alized, their energies were quickly exhausted.67
The peace deals, intended to save face for the army and quell the violence,
only reinforced troubles on the ground. By coming to terms with the militants –
young hotheads with little traditional standing in their tribes – the army granted
its enemies legitimacy and preserved their safe havens. Nor did the army have
any ability to enforce provisions in the accords that prohibited harboring inter-
national terrorists or sending fighters into Afghanistan. Taliban assassination
campaigns killed dozens of prominent tribal elders who attempted to live up
to deals with the army or otherwise block the rising power of the militants.
All told, foreign influences – the jihadist ideology of al-Qaeda and the Tal-
iban, along with the heavy-handed presence of the Pakistani army – were
destroying what remained of the region’s traditional political and social hierar-
chy. Islamabad had no good answer to these problems. The fact that Pakistani
leaders continued to draw distinctions between different militant groups –
favoring some and attacking others – muddled the picture even more.
The sad truth was that Pakistan lacked a sustainable counterinsurgency
option. With effort, its troops could clear and occupy territory, but holding
the land against a resilient enemy and then turning authority over to civilian
administrators was beyond their means. Pakistani generals were not lying when
67 On Pakistan’s peace deals and military operations in the FATA, see Hassan Abbas, “Militancy in Pakistan’s Borderlands: Implications for the Nation and for Afghan Policy,” Century Foundation, 2010, http://tcf.org/publications/2010/10/militancy-in-pakistan2019s-borderland s-implications-for-the-nation-and-for-afghan-policy/pdf; C. Christine Fair and Seth G. Jones,
“Counterinsurgency in Pakistan,” RAND Corporation (2009), http://www.rand.org/pubs/
monographs/2010/RAND MG982.pdf.
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they explained the stresses the tribal insurgency placed on their forces. This
does not absolve Islamabad for its failure to tackle some of the worst Afghan
Taliban groups, like the Haqqanis, but it does place Pakistan’s tribal dilemma
in context. Islamabad’s ill-fated peace deals resemble Neville Chamberlain’s
appeasement of Germany prior to the Second World War: tactically appealing
but strategically unwise.
Negotiated in weakness and desperation, Islamabad’s peace deals were sold
to the outside world in disingenuous terms. Washington also took its eye off
the ball, investing its military and intelligence resources in Iraq rather than
Afghanistan or Pakistan. As a consequence, America blinded itself to the resur-
gent Taliban threat and sent mixed signals to the region. The Bush adminis-
tration failed to come to terms with the Musharraf government on a workable
plan to deal with terrorist sanctuaries along the Afghan border.
We cannot be certain whether earlier attention from Washington and a heavy
injection of U.S. resources could have transformed a post-Taliban Afghanistan
into a more stable, effective nation-state. Perhaps no realistic American invest-
ment would ever have been sufficient. What we do know is that a serious
debate on the subject was delayed by several years, during which time the
threat posed by the Taliban and their terrorist allies grew. By 2007, militants
of various stripes had consolidated power in many parts of Pakistan’s tribal
belt and established new footholds in Pakistan’s major cities. In the years that
followed, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United States all paid a heavy price.68
Exit Musharraf
Washington had always known that Musharraf’s regime could not last forever.
Even so, the drama of its collapse sent shockwaves throughout the world. The
timeline for Pakistan’s transition was set, in part, by Pakistan’s electoral cycle,
inasmuch as Musharraf’s five-year presidential term was up in October 2007.
But the real question was whether he would once again attempt to retain his
job as army chief, stepping away from earlier pledges as he had done at the
end of 2004. In late 2006, even early 2007, that script looked very likely to
play out again. Washington – and perhaps Musharraf himself – had little idea
of the trouble just over the horizon.
Months after he left office, Musharraf spoke at a luncheon in Washington,
DC. When asked about the lessons he had learned from the tumultuous end to
his hold on power, his meandering, inconclusive reflections showed that he had
not come to terms with his own failings as a politician.69 In the end, Musharraf
was a victim of contradictions inherent in his rule; he was a liberal autocrat who
thought he could reform politics on his own terms and timetable. He seemed
68 On the militant threat in Pakistan’s tribal areas, see Imtiaz Gul, The Most Dangerous Place: Pakistan’s Lawless Frontier (New York: Viking Press, 2010).
69 Author’s conversation, Washington, DC, January 29, 2009.
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No Exit from Pakistan
deeply troubled when his people did not love him for the enlightened aspects
of his rule that he so generously bestowed, like allowing a relatively free media
or not personally stealing from the national till. His military mind was closed
to the practice of genuine political competition. He understood the concept of
“unity of command” far better. Instead of building a new, competitive party
with grassroots appeal, he bought off established politicians who were willing
to bolt from Pakistan’s main opposition parties. His only real constituency was
the one that usually mattered most: the army. In the end, that was not enough.
Under normal conditions, Musharraf’s control over the military probably
would have been sufficient. But Pakistan in early 2007 was not living under
normal conditions. The country was rocked by two different, unanticipated
crises almost at the same time. Both were of Musharraf’s own making.
First was Musharraf’s confrontation with the chief justice of Pakistan’s
Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. The conflict started with
Musharraf’s ill-considered decision to sack the judge in early March. Musharraf
expected that the judiciary, long a pliant institution manipulated by successive
Pakistani regimes, would bend to his will. Instead, the move triggered the pas-
sion and vigor of the black-suited lawyers’ movement, expertly organized by
Aitzaz Ahsan (described in the previous chapter) and his associates.
At once, the lawyers’ protest gained steam across the nation. Its ranks swelled
not only due to its principled defense of the judiciary but also because it
served as a powerful unifying vehicle for all of Pakistan’s opposition forces.
Opportunistic critics of Musharraf jumped at th
e chance to exploit this chink
in his armor. Over the period since he seized power in 1999, Musharraf had
gradually alienated various constituencies. Liberals who had hoped for a brief
military interregnum had lost patience. Hawks who favored a tough anti-
Indian, anti-Western stance were troubled by Musharraf’s overtures to New
Delhi and appalled by his cooperation with Washington. Businessmen feared
that the best days of the market were behind them. The relatively free, still
immature media trained its vicious gaze on the president. The commander-in-
chief started to look vulnerable. His opponents were energized.
The second crisis was equally unexpected. It began with the 2007 uprising
at the Red Mosque, or Lal Masjid, in the center of normally staid Islamabad.
The radical clerics of the mosque had for years collected money and recruits
for Pakistan’s various jihadist causes. But in the spring of 2007 their students
launched a new movement, perhaps touched off by an escalating land dis-
pute with the city government.70 Whatever its proximate cause, the radicals
began a mini-Talibanization campaign in nearby neighborhoods. They ter-
rorized city residents who violated harsh interpretations of Islamic practice,
including owners of local DVD shops, and even “liberated” a number of Chi-
nese women who they claimed to be prostitutes.
70 Asad Munir, “Lal Masjid Siege – Four Years On,” Express Tribune, July 2, 2011, http://tribune
.com.pk/story/201068/lal-masjid-siege-four-years-on/.
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Islamabad’s initially tepid response to this strange disruption reflected
its own contradictory impulses. Aligned with Washington’s war on terror,
Musharraf’s political party, the PML-Q, had also cut numerous political deals
with hard-line Islamist parties. The principal civilian faces of the party leader-
ship – the Chaudhry family of Punjab – were unwilling to take a firm, public
stance against extremists. They always preferred concessions to confrontation
and distanced themselves from the alliance with Washington.
Prevarication by the government and the army allowed the Red Mosque
movement to grow. By mid-summer some 1,100 extremists had packed the
grounds. Many of them were well armed.71 At the time, one of the most
stunning aspects of the situation was that no one in Islamabad seemed to
know what was really going on. As always, rumors and conspiracy theories
abounded. How, Pakistanis asked during the early days of the crisis, could the
uprising not have the support of the army and the ISI, considering that it was
taking shape almost literally under their noses?72
Only in July, when Musharraf sent army commandos to crush the uprising
by force, would it be clear which side the regime was on. Even then, rumors
persisted that some military units had refused to participate in the raid and
that Musharraf had acted contrary to the wishes of his civilian political allies.
Televised images from the mosque, where at least sixty jihadists, and possibly
many more, were killed, did little to unite the country behind its president.73
To the contrary, the affair inspired Pakistan’s Islamist militants to turn their
fire against the state in a sustained rash of suicide attacks and other violence
that engulfed the country. Supporters of Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who was killed at
the Red Mosque by Pakistani forces and was the brother of the mosque’s head
cleric, even formed their own shadowy terrorist organization, the so-called
Ghazi Force. Over the next two years, terrorists killed over 4,600 Pakistanis,
nearly six times the number killed in the two years preceding the mosque
crisis.74 Other Pakistanis, even those with little sympathy for the extremists’
cause, still found fault with what they considered a heavy-handed use of force
by Musharraf. If the lawyers’ movement united Pakistan’s progressives and
centrists against the regime, the Red Mosque crisis angered most other parts of
the political spectrum.
As each of these crises unfolded, Musharraf was frantically seeking a way
to extend his grip on power. Washington was mostly eager to avoid a risky,
disruptive transition in Islamabad, one that would jeopardize American coun-
terterror operations or the war in Afghanistan. Together, these impulses led the
71 Somini Sengupta and Salman Masood, “Battle at Pakistani Mosque Ends,” New York Times, July 11, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/world/asia/11cnd-pakistan.html.
72 Author conversations, Islamabad, April 2007.
73 Salman Masood, “Musharraf Defends Raid that Ends Red Mosque Siege,” New York Times, July 13, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/world/asia/11cnd-pakistan.html.
74 Worldwide Incidents Tracking System, National Counter-Terrorism Center, http://wits.nctc
.gov on January 30, 2012.
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No Exit from Pakistan
Bush administration to cooperate in a bit of high-stakes matchmaking between
Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Zulfikar and self-exiled leader of
what remained Pakistan’s largest opposition party, the PPP. On the back of a
Washington-brokered deal with Musharraf, Bhutto made her way to Pakistan
party, the PML-N, followed her the next month. The Saudis sponsored his
return.
The secret deal making between Musharraf and Benazir was originally con-
ceived as an effort to mate Musharraf, the moderate army chief who lacked a
legitimate electoral base, with Bhutto, a popular and progressive politician, to
enable a gradual transition away from military rule. The oddness of the couple
was lampooned in Pakistani circles, where one political cartoon – an impressive
photo-shopped image – put Bhutto and Musharraf in the traditional pose of
a bride and groom. Proudly flanking the newlyweds were their “parents,” a
beaming President Bush and Secretary Rice.
The pairing was odd, but it was not Washington’s brainchild. For years, Pak-
istanis from both Musharraf’s and Benazir’s camps had floated similar propos-
als. The United Kingdom also played an extensive role in these conversations.75
In the early lead-up to elections in 2007, the deal held particular appeal in
Washington since the most realistic alternative – at least until the dual crises of
the Supreme Court and the Red Mosque shook Musharraf’s hold on power –
looked like a repetition of 2002, when Musharraf had blatantly manipulated
elections and reasserted his dictatorial authority. In her account of Musharraf’s
final days, Condoleezza Rice argues that a negotiated power-sharing arrange-
ment looked like the best way to assure a smooth path for Pakistani elections.76
The deal unraveled as Musharraf’s regi
me faced blistering attacks from all
sides. Over the summer and autumn, Musharraf’s desperation mounted. He
maneuvered himself into another presidential term through a constitutionally
suspect game, holding an indirect election before taking off his army uniform.
He then clamped down on opposition and the media by imposing a state of
emergency. These moves destroyed what little trust he had cultivated with
Bhutto and made Musharraf so politically radioactive that Bhutto – and every
other opposition politician – had to keep a distance.
Bhutto traveled to Washington, DC, in late September 2007, a couple of
weeks before she returned to Pakistan. Her visit made it clear that she viewed
the Americans as an important political constituency, one she wanted to culti-
vate as part of her plan to retake power in Islamabad. During a limo ride across
town, shuttling between a think tank discussion and an interview at CNN, she
explained that she was not at all convinced she would be able to strike a
deal with Musharraf. There were many sticking points. She needed a deal that
would protect her (and other members of her party, including her husband)
75 Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos (New York: Viking, 2008), p. 376.
76 Rice, No Higher Honor, pp. 605–12, esp. p. 608.
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U-Turn to Drift
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from outstanding legal cases that might otherwise tie them in knots on their
return to Pakistan. She also needed more confidence in Musharraf’s willingness
to surrender his uniform and open the way for her to contest elections on an
even playing field.
Finally, the intensely charismatic Bhutto was worried about her personal
security. She had every reason to fear; there were many extremists in Pakistan
who hated everything she represented and wanted her dead. Bhutto’s return to
Pakistan was driven by cold political calculations. She knew it was a make-or-
break opportunity for her and her party. It was also undeniably courageous,
given the degree of political violence that plagued Pakistan at the time.