The Storm Over Pakistan

There is an American problem in Pakistan, and there is a Pakistani problem in Pakistan. In our narcissism, in our obsession with America's investment in President Pervez Musharraf, we must not lose sight of the enduring truths of Pakistan's political life. This is a big, unhappy land that has been governed by the military for half of the six decades since its emergence as a nation-state after the cataclysmic partition of India in 1947. Its faith, Islam, was the raison d'être of this state, but the problems thrown up in the country's way—the struggle of its principal nationalisms, the destitution and lawlessness, the impasse between a modern bureaucratic state and the writ of tribal warlords—were not of the kind faith could resolve. Indeed, the faith itself would become a contested matter as the relative secularism and tolerance of Pakistan's early years gave way to a belligerent Islamism.

President Bush with Musharraf, during a 2006 White House visit.

It was telling that in the course of announcing the imposition of emergency rule, Musharraf switched from Urdu to English, to plead for time and understanding, even citing Abraham Lincoln's extreme measures seeking to preserve the union. "Towards that end," said Musharraf, "he broke laws; he violated the Constitution; he usurped arbitrary powers; he trampled individual liberties." This was as explicit an appeal for American support as can be made in a foreign land. "Please give us time," he added, and "do not demand and expect your level of civil liberties, which you learned over the centuries." This was the classic dilemma of the "friendly authoritarian" in trouble, presenting foreign patrons with the hard choice of the devil they know versus the uncertainty of the deluge rushing in from below.

The forces arrayed against Musharraf are a varied lot. There are lawyers (not always sure friends of the rule of law) and liberal professionals disappointed by the pace of reform and by the power of the Army, but there are also in the streets agitators and religious obscurantists who oppose Musharraf for his alliance with the United States, for the greater realism and moderation he brought to his country's foreign policy.

Musharraf may not be a devoted democrat, but in all fairness, he has hitherto ruled with a light touch. There is in him a soldier's earnestness, a preference for order. His hero is not Lincoln but rather Turkey's soldier-founder, Kemal Ataturk. Musharraf had picked that romance for Ataturk early in life, when his father was assigned to Pakistan's embassy in Ankara. The Musharrafs spent seven years in Turkey, and the creed of Kemalism—for the people, despite the people, the Army as a guardian of the nation's order, and "progress" in the face of religious reactionaries—is basic to Musharraf's worldview.

Back from the brink. Things had not been pretty in Pakistan when Musharraf seized power in 1999. The country was virtually ungovernable, corruption was rampant, and the Pakistani state was a pariah, sanctioned for crossing the nuclear threshold with its detonation of six nuclear devices in 1998. Musharraf pulled it back from the brink of disaster. He joined America's campaign against terrorism. He understood the meaning and the magnitude of 9/11 for American strategy and opinion. True, he has not given America all the cooperation it wanted, and there have been persistent reports that his intelligence services have been duplicitous on the Pakistani-Afghan frontier, but we take the world as it is, and Musharraf has been the best that could be hoped for in a country with Pakistan's temperament.

In the scheme of things, U.S. policy has been careful and measured. We can't cast Musharraf adrift, for Paki-stan's potential disorder is great. Nor can we give a green light for emergency rule. His promise to hold parliamentary elections in February is a sign of his sensitivity to American opinion.

American diplomacy had brokered a deal between Musharraf and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. But this is not "people power" of the kind that brought down Ferdinand Marcos two decades ago in the Philippines. In that crisis, Secretary of State George Shultz secured America's interests in that crucial country by brilliantly nudging Marcos out of power and reconciling a reluctant Ronald Reagan to that outcome. This crisis in Pakistan may be more akin to Iran's 1979 upheaval: a choice between the man at the helm and the terrible storm threatening to blow him away.