There are now two choices to be made. In the first, Pakistanis must decide whether to accept military rule or instead take to the streets to demand a return to the constitution. In the second, Gen. Pervez Musharraf's key outside supporter, the United States, must decide whether his usefulness as an ally in President Bush's global war on terror still outweighs the deepening embarrassment of his rule.

Musharraf, Pakistan's leader since the military coup that brought him to power eight years ago, claimed in his TV address to the nuclear-armed South Asian country of 165 million people Saturday, "I cannot allow this nation to commit suicide."

As he spoke, the chief justice and a majority of the Supreme Court declared emergency rule to be unconstitutional and were told they were dismissed. Other civilian political leaders were being arrested. A new chief justice loyal to Musharraf was appointed. Rumors had swept the capital of Islamabad in recent days that the court was prepared to rule that Musharraf's election as president last month while retaining his military rank was against the constitution and therefore void.

This would unpick the political deal that had been urged by the United States, for former Premier Benazir Bhutto to return as prime minister to Musharraf's president and hold new elections. Bhutto returned from a brief visit to Dubai Saturday to denounce the state of emergency and the new media controls that Musharraf had announced.

Deplored by the United States and Britain, Musharraf's key international allies, the state of emergency looked like a sign of weakness on Musharraf's part, and even of desperation. Certainly it ripped away the veil of democratic legitimacy that he had been trying to construct.

His rule now depends on the army, whose morale has been badly battered by a series of setbacks, including the humiliating surrender of hundreds of troops as a time in their attempt to impose Pakistani rule in the lawless frontier districts with Afghanistan. The army, which has ruled Pakistan for 32 of the 60 years of the country's independence, has lost prestige. Its self-image as the custodian of national sovereignty and identity has suffered from reports of corruption through land grants and lucrative jobs for retired officers, who now run most of the nationalized industries and state boards and institutions.

"It is usual for a country to have an army," runs the wry national joke. "But in Pakistan, the army has a country."

Without the support of leading civilian politicians like Bhutto and important national institutions like the Supreme Court, military rule looks like a stop-gap and short-term solution that cannot tackle the much deeper and longer-term problems.

The first problem is that Pakistan has never really coalesced into nation. The Pashtun tribes of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Afghan border speak a different language from the Urdu of the dominant, richer and better educated Punjab and Sind regions, and have never accepted federal rule. The Baloch of Baluchistan, along the Iranian border, are similarly disaffected, though unlike the FATA regions they have not given refuge to the Taliban and al-Qaida.

The second problem is that the United States and its NATO allies are unable to stabilize Afghanistan so long as the Taliban have refuge in northern Pakistan. The U.S. military is resisting the urgings of Vice President Dick Cheney that they should strike at the Taliban bases inside Pakistan, fearing that would ignite even more opposition inside Pakistan. But senior officers have told this reporter that they must weigh that danger against the prospect of a new terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland being plotted and launched from inside those Taliban sanctuaries in the FATA region.

The third problem is that Pakistan is a nuclear power. It is no secret that three other nuclear powers -- the United States, India and Israel -- have each had to prepare detailed contingency plans about neutralizing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if Musharraf looks like being overthrown by Islamist militants.

Perhaps the only reassuring news out of Pakistan is that the Islamist political parties, who have yet to get more than 11 percent of the vote, do not yet look capable of seizing power. But in the event of a U.S. military strike against Taliban bases inside Pakistan, or in the event of a U.S. military strike against the nuclear facilities of neighboring Iran, the Islamists may well gain new support, and even make political headway inside the deeply patriotic military.

Against this grim context, Musharraf can at least claim to have delivered the best period of economic growth the country has ever known, with gross domestic product growth at 7 percent for each of the past three years. This has been fueled partly by some $10 billion in U.S. aid sine 2002, partly by the $5 billion a year in remittances sent back by the million Pakistani workers in the Gulf states, and partly by a modest export boom.

But the economic success has not been evenly spread in what is still a poor country with more than a third of the people illiterate, and one of the world's highest birthrates. The landholding system in many rural areas is quasi-feudal, in which the peasantry had better vote in a block as the landlord wishes or face eviction. This is the power base of Bhutto, herself from a wealthy family of vast landholdings, and her Pakistan People's Party.

There are two key decisions to be taken now. The first is whether Bhutto herself goes along with Musharraf's rule, which would damage her credibility as a democrat, or risks prison by leading her supporters against it. She will probably steer a middle course, opposing military rule verbally and in principle, at least until she can assess the public mood.

The second is whether Musharraf agrees to hold the parliamentary elections in January as planned. One of his ministers said Sunday they could be delayed for a year. The United States will probably press him to hold the elections on time. Musharraf is unlikely to comply, since the sullen voters are likely to punish him and his party at the polls unless the elections are completely rigged by the notorious Inter Services Intelligence organization.

The U.S. Congress would then almost certainly cut back on military and civilian aid. This would mean even less Pakistani cooperation against the Taliban, and even more anti-American sentiment in Pakistan. However bad the situation in Pakistan now appears, it is likely to get worse.

In the words of Sunday's editorial in Dawn, Pakistan's leading newspaper: "All the gains over the years have gone down the drain. All this talk about the forward thrust towards democracy, about the impending 'third phase' of the political process and the lip service to the sanctity of judiciary turned out to be one great deception. The people have been cheated. In a nutshell, one-man rule has been reinforced, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel -- a tunnel that is dark and winding with an end that is perhaps blocked."

Community
Email This Article
Comment On This Article

Related Links
News From Across The Stans

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News