So Pakistan’s latest coup isn’t anything to fret about, right? Wrong. Washington issued a collective shrug last week when Nawaz was ousted, but that placid public demeanor masked deep concerns. Pakistan, a country of 148 million people, has the proven ability to build a nuclear bomb, but it can’t master the more subtle science of managing its own affairs in a democratic fashion. It’s also on a grim list of post-cold-war countries listing dangerously toward lawlessness. Pakistan can still avoid the fate of Afghanistan and Somalia, where warlords rule. But it could also turn to extreme nationalism or Islamic fundamentalism to hold itself together. “There is every danger of Pakistan becoming a failed state,” exiled opposition leader Benazir Bhutto told NEWSWEEK last week. “Many Pakistanis have been talking about this–that we need to wake up and save our own nation because the rest of the world can’t save us” (box).
The generals now in charge seem to share that concern. Musharraf was on a plane when Nawaz unceremoniously fired him; only then did the Army step in. Units took over the state television station and the airports–finally allowing Musharraf’s circling plane to land at Karachi. Officers loyal to Musharraf arrested Nawaz, his brother and Lt. Gen. Khawaja Ziauddin, the head of the shadowy Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. Not a shot was fired.
But the generals were stumped about what to do next. They cast about for a constitutionally acceptable way to change the government, and apparently tried to persuade Nawaz–who was incommunicado–to resign. Two days passed before Musharraf finally suspended the Constitution, imposed a state of emergency and made himself “chief executive.” As of late last week, the generals were still huddled in consultations to form an “interim administration.”
U.S. intelligence analysts furiously shuffled through field reports of the past several weeks to search for missed signals. They were well aware of tensions between Nawaz and the military. In recent months, Pakistani opposition politicians had warned of an impending crisis, as had Nawaz’s own brother during a visit to Washington in September. (The Pakistani brass was steamed, in particular, because Nawaz–under American pressure–had forced their troops to retreat from territory captured last spring in Kashmir.) On Sept. 21, the State Department took the unusual step of publicly warning all parties against “extraconstitutional measures.”
The worst of the tension seemed to have passed–until Nawaz inexplicably moved against Musharraf. Senior officials in Washington were exasperated. Tellingly, nobody took up Nawaz’s cause once he was under house arrest. Instead, the message to the generals in Islamabad, in the words of Assistant Secretary of State Karl In- derfurth, was that Washington expects “democracy and civilian government will be restored as soon as possible.” Note the omissions: not Sharif or his government restored, and not even elections at once or immediately. The White House canceled a $1.7 million health program, operated by private organizations, but left open–for the moment, anyway–plans for Clinton to visit Pakistan and India early next year.
If he does travel to Islamabad, Clinton will have plenty to talk about: Pakistan’s nuclear program, its volatile standoff with India, and its links to Afghanistan, a haven for Islamic extremists, gunrunners and drug producers. Yet Clinton has been forced to recognize that, thanks to years of sanctions to protest Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons program, the United States has virtually no influence within the Pakistani military. Back in the 1980s, roughly half of the senior leadership of the Pakistan Army had been through U.S. training schools. Now the figure is 10 percent or less. “We have lost touch with a generation of Pakistani military leaders,” says Inderfurth.
Musharraf himself is a mystery to Washington. Many believe that Pakistan’s new leader is “a soldier’s soldier,” and expect that he’ll be “pro-Western and pragmatic.” But on what basis do they make that judgment? Musharraf has a brother who is a resident of the United States, as well as a married son living in Cambridge, Mass. Presumably, that means he’s not zealously anti-American. But he’s also viewed as a hawk on India. He masterminded the assault on Kashmir last spring–and Islamic militancy has been rising steadily inside the Pakistan Army. The sad truth is that Washington’s erratic policy on Pakistan has left it with little sway of its own.
