed by Benazir Bhutto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of former president Nawaz Sharif. Both parties are, since February 2008, united in an uneasy coalition of convenience against the reviled president Musharraf. It was their decision to launch an impeachment trial that finally succeeded in forcing the “general”, as George W. Bush once called him, to withdraw from his position.

Musharraf’s exit from power is a victory for democracy in Pakistan. Musharraf came to power in a coup d’état, he governed as a general sometimes with, and sometimes without uniform. Until the very end he failed to fulfill his long-standing promise to restore democracy. He had more than 60 judges removed from their posts because he deemed them unfavourable to his rule. He waged a cruel, yet fruitless war against the population in the North Western tribal areas and he did not undertake the necessary reforms to prepare the country for global competition.

Musharraf’s exit from power is also a victory for Islamists in Pakistan. After September 11th, Musharraf opted for a radical change of direction. Instead of providing a safe haven for the Afghan Taleban, he supported the US-led operation “Enduring Freedom” and periodically ordered mass arrests of alleged extremists. The bloody and violent clash at the “Red Mosque” – a centre of radical Islam in the heart of Islamabad – finally turned Musharraf into a hated enemy of the Islamists. Thus, for a section of moderate Pakistan, he was a sign of hope. A woman from Lahore commented on the BBC’s website: “I’d rather be governed by a democratic dictator than by democratically elected despots.”

USA

Some observers choose a third way of looking at it. Musharraf’s exit is a defeat for the U.S. In fact, according to their view, it is the second foreign policy defeat in the span of just one week, following the Russian occupation of Georgia, Washington’s protégé. The slight difference, of course, is that while about 4.5 million people live in Georgia, Pakistan is home to roughly 170 million Pakistanis and a few dozen nuclear bombs. Going by the amount of media coverage devoted to the two issues, you may be forgiven for thinking that Georgia was the nuclear power, not Pakistan.

In exchange for Musharraf’s willingness to cooperate against the Taleban, the U.S. over the years granted him a grand total of 12 billion dollars in (mostly military) aid and lifted economic sanctions against Pakistan. Musharaff, it seemed, had temporarily attained a status of indispensability: “We don’t love him but if he’s leaving, the entire country is either going to collapse or – worse still – to disintegrate.”

Now that he is gone, it isn’t at all clear that his exit is actually a loss to the U.S. The relationship with Musharraf had always been far from harmonious, and with Benazir Bhutto’s and Nawaz Sharif’s return to the political stage it appeared to cool considerably further. Thus, in the aftermath of Bhutto’s assassination late last year, President Bush called for parliamentary elections to be held in January this year. Thereby he openly contradicted president Musharraf. Moreover, Washington needn’t worry too much, since the new leadership is likely to stand for continuity in its foreign policy outlook. The PPP supports continuing cooperation with the U.S. and the PML-N, though popular among social sectors extremely critical of the U.S., would not dare to break with Washington either. What may change, however, is the way the “war on terror” is framed to the public. It wasn’t so much the fight against terrorists that was unpopular. It was the widespread perception that Pakistan was acting as a feeble, servile puppet to the U.S. on its own soil, which enraged many people and brought them into opposition to Musharraf.

Whoever the next president of Pakistan is going to be, it is out of the question that the U.S. is going to seek a close alliance with him at almost any cost. There is a long list of things that make a lasting engagement with Pakistan so irresistibly enticing: the Taleban’s resurgence, the badly secured border to Afghanistan, the presence of radical madrassas, the proximity to Iran and the fact that a large, Muslim country opts for partnership with the allegedly islamophobic U.S.

But it’s not only the U.S. that is affected by the changing of the guard in Islamabad. Neighbouring India is usually the first to hear Pakistan coughing.

India

Often neglected by the West in favour of China, India has the potential and the desire to impact events well beyond the scope of South Asia. As a democratic country with high economic growth rates based on high-tech, local enterprise, and the domestic market; as a state apparatus equipped with the largest army in the world and a cross-partisan consensus on foreign policy, India seems well positioned to become a global player in our time. Two things, above all, hold it back. First, the state’s federal structure and its multicultural, multi-religious, and multiethnic character have triggered numerous internal conflicts that force India to remain for the most part inward-looking. The second factor is the strategic fixation on Pakistan.

Since the founding of both states, the cold war with Pakistan has been a guiding line for each and every Indian government. At the heart of the conflict lies the predominantly Muslim province of Jammu & Kashmir, which has been the scene of three wars between the two countries – all won by India. Hence, the further political evolution in Pakistan is of enormous importance to India. Incidentally, the relations with president Musharraf followed a very peculiar trajectory: the Kargil crisis in 1999 and the near-war after the terrorist attacks on the parliament in Delhi in late 2001 were followed by a period of détente – including cricket diplomacy and eased travel regulations – that continues today. Therefore, the current political turmoil raises fears in India that the timid and tedious peace process might be interrupted for a long time.

And India’s fear is justified. In times of domestic strife and economic malaise (inflation stands at 25% and food prices have soared) the temptation is high in Islamabad to deflect attention from their own shortcomings by beating the bush over Kashmir. The recent bomb attacks in Jaipur, Bangalore and Gujarat, whose perpetrators are suspected to be Pakistanis, are quite possibly the harbingers of a new ice age between the two South Asian powers.

China

While India is trying to overcome the perpetual conflict with Pakistan in order to play a larger global role, China is working towards the very opposite goal. Beijing does not want further competition in the struggle for Asian supremacy. The Indian-Pakistani antagonism thus functions as a useful tool for the Chinese leadership to curb India’s ambitions. Conversely, China looks with suspicion upon the U.S. military presence in the region. The U.S. does not only have troops in Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and Japan but it is also moving closer to India, Moscow’s former ally. Traditionally reared in the realist school of international relations, the Chinese authorities cannot but perceive this encirclement as a threat or at least an infringement on their freedom of action. As a consequence, the Politburo can hardly afford to lose clout in Pakistan.

Hence, it is not surprising that China is – in the words of a Pakistani diplomat – Pakistan’s closest and most trusted strategic partner. Pakistan is a big market for Chinese products; trade in arms and military know-how (including Pakistan’s nuclear programme) is blossoming, and the country has become an important energy corridor for resource-starved China. China’s booming economy requires huge amounts of oil, most of which is imported from the Middle East via sea. As a means of decreasing its dependence on this easily interrupted transport route, China has financed and constructed a harbour on the mouth of the Persian Gulf, in the city of Gwadar. This harbour, along with massive Chinese investments in Pakistan’s infrastructure, not only ties Pakistan ever stronger economically to China, but it also constitutes an invaluable alternative avenue for energy transit to China.

China’s regional policy therefore primarily seeks stability in Pakistan and consistency in Islamabad’s foreign political allegiance.

Pakistan – the hinge of Asia?

Geopolitical mind games like the one I am conducting here run the risk of falling prey to the ever-looming accusation of being but a couch Napoleon. Yet, I believe the occasional peak from high up can help the eye to observe and assess the connections between those small details that you only see in isolation when looking from up close.

Barack Obama was right when he focused on Pakistan in an August 1, 2007, speech on his foreign policy principles at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Not that it would be wise or advisable to act unilaterally and bomb Northwest Pakistan like Senator Obama said he might do if elected. He is right is in his assessment that here – in the immediate vicinity of Afghanistan and Iran, at the crossroads of jihadism and energy corridors, where the interests of India, China and the U.S. collide – that here is one of the hotspots of world politics. If Parag Khanna is right in saying that world leadership depends on whom the countries of the Second World pick as their superpower of choice, then Pakistan lies truly at the heart of Asia’s “Great Game”. The continent’s door may be opened in Beijing, Delhi, or Washington, but its hinge cringes in Pakistan.