by Ahmed Rashid
The public understood that the elections were not about restoring democracy but about the military’s attempt to legitimize a permanent political role for itself, weaken the secular parties, strengthen the Islamic parties, and create a hung parliament in which the military would become the main power broker. However, all the political parties participated in the polls, contesting 392 seats for the National Assembly and another 728 seats in the four provincial assemblies. Sixty women contested general seats— the highest number in the country’s electoral history—while sixty seats were reserved for women in the assemblies. The increased participation of women decreed by Musharraf was the most progressive step he took before the elections.
When all the votes were in on October 10, the turnout was a poor 41.8 percent, reflecting the low level of public interest or credibility in the polls. Despite the effort to weaken Bhutto’s PPP, that party secured sixty-three seats in the National Assembly, coming in second after the army’s favored Pakistan Muslim League, which won seventy-seven seats. The MMA won a staggering forty-five seats, the largest number ever won by an Islamic alliance. 29 Voting patterns demonstrated how popular the opposition still was, despite the pre-poll rigging. The PPP received 25.9 percent of all votes cast, the largest number for any party in the country. The MMA won 11.5 percent of the votes cast, but it did extraordinarily well in the NWFP provincial elections, where it won half the seats and formed the new provincial government.30 It also made substantial gains in Balochistan, where it set up a provincial government in alliance with other parties. The main winner within the MMA was the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam—the party that supported the Taliban—gaining more seats than ever before.
Three hundred international observers monitored the polls, including a seventy-member team from the European Union. All of them said the polls were seriously flawed. The Commonwealth Observer Group described “many irregularities” and “chaotic scenes at many polling stations.”31 William Milam, the former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, said that by rigging the elections, Musharraf had struck “a Faustian deal” with the MMA and destroyed the middle ground of Pakistan’s political landscape.32
The staggering successes of the MMA shocked and dismayed many Pakistanis and even many in the army. In an internal assessment before the elections, the ISI had predicted that the MMA would win only twenty seats nationwide, compared to the forty-five it won. Several serving generals whom I spoke to after the polls were angry at the ISI, saying it had given its operatives in the NWFP the freedom to help MMA candidates get out the vote. Vali Nasir, a scholar on political Islam, explained the army’s preference for the MMA: “The army’s acquiescence to Islamization actually transcends its fear of it, by seeking opportunities in it to establish the military’s hegemony and expand its control over society. The MMA is opposed to civil society and not to army rule, and periods of military rule have seen the expansion of Islamization.”33
The elections resulted in a hung parliament. It took six weeks of intense horse-trading and arm-twisting by the ISI before a coalition government headed by the Pakistan Muslim League was formed with the slimmest of majorities. Zafarullah Khan Jamali, a Baloch politician and tribal chief, was elected prime minister. He was a safe bet who would insist on calling Musharraf “my boss” in public. Musharraf took the oath of president for a five-year term, but refused to submit himself to being elected by parliament, as was required. The opposition refused to accept Musharraf’s unilateral measures, and their protests were to paralyze parliament in the months ahead.
For the U.S.-led Coalition and the Afghan government, the most worrying outcome of the elections was the creation of an MMA provincial government in the NWFP, with the JUI politician Akram Durrani becoming chief minister. Durrani said he would not allow U.S. agencies to operate in the province and promptly banned alcohol sales and gambling. He gave an extraordinary description of JUI plans for economic development, saying, “We believe that God prearranged food and clothing for every man or woman he created. If we give up the ways of God and devise our own solutions to perceived problems we may land in trouble.”34
With these kinds of views and the NWFP provincial parliament now stuffed full of neo-Taliban mullahs belonging to the JUI, the Afghan government was extremely fearful of greater support for its own Taliban. “We are extremely concerned at the victory of friends of the Taliban in the NWFP,” Zalmay Rasul, national security adviser to President Karzai, told me.35 The JUI also helped form a coalition government in Balochistan. In both provinces the JUI was to use the state machinery now at its disposal and its own network of madrassas and mosques to help the Taliban regain Afghanistan. By rigging the elections, Musharraf had for the first time unleashed the Islamic extremist genie within the Pakistan state and handed it political power in two provinces.
The country had been on edge as a wave of terrorist attacks by al Qaeda and Pakistani extremists hit, this time aimed at Pakistani Christians. On August 4, 2002, six Pakistani Christians, including several children, had been killed in an attack on a convent school near Islamabad. Five days later four Christian nurses had been killed and twenty-three wounded in a grenade attack on a Christian hospital, also near Islamabad. On Christmas Day in Punjab province, three young Christian girls had been killed in a grenade attack during a church service. The four gunmen were later caught and admitted to belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammed. Yet the group’s leader, Masud Azhar, now released from house arrest, was preaching in mosques across the country.
The rigged elections had only widened the political divide, further polarized society, and encouraged the extremists. Parliament was paralyzed by the opposition, who, for the next twelve months, denounced Musharraf at every session of the National Assembly by thumping their desks, shouting, and walking out. In March 2003 the opposition boycotted the elections for the chairman of the Senate—the upper house of parliament—after the ISI hosted a dinner for fifty-four senators to persuade them to vote for its favored candidate. The dinner made a mockery of the election, which was dubbed the “ISI selection.”36
The MMA acted as cheerleader for the army while opposing its policy of alliance with the United States. It wanted to keep its public credibility intact by not being seen to be too close to the army’s policies. In May 2003 in the NWFP, the MMA parliament adopted a Sharia, or Islamic law, bill that threatened to introduce Taliban-style Islamic measures in the province. Schools in the NWFP were ordered to replace boys’ uniforms of shirts and trousers with traditional dress, and girls were told to cover their heads. Western aid agencies and the World Bank suspended their activities in the NWFP because of the restrictions placed on women there. Musharraf criticized the MMA actions, yet when he arrived at Camp David in June 2003, he assured Bush that “all the political restructuring that we have done is in line with ensuring sustainable democracy in Pakistan.” Bush in turn continued to call Musharraf “a visionary and courageous leader.”37
At their meeting, Bush announced a five-year aid package to Pakistan worth $3.2 billion, with half the money being allocated to the military. U.S. officials categorically said that the package was not linked to any specific demands on democratization. However, some mid-level U.S. diplomats feared that without tying down the aid package to specific political and social reforms, the Bush administration was creating long-term problems for itself. The White House’s only concern was how to support Musharraf even as it turned a blind eye to the extremism the president and the military’s allies were encouraging.
U.S. military aid to Pakistani forces on the Afghan border began to pour in. In January 2003, U.S. ambassador Nancy Powell had handed over to the military in the NWFP 400 military vehicles and 750 wireless sets worth $13 million. Two weeks later she had given a similar amount to the army in Balochistan province. Pakistan also had received 3 fixed-wing aircraft and 5 helicopter gunships, with more promised. Washington went to extraordinary lengths to satisfy the military. In the spring of 2004, the United States would promise Islamabad 26 Bell helicopters costing
$250 million, to be used for a new airborne commando force. The U.S. Congress would take too long to allocate the funds, so Bush would approach Prince Bandar, the influential Saudi ambassador to Washington, who came up with funds to pay for 24 helicopters, which were immediately delivered.38
However, U.S. military aid could not shore up what was a weak political dispensation that was already showing signs of eroding. The fundamental institutions of government were failing. Parliament was discredited by the lack of importance given it by the army and the opposition protests. Newspapers dubbed the National Assembly the most ineffective in the country’s history, as it passed so little legislation. The opposition parties and the MMA continued to demand that Musharraf give up his uniform as army chief and become a civilian president. Two assassination attempts against him in December 2003 created widespread shock and further political uncertainty. For many Pakistanis, Musharraf and his generals were devoid of a political vision or strategy and were merely following expediency to stay in power.
The fallout from the war in Afghanistan did not affect only Pakistan but also the neighboring states of Central Asia, where political expediency also flourished. The Central Asian regimes had welcomed the arrival of U.S. forces and influence because they hoped that the United States would provide a balance to Russia’s overweening power and influence. They also determined that the United States would provide international legitimacy to their repressive dictatorial regimes, which could use such legitimacy to end the years of international isolation and the lack of foreign investment they had endured since the breakup of the Soviet Union. The public response was also positive as people hoped for greater American influence and pressure on their respective regimes for democracy and economic reforms.
Central Asia was the only bloc in the Muslim world that had never experienced American power, interference, or largesse. Unlike in the rest of the Muslim world, in Central Asia the United States had an overwhelmingly favorable image—largely because nobody knew anything about America except that it was rich, powerful, and democratic. Washington started off with a major plus—neither the regimes nor the peoples disputed the U.S. presence.
The most important country for the United States was Uzbekistan. With the largest armed forces in the region, numerous military bases, and a regime that had resisted Russian domination, President Islam Karimov was considered a significant ally. He had swiftly allowed U.S. SOF and the CIA to operate out of Uzbek bases even before the Uzbeks had granted formal permission for setting up a U.S. base. Karimov, sixty-three, had now governed for thirteen years, running a repressive and dictatorial state. After serving as first secretary-general of Uzbekistan’s Communist Party, he had been elected president in 1990. In 1995 he had held a referendum to extend his mandate for five years, and in 2000 he had won another rigged election. Now he used the American presence to justify holding a referendum in January 2002 that would extend his term of office from five to seven years, keeping him in power until December 2007. As in Soviet times, the government claimed that 91 percent of the voters had polled in his favor. Karimov had scheduled the polls on January 27—the same day that American officials from the State Department and the Treasury arrived in Tashkent for a meeting of the newly formed U.S.-Uzbekistan Joint Security Cooperation. Karimov could boast that Washington fully supported the referendum.
In order to avoid any rivalry with Moscow, U.S. officials repeatedly clarified that they had no intention of maintaining a permanent military presence in Central Asia. “We do not anticipate a permanent presence in any of the countries in the region,” General Franks said in Tashkent in January 2002.39 Franks invited Russian officers to join CENTCOM to be briefed on the war’s progress, and he asked retired Russian generals to brief his officers about Russia’s war experiences in Afghanistan. At the May NATO summit in Italy, Presidents Bush and Putin signed a declaration that for the first time created a joint council for NATO that would allow Russia to join its decision-making process. “Two former foes are now joined as partners overcoming 50 years of division and a decade of uncertainty,” said Bush at the NATO meeting.40
For Karimov, the real goal was to wangle a visit to Washington and use it to show Russia and his own people that he was now a world-class leader. His visit to the White House on March 12-14 aroused intense anger from human rights groups and some congressmen, but the Bush administration insisted it had succeeded in getting Karimov’s commitment to carry out political reforms in the Strategic Partnership document that he and Karimov signed. The document committed Tashkent to “intensify the democratic transformation of its society politically and economically.” The tightly controlled Uzbek media were never allowed to publish the document, due to the controversial commitments Karimov had made, while Washington knew those commitments were meaningless and that the United States would never hold Karimov to them. Bush pledged $155 million in aid to Uzbekistan for 2002—aimed largely at the military and security agencies. Total U.S. aid to Central Asia for 2002 was to more than double to $442 million from $200 million the previous year. Both the United States and Uzbekistan had begun a ritualized shadow dance that had little meaning for the long-suffering Uzbek people.
The United States had few intentions to help kick-start a reform process in Uzbekistan or any other Central Asian state. The Pentagon was looking for access to bases and it did not want other issues such as democracy or human rights fogging up its one-dimensional agenda. Colin Powell articulated the essence of the U.S. relationship with Central Asia at the NATO summit meeting in May: “We think it serves our interest to work with the nations of Central Asia, to have access agreements, to be able to go into their nations at their invitation, to train with them, and, perhaps if necessary, to help them in their own self-defense efforts.”41
The U.S. presence encouraged international lending agencies to return to Central Asia with renewed optimism. In the past, both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund had struggled in Uzbekistan. The IMF had closed its office in Tashkent in 2000, after Uzbekistan had refused to implement the terms of a memorandum it had signed committing itself to currency reform. The IMF now warily returned and made the same demands. World Bank president James Wolfensohn visited the countries of Central Asia for ten days in April 2002 and optimistically declared that “for the next two to three years Central Asia will be on everybody’s agenda.” He urged the regimes there to consider that “if they are going to take advantage of this opportunity for funding, for aid, for support then change will be needed.”42 It was a wake-up call to the Central Asian leadership and it offered people a glimpse of what they had hoped for from the new engagement with the West—reform.
However, economic cronyism—policies that benefited a few close relatives and associates of Karimov—continued unabated in Uzbekistan. In July the population was infuriated when the government suddenly imposed 90 percent duties on imported goods and packaged foodstuffs, which benefited a few Karimov cronies who held import licenses, but put tens of thousands of small stall holders and traders in the private markets out of business. There were unprecedented demonstrations by traders and shopkeepers in Tashkent and more unrest in the impoverished countryside as inflation surged and ordinary consumer goods became too costly to buy. In October, as unrest spread, the government reduced the duties to 70 percent, but it was not enough. Uzbekistan’s countryside was deeply impoverished and becoming a breeding ground for extremism. The government set low prices for buying raw cotton from farmers—the major agricultural crop—while Karimov’s cronies with special licenses were able to reap huge profits by selling the cheaply bought cotton at world prices abroad. Farmers became indebted and poorer. That same month an IMF mission to Tashkent announced that the government had again failed to fulfill any of its promises.
Karimov’s strategy to retain his importance for the Americans was constantly to remind visitors that the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) remained a potent threat. To some extent this was true. The IMU still had an underground network
in Central Asia. IMU fighters who had survived the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan retreated into Pakistan—some of them escaping in the Kunduz airlift organized by the ISI. Although the United States repeatedly said that IMU commander Juma Namangani was dead, Uzbek intelligence continued to plant stories in the Russian and Kazakh media that he was alive and waiting for the right moment to reappear. I was approached several times by Uzbek diplomats who knew my expertise at the IMU and tried to use me to plant stories that Namangani was alive.43
Tahir Yuldashev, the chief ideologue of the IMU, had settled in Wana in South Waziristan. I continued to hear stories about the popularity of Qari Tahir Jan, as he was called in Pakistan—his recitations of the Koran in chaste Arabic, his fierce demeanor, his skills reorganizing the IMU with al Qaeda support—and how numerous new recruits for the IMU were arriving from Central Asia. Washington feared that the IMU could still target U.S. troops in their Central Asian bases.
Karimov and other Central Asian leaders raised the specter of another Islamist threat from Hizb ut-Tahir (HT), a radical but nonviolent extremist group extending its influence in the region. Although HT was influential among some urban ethnic Uzbeks in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, it was hardly capable of toppling any regime.44 HT was founded in 1952 by a Palestinian judge, who aimed for the group to mobilize public support to restore the Caliphate. HT was close to Wahhabism in many aspects of its extremist beliefs and developed a very secretive cell system to promote itself among young people, but it did not advocate violence. Between 1996 and 2001 the majority of political prisoners in jail in Uzbekistan were charged with belonging to HT. Several European countries were also affected by HT recruitment, especially among young Muslims studying at university. Despite HT’s nonviolence claims, Germany banned the group in January 2003, citing that “it supports the use of violence as a means to realize political interests.” Britain was under pressure from conservatives to do the same, but Tony Blair demurred.45
