T N Ninan: Who can rule?

WEEKEND RUMINATIONS

In an interview to Newsweek magazine's Fareed Zakaria, President Musharraf speaks bluntly about the realities of who can fight the terrorists in Pakistan. It is worth quoting him: "You need three qualities today if you want to fight the extremists and the terrorists. Number one, you must have the military with you...Number two, you shouldn't be seen by the entire religious lobby to be alien "" a non-religious person. The third element: Don't be seen as an extension of the United States....These are the elements."

So who can rule Pakistan? It used to be said that three 'A's ruled in Pakistan: Allah, America and the Army. But it would now seem that America is in bad odour, and anyone who wants to rule Pakistan will have to maintain a certain distance from Washington. Opinion surveys confirm that the country is distrustful of the United States. That would seem to knock off one of the 'A's, except that Pakistan has stayed afloat largely because of American largesse "" billions of dollars in aid and hardware every year, plus help in dealings with the World Bank and the IMF, have shored up both the economy and the military for years. So what seems to be required is a double-handed trick, of being seen by America as its friend and by Pakistanis as anti-American.

Then there is the army. It is obvious that if you want to fight the terrorists, you have to do it with your security forces. But in any normal democracy, the army takes its orders from the national leadership. In Pakistan, as everyone knows, that is not the case "" it is the leadership that must be acceptable to the army ("you must have the military with you"). What Mr Musharraf is really saying is that the nominal leader must be someone who will continue to give the army considerable autonomy, to do as it pleases "" including not reining in the inter-services intelligence directorate and, as at the time of the Kargil attack, not informing the prime minister of what is going on. In other words, it will have to be a prime minister who is there on sufferance and knows his or her limits. But there is a contradiction here too, because the army is no longer held in the same high esteem as it was once and indeed seems to be incapable of winning battles against the militants. Is this really the force that is supposed to be Pakistan's backbone?

Third, there is Allah "" from whom you should not be alienated. What this means is not clear, because the religious parties have never got much of the vote in Pakistan, though by general consensus they have gained in influence in recent years. Also, how easy or even possible is it to separate the religious lobby from the jihadists? That therefore brings up the third contradiction: If you are a politician of secular bent, you cannot take on the militants. But which person from the "religious lobby" will undertake such a task?

In a sense, Mr Musharraf was merely describing the contradictions that he himself has tried to manage. But in the ninth year of his rule, nothing has improved in Pakistan except the economy "" thanks, in part, to those billions from the US. In terms of the stability of the system and the country's internal cohesion, matters have got worse. Mr Musharraf's vision of Pakistan standing out as a beacon of "enlightened moderation" therefore rings hollow. The sounds emanating from Washington suggest that it knows this, but is helpless. And it seems too much to hope that the people of Pakistan will throw up a solution in next month's election.