The United States government has admitted to brokering Benazir Bhutto’s ill-fated return to Pakistan.
US officials have confirmed that they cut a deal with Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf to allow Ms Bhutto to return to contest the 8th January elections (since postponed to 18th February). According to the Washington Post, Mr Musharraf agreed to lift corruption charges against Ms. Bhutto and she agreed not to protest against his re-election in last September’s tainted poll. She also sought Washington’s guarantee to push Mr Musharraf to holding free and fair elections for an eventual return to civilian rule.
If Ms Bhutto had been elected Prime Minister, Mr Musharraf’s dictatorship would have received a veneer of democracy. However, the larger question of whether Ms Bhutto would have been able to steer the President and the country towards democratic governance will remain forever unanswered.
The US relationship with Mr Musharraf is complex and delicate. He is at one and the same time an ally in the “war on terror” and an embarrassment to the US, as it wages its “war” in the name of democracy.
Mr Musharraf likes to portray himself as a reliable partner in the “war on terror” and he has cleverly used his alliance with America to channel US defence funds towards the strengthening of the Pakistani military and to give himself legitimacy as Pakistan’s leader. On the other hand, he is also undermined at home by his closeness to America, just as attitudes to the US in Pakistan, already seriously affected by American heavy-handedness, harden even more because of President’s Bush’s support for the dictator.
For America, Pakistan is in the frontline of the “war on terror”. Pakistan borders Afghanistan and is reputed to be a safe haven for elements of the al Qaeda and Taliban leadership; and its madrassas are a breeding ground for Islamist extremists. Above all, Pakistan possesses the nuclear bomb. This is for the US the overriding concern that explains the high stake the Americans – and indeed, Pakistan’s neighbours and the rest of the world – have in Pakistan’s stability. Nobody can afford Pakistan’s nuclear capability falling into the wrong hands.
From the outset, however, there were sceptics in the US State Department, the Defense Department and in intelligence circles, who did not think that Mr Musharraf and Ms Bhutto could work together in the projected marriage of convenience. From the outset, the whole enterprise appears to have been a huge, calculated gamble, threatened by a combination of factors – among them, Islamist fundamentalism, an anti-democratic military establishment, ethnic tensions between Punjabis (who comprise most of the military) and Sindhis (Ms Bhutto’s home province) – all of them part of Pakistan’s volatile history of instability and increasing extremism.
From the outset, Ms Bhutto faced death threats. Indeed, her life was imperilled at every step, from the moment she returned home to a triumphant and emotional welcome, only to escape death narrowly a few hours afterwards in the suicide bombing of 18th October in Karachi. From the outset, the enterprise set in motion by the Americans was perhaps all too tragically doomed.
The US should not however be accused of sending Ms Bhutto to her death, for there is no doubt that she went back to Pakistan courageously and willingly, in full knowledge of the risk she ran.
Nevertheless, the Bush administration will now have to contend with the view held in some quarters that it was cynically trying to give a scheming dictator a fa?e of democracy and that, by extension, it was also trying to bolster its own image, tarnished by association with Mr Musharraf, in the West and among moderate Muslims, by turning to the Harvard and Oxford-educated populist, Benazir Bhutto.
If the US is now to be a force for good in Pakistan, then it must press Mr Musharraf to allow an international investigation into Ms Bhutto’s assassination, reinstate the Supreme Court, keep the army in its barracks and out of civil and political life, lift restrictions on political parties, civil society and the media, and allow for greater transparency in the administration of elections. Ideally, he should be vigorously encouraged to foster an inclusive political dialogue in Pakistan with a view to paving the way for reconciliation and a genuine and lasting political outcome. Ultimately, there must be in Pakistan free and fair elections and a return to civilian rule, if Benazir Bhutto’s sacrifice is not to be in vain.
