E-Paper
Sign In
Thu, Nov 13, 2025 | Jumada al-Awwal 22, 1447 | Fajr 05:14 | DXB 
29.3°C
iPhone | iPad
Android
Playing with fire in Pakistan
PAKISTAN'S national elections on Monday are critically important for this strife-torn country's future. They are just as important for its Western backers. Unless honestly conducted - and this seems highly unlikely - the vote will ignite further violence, plunging the highly strategic nation of 163 million into new dangers.
- By:
- Eric Margolis
Only one thing is certain about Monday's vote. If President Pervez Musharraf and his PML-Q party do well enough to retain power or lead a coalition, almost everyone will charge the election was rigged.
Musharraf has manipulated every vote since seizing power in a 1999 military coup. Polls show only 15-20 per cent of Pakistanis support him. A recent World Public Opinion voter survey found 63 per cent believed conditions in Pakistan would improve if Musharraf resigned.
Recommended For You
The majority of Pakistanis backs the late Benazir Bhutto's People's Party, and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's Muslim League (PML-N).
But Musharraf's powerful friends are determined to keep him in office. In spite of Musharraf's having muzzled the media, jailed thousands of opponents, purged the judiciary, and stuffed the electoral commission with henchmen, Washington and London still support his dictatorship and continue to hail him as a 'democrat.'
Adding to the hypocrisy, while claiming to be waging war in Afghanistan to bring it democracy, the Western powers have been encouraging dictatorship in Pakistan.
The reason is clear: Musharraf has rented out much of his army and intelligence service to battle Taleban in Afghanistan, and tribal militants at home. The fee: up to $1 billion monthly in secret and overt US payments. Without the steady inflow of cash from Washington, Musharraf would not last very long.
Musharraf and his US and British patrons are hoping the opposition will split the vote and leave the former general as last man standing. The opposition, by contrast, is talking about ending the war against Taleban and reasserting Pakistan's traditional interests in Afghanistan and Kashmir.
The powerful military still supports Musharraf, though for how long depends on the level of post-election violence. Gen Ashfaq Kiyani, the new armed forces chief, was selected by Musharraf and Washington as a loyal anti-extremist who would follow America's lead. But this capable general remains an enigma. Indian intelligence sources say the US decided in early 2007 to ease the floundering Musharraf from power and make Gen Kiyani Pakistan's new strongman.
If Pakistan is rent by widespread protests and violence over brazen electoral fraud, or suffers political deadlock, the military may overthrow the widely unpopular Musharraf and seize power. Gen Kiyani is said to be reluctant to see the military re-engage in politics, but there could be no alternative.
The best outcome would be for the military to remove Musharraf and impose temporary martial law until the independent judiciary can be restored, the electoral commission made fair, media ungagged, and political repression ended. Then genuine elections could be held and Pakistan returned to parliamentary government. But once soldiers taste power, they are often reluctant to give it up.
Until Pakistan gets a legitimate government representing its national interests, rather than those of the Western powers, the country will remain in turmoil.
Pakistan is facing spreading civil war, and possible secession by two of its four provinces, Balochistan and Northwest Frontier. The Pashtun tribal uprising ignited by the US/NATO occupation of Afghanistan is now spreading into Pakistan, risking a full-scale uprising by that nation's 25 million Pashtuns. Any of these earthquakes could provoke an invasion by India, met by a nuclear riposte from Pakistan.
The war in Afghanistan and heavy-handed efforts by the US to bend Pakistan's military regime to its will ignited much of the current turmoil. A majority of Pakistanis don't want their soldiers to be Western mercenaries, or their leaders Western yes-men. They support Taleban and the struggle for Kashmir. But the US is so consumed by its war of revenge against Taleban it cannot see any of this.
Pakistan is one of the Muslim World's most important nations and its sole nuclear power. By treating Pakistan like a banana republic, arm-twisting Islamabad into battling its own people, and ignoring the wishes of Pakistan's people, the US and Britain are playing with fire.Eric S. Margolis is a veteran American journalist and contributing foreign editor of The Toronto Sun
Don’t just scroll. Know it all. Sign up for your daily UAE news fix.
Get the top stories of the day right in your inbox.
