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COVER
STORY: PAKISTAN
GUEST COLUMN: MUSHAHID HUSSAIN
The Need For Change
 Having
joined the coalition against terrorism, President Pervez Musharraf has
realised that he has to change the country's course, not just the Afghan
policy that, in any case, is buried deep in the debris of the World Trade
Center. Musharraf has undertaken a wide-ranging reshuffle in his military
team while altering the balance of power between the religious parties
who oppose his policy and the moderate political mainstream which supports
him. This change of course has to be examined in three contexts:
# The unravelling of the cosy clerical-establishment
alliance which had thrived since 1977.
# In 1977, general Zia-ul-Haq's military coup
against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was part of a right-wing backlash against
the secular, autocratic policies of the Pakistan People's Party, which
had alienated the urban middle class, big business houses, regional "nationalists"
and the clergy.
# This constituency was tailor-made to support
general Zia's Islamisation and became his political mainstay during the
Afghan jehad which began with the Soviet invasion of the country in 1979.
During the jehad more than $5 billion flowed
in from the CIA, Saudi Arabia and China and a two-lakh strong army of
motivated mujahideen came into being. The Pashtoon factor came into play
around the same time. The majority of the three million Afghan refugees
were Pashtoons, settled in the North West Frontier Province or Baluchistan,
both Pashtoon-majority provinces. So the ideological affinity of the jehad
was reinforced by an ethnic camaraderie. It was the 1991 Gulf War which
laid the basis for the Taliban phenomenon. Mujahideen commanders like
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Burhannudin Rabbani and the Jamaat-e-Islami all
backed Saddam Hussain against Saudi Arabia which was part of the US-led
coalition. In 1993 Benazir Bhutto took over as prime minister in alliance
with Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI), a predominantly Pashtoon party which controls
a large network of madarsas where most of the Taliban leadership studied.
It is in this broader context that the American
bombing of Afghanistan coincided with the radical reshuffle in the military
high command on October 7. Two four-star generals were promoted, a new
head of the ISI appointed and a number of the corps commanders changed.
Musharraf's closest confidantes, former ISI chief lt-general Mahmood Ahmed
and deputy chief of army staff lt-general Muzaffar Hussain Usmani, have
retired. Mahmood, corps commander at Rawalpindi, took over Islamabad and
arrested Nawaz Sharif during the October 12 1999 coup, while Usmani, corps
commander at Karachi, took over the Karachi airport to ensure Musharraf's
safe landing from Colombo. In Pakistan's time-honoured tradition of power
politics, king-makers seldom outlast the king. In 1971, lt-general Gul
Hassan, chief of general staff, broke away from the Yahya Khan coterie
and was instrumental in installing Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Within 90 days
of appointing Hassan as army chief, Bhutto had him removed.
The reshuffles by themselves may not suffice.
To deal with the protests against his policy, Musharraf has to muster
all his political skills to ensure that Pakistanis do not perceive the
war on terrorism as an endorsement of attacks on a fellow-Muslim nation.
But in the longer term, he is relying not only on extensive western support
to stabilise Pakistan's economy, but also on the moderate mainstream or
the "silent majority", as he prefers to call them, to defuse
the activism and ire of the religious right.
(The author was the information minister of Pakistan under prime
minister Nawaz Sharif)
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