This was sent to us by a regular reader and commenter on Take Back Pakistan. After listening to it, we felt it must be heard.

We will try to post a translated version of Hamid’s assessment tomorrow so that our non-Pakistanis can understand what he said.

The presidential referendum in Pakistan has come and gone. As quickly as the drama enveloped the country it has been forgotten. The Pakistani nation is disappointed and fed up with the antics of the ruling classes and the referendum served only to confirm their suspicions. As expected, General Musharraf made a heap of populist promises. But sadly, till now, these promises have proven to be nothing more than meaningless rhetoric. It seemed impossible for the already dysfunctional Pakistani political culture to degenerate further. Yet this is exactly what has happened in the past two months – considerable effort will be needed to repair the damage. That said, it is important to look at global trends and draw comparisons. Despite the widespread practice of electoral democracy, there is considerable disillusion amongst citizens the world over about the responsiveness of formal politics. The recent presidential election in France is a good example of how extremist exceptions are becoming more popular in electoral polls.

More than anything else such occurrences reflect a narrowing of the political spectrum and homogenization of thought processes and ideas. In other words, ‘liberal’ market democracy has become the coveted political system of choice around the world (with Europe the exception to a certain extent). Politicians from social democratic parties espouse many of the same values that politicians from conservative parties do. In India for example, while it is the right-of-centre BJP that has unquestioningly moved toward privatization of major state-owned enterprises, it was the left-of-centre Congress government that signed loan agreements with the international financial institutions (IFIs) that set the stage for these enterprises to be privatized. All in all then, it is not surprising that extremists such as Le Pen are suddenly default beneficiaries of intense voter reaction to post-election inertia.

So maybe Pakistan’s political culture is not so dysfunctional after all. Who needs electoral democracy if it turns out to be just tokenism? The fact is that political culture cannot be judged on the elusiveness of electoral democracy. It needs to be judged on the basis of factors far more important than elections, factors that are the foundation of a robust democratic culture. A nation with a democratic culture is not necessarily one that has achieved economic democracy – no country in the world has. Similarly, a democratic culture does not necessarily mean that extremist thought and action are eliminated. Read more »

Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark are the authors of Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy.

After claiming to have spent nine years nurturing democracy in Pakistan and festooning the country’s military dictatorship with $11bn in aid, the Bush administration’s policy is careering out of control, as US soldiers trade bullets with the forces of what was once a most-favoured ally in the “war on terror”. On Sunday night, Pakistan border troops fired on a raiding party of American commandos emerging from two Chinooks in an attempt to cross on foot from Afghanistan into the Pakistan village of Angoor Adda. They had no permission to be there.

This was the latest in a series of forays into Pakistan sovereign territory taken by US special forces at the behest of President Bush. In July he signed an executive order to sidestep Pakistan’s freely elected government in the rush to claim al-Qaeda scalps - especially Osama bin Laden’s. In the past six weeks, US missiles have rained down on Pakistani villages, with Predator drones lighting up the country’s tribal belt and hunter-killer teams dropping into Pakistan’s villages in the dead of night.

All good timing for the Republicans: these red-blooded offensives play well in America’s heartlands; the ailing Bush and his party have been re-branded, Rambo-style, as sidestepping an untrustworthy ally to take the fight directly to the terrorists. However, it is spectacularly bad timing for Pakistan, the raids commencing just three days before Asif Ali Zardari was sworn in as president. During his inaugural speech in Islamabad on September 6, more than 30 civilians were killed by a suicide bombing in Peshawar as the local population vented its anger at the incursions.

Zardari has used a family trip to Britain to gain an urgent sit-down with Gordon Brown. Yesterday he flew in to see off his oldest daughter, Bakhtawar, 18, who is studying English literature at Edinburgh University. Today in Downing Street, Zardari will warn the prime minister that the latest twist in the war on terror will “only lead to greater disaster, more hatred, more alienation, more ghettos, more recruits, and more violence”. Without Britain’s help in holding back the US, buying the new Pakistan government breathing space, anti-American sentiment will wash over the country; Zardari and his Pakistan People’s party coalition will be unable to stop it spiralling out of control. Read more »

The first-ever ground military attack on Pakistan’s soil by the US-led troops on Sept 3 provoked strong condemnation and outrage in Pakistan. Now the cat is out of the bag. The New York Times said the raids were authorised by President Bush “without the approval of the Pakistani government.” The Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mullen declared on Sept 10 that the US military “will revise its strategy for Afghanistan to include militant safe havens in Pakistan in its areas of concern.” Translated in simple terms, the US attacks are part of a well planned strategy. Gen Pervez Kayani rejected US claims that the “rules of engagement” gave the coalition forces the right to enter Pakistan. He denied that there was “any agreement or understanding with the coalition forces whereby they are allowed to conduct operations on our side of the border.” Prime Minister Gilani backed Kayani’s statement while President Zardari has so far chosen to keep quiet and talk about Kashmir. If he decides to visit Britain first and not China, as was earlier reported, it may be seen as a capitulation to the US pressure. 

The ground attack had come after a number of airstrikes and artillery attacks which have intensified this year. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi termed the attack as shameful, regrettable and surprising and an “unforgivable incident.” Since Mr Qureshi’s statement, more missile attacks have killed dozens of innocent people near the Afghanistan border. Qureshi said he was surprised at the attack but was the attack really a surprise or the attacks were purely unilateral American acts? A careful review of the developments and reports since January suggests otherwise. 

A New York Times report of Feb 22, 2008 offers some insights into what has been brewing. The paper reported that “American officials reached a quiet understanding with General Musharraf in January [2008] to intensify secret strikes against suspected terrorists.” The paper noted that the new agreements with Pakistan came after a trip to the country on Jan. 9, 2008 by Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, and Gen Michael Hayden, the CIA director. The American officials met with Mr Musharraf and the army chief, Gen Kayani, and offered a “range of increased covert operations” aimed at thwarting intensifying efforts by Al Qaeda and the Taliban to destabilise the Pakistani government. 

On March 22, 2008, Newsweek confirmed these reports and disclosed that although some news reports said at the time that Musharraf had “rebuffed” US proposals to step up combat operations inside Pakistan, US officials and Pakistani sources, who asked for anonymity discussing sensitive information, said the recent wave of Predator attacks are at least partly the result of understandings the high-level visitors reached with Musharraf and other top Pakistanis, ‘giving the United States virtually unrestricted authority to hit targets in the border areas.’

Alarm in Pakistan about possible American intervention rose after a surprise visit July 12 by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm Mike Mullen, to Islamabad, where he met with the army chief, Gen Kayani; Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani; and President Pervez Musharraf. It was Admiral Mullen’s fourth visit to Pakistan in six months. Days afterward, reports about a build-up of NATO forces on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan added to Pakistani anxiety. 

On Aug 28, Admiral Mullen again met his General Kayani secretly on board a US aircraft-carrier in the Indian Ocean. After the news was broken by The New York Times, Mullen conducted a press briefing and heaped praise on Kayani. 

Mullen said: “… as I’ve come to know him [Gen Kayani], he’s been very clear to me, and not just in saying it, but what his actions are, that his goal — my view — is to do the right thing. He’s an extraordinary individual and his ultimate — his goals are — his principles and goals are to do what’s best for Pakistan. And everything he’s done, our engagement, indicates that’s absolutely the case.” 

However, Admiral Mullen refused to give more information about his meeting saying, “”I’m not prepared to discuss in great detail the specifics of everything that we covered. But I can tell you I came away from the meeting very encouraged that the focus is where it needs to be at the military to military relationship.”

This theme was earlier articulated by Lisa Curtis, an influential analyst and a former CIA official, in a Heritage Foundation (a think tank) paper dated Aug 7. “The army’s full attention should be on the real threat to the country’s future: the advance of Taliban militants along the border with Afghanistan and in some of the settled areas of the Northwest Frontier Province”, she wrote. In an obvious reference to the charges that the US actions could destabilise Pakistan, Curtis stressed that Islamabad must accept that regarding terrorism, ‘a convergence of US interests with those of Kabul and New Delhi does not translate into a wider conspiracy to undermine core Pakistani national security interests.’

The US attaches the top most priority to stop the infiltration of the militants into Afghanistan from Pakistan’s tribal areas and deny them a ’safe haven’ from which to launch attacks. It has been dealing directly with Pakistan’s military leadership under Musharraf and now with the tacit approval of the PPP government which has not shown any serious will to stand up to the US policy of conducting military operations from across the borders. They may now be reaching the point where they could cost it popular support and, consequently, its ability to fight militancy. 

Apparently, while the US is satisfied with the cooperation of Pakistan’s military and political leadership, notwithstanding its reservations about the role of the ISI or elements within it, the Bush administration seems to place a low priority on supporting democracy. It remains to be seen if a Democrat president would follow a substantially different policy.

The attacks came just days before the presidential election and were coincided by a stinging personal attack on Mr Zardari in the conservative The Wall Street Journal on Sept 2. In an article written by a member of the editorial board, the paper alleged that the Pakistani government agreed to stop its air strikes on the Taliban, in exchange for which Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam agreed to throw its support to Mr Zardari. The paper described him as a caricature of everything that’s morally bankrupt with the country’s Westernised elite, and thus an inviting propaganda target for Al Qaeda and the Taliban. “Al Qaeda and the Taliban feed on chaos, and a Zardari presidency will almost certainly provide more of it.”

Whether or not, these views reflect the thinking of the White House and US establishment, Pakistan is likely to face more military strikes and a even greater pressure from Washington, directly and indirectly, overtly and covertly, in both political and economic terms, to aggressively fight the Taliban, and to ‘do more’ sans negotiations with the ‘terrorists’. Hence, the ‘hot pursuits’ and airstrikes are likely to intensify in the coming months despite “strong protests” from Pakistan’s leaders. If allowed to continue, they will further inflame the insurgency and may ultimately lead to a military takeover by destabilizing the civilian government.

The writer is an economist and author of The Gathering Storm in Pakistan: Political Economy of a Security State. Email: ynazar@cyber.net.pk