Mohammed Goes To The Mountain

Just over a year ago, the question "Do you know who the head of the Pakistan state is?" flummoxed US President George W. Bush. A presidential candidate for the Republican Party at the time, Bush hadn't heard of Pervez Musharraf, nor could he have imagined how important this Pakistani general was to become for America.

A year later, and four months post September 11, Musharraf arrived in Washington last week on a wave of locker-room bonhomie, but the initial enthusiasm over the visit began to wane quickly. That the one-time commando has a penchant for shooting his mouth off became obvious when he told a stunned gathering of South Asia experts that India was on the verge of conducting a nuclear test.

He didn't have substantive proof to support his allegation. All he could share with the Bush administration were "indications", "some news" and "some information". No wonder, none took his allegation seriously. A senior administration official blandly noted that Washington was pleased that there had been no nuclear tests since 1998, "and we expect that there will be no more nuclear tests from either side".

Musharraf's desperate attempts to politicise the Kashmir issue also didn't find too many takers. Appearing beside Bush at a White House press conference, the Pakistani president said he believed the US could "help South Asia turn a new leaf". Bush refused to be drawn into the dispute. He made it clear that this situation could only be resolved by a meaningful dialogue between India and Pakistan. "The best our government can do is to encourage both sides to come to the table, and that's what we'll continue to press for," Bush said.

Analysts say the US will not, and must not, micromanage the Kashmir dispute. Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute, Washington, hoped "we don't make that mistake"; while Stephen P. Cohen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, thought this was "unlikely". Cohen listed Washington's priorities: "Present US policy is to reduce military build-up (along the India-Pakistan border). Then comes our interest in seeing a strengthening of economic ties. Kashmir's a distant third."

Yet, Cohen thinks it's impossible for India and Pakistan to settle the dispute on their own. Prof Ashutosh Varshney, director of the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, too says it's difficult to imagine a situation where the US wouldn't be involved behind the scenes.

Be that as it may, last week, Musharraf's fortunes witnessed a change. From being a leader whom former US president Bill Clinton eyed suspiciously, and whom most accused of derailing democracy in his country, Musharraf received an extremely warm welcome. Bush reminded journalists that he hadn't mentioned many world leaders in his recent State of the Union address, claiming this indicated his sincerity in developing a strong relationship with Pakistan.

Pentagon's enthusiasm for Musharraf was no less. Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld thought the Pakistani leader had made "a series of very tough decisions, taken a number of bold steps, and we certainly welcome his decision to place Pakistan among the ranks of nations that are helping to deal with the problems of global terrorism".

Musharraf thought he deserved the debt write-off for his stand on terrorism. But the waiver wasn't complete: Bush pledged $200 million in economic assistance for fiscal year 2003, to be used to pay down $1 billion of outstanding debt for Pakistan. The amount is just a third of Pakistan's total debt.

These figures challenged even the most brilliant: how could $200 million in economic assistance pay off $1 billion in debt? White House press secretary Ari Fleischer answered: "I have asked it (this question) to the people who do work in the realm of international debt.And I have been advised that if you give $200 million of assistance, it pays down $1 billion of debt. I can only repeat it. I can't understand it." National Security Council spokesperson Sean McCormack was equally unsure: "I wish that were true for my mortgage!"

This incomprehension is what epitomises Washington's present relationship with Islamabad and more so with a dictator responsible for creating terrorists whom he now disowns. Washington believes the madrassas in Pakistan are partly to blame for the spread of terrorism in and around the subcontinent. This concern was reflected in the $34 million aid for Pakistan to revamp its educational system. This is the beginning of a multi-year $100 million programme to strengthen Pakistan's education.

But some feel the Bush administration sought to make a subtle statement through its decisions of providing assistance for education reform and, simultaneously, refusing to sell F-16s to Islamabad. Pakistan had signed a contract to purchase 28 F-16s for $650 million in 1989 and had paid for the jets in instalments over the next several years. But delivery was barred by the Pressler Amendment, which required the president to certify that Pakistan wasn't developing a nuclear weapon.

Musharraf's chameleon-like quality also came to the fore on the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. While talking to Bush at the White House, he said he felt the abduction was a fallout of his crackdown on terrorists and added he was "reasonably sure" that Pearl was still alive. But later in an interview to a news network, Musharraf, when pressed on Pearl's whereabouts, said he was then only "guessing" about the fate of the abducted journalist.

Undeterred, Bush summed up Washington's enchantment with Musharraf saying he was "proud to call him friend". While Cohen noted that Pakistan was moving out of its "nightmare period", former PM Benazir Bhutto, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, thought the West had accepted Musharraf for his post-September 11 volte face on the Taliban and the January 2002 turnabout on terrorism against India. She claimed that these "strategic somersaults are tarred by unreliability".

For the moment, some might find Musharraf's dictatorship useful, Bhutto rued, adding an ominous caveat: "Ultimately, the West's blind eye to democracy and human rights can have unforeseen and deadly consequences, not just in Pakistan, but for regional and world peace."