NYTimes.com Article: In Pakistan, a Shaky Ally

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In Pakistan, a Shaky Ally

October 2, 2001

By BARRY BEARAK

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 1 - For years, Pakistan has
seemed a place about to blow. Bankruptcy is at the door;
angry mullahs are at the gate. The corruption of the
powerful is epic, the poverty of the masses crushing. The
army has taken charge, again putting democracy on the
shelf. More people own guns than refrigerators.

This country, then, may seem a strange choice as America's
indispensable ally in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Islamic
guerrillas - many would call them terrorists - openly
operate inside Pakistan's borders, with government support.

But for the Bush administration, Pakistan it is - a
rediscovered crony from America's cold war days, forced
back into friendship at gunpoint to fight terrorism. In his
Sept. 19 speech to the nation, Gen. Pervez Musharraf,
Pakistan's military ruler for the last two years, explained
that he was facing an American ultimatum - join us or fight
us - and that he felt that the country's very survival was
at risk.

In many ways, it is. The country is polarized. On one side
stand sympathizers with the West who have felt increasingly
marginalized in recent years and believe that the current
turmoil may be a rare stroke of fortune that halts the
"Talibanization" of Pakistan, a drift toward the
fundamentalist Islam of neighboring Afghanistan. On the
other stand the holy warriors, the hope of the country's
myriad dispossessed.

Pakistan, with a population between 140 million and 150
million, is the world's seventh most populous country. Like
many nations in the third world, it seems to be
simultaneously moving ahead and falling behind at frantic
speeds. It is this dichotomy that explains some of the
violence of the country's conflicts.

Today, someone claiming to be from one of the best-known of
Pakistan's radical Islamic guerrilla groups,
Jaish-e-Muhammad, took responsibility for a suicide bombing
at the state legislature in Srinagar, in
Indian-administered Kashmir. The attack killed at least 26
people.

One of this region's many open secrets is that the
Pakistani government itself has armed Islamic militants,
sending them off to fight the Indian authorities in Kashmir
in an attempt to wrest the contested Himalayan territory,
which is primarily Muslim, from Hindu control.

A Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman, in a statement
today, condemned the Srinagar attack. "Pakistan condemns
terrorism in all its forms and manifestations," he said.

But whatever the government's past relationship to
Jaish-e-Muhammad, it seems clear that the United States, in
its new determination to combat terrorism, has sided with a
military government that has not been averse to backing
insurgency in Kashmir.

Radical Muslim political parties, historically weak at the
polls, are traditionally potent in the streets, where the
number of poor and the number of refugees grow.
Kalashnikovs are everywhere, as are men who know how to use
them. Twin jihads - one in Afghanistan, one in Kashmir -
save many from the idle hours of joblessness and fill them
with lethal, self-righteous purpose.

But the radical Islamists drawn to holy war, however
grateful for their supply of guns and grenades, very often
despise the national leaders who provide them. The more
those Pakistani leaders look like American cronies working
to oust the Taliban government in Afghanistan, the more the
hate may grow.

By drafting this fragile and fractious nation into a
central role in the "war on terrorism," America runs the
danger of setting off a cataclysm in a place where civil
violence is a likely bet and nuclear weapons exist.

Pakistan has long been the speculated locale for one of the
world's worst nightmare scenario, in which Islamic
terrorists, in league with rogue elements of the military,
seize control of the government and wield the vengeful
sword of jihad with a nuclear tip.

Islam is a growing force here. Hundreds of religious
schools, known as madrassahs, have eagerly sent their
students to fight at the Taliban's side. Pakistani border
guards wish them well as they head to the front lines.

Last Friday, in a drama repeated in hundreds of towns and
cities across the country, mullahs at the Red Mosque in
Islamabad followed the gentle chanting of afternoon prayers
with frenzied threats of violence: Death to America! Let
Americans come here to be buried!

A plea went out for 50,000 volunteers to defend Afghanistan
against "the infidels." The entreaty was made with the
desperate ardor of merchants at a going-out-of-business
sale. Many of Pakistan's fundamentalist clerics endorse the
Taliban's formula for a pure Islamic state. Without the
Taliban, these mullahs would be without their rallying
point.

An 18-year-old spectator, Tai Muhammad, said he had pledged
his life to the anti-American jihad, enlisting at the
mosque's sign-up table. "People like me will be the
Americans' reception committee," he said, grinning in
satisfaction.

Lambasted along with President Bush was General Musharraf,
called a traitor to his country, his religion and 1,400
years of Islamic history.

Afghanistan, Mr. bin Laden's sanctuary, is not merely
Pakistan's neighbor. Pakistani intelligence agents have
been the Taliban's godfathers, turning a throng of self-
righteous religious students into a militia of self-assured
soldiers.

Until recently, the Taliban have been useful to Pakistan,
providing an ally on its western flank as rival India lurks
to the east, and a breeding ground for Islamic militancy
that could be redirected toward Kashmir.

So to many at the Red Mosque, Pakistan's cooperation with
America seems like a sellout.

American money, of course, is not an insignificant
inducement, especially to a nation $37 billion in debt with
virtually no prospects of climbing out of the hole.

So far, a windfall has yet to appear, though America -
suddenly forgiving of the testing of nuclear weapons and
the eschewing of democracy - has removed many economic
sanctions against Pakistan. Together with the Japanese, the
United States has rescheduled nearly $1 billion in debt and
authorized $90 million in aid.

Indeed, renewed solvency is the hope of many Pakistanis who
believe that a decisive battle has at last been joined.

"It's a wonderful thing," said a retired general, speaking
on condition of anonymity. "We were in a state of drift.
The silent majority was being dragged in a terrible
direction by a very vocal minority. This is God-sent. We're
saved."

That optimistic view is shared by much of a Westernized
elite that would see the Taliban's overthrow as the logical
halt to the onrushing fundamentalism in their own midst.

Many have long assumed that an upheaval was inevitable,
with moderate Islam battling the religion's extremist,
intolerant version.

That confrontation is better fought now than later, they
say. "If there is a silver lining in this, it's that the
radicals, the jihadists, will be de- fanged now instead of
10 years later when they'd be stronger," said Pervez
Hoodbhoy, a physicist and peace activist.

But radicalism has deep social roots here. In the cities,
the turn of a street corner can seem to be time travel
between centuries. Wide boulevards clogged with expensive
cars become narrow lanes where shrouded women carry jugs of
water on their heads.

About 75 percent of all Pakistanis reside in rural areas.
Most are sharecroppers, eking out a subsistence. In some
areas, feudal families still hold sway, making private laws
and operating private jails.

While the wealthy send their children to college in America
or Britain, many of the poor are deprived of even an
elementary education. The literacy rate is below 40
percent. A fifth of Pakistan's government schools are
"ghosts," with buildings but no students or teachers,
General Musharraf himself admitted. This void increasingly
has been filled by thousands of madrassahs. Considered a
godsend by the destitute, they feed and house their pupils
while teaching them the wisdom of the Koran and the moral
requirement to fight in holy wars.

Islam is the great refuge of Pakistan's masses. In mosques,
in the fields, on the roadsides, men drop to their knees
and perform their daily prayers. However empty their
pockets, they are equal in these genuflections before God.

But it is not a simple picture. Fundamentalist Muslims,
like secular ones, are minorities. Between them are a
multitude of gradations in the practices of faith - one
reason why recent polls suggest layers of ambivalence about
the current crisis,

Before General Musharraf's address to the nation on Friday,
the pollster asked people whom they would support in a war
between America and Afghanistan. Seven percent said America
and 67 percent Afghanistan, with about 26 percent neutral.
Four days after the speech, those who said they would side
with the United States remained the same, though 20 percent
shifted from Afghanistan to neutrality.

Some of this sentiment reflects a general doubt that
America has enough proof against Mr. bin Laden to warrant a
punishing attack on Afghanistan. At the same time, many
Pakistanis are merely wary of America, regarded as a
companion of shallow sincerity.

"Unfortunately, America seems to be Pakistan's friend only
when it suits America's needs," said Zahid Mahmood, a bank
manager. "When the need is over, America deserts you."

In the 1980's, America had great needs in the region. In
late 1979, the Soviet Union sent its troops into
Afghanistan, getting itself closer to a warm-water port.
Using Pakistan as a pipeline, the United States and other
nations then financed the Afghan resistance. The Soviets
soon found themselves bogged down in a crippling war
against guerrillas adept at mountain combat. The cold war's
end swiftly followed the Soviets' humbling retreat in 1989.

America's attention span, as well its affection, did not
last much longer. That was a shock to Pakistan.

Money had seemed a token of friendship, and in 1990 the
United States aid package to Pakistan was $564 million;
only Israel and Egypt received more. But then the largesse
was suddenly withdrawn, the penalty for Pakistan's
continuing program to develop nuclear weapons in pace with
its archenemy India.

"Looking out for No. 1, that's the American way, isn't it?"
snickered Ajab Gul, a barber in Peshawar. "That is what
Americans are proud of. We're different."

But the loyalties of Pakistanis are no simple matter,
either.

In 1947, after a flurry of cartography, Pakistan and India
were mapped out of the British Empire. Pakistan was devised
with religious cohesion as a Muslim state. But it, rather
than India, has been the one struggling for a national
identity.

The country is split among several ethnicities and
languages. Mr. Gul, the barber, is Pashtun and admits to
feeling a greater affinity for the Pashtuns of Afghanistan
than the Sindis of Karachi or the Punjabis of Lahore in his
native land.

Democracy has never taken a firm foothold. The military has
remained the dominant institution, and while it has failed
in its three wars with India, it has had repeated success
in overthrowing its own democratically elected governments.

During the 1990's, however, it was civilian governments
that generally maintained control. The indefatigably
corrupt governments of Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and
Nawaz Sharif - as well the stopped-up American spigot -
helped plunge the economy into the red while at the same
time discrediting democracy in the eyes of the people.

Both Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Sharif now live in exile. Their
political parties, the Pakistan Peoples Party and the
Pakistan Muslim League, are in disarray. For now, public
assembly is forbidden.

By order of the Supreme Court, a return to civilian
government is supposed to occur by next October. General
Musharraf, who recently assumed the title of president, has
promised to abide by the timetable.

But his future, like his country's, is now linked to
matters that could not have been foreseen a month ago: the
number of American soldiers who will touch Pakistani soil,
the amount of blood spilled in reflexive outrage, the havoc
caused by the coming onrush of refugees and the furtive
ability of a Saudi-born multimillionaire named Osama bin
Laden.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/02/international/asia/02ALLY.html?ex=1003105506&ei=1&en=5168d77fada7a710

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