With the Taliban on the march, its cities paralyzed by demonstrations and its president targeted four times for assassination, Pakistan is facing its most severe crisis since the 1999 coup that brought Gen. Pervez Musharraf to power. Over the past few months, surging Islamic extremism and widespread political unrest have erupted into violence, undermining the government's authority. Now, with elections on the horizon and the general's heavy-handed tactics aggravating tensions, Washington is being forced to reexamine one of its most critical and controversial alliances in the war on terror.
The latest wave of violence began in May, when a suicide bomber attacked a crowded hotel reception in Peshawar, killing 24. Since then, remnants of the Taliban, until now largely focused on U.S. and Afghan targets next door, have turned their sights toward the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, staging increasingly brazen attacks on the Musharraf regime.
In part, this is the result of a foolish gamble by the general to extract his military from violent provinces in return for a pledge by local tribes to expel foreign jihadists and secure the Afghan border. The withdrawal left behind a colossal security vacuum, one which al-Qaida and the Taliban were quick to fill. Now the Islamists are openly seeking to overthrow the government.
Matters got considerably worse last week when the mounting jihad, which had been largely confined to the tribal areas along the border, spread to the heart of the capital. Islamic radicals had been agitating from the city's Red Mosque for months, waging a campaign against un-Islamic "innovations," such as women's rights and the public playing of music. On Tuesday, as another suicide bombing claimed nine more lives, students at the mosque attacked a government outpost, seizing weapons and hostages. Subsequent fighting has left at least 19 dead. Even if the general subdues the mini-insurgency, which appears likely, the message is clear: Radical Islam is on the move.
As if to punctuate the point, a fourth assassination attempt was made on the president's life on Friday, when Gen. Musharraf's plane came under anti-aircraft fire as it lifted off from a military base near Islamabad.
And yet, the threat from Islamic extremists may be the least of the president's worries. With critical national elections due this year, Gen. Musharraf ordered the independent-minded chief judge of the Supreme Court arrested in March. Charged with "misuse of authority" before his own court, Mohammed Ikfitar Chaudhry has become a public icon, galvanizing the fractured opposition parties and challenging Gen. Musharraf's legitimacy. The trial has brought thousands of lawyers and regime opponents to the streets, snapping the electorate out of a seven-year malaise. Unfazed by intimidation and mobbed by thousands of adoring fans, Mr. Chaudhry and his motorcade now crisscross Pakistan's electoral map, demanding the return of democracy.
Washington is understandably worried. Pakistan was the first and is, for now, the only Muslim nation with nuclear weapons. Its population of 160 million eclipses that of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan combined. Shaken too hard, this volatile cocktail of nuclear weapons and Islamic extremism could explode, spreading instability to its neighbors, swelling al-Qaida's ranks and providing radicals with weapons of mass destruction. What is Washington to do?
For decades U.S. policy towards Islamabad has been guided by short-term interests and regional security concerns, with support being channeled to whichever Islamist, dictator or democrat served immediate regional needs. While that approach brought qualified successes at times, it also sidestepped fundamental conflicts which plague this divided nation and bred popular resentment towards Washington in the process. America must reverse course, and the first step is to demand that Gen. Musharraf uphold his pledge to hold free and fair elections this year.
Conventional wisdom has misled U.S. officials about Pakistan: The vast majority of its voters are not jihadists. Having never garnered more than 12 percent of the vote, Islamist parties will not sweep to power through the ballot box. In fact, stripping Pakistan's moderate majority of their democratic rights may do more to expand the ranks of extremists than the country's web of radical madrassas.
The predisposition to favor "stability" runs strong in Washington. But those concerned about losing a proven ally in the war on terror to unpredictable elections should remember that it was a dictator, Gen. Zia al-Huq, who helped ignite Islamism in the late 1970s and an autocrat, however enlightened, who presides over its resurgence today. Gen. Musharraf has done nothing to curb the jihadist infiltration of Pakistan's intelligence apparatus and has been impotent in addressing the al-Qaida safe haven along the Afghan border.
And while nothing keeps our generals up at night like the prospects of al-Qaida snatching nuclear weapons out from under a collapsing Pakistani state, moving toward democracy makes this possibility less likely, not more so. In truth, Pakistan's nuclear weapons will never be secure so long as al-Qaida and the Taliban roam the countryside with impunity and their sympathizers staff the intelligence services.
For skeptics of democracy, a better case for sticking with Gen. Musharraf rests with the record of corruption and ineptitude that has characterized the democratic governments of Pakistan's past. Yet, in largely welcoming Gen. Musharraf's military coup in 1999, Pakistanis sent a clear message to political leaders about their declining tolerance for corrupt officials, elected or not.
Only a government answerable to the people -- and not the army or intelligence services -- can muster the will to tame the lawless border, seek peace with the neighbors and truly secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Still just an illusion, a true partnership between the United States and Pakistan could rid the world of al-Qaida's principal safe haven and secure the democratic Muslim ally the United States so desperately needs.