Pakistan's unlikely alliance leaves the US out in the cold

Published on Saturday 23 February 2008 18:47

FROM overthrowing Saddam to helping the Afghans expel the Soviets, America has often had cause to rue outcomes that it has been at pains to engineer. Pakistan looks set to be another case in point.

There were unmistakable signs this week that the three competing political power blocks in Islamabad were inching towards an accommodation that would see America's wish for embattled Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to lose power become a reality.

The key moment came on Thursday when the leaders of the two parties that won Monday's general election – the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League – vowed to work together to form a government following Musharraf's stunning defeat.

Sharif met Asif Ali Zardari, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's widower and leader of the PPP since her assassination on December 27, in Islamabad on Thursday evening for their first face-to-face talks since the election.

If they forge a coalition, it will be the first time in Pakistan's history the two main parties have come together. Musharraf's 1999 coup ended a chaotic decade of civilian rule alternating between Bhutto and Sharif governments.

There is little love lost between Zardari and Sharif, whose government imprisoned Zardari for eight years on murder and corruption charges, yet the two men seem prepared to put aside their differences.

Zardari met the PPP's winning candidates, and a party statement said more consultative meetings were expected over the next three days.

Zardari and Sharif also met separately with leaders of the Awami National Party, a Pashtun nationalist party set to join them in a coalition after sweeping Islamists out of power in the North West Frontier Province.

Zardari, whose party won the most seats, but not an overall majority, said he wanted a broad government but one excluding Musharraf and his supporters. Sharif's party has yet to decide whether to join a PPP-led government or support it without being part of it.

Musharraf seems to have accepted his fate. In a column in Friday's Washington Post, he said that he was ready to work with the newly elected parliament to fight terrorism and build a stable democratic government.

While the US welcomed the developments, President Bush will look less favourably on many of the policies that will accompany the new regime. Both Zardari and Sharif made it clear that, as well as restoring independence to the judiciary and lifting the crackdown on the media, they would take a new approach to combating Islamic militants by pursuing more dialogue rather than military confrontation.

Although the Islamists were trounced in the elections, the ferocity with which the Pakistan Army targeted Islamic militants fuelled the strong protest vote against Musharraf.

Both Zardari and Sharif will be more responsive to the public consensus, shunning a heavy hand by the military.

Zardari has already criticised the anti-terrorism policies of Musharraf, saying he had played a double game that had led to an increase in militancy. "We feel they in the government are running with the hare and hunting with the hounds," he said.

Zardari said the morale of the army had plummeted, asserting that only a popularly elected government with the backing of parliament could reverse that.

He added that a counterinsurgency should be waged by the police, not the army, in the tribal areas, and that Pakistan had to train and equip its police forces to curb much of the lawlessness.

Zardari said his party would seek talks with the militants in the tribal areas along the Afghan border, where the Taliban and al-Qaeda have carved out a stronghold, as well as with the nationalist militants who have battled the Pakistani army in Baluchistan Province.

"We will have a dialogue with those who are up in the mountains and those who are not in parliament," said Zardari, who argued that the Pakistani public needed to understand it was not America's war they were fighting, but a threat to their own nation.

Although some analysts saw opportunities for the US if a new civilian government could persuade Pakistanis to get behind the fight against the militants, past attempts to deal with the militants have left them stronger, and any policy that is too accommodating is likely to raise concern in Washington.

Even now the Bush administration, which has leaned heavily on Musharraf, is scrambling to find new partners in the campaign against Islamic militants in the region. Its search is likely to be in vain.