Now that Benazir Bhutto is no more, George Bush must be looking for another protégé to push his one-item agenda to fight his proxy war against ubiquitous Al-Qaeda and its followers, the Taleban, who are engaged in a see-saw battle with the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Marred Alliance
Much as the lame duck American President had wished the two, Benazir and Musharraf, to combat terrorism at home and abroad, in a power-sharing deal assiduously brokered by US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, the arrangement could not work as neither would play a second fiddle to the other. Added to the mutual mistrust was the reluctance of the Musharraf loyalists, the so-called Q Leaguers (the ruling Pakistan Muslim League- Quaid-e-Azam group) who feared their ouster from any future dispensation. Like their opponents, certain members of the ruling oligarchy have skeletons in their cupboards, so they can ill-afford to be out of power.
At the moment the present regime of Pakistan has to defend itself against charges of negligence in providing security to the slain PPP leader. The confusion created by the conflicting versions of Mohtarma Benazir's death was a source of embarrassment to General Musharraf who had expressed his dissatisfaction with his interior ministry's statement that the deceased leader died of an injury caused by the sunroof lever of her vehicle after she fell down as a result of bomb explosion and not by a bullet.
Covering Up Musharraf
That the President had to agree to the investigation of the incident by Scotland Yard gave rise to call for investigation by the UN as was done in the case of the former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafick Hariri. A similar demand was made by twelve US congressmen including Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden, and Nancy Pelossi. As against this, Gorge Bush, Gordon Brown and the French foreign minister vehemently apposed the UN probe and instead, favored investigation by Scotland Yard.
The people of Pakistan have a bitter experience at the hands of the British Agency which was hired by the government of Pakistan to probe into the murder of Liquat Ali Khan; the nation's first elected Prime Minister who, too, was shot dead at the same fateful Liaquat Garden then known as Municipal Garden and earlier, as Company Bagh.
The Scotland Yard investigator, Mr. Urin, came out with a cock-and-bull story that the motive behind Liaquat's murder was religious fanaticism since religious minded people were indignant over his wife Begum Liaquat's public appearance. These findings were rejected by the general public which saw it as an attempt to divert the nation's attention from the real culprits.
The assassin, Saed Akbar, was an Afghan fugitive who had been receiving pension from the British Indian Government, a privilege that continued even after the creation of Pakistan. To eliminate evidence, some one shot him dead then and there. Again, in Benazir's case the Scotland Yard has declared that Baitullah Mehsud, an Al-Qaeda militant, had killed her although the Agency has admitted that its terms of reference did not assign it to find the identity of the assassin but to enquire into the cause of Benazir's death.
When there is no transparency in the government's work, wild rumors gain currency. The common man saw in Liquat's murder an imperialist conspiracy to remove a popular leader from the scene in order to establish its tutelage over the country. And subsequent events seemed to justify this notion as the democratic process came to a grinding halt and Pakistan became embroiled in the Cold War as a member in the entangling anti-communist alliances and became a pariah in the Afro-Asian region.
Doing the Job for the US
With Benazir Bhutto's assassination, Pakistan has come full circle. The martyred leader having seen the fate of her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, had been toeing a cautious and conciliatory line toward the strong powers, i.e., the rulers within the country and the US outside. But as it has been obvious: She could not ingratiate herself with the Q League bosses. And after her death, a war of words ensued between her husband, the co-chairman of PPP, and the Q League Choudhries over the whole episode.
In the rescheduled elections—if at all held on February 18 2008—the PPP and the Nawaz League would be locked in life-and-death struggle for power. The US strategists want to use Pakistan's armed forces, now deployed along the 1400-mile-long porous Pak-Afghan borders, to prop up America's puppet regime in occupied Afghanistan.
This means the continuation of Gen. Musharraf's policy aimed at combating terrorism. In this proxy war Pakistan's national interests, Kashmir, Indus Waters, and Sir Creek, would be lost sight of. The US-backed confidence-building talks between India and Pakistan have so far touched only the peripheral and not the core issues that bedevil the India-Pakistan relations.
A Dissenting Musharraf?
Now Gen. Musharraf has been irked by belligerent talks in US ruling circles about taking over Pakistan's nuclear arsenal; therefore, he has reacted by telling Washington to find another ally if it is not satisfied with Pakistan's performance in the anti-terror operations. He went to the extent of saying that if the US stops aid to Pakistan, it would get assistance form other sources. Musharraf has been resisting America's call for direct strikes by its forces against the suspected hid-outs of Taleban inside Pakistan.
If Gen. Musharraf stands by his words he is likely to gain popular support at home which has been fast waning due to his military operations against FATA and Baluch nationalists. In that case he will have to reach out to the mainstream opposition parties in order to form a broad-based national government. By doing so he will have to concede the opposition demand for the restoration of the constitution and the independence of judiciary. But only time will tell whether an autocrat like him would be able to share power with a government of national unity.
The tribal areas' insurgency is the spill-over of the war of independence of the Afghan people against the US occupation. Therefore, regional peace could come only after the total US withdrawal from Afghanistan. If the US decides to attack Iran, Pakistan may not allow it to use its shahbaz and Al- shamsi air fields due to strong public opposition to American invasion of the brotherly country of Iran. If the US seeks to destabilize such government in Pakistan in order to bring in a compliant regime, it will only be asking for trouble.
But for now the US remains clueless; it has to wait for the results of the upcoming parliamentary elections in order to device a strategy to deal with a very volatile political scene in Pakistan.
