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The Eurasian Politician - December 2003
By: Christian Jokinen, 26 Dec. 2003
(Translation by Anssi Kullberg)
The Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has twice survived from attempts on his life within one and half week. Although the majority of Pakistanis support the president and commander of the army, General Musharraf, who usurped power in a bloodless coup in 1999, Musharraf has also got bitter enemies, for whom his death would be a glad news. Especially Pakistan's policy against terrorism and the president's negative attitude towards the aspirations of the Islamists for power have been issues of bitterness for Musharraf's enemies. The attempt on Thursday 25 Dec. 2003 came only a day after Musharraf had announced that he would give up the supreme command of the army in the forthcoming year, as a part of a deal reached with the radicals, in order to cease the parliamentary stalemate. The attempt thus shows that concessions to the Islamists in politics does not give protection against terrorists.
After the terrorist attacks of the September 11th, Pakistan was prompt to devote itself to the US-led alliance against terrorism. The war in Afghanistan has made Pakistan and the United States closer to each other, which has infuriated the Pashtuns inhabiting Pakistan's North-Western Frontier Province (NWFP) as well as the Islamist opposition, whose stronghold also rests in the Pashtun areas. For them it was a bitter disappointment that Pakistan turned against the Taliban, the fundamentalist and Pashtun-dominated movement in Afghanistan. The co-operation between US and Pakistani security authorities in the Tribal Agencies has been seen as humiliating bootlicking of the US, although even Usama bin Ladin is believed to hide in these tribal areas. This being the situation, there are many in the NWFP, bordering Afghanistan, who would be glad to hear about a successful assassination of President Musharraf.
The biggest beneficiary, however, of a successful assassination of Musharraf, would be al-Qaida, which probably has had a hidden hand behind the murder attempts. The US military operations have caused significant difficulties to al-Qaida's operations in Afghanistan. Removing the organization to the Pakistani side of the border, out of the US firepower, has given al-Qaida only a limited pause of sigh, because the Pakistani security agencies have arrested hundreds of its members and thousands of radical Islamists, including many key leaders of al-Qaida. The most important of the arrests was that of al-Qaida's operational director Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Rawalpindi last March. The death of President Musharraf, who is personally deeply dedicated to the war against terrorism, could, at worst, give way to the Islamists to rise in power in Pakistan, and in that way make it significantly easier for al-Qaida and the Taliban to operate. The results of such a development would immediately be seen especially in Afghanistan.
President Musharraf has acted as an effective barrier against an Islamist rise into power. It should be remembered that one motive for Musharraf's coup d'état was the fact that the prime minister Nawaz Sharif was quickly transforming Pakistan into an Islamist state. Besides of the doghouse position of the political Islamists, another issue feeding Islamist hatred against Musharraf is the Kashmir dispute. When the war against terrorism was launched, Musharraf changed his uniform to a suit, and at the same time he distanced the Pakistani government from the armed separatist movements of Kashmir, which have enjoyed support of the Pakistani intelligence services and army for decades.
However, the changes in world politics were not the only reason for this divorce, but another lied in the fact that the Kashmiri liberation movements had by time become very difficult for Pakistan to control. In 1990s, the original national-inspired freedom fighters of Kashmir had been increasingly replaced by a generation of internationalist jihadists, part of whom had received their training in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan, and fought in al-Qaida-backed brigades on the side of the Taliban in the Afghan civil war. Some of the armed groups fighting in Kashmir are full of foreign combatants from Punjab, the Middle East, the Philippines, and Africa. Another part of the groups have been influenced by Usama bin Ladin and thereby changed their strategies, attacking no longer Indian military but Western tourists and Pakistan's religious minorities. These developments have effectively alienated Pakistan's leadership from the support organizations of the jihadist groups in Kashmir. Like in Afghanistan, also in Kashmir the rise of radical Islamists of the Taliban type does not mean that all armed Kashmiri groups are anyhow connected with radical Islamists. Many continue to be Sufi and national-inspired and strongly reject fundamentalist Islamism. Most of the Kashmiri separatists reject the Taliban model of Islamist rule.
For President Musharraf, the Kashmir question is an extremely difficult challenge both in foreign and in domestic politics. Open support for Kashmiri guerrillas would lead international condemnation for Pakistan. On the other hand, betraying the cause of the Kashmiris would be devastating for Musharraf's position and support in domestic politics, and surely strengthen the radical elements in Pakistan, as well as al-Qaida. The Kashmir issue acts as an efficient tool for recruitment and fundraising for the Islamists. In short, the Kashmir issue is for Pakistan's 150 million Muslims of about the same importance as the Palestine issue is for Arabs. The latest attack against Musharraf's life showed that the terrorists had advance information about the president's movements. Probably also among the Pakistani intelligence ISI there are those for whom abandoning the Kashmiri guerrillas has been a bitter disappointment.
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The author is an expert of security affairs and terrorism, reporter for the Eurasian Politician, and a student of the University of Turku, Finland.