[NYTr] U.S. Helps Push Pakistan to the Brink

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Consortium News - Nov 17, 2007
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/111607a.html

[Editor’s Note: The neoconservative vision of remaking the Middle East
so it would conform to U.S. strategic interests is on the verge of
turning into an unspeakable nightmare as nuclear-armed Pakistan teeters
on the brink.

In this guest essay, the Independent Institute's Ivan Eland looks back
on how this happened and looks forward at how to avert catastrophe.]


U.S. Helps Push Pakistan to the Brink

By Ivan Eland

Pakistani president Gen. Pervez Musharraf is now teetering on the edge
of the abyss, just as I predicted in the spring of 2007. He was pushed
there by U.S. policy, and worse yet, his country is armed with nukes.

To prevent the Pakistani Supreme Court from declaring him ineligible to
serve another term as president, a role he won last month in dubious
elections, the autocratic Musharraf has declared martial law and ousted
the Supreme Court’s chief justice.

Although President George W. Bush has asked Musharraf to set an end
date for the state of emergency, to hold elections, and to give up his
powerful position as head of the armed forces, Bush has continued U.S.
aid and recently described Musharraf as an ally America needs in order
to fight al Qaeda.

These signs of continued U.S. support have emboldened the spent
Musharraf regime. Although Musharraf has set parliamentary elections
for January 2008, they will hardly be fair, unless martial law is
lifted prior to the plebiscite.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani population smolders with anger against the
unpopular dictator, and in Pakistan’s northwest, Islamic militants are
ascendant.

How did the Bush administration help create this mess?

It all started in 2002. The Bush administration decided U.S. forces
should stay and occupy Afghanistan after their successful invasion to
oust the radical Islamist Taliban movement from power.

Meddling in and occupation of Muslim lands by non-Muslims is what
drives Islamists to violent acts—guerrilla warfare and terrorism. For
example, American support for the corrupt Saudi Arabian regime, and
U.S. military presence in holiest lands of Islam, led Osama bin Laden
to launch his terrorist campaign against the United States.

Similarly, continued U.S. and Western occupation of Afghanistan and the
failed attempt to eradicate opium, the primary crop of the poor Afghan
people, have led to Afghan disillusion with the West and increased
support for a resurgent Taliban movement.

That’s where Pakistan comes in. The Pakistani intelligence services, in
order to dominate Afghanistan, supported the Taliban in its original
quest for power, and during its despotic rule.

Although Musharraf, under intense pressure to switch sides after 9/11,
rhetorically supported the U.S. “war on terror” and pocketed $10
billion in American aid, he needed the support of those same Islamists
to survive in power. Thus, he never made a real effort to capture or
kill Osama bin Laden, suspected to be hiding in northwest Pakistan.

On the contrary, he pledged not to attack the Islamists in that area.
Meanwhile, as with the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, U.S. backing and
military assistance to the Musharraf government has fueled an Islamic
resurgence in Pakistan, too.

Now it is within the realm of possibility to have a repeat of the 1978
situation in the Shah’s Iran. The population could become so enraged at
a brutal dictator supported by the United States, that eventually a
hostile radical Islamist government would take power.

But this time, in Pakistan, it would be a regime with nuclear
weapons—in short, an Islamic bomb. So the Bush administration may yet
hand us the worst of all worlds: bin Laden and company still on the
loose and again guarded by an Islamist regime, this time with nuclear
weapons.

The Bush administration has continually exacerbated the threat of
radical Islamism by refusing to see that U.S. meddling in Islamic
nations is fueling the problem. Overt U.S. occupation of Afghanistan
and support for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, along with U.S. backing
and aid to Musharraf in Pakistan, have inflamed the entire region.

So after 9/11, what would have been a better U.S. policy?

After the destruction of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the United
States should have called a conclave of all Afghan groups and stated
that Afghan governance was the business of Afghans; but if any Afghan
government gave anti-U.S. terrorists sanctuary, the U.S. military would
return with a vengeance. If the U.S. had employed such a policy, the
Taliban likely would not be resurgent today.

As for Pakistan, for an entire year after 9/11, Musharraf quietly gave
the United States free reign to nab  bin Laden. But instead of using
its covert forces quietly to take full advantage of this offer, the
U.S. provided ostentatious diplomatic support and military aid, turning
Pakistan—in the eyes of the Islamists—into an American puppet.

The first step toward a smarter policy in the region is to recognize
that the United States is part of the problem.

In Afghanistan, the United States still could do what it should have
done after 9/11; withdrawing its forces would extinguish the fire of
the Taliban resurgence. In Pakistan, Musharraf is likely to fall, but
such a close U.S. hug for him makes it more likely that Islamists could
eventually win power.

So the U.S. should use Musharraf’s declaration of martial law as a
reason to terminate all aid to his regime. The United States is so
unpopular in the region that supporting a governing alliance between
Musharraf and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto would probably
delegitimize even the middle ground in Pakistan.

For moderate forces to have the best chance in that nuclear-armed
nation, the United States, paradoxically, should refrain from
supporting them, and stay out of Pakistani politics.

Instead of taking its eye off the ball and continuing to take actions
that make radical Islamism and anti-U.S. terrorism worse, the Bush
administration should content itself with obtaining better intelligence
on the whereabouts of bin Laden and his associates. If such information
is found, the United States should take quiet, unilateral action to
capture or kill them.


[Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The
Independent Institute and Assistant Editor of The Independent Review.
Dr. Eland has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato
Institute, Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget
Office, Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for
the U.S. General Accounting Office, and Investigator for the House
Foreign Affairs Committee.]