Terror threat wears thin in Pakistan crisis

Nov 6, 2007, 15:53 GMT

Islamabad - With his Western backers flinching at the imposition of emergency rule and threat to Pakistan's democratic process, the image of President Pervez Musharraf as a bulwark against the Taliban and al-Qaeda becomes more thinly stretched by the day.

The dapper-suited, English-speaking army general-turned-politician has been a relatively easy figure to sell in recent years to a foreign audience that is terrified of the Islamist menace.

But the measures announced Saturday and government talk of postponing elections due by mid-January have severely tested the credibility of Musharraf, who came to power in a military coup in 1999.

'The military-led government will be hard put to show results and convince the world and the Pakistani people that the enforcement of emergency has paid dividends and helped it make gains against the militants,' the liberal Dawn newspaper wrote Tuesday in the wake of mass arrests that sounded alarm bells around the world.

The round-up of politicians, leading lawyers and human rights activists would cast the regime in a negative light, it noted, adding: 'The world would not be wrong in coming to the conclusion that the generals had used the war on terror as a ploy to strengthen their stranglehold over the country.'

While most observers link the steps taken by Musharraf to a simple fear of having his October 6 re-election overturned by a defiant judiciary, he broadly invokes the Jihadist bogeyman.

Addressing a group of foreign ambassadors in Islamabad this week, the president said emergency was imposed because the top judiciary had 'paralysed various organs of the state and created impediments in the fight against terrorism.'

These included the freeing of many alleged militants, he said, referring to prominent cases where the Supreme Court ordered intelligence agencies to produce scores of missing people being held without charge.

Under the emergency measures, curbs were also placed on national media, which the president said appeared to be helping the cause of extremists and terrorists by showing gory scenes of suicide bombings, thereby encouraging them to perpetrate more atrocities.

Responding to the recent developments, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talked about 'reviewing' the aid package to Pakistan - recipient of some 11 billion dollars in US aid since 2001 - while Britain said it will also review aid worth almost one billion dollars over the next three years. Holland became the first country to cut off aid altogether.

Bilateral defence talks between the US and Pakistan were put on hold, and chairman of the US Foreign Relations Committee Senator Joseph Biden recommended that Washington should consider depriving Pakistan of F-16 warplanes and other military equipment not directly related to the war on terror.

But while Secretary of Defence Robert Gates also said during a visit to Beijing that assistance programmes to Pakistan would be re- examined, he stressed that 'we are mindful not to do anything that would undermine ongoing counterterrorism efforts.'

The last word naturally fell to President George W Bush, who said Washington expected Musharraf to hold elections as soon as possible and to fulfil his earlier promise to step down as army chief and serve his next term as a civilian leader.

If he didn't, 'all we can do is to continue to work with the president' and 'deal with it,' Bush added, fuelling growing skepticism at the apparently sacrosanct relationship.

Speaking while under house arrest in Lahore, the United Nation's rapporteur on human rights, Asma Jahangir, branded Musharraf an 'eyesore' and an 'embarrassment'.

'It's time for the US to be clear that this gentleman is the obstacle, not the solution, and they simply have to get rid of him,' Jahangir told Britain's Guardian newspaper.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani daily The News speculated that 'many Americans will question the sending of billions of taxpayer dollars to prop a military dictator who has ravaged the constitution and trampled on human rights and the press in his own country.'

Other commentators said that after investing so much in the general, who was coerced into partnership in the war on terror in 2001, Washington had effectively tied its own hands.

'As far as America is concerned, he is playing his cards very well - America is more or less hostage to Musharraf because he has made them believe that the war on terrorism cannot be fought without him,' retired general and political analyst Talat Masood said.