Tipping Point in Pakistan? Musharraf's Military Support Cracks

If you're a Pakistani strongman, it's not wonderful but it is survivable to lose the support of the judges and lawyers. But it's quite another to be challenged by your fellow former generals.

That's President Pervez Musharraf's current predicament, and if he doesn't do something about it, we are observing his political demise. With the steady Talibanization of the nation's northwest, the military brass will put its ultimate loyalty first -- to Pakistan's survival -- and force Musharraf out.

Carlotta Gall and Salman Masood of The New York Times weigh in with a piece today on a startlingly public demand for Musharraf's resignation by several hundred retired senior military officers. As a measure of the discontent, the retired generals among yesterday's protesters included Jamshed Gulzar Kiani, the former commander of the key Army corps in Rawalpindi.

Their outburst -- their third in two weeks -- is an important turn of events because of how the Pakistan military operates. This ultimate bedrock of Pakistani power is discreet and united. Serving and retired officers are an organic whole, sort of a society, listening to and advising each other. They regard themselves as Pakistan's fundament. When the officers decide the country's integrity is threatened, you get a government overturned.

That the retirees have gone public means that that military society has become disfunctional; Musharraf has stopped listening to the retirees. If he's stopped listening to the retirees, it's probably the same to one degree or another with serving officers.

So far, Pakistan's serving generals have been content to stay behind the scenes and allow Musharraf to rule unimpeded. But if the contagion spreads, and Musharraf can't keep his base on side, he is finished.

Photo: pingnews.com
Rights: Creative Commons

The Dealmaking General

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has granted a slew of media interviews claiming that increasingly isolated General Musharraf has agreed to resign from the military in order to run again as president next month. The upshot: With the media blast, Bhutto is trying to force Musharraf to honor the pact she says they struck. But if he has nodded to such a deal, and abides by it, he has opened the door to a fresh catfight among Pakistan’s vile senior political elite.

Here is the first paragraph of the FT story: General Pervez Musharraf has reached an agreement with exiled opposition leader Benazir Bhutto under which he will resign as military chief in exchange for her party’s support for his re-election as president. Read story

Steve's comment: According to the news accounts, Bhutto, who was twice prime minister before being forced to leave the country following Musharraf's 1999 coup, squeezed several key concessions from Musharraf: The constitution would be changed so she could run for prime minister again; corruption charges would be dropped against her and some of her political followers; and he would step down by the end of the year as chief of the Army.

According to Bhutto, the idea is that Musharraf would then be free to run again for a five-year term for elections expected next month.

No one is defending Musharraf from criticism -- he has plenty to apologize for in terms of his performance in office. But his dealmaking is cynical to the extreme in his effort to retain political power.

Quite apart from Bhutto's competence, the problem with his horse-trading is that the Supreme Court has agreed to allow the country's other exiled former two-time prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, to return home.

And Musharraf apparently hasn't included Sharif in the deal. So expect more political turmoil among politicians with absolutely no respect for the person in office -- unless it happens to be they themselves. Here is Zahid Hussain's take on the topic.

Naked Bankruptcy in Pakistan

The lead story in The New York Times today is that the Bush administration is pushing Pakistan's Gen. Musharraf to share power with former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. A mistake six years in the making, the White House has failed to finesse Musharraf into cultivating concrete political alternatives to himself with whom he could live. The upshot: yet again, Pakistan is faced with a stark choice for leadership: A corrupt feudal, a corrupt businessman, the religious opposition, or a General.

The first paragraph of the NYT piece: The Bush administration, struggling to find a way to keep Gen. Pervez Musharraf in power amid a deepening political crisis in Pakistan, is quietly prodding him to share authority with a longtime rival as a way of broadening his base, according to American and Pakistani officials. Read rest of story

The synthesis of the proposed deal between Musharraf and Bhutto was reported three weeks ago by Zahid Hussain, my friend and the author of the first-rate Frontline Pakistan. According to Zahid, "under the agreement, the military leader would be granted another five-year term as president, while Ms Bhutto, twice prime minister of Pakistan, would be allowed to return in September to contest parliamentary elections, exonerated of corruption charges made against her. However, the talks appeared to have stalled over General Musharraf’s insistence that he should be allowed to retain his dual role as army chief and president." Read story

Steve's comment: Bhutto is famously a Harvard- and Oxford-trained political scientist and orator. Based on that background, in addition to the huge political following she inherited from her father, the West has had huge hopes for what she could bring the country. Yet in her two terms as prime minister during the late 1980s and the 1990s, she proved one thing -- an elite education is not guaranteed to take the arrogance out of a feudal.

In short, Bhutto has dictatorship and corruption in her DNA -- she is a beautiful speaker, and a terrible national leader. That Musharraf is trying to make a deal with her reflects his own political desperation, and his willingness to compromise his principles.

The leader whom Musharraf ousted -- industrialist Nawaz Sharif -- is a deceptively talented power accumulator who as prime minister proved himself to be a corrupt would-be dictator.

The sad thing is that Pakistan is absolutely replete with ultra-talented and brilliant economists, political scientists, lawyers and so on. That Washington is getting behind the power-sharing idea reflects utter bankruptcy. The United States should not be in the business of encouraging the perpetuation of the rule of Pakistan's landowning class.