KEY POINTS:
In waging its war on terror, the United States relies on a host of dictators and despots across the nominally Islamic world. Among its favourites is a general referred to by many of his countrymen and women as Busharraf.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, one former adviser to the late Benazir Bhutto wrote: Since 9/11, Musharraf has marketed himself to the West as the man most capable of saving Pakistan from a radical Islamist takeover. But under his rule Pakistan has become more vulnerable to terrorists than before.
Indeed, suicide bombings are now occurring in major cities such as Lahore, something previously unheard of. Last June and July, a quiet middle-class suburb in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, was transformed into a war zone. More than 1000 theology students and their instructors turned the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) and adjoining religious college into a fortress, kidnapping foreign nationals and enforcing a vigilante brand of Islamic law. They smuggled in heavy weapons and took over adjoining state-owned buildings.
Eventually, soldiers and police stormed the mosque at the orders of Musharraf. Scores of students and at least one imam died. For many Pakistanis, the storming of mosques or religious schools is sacrilege. Virtually all opposition leaders, including Nawaz Sharif, condemned the assault. Only Bhutto supported Musharraf in the raid.
Musharraf's tactics may be popular in Washington, but many in Pakistan have until recently seen them as little more than another American proxy war in their backyard, much as they saw the American-backed jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan during the 1980s.
That war involved active US support for another unpopular military dictator, the late General Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq.
You can hardly lay blame for them. So many former US allies in the Afghan jihad are now on the receiving end of American firepower.
Pakistanis remember when the al Qaeda leader may as well have been named Osama bin Reagan.
At the same time, Pakistani voters aren't terribly fond of parties seeking to politicise Islam. Such parties tend to seek imposition of one form of Islam, despite the fact that Pakistan is a nation where Islamic theology is combined with more localised folk practices. Pakistan has also experienced sectarian tension, often exploding into violent conflict between sectarian extremists often backed by Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Much of this took place during the 1990s, a decade in which Pakistan experienced relatively uninterrupted civilian rule.
During a three-week stay in Karachi at the end of 1994, I lived in an almost constant curfew. Alternate days saw conflict along alternating factional and sectarian lines. On one day, Ahmed would be crouching behind a barricade next to his political ally Ali and shooting in the general direction of Umar from a rival political faction. The next day, Ahmed and Umar would be together as Saudi-backed Sunni warriors shooting at Ali and his pro-Iranian Shiite cohorts.
By the end of 1999, many Pakistanis were fed up with the incompetence and corruption of civilian rule. Sharif and Bhutto, who alternated in the PM's chair, were extremely unpopular. For many, the bloodless military coup led by General Pervez Musharraf in December 1999 was seen as a huge relief.
Once again, power in Pakistan moved from elected prime ministers to the military chiefs who overthrew them. But after nine years of military rule, Pakistanis again are in the mood for civilian government. Musharraf promised free and fair elections. He ensured the electoral rules were drafted to favour his candidates from the Q faction of the Pakistan Muslim League. His electoral commission implemented some curious rules including a blanket ban on exit polls. Human Rights Watch even released an audio recording of Attorney-General Malik Qayyum allegedly admitting to poll rigging.
In the end, nothing could save the President's men from the wrath of millions of Pakistani voters. Secular opposition parties led by Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari (Bhutto's widower and a man once jailed during a term of Sharif's Prime Ministership on charges of corruption and murder) took more than two thirds of the seats in the 342-seat National Assembly.
Interestingly, Bhutto's widower could not capitalise on what many presumed would be a sympathy vote that would flow to her Pakistan People's Party.
The pro-Musharraf party has been decimated, now holding a mere 38 seats. In the North-West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan, scene of much Taleban and other extremist activity, the Islamist Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal coalition that came to power in the province on the back of anti-US sentiment in 2002 had its parliamentary presence reduced from 61 seats to a mere five. It seems even the fear of suicide bombers couldn't deter Pushtun voters from lining up to cast their vote for the Pushtun sub-nationalist Awami National Party.
If all goes well, Pakistan's two most powerful men (Sharif and Zardari) can put their differences aside. Then again, the election result may be meaningless. Australian National University sociologist Shakira Hussein writes in the online magazine New Matilda of Pakistan's growing imposition of vigilante rule. If her assessment is correct, religious extremists may already be on the verge of wielding real political power without securing a single seat.
* Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer and associate editor of AltMuslim.com
