Former Pakistani diplomat fathoms Musharraf's bind

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By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN

© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 19, 2001

Of all the world's leaders, none is sitting on a hotter seat right now than President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan.

On the one hand, Musharraf is trying to keep the United States happy by urging the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan to turn over Osama bin Laden, suspected mastermind of last week's attacks against the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

On the other hand, Musharraf knows that cooperating too closely with America could destabilize his own country, where the Taliban originated and where it still enjoys some popular support.

"It would be hard to imagine a more difficult dilemma for Pakistan," says Jamsheed Marker, a man who can imagine it more easily than most.

Now living in St. Petersburg, Marker had been Pakistan's ambassador to the United States and so many other countries that he's in the record books as the world's longest-serving diplomat. As he recovers from a serious car accident, the retired diplomat and the Pakistani president have talked by phone several times in recent weeks.

A general who took power in a 1999 coup, Musharraf angered his country's religious leaders even before he began cooperating with U.S. efforts to capture bin Laden, considered a hero by some in the Muslim world.

The Pakistani president "is a good Muslim but he is far from being a fundamentalist Muslim," Marker says.

"Recently he summoned the mullahs and spoke to them as no other political leader in Pakistan ever has. He told them that this type of fundamentalism was out of line in terms of what Pakistan needed and what the world needed, that sectarian violence in Pakistan is contrary to all the beliefs of Islam.

"(The mullahs) were shattered, and there were some protests after that. They don't accept this, and they're not happy with it."

Despite the anger, Musharraf felt he had to go along with America, especially after Secretary of State Colin Powell told the nations of the world that, "You are either with us or you are against us."

Rather than be seen as "against," Musharraf agreed to send a delegation to Afghanistan to urge the Taliban to hand over bin Laden. He also sealed Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, halting the flow of all but humanitarian supplies of food.

In taking those actions, however, Musharraf has angered the Taliban, which itself has threatened to attack Pakistan. As a result, Musharraf has not yet agreed to provide troops or let foreign troops use his country as a base for any efforts to get bin Laden by force.

"It's a very delicate and finely balanced situation," Marker says.

"Pakistan is one of three countries that recognizes the Taliban, and it's the one that probably has the most political influence because the Taliban movement grew up in Pakistan. . . . There is a strong Taliban presence inside Pakistan, which makes it so much more complicated (for Musharraf) -- if he declares the Taliban the enemy, then he has an enemy within."

Pakistan's dilemma is just the latest bump in what Marker calls a "love-hate" relationship between it and the United States.

"There is a very strong feeling that the United States has used Pakistan for its own purposes, and, when convenient, has either embraced it or pushed it aside and ignored it," Marker says.

A key example: the rise of the Taliban, aided by none other than what is now considered its archenemy, the United States.

The Taliban had its roots in the anti-communist rebel forces that fought the Soviet Union after it invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Pakistan organized and trained the rebels, while the United States provided arms and ammunition.

The Soviets withdrew in 1989, but a brutal civil war continued, resulting in thousands of Afghans fleeing across the border to Pakistan. There they languished in squalid refugee camps, spawning the fundamentalist fervor that produced the Taliban movement. The Taliban captured the Afghan capital of Kabul in 1996 and now control 95 percent of the country, imposing a strict form of Islamic rule that bans most entertainment and prohibits women from working or going to school.

It was in this forbidding place that bin Laden, a rich, eccentric Saudi Arabian exile, found a hospitable planning area for his alleged terrorist attacks.

In return for encouraging the Taliban to give up its "guest," Pakistan expects three things from the United States, Marker says:

1. Economic aid, including relief of Pakistan's $36-billion international debt.

2. Assurances that the United States "will become more flexible," as Marker puts it, on the issue of Kashmir, a mountainous region claimed by both Pakistan and India. Pakistan feels the United States has swung toward the Indian side, and "resents that very much," Marker says. Kashmir is considered one of the world's most dangerous flashpoints, since both countries have nuclear capability.

Although some experts fear the Taliban could seize control of Pakistan's government and its nuclear weapons, Marker regards that as an unlikely, "worst case scenario." Less than 1 percent of Pakistanis say they support terrorist acts, and only slightly more profess support for the Taliban.

3. Continued acknowledgement by President Bush and other American leaders that "not all Muslims are terrorists," Marker says.

"What's happening here (in the U.S. attacks) is a clash between civilization and barbarism and it's important that recognition be given to the Muslim ethos," Marker says.

It is important, too, he adds, that non-Muslims understand the frustrations that lead to extremism and that America and other Western nations support moderate Islamic governments.

In the West, President Musharraf has been criticized for not doing more to stamp out Pakistan's endemic corruption and improve the living standards of its 141-million people, many of whom have to leave the country to find work.

But Marker calls the president a "pragmatic" man, who appointed an all-civilian Cabinet, agreed to hold democratic elections and believes in empowering women. The new United States ambassador to Pakistan is female.

Still, the U.S. reaction to the attacks has put Pakistan "in one of the most difficult and explosive situations" in its 54-year history, Marker says.

He warns that the United States should proceed carefully with any military action against Afghanistan -- "there's no World Trade Center in Kabul, what's there to destroy?" -- and recognize that even if if gets bin Laden, other shadowy, hard-to-identify enemies might remain.

"It's important for the United States not to fall into the common trap of fighting a current war on the assumptions of the last war. This is not Desert Storm, this is not the liberation of Kuwait. It's different because the concept of terrorism is different."

- Susan Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com.

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