Its government is collapsing, embattled by a rising opposition movement and terrorist attacks. Where will it all end? And what will it mean for the West? Cris Sholto Heaton reports.
What’s going on in Pakistan?
Political chaos – the government is collapsing. That’s not unusual in this nuclear-armed, deeply divided state, which has a chronic problem with Islamic extremists. But it’s particularly troublesome at a time when the attempted murder of the Sri Lankan cricket team while touring the country, not to mention the recent Pakistan-originated terrorist attacks in Mumbai, mean a steady hand is needed. Instead, the country’s president, Asif Zardari, widower of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, is struggling to hold back a populist movement headed by another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif.
What’s the background?
There’s at least six decades worth, dating back to the time when Britain divided the Indian subcontinent into modern-day India and Pakistan. But sticking to more recent history, in 2007 then-president General Pervez Musharraf dismissed the country’s chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, to prevent his court from ruling that Musharraf’s re-election was illegal. Musharraf then called a parliamentary election, during which Bhutto was assassinated on the campaign trail. Zardari and Sharif formed a coalition out of their PPP and PML-N parties, beating the PML-Q and its allies, who backed Musharraf. In August 2008, they forced Musharraf to stand down and Zardari took over as president. The coalition then disintegrated, with Sharif pushing for the chief justice to be reappointed and Zardari resisting. But don’t be fooled into thinking that this fight is about judicial independence; Sharif hopes that Chaudhry would overturn a block on him serving as prime minister again, while Zardari fears the judge would revoke an amnesty on corruption charges against him.
Who’s winning
Sharif, convincingly. Zardari tried to take direct control of Sharif’s power base in Punjab and put his rival under house arrest; this failed humiliatingly in the face of angry crowds of PML-N supporters. Sharif then prepared to start a protest march to Islamabad, throwing his lot in with lawyers already protesting in favour of the sacked judge. But on Monday, Zardari’s government backed down and promised to reinstate Chaudhry. Sharif’s power is clearly growing, while Zadari is embattled; America, Britain and Pakistan’s army are all reported to have told him that he had to give in. This looks like the end for Zardari, at least in terms of having real power. He seems to have little domestic support left, due partly to the resurgence of his reputation for corruption, while the West is only interested in a leader who has enough influence with the army to keep up operations against Islamic militants.
Is the army opposing the Taliban?
Not really. Under US pressure, Musharraf and Zardari have both acted against the Taliban, but not wholeheartedly. And it’s hard to blame them. A pro-West stance is unpopular with the majority of Pakistan’s population and the task is not easy in any case. Many tribal areas of the country are not in Islamabad’s control and the army operates there only with the tolerance of the locals, who frequently support, or even are, the militants. Even more significantly, the army is by no means pro-West – there are plenty of troops and officers who side with the Islamists to varying extents. And then there’s the notorious ISI.
Who are the ISI?
The Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s largest intelligence agency, is a state within a state that answers fully to neither the government nor the army. Many ISI staff are believed to support Islamic militants in Afghanistan (partly a relic of the days when America used the ISI as a conduit for supporting the Mujahideen in their guerilla war against the Soviet presence in Afghanistan). There are credible allegations that ISI operatives were involved in the Mumbai attacks and earlier attacks in its old enemy India. There have also been rumours about the cricket attacks, though no definitive evidence points to any one group. Other theories involve the Tamil Tigers, Indian terrorists retaliating against the Mumbai attacks (a popular theory in Pakistan) and even underworld betting syndicates who wanted the tour cancelled.
What happens now?
It will be messy as Sharif and others scrap for power. But fears of Pakistan exploding are overdone, argues Jason Burke in The Observer. Chaos is not unusual there: “successive governments have perfected the art of negotiating by pointing a gun to their own heads” to ensure the continued flow of financial aid. However, the pro-West elite seems to be losing its control, and with the masses far more sympathetic to the Taliban, the West faces the problem of “a nuclear-armed nation with a large population that is increasingly vocal and which sees the world very differently from us”.
How did Pakistan develop nuclear weapons?
Pakistan began a nuclear programme in 1972 under the then-prime minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (Benazir Bhutto’s father), after Pakistan’s defeat by India in the Bangladesh Liberation War. Scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was its driving force; he took blueprints from a Dutch facility to advance the uranium enrichment project and brought weapons designs back from China, a key ally. Tests were carried out in 1998 (when Sharif was prime minister), weeks after an Indian test. The country probably now has more than 50 warheads. In 2004, Khan admitted supplying technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea; he was pardoned by Musharraf and is still a hero in Pakistan.