Britain brokered deal to channelise Pakistan towards democracy, says former envoy

A former Indian diplomat has said that Britain played a key role in charting the path for Pakistans transformation into a democracy.

New Delhi, Sept.1 : A former Indian diplomat has said that Britain played a key role in charting the path for Pakistan's transformation into a democracy.

According to M K Bhadrakumar, former envoy to Uzbekistan and Turkey, the Tony Blair Government "was prescient enough to realize three years ago" that Pakistan "might be in serious disrepair".

"With an ally across the Atlantic that was still rooting for Musharraf, Britain had a job on its hands. It needed London's persuasive skill to get Washington to see the point that unless the Pakistani regime was recast with an infusion of credible civilian content, the "war on terror" in Afghanistan itself would be thrown into jeopardy," says Ambassador Bhadrakumar in an article for the Asia Times.

Bhadrakumar further states that former British foreign secretary Jack Straw undertook the delicate mission first to sound out exiled former prime minister Benazir Bhutto about reaching a political understanding with Musharraf.

Straw's three-year mission is expected to come to fruition this weekend.

The Musharraf-Bhutto deal, at its core, contains three key elements. Bhutto will be allowed to contest general elections scheduled for next year; she will enjoy immunity from prosecution for any misdeeds while in power as prime minister (1988-90 and 1993-96); Bhutto, in turn, will support Musharraf's game plan to amend the Pakistani constitution to allow him to be re-elected without any fear of judicial review. Musharraf took power in a bloodless coup in 1999 and has since refused to relinquish his uniform and his post of chief of army staff.

The deal anticipates that when the dust settles, the Musharraf-Bhutto duo will be ensconced in power in Islamabad with all the trappings of a practicing democracy, including a brand-new Parliament constituted through "free and fair" general elections. This would represent the coalescing of the "moderate center" in Pakistani politics, says Bhadrakumar in his article.

"In the Anglo-US plan, while London provided the brain, Washington undertook the tough assignment of persuading Musharraf to change horses midstream. In turn cajoling, threatening and conciliating, Washington softened up the general over the past several months," he adds.

In Ambasador Bhadrakumar's view, US think-tanks and media played a useful role.

"The general's mishandling of the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) crisis this year in which troops stormed the radical mosque and his disastrous political misjudgment in confronting the Pakistani judiciary weakened him considerably, and that helped Washington's task immensely. But Washington also kept in view that it ultimately has to deal with the Pakistan Army as its principal interlocutor in Islamabad, and there is none more dependable than Musharraf," he says.

Bhutto was virtually ignored by the US administration until recently. Bhutto may have her uses, but there is no indication that Washington respects her. At any rate, she is simply not in a position to annoy the US, he adds.

"The looming threat to the Musharraf-Bhutto deal is that it could be confronted on the streets of Pakistan. That focuses attention on another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, who was recently cleared by the Supreme Court to return from exile to Pakistan. Musharraf wants Sharif to stay away from Pakistan, as he fears that his power-sharing arrangement with Bhutto might unravel under Sharif's expected onslaught," he says.

According to Ambassador Bhadrakumar, Sharif's role in the emerging situation in Pakistan cannot be underestimated, as his "sustained campaign against army rule has found resonance in Pakistani public opinion."

"The irony is that there are several reasons Sharif ought to have been Washington's man in Islamabad. Sharif can handle the menagerie of Islamists. He arguably possesses the right political pedigree to squeeze the jihadist culture out of Pakistan. Second, for the average Pakistani, Sharif is a desi neta (native leader). He has gained in credibility as a nationalist," says the former envoy.

He believes that the people in Pakistan have chosen to forgive Sharif for his previous notoriously corrupt administration and his mercurial style of governance. Bhutto, on the other hand, he says, has been tarnished politically by her deal with Musharraf as well as her proximity to the US.

"She is yet to realize that her aura in Pakistan is turning out to be very different from her aura in the US or Britain," Ambassador Bhadrakumar asserts.

Third, Sharif is genuinely pro-market and is friendly to large capital. He has taken care not to be branded as pro-US, but he isn't reflexively opposed to US interests, either. For him, modernization is something independent of Americanization. Indeed, despite his conservative rhetoric, Sharif has a proven record as a pragmatist.

Yet if Washington has opted for Bhutto, the considerations are obvious. Sharif will refuse to be a participant in America's "war on terror". He understands that the US is the primary issue in Pakistan. He has sized up that the public expects him to be the marker of the beginning for Pakistan's "post-US era", no matter what his own gut instincts tell him. Least of all, Sharif's experience with Washington during his last term as prime minister was far from happy.

Equally, Musharraf would see Sharif as opportunistic, authoritarian, dangerously maneuvering, personality-cultish and incessantly plotting to extend his influence.

"There is no naivety about Musharraf. He knows his days as president are numbered if there is a popular uprising against army rule. And Sharif is a skillful agitator, especially in the heartland province of Punjab, which accounts for 56 percent of Pakistan's population and happens to be his political base," the former envoy says .

Sharif's close associates have made it clear that the prospect of him buckling under Musharraf's pressure tactic is virtually nil.

ANI