Deepak Lal: The Musharraf enigma

A jehadi replacement for Pervez Musharraf is a consummation devoutly not to be wished.

I was recently at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, where there was a fascinating roundtable discussion organised by two members of the US Military Academy on "The Future of the Jihadi Movement". All the participants agreed that the jihadis were not going to disappear, and that they will increasingly be locally bred from the Muslim diaspora in Europe. It was, however, the assessments by Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation and Jessica Stern of Harvard about the sources of the jihadi threat which to me were the most chilling. They claimed that Pakistan was at the centre of the spider's web of the worldwide jehadi movement. They claimed that even though General Musharraf was willing to throw crumbs to the West in apprehending some important jehadis, the Al Qaeda network was still operating from Pakistan, and that Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant were most probably being sheltered by Pakistan. This also conforms to a statement I heard Benazir Bhutto make a year or two ago. When asked whether the General would help to capture the Al Qaeda leaders, she laughed and remarked that he would not, as they provided the General's best insurance policy with the Americans.

Against these hypotheses we must set well-known facts. Having personally escaped assassination by the jehadis at least four times, the General must have strong personal reasons for eliminating them. The fact that one of these attempts was made on a secure route only known to the Army suggests it still remains infiltrated with jehadis. Whether the General has been successful in disbanding the supporters of the notorious self-proclaimed Islamist, General Gul, in the ISI, remains uncertain, and with it Musharraf's future if he bears too hard on them.

Second, the jehadi infiltration into Kashmir, sponsored by Pakistan, has (from all accounts) diminished. However, the recent bomb explosions in Delhi and Mumbai suggest that despite the General's claims of having closed down the LeT, it still remains capable of terrorist attacks in India. Third, the General has proclaimed that he wants to imitate Kamal Ataturk by creating a modern secular Muslim state. His recent attempt to grant Pakistani women various rights""denied by sharia law""in the sexual domain, in the face of stiff Islamist opposition would seem to bear out this claim. But, against this must be set the fact that though he has also said he wants to regulate the madrassas, and to see that they teach a modern curriculum, there seems little evidence of any action.

Finally, largely based on the US and other Western largesse which has flowed into Pakistan after 9/11, when the General joined the US War on Terror, the Pakistan economy, which was on the verge of collapse, has been booming. This is to the good. It could provide the means for the Pakistani state to fulfil many of the functions (particularly in the social and educational spheres) that by default are being performed by various Islamist organisations""see how quickly they were able to get relief organised for the victims of the Azad Kashmir earthquake. It is also because of the failure of the Pakistani state to provide the means to educate its poor that the poisonous madrassas, which provide both housing and traditional education for their young charges, have flourished.

Against this we have to set certain other facts. Pakistan still bears all the lineaments of a failed state. Unlike India, civil society has not been allowed to flourish. When democratic parties were given their head they merely looted the populace. Whether the General can continue to rule as a quasi-dictator must be open to question. And the danger of Islamists coming to power through the ballot box, in genuinely free elections (as in the recent elections in Lebanon and Palestine), cannot be discounted.

The General's problems of trying to convert Pakistan into an equivalent of Ataturk's Turkey are compounded by the fact that his dictatorial predecessor, Zia-ul-Haq, sought to create an Islamist identity for a State, which since Partition has only been able to define itself as "not India". As the only functioning formal institution in the country, the Army has naturally been in the vanguard of these attempts at providing an identity for the country. But whether Musharraf, who it must not be forgotten was the architect of Kargil, has really changed his spots must remain an open question. He has deftly played his international hand, as did Zia, to maximise the material and diplomatic gains from the current international conjuncture of events. Also unlike his military predecessor, he does not seem to be infected with the same religious fanaticism. But given the forces let loose by Zia, he also has to tread warily in dealing with the Islamists.

Hence the Musharraf enigma. Is he truly a Pakistani Ataturk, who will turn his back on the over 50 years of India-hating and fomenting terrorism in India, and make Pakistan a normal state""albeit supervised, as was Turkey, by a fiercely secular modernising Army? Or is he just a Zia clone, who wants""like Osama bin Laden""to ultimately create an Islamic state, for which the infidel secular Indian state will always remain the enemy? On the answer depends the future of Indo-Pak relations, no less than the hope of turning back the murderous jehadi tide, which is currently sweeping the world.

Given their murderous intent, the worst outcome would be a jehadi replacement for the General. The doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, on which the stability of a nuclear balance between nuclear armed states is based, demands rational actors on both sides. A jehadi suicidal leader, who sees only eternal salvation in the elimination of infidels, would not be held back by the expected mutual destruction of a nuclear Armageddon in the sub continent. That is why, given the likely alternative, I at least will continue to offer a little prayer for a long life for the General.