MK Bhadrakumar

Arranged marriages can be a messy business. Where both parties are known to loathe each other, only a rash parent, desensitised by the thought of short-term gain, will continue with the process knowing fully well that it will end in misery and possibly violence. That this is equally true in political life became clear in the recent attempt by Washington to tie Benazir Bhutto to Pervez Musharraf.” That was what Tariq Ali, a friend of Benazir Bhutto’s from her Oxford days, wrote in the London Review of Books recently, a devastating critique of her recent politics.

No doubt, the mismatch that the George W Bush administration was pushing for had to end messily. Therefore, Washington should have given up at some point — say, after the clumsy attempt in early November by US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte on his visit to Islamabad. A catastrophic bloody end became inevitable once the generals in Rawalpindi realised that the Bush administration was stubbornly refusing to see what was so plain to all — that Washington had no real leverage on the Pakistani military to make it bend to its curious agenda of democracy.

And in Bhutto’s case, the Pakistani military was not amenable to persuasion. In retrospect, therefore, the Bush administration has blood on its hands. Benazir Bhutto fell in the crossfire between the Pakistani establishment and Washington. It will be tempting to point fingers at the ubiquitous Al-Qaeda or the rampaging Taliban. But the high probability is that elements within the Pakistani establishment masterminded this crime. Bush’s sombre face while reacting to the Bhutto assassination spoke volumes.

Interestingly, his statement completely ignored the Musharraf regime. Bush instead directly addressed the Pakistani people. More important, he exhorted them to honour Bhutto’s memory by pressing ahead with the campaign for democracy. Bush’s equations with Musharraf are never going to be the same again. The irony is that Bhutto might have achieved on a Thursday evening on a Rawalpindi street, what she had assiduously sought in recent years across world capitals — that Bush not equate Pakistan with Musharraf.

Developments in recent months made it obvious that the Pakistani military was refusing to take diktats from Washington about how Pakistan should transform into a democratic state under civilian control. A turning point came 10 days ago when the US Congress passed legislation putting riders for the first time on the disbursement of American military aid to Pakistan, naming the Pakistani military accountable.

Alongside appeared a cold blast of propaganda that took everyone by surprise. Senior US administration and military officials began speaking out of turn in some sensational media ‘leaks’ in the US-Pakistan grapevine, almost rubbishing the Pakistani military as unscrupulous, duplicitous, unreliable and corrupt. In September 2001 the Bush administration threatened to despatch Pakistan right back to Stone Age. Today, seven years down the line, the US realises it is back at ground zero.

Meanwhile, it has spent a staggering US$11 billion by way of ‘assistance’ to Pakistan for helping out in the war. But the Pakistani generals know that the Bush administration has no choice but to depend on it, given the criticality of the Afghan situation. A defeat in Afghanistan would mean a collapse of the entire US strategy of making the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation a political organisation with a global reach outside of UN control. The stakes are indeed very high for the 21st century world order.

That is why in Bhutto’s departure Washington has lost its precious trump card. In the present circumstances, it is unthinkable that any serious Pakistani politician will allow himself to identify with the US. From the day Bhutto arrived in early October in Pakistan, concluding her eightyear exile, her life was in mortal danger. As Tariq Ali bemoaned, she was no longer the Daughter of the East that she once claimed herself to be, but was widely perceived by Pakistanis as the Daughter of the West.

The Pakistani establishment felt threatened nonetheless that she still was the firebrand that it knew her to be and that she was again showing signs of conjuring up her magical spell over the masses in the upcoming election on January 8. Coupled with that, it became apparent that Washington was insisting on her induction into the power structure as a democratically elected leader.

Only the Pakistani security apparatus could have saved Bhutto’s life. Evidently, it wasn’t interested. That is the key issue here. The rest is minor detail — suicide bomber who rode the motorcycle or the gunman who ensured she didn’t survive. In all probability, they would be thumb sketched as ‘jihadis’.

The writer was India’s Deputy High Commissioner in Islamabad and headed the Pakistan Division in the MEA.

Source : DNAIndia