Last week, Pakistan turned its political clock back to the year 2007. Its lawyers movement forced President Asif Ali Zardari to reinstate judges dismissed by his predecessor, General Pervez Musharraf. After many broken promises and nasty personal politics, Pakistanis now confront the same governance problems that dogged them in the waning days of Musharraf’s rule. This may not seem like progress. But the fact that the courts can now hold government to account is an enormous step for a state engulfed by terror and fear. Just as the United States is ready to unveil a new strategy for the region, Pakistan may finally begin to marshal a democratic response toward the Taliban and Al Qaeda that neither Islamabad nor Kabul could muster until now.
Why should a domestic dispute matter to the US-led war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda? Politics and a deep need for justice. The Supreme Court can certainly make life uncomfortable for Zardari, whose tenure is colored by allegations of his corruption and the shadow of Musharraf's policies. Before the dismissals, the Supreme Court was prepared to take up contentious cases concerning the security and intelligence services, the disappearance of hundreds of Pakistanis swept up in anti-terrorism campaigns and US rendition practices, Musharraf’s abuse of presidential powers to support US policies and state corruption.
Were the court to rule now, these cases could alter the balance of power within Pakistan and the direction of its foreign policy. Each also strikes at the heart of Pakistan's misled governance. The courts will undoubtedly keep a close eye on diminishing parliamentary prerogatives and rising presidential powers as Pakistan wades into the new depths of the American-led war. This time around, the United States may have to deal with Pakistan, and if it were smart, Afghanistan, on terms set, at least in part, in the region itself.
Advertisement
The most pressing issue is negotiating with insurgents. The Taliban’s strength lies in border regions, but this is not a peripheral problem. Zardari's decision to reach an agreement with them in the Swat valley – exchanging peace for the imposition of Islamic law – has infuriated Pakistanis who believe it trades constitutional principle for tactical expediency, and land for peace, bringing militancy close to the heartland without regard to public opinion.
The idea that there is a "moderate" Taliban has circulated since the movement's rise in the 1990s, when the government of Pakistan formally recognized and international organizations engaged with its members in order to secure humanitarian supplies for Afghanistan. Who these moderates are, and how strong they might be, remains hazy. Then, as now, even limited talks with the Taliban raised fears that talking conferred legitimacy. And then, as now, negotiation was a quick fix without a clear sense of its consequences for the future of either Afghanistan or Pakistan. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto did little to stop the Taliban, her successor Nawaz Sharif gave them formal sanction, Musharraf and Zardari treated them as bargaining partners – and today the Taliban's rise has raised anew the question of Sharif's claim to a close relationship with those the US has spent seven years trying to destroy.
None of these efforts diminished the Taliban’s terror campaign, and attempts to cope with this challenge by acceding to its demands raise serious questions about the country’s future. Some Pakistani terror victims now ask if negotiation with insurgents might turn out to have been the right course. Others worry that such bargains might end Pakistan as they know it. All worry about the government’s alliance with the US, including its tacit permission for pilot-less drone attacks against insurgents inside Pakistan that undercuts its sovereignty and political legitimacy.
These are not questions about military decisions, but about political judgment, and affect the kind of political society that Pakistan can become. While the US debates Zardari’s utility, it’s worth remembering that neither Pakistan’s nor Afghanistan’s president has, or should have, sole authority to decide these questions. In both countries, much-ignored parliaments and courts have constitutional roles that could ease the future of future decisions for the region and foreign powers alike.
Like so many questions about legitimacy in a purportedly democratic state, these turn out to be about popular franchise. One year ago, Pakistanis voted against the parties and politicians who wanted to fight terrorism with authoritarian tools – an implied vote against both the Taliban and military decision-making. Now that Zardari has backed down and restored the authority of the judiciary, many Pakistanis are likely to hope that their government will think much harder about the consequences of handing territory and political power to anti-state insurgents.
The same can be said for Afghanistan, where an election is slated for later this year. Its security environment differs from Pakistan's even if its enemies appear similar. The country's history with its own Taliban and the profound weakness of the Afghan state may lead Kabul and Islamabad to take different decisions. The Karzai government allowed talks with the Taliban for several years when the US didn't want them and continues them now, perhaps with US sanction. Few in Afghanistan have complained. The primary lesson remains a critical one: Afghans need confidence in their own government, in its decisions about war and, ultimately, peace. Their votes need to be respected within the country and outside – not only when they suit the US and its allies.
Politicians don't always take the right military decisions; neither do military leaders. The problems that trouble Afghanistan and Pakistan today began politically and remain political. Those politics are not solely national. Afghanistan and Pakistan continue to host transnational groups like Al Qaeda and cross-border movements like the Taliban. But the region’s travails are both a cause and a consequence of long-standing problems of governance. Terror is not an overlay, but a part of the governance environments of both states, and will not disappear until each state can govern itself fully, representatively and justly. This is not about buying allegiance or manufacturing aid projects to stem extremism – it is about the legitimacy of political leaders and institutions.
The US has difficulty reconciling democracy with foreign policy in this region. It pushed Pakistan to send troops into the tribal areas to fight Al Qaeda, gained permission to fight directly on Pakistani soil and merged anti-insurgency activities across the Durand Line – all without the support of the Pakistani electorate. In Afghanistan, the US and NATO control a war on the territory of an otherwise sovereign state whose elected leader has virtually no say in its conduct and, when he finally complained publicly, was derided by Washington.
This is one way the Obama administration's policies can stem the tide of failure in the region: by ensuring that its own policies are supported in Afghanistan and Pakistan, not just by officers, presidents and technical experts, but by the electorates themselves. Only then can both countries can take hard decisions and hold them as their own. It's called democracy, and deserves a chance.
Advertisement
Paula R. Newberg is the Marshall B. Coyne Director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University.Rights: © 2009 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. YaleGlobalOnline
