Pakistan's Appeasement Strategy Has Failed

By AHMED RASHID, The Daily Telegraph
July 13, 2007

LAHORE, Pakistan — President Musharraf again finds himself in the eye of the storm. Al Qaeda is baying for his blood as a result of the carnage inside the Red Mosque, and Western powers and most Pakistanis are demanding that he finally take on Islamic radicals and militant madrassas. Since the September 11, 2001, attacks, General Musharraf has survived by riding two horses, at times bending to Western pressure to hunt down Al Qaeda and their Pakistani protectors, while allying himself with Pakistani Islamic parties in an attempt to placate extremists.

It has been a rocky time and Pakistan is paying the price, but General Musharraf has preserved the three-decade old nexus between the army and the fundamentalists, which has helped to keep him and the military in power.

As a result, Al Qaeda has found the space and support to regroup in Pakistan's tribal areas, the Afghan Taliban leadership has found a safe refuge in Baluchistan province, foreign radicals like the 2005 London bombers have found easy access to Al Qaeda central, while Pakistani extremist groups have multiplied. American and NATO forces fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan have become frustrated at General Musharraf, but they have dared not put pressure on him fearing even greater chaos, while Pakistan's middle class has despaired at its president's courtship of the fundamentalists.

His two-track policy has come to the end of the road. Pakistani extremists such as those who were holed up in the Red Mosque have read the army's laxness toward them as a passport to defy the state and bring about an Islamic revolution.

General Musharraf is faced with two stark choices: Go for the extremists in a consistent manner, or succumb to them and try to appease them, putting the future of Pakistan at risk. If he takes the first path he will need a new political mandate and support from secular national parties such as Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party, which he has treated with contempt since he seized power in a coup in 1999.

But striking a deal with Mrs. Bhutto will also mean that the army will have to hold a free and fair election by the end of the year, allow an independent judiciary and press and share power with the politicians — something General Musharraf has been loathe to do. The other path is that General Musharraf and the army again strike peace deals with the Pakistani Taliban in the North West frontier province, jeopardize Afghanistan's future by allowing the Afghan Taliban to continue wreaking havoc there, allow the mushrooming of militant madrassas — and live with the risk that one day he will be assassinated by the extremists.

The second path would also mean an abandonment of any pretence of democracy, the imposition of martial law and a further distancing from the West. To ensure that General Musharraf takes the first path, Pakistan's liberal politicians have to show wisdom and flexibility and Western powers must exert pressure so that he does the right thing. The first choice carries immense risks but it is the only way that Pakistan can be saved the fate of Afghanistan and Iraq.