Do No Harm

If you don't know what to do, better to do nothing -- and the United States does not really know what to do in Pakistan. Moreover, things there are not nearly as bad as the Western media and some excitable politicians present. The situation is deteriorating, but the country is not yet close to failing. Although it is a flawed state, menaced by terrorists and insurgents, it is still a largely effective one.

By pushing for particular political outcomes, the United States does more harm than good to its own interests -- because, to put it mildly, the United States is not popular in Pakistan today. And if it keeps meddling, America will strengthen Islamist radicalism and could even help push Pakistan toward disintegration.

The United States urgently needs a new strategy. Washington must get over the idea that it can and should micromanage political outcomes in countries like Pakistan. Trying to produce governments that both uncritically accept all U.S. security requests and also pass our democracy litmus test is hopeless given the fact that the overwhelming majority of voters in Pakistan are hostile to U.S. strategy in the region.

Current U.S. policy is based on an incomplete understanding of the political and ethnic landscape in Pakistan. Just one example of how disastrous U.S. policy can be: the assassination of Benazir Bhutto by Islamist militants who saw her as a U.S. stooge. But this partly U.S.-induced tragedy -- with very dangerous implications for Pakistan's future stability and unity -- may at least help clear up some confusion.

U.S. interference is animated by the fear of state failure and an Islamist revolution in Pakistan leading to militants seizing control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. For a long time to come, however, this will be an extremely unlikely scenario, due to the limited nature of Islamist support and the strength of the Pakistani army and ruling class. The Islamist extremists can certainly cause serious violence and destabilization, but they cannot take over the country. In fact, it is only American military intervention in Pakistan that could make America's worst nightmares happen.

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The Pakistani ruling class is divided by its ambitions but united in its opposition to an Islamist revolution that would destroy its own hold on wealth, power and status. This is a ruling class that in some ways resembles those of late-medieval and early-modern Europe. Though different strands come together to make up Pakistani electoral politics, the most important one by far is the distribution of patronage: not just jobs and contracts, but legal, administrative and, when necessary, physical protection from enemies and rivals provided by the police or the bosses' own gunmen.

The most important political relationship in Pakistan is therefore between the patron and the client. It is patronage more than anything else that determines the political actions and allegiances of most local actors, especially in the countryside, and that holds together (and sometimes splits apart) the varied clans that are the building blocks of Pakistani politics. By contrast, mass parties in the Western sense play only a very limited role, and one that has been reduced still further by the death of Benazir Bhutto and the possible weakening of her dynastic Pakistan People's Party (PPP).

Of course, some of the Islamist political groups -- notably the Jamaat-e-Islami -- are trying to replace the patronage politics of the "feudal" landowners and urban bosses with their own version of modern mass politics, but so far with only limited success. One key reason for their failure to date is the archaic nature of much of Pakistani society; for -- quite contrary to most Western perceptions -- modern Islamist mobilization thrives not on backwardness, but on partially achieved modernity. Thus most Pakistani Muslims reject Islamist appeals not because they are "moderates" in the largely meaningless Western phrase, but because they are traditionalists, attached to local cults and practices, which the Islamists wish to abolish.

As every election has demonstrated, the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis do not support the political, social and ideological agenda of the Islamist parties, and even a majority of the Islamists themselves do not support terrorism and attacks on the army and police. Even in the circumstances of heightened emotion following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the Islamist coalition won less than 15 percent of the total vote, and that was heavily concentrated in the ethnic Pashtun areas of the country (the only area truly at risk of being overrun by extremists).

These numbers are expected to decline sharply come the next election. There is simply no resemblance between the situation in Pakistan today and that in Iran in the late 1970s or even Algeria in the early 1990s. There is no risk of an "Islamist revolution" in Pakistan as a whole for many years to come. Unless, that is, the United States attacks Pakistan, either in the form of a move to occupy the tribal areas or in an effort to seize Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

Absent a U.S. attack, the army will most probably continue to demonstrate the same features that have characterized its behavior since Pakistan was created. These include extreme ruthlessness in the face of serious threats of secession or revolution; considerable pragmatism, caution and flexibility in the face of lesser challenges; a deep conviction that the army is the essential factor in Pakistan's continued survival as a state, and that it deserves to be treated accordingly, both politically and financially; and extremely strong bonds of internal military discipline and solidarity.

If mass unrest in Pakistan continues and spreads, then sooner or later the senior generals will form a delegation and politely and respectfully ask Pervez Musharraf to step down as president, just as they did with General Ayub Khan forty years ago. The military will then conduct a "transition to democracy" and will almost certainly have already decided in private to whom the government should in fact be transferred. If Musharraf and the bitter mutual hostility between him and exiled opposition leader Nawaz Sharif (a Punjabi industrialist and head of one wing of the moderate-conservative Muslim League) are out of the way, that could well be Sharif, but it could equally be some PPP leader.

This move by the army to replace Musharraf will be hastened if really serious mass protests occur in northern Punjab. Any trouble in this region is especially worrying to the high command because a large majority of the ordinary soldiers are recruited from that area. The generals' nightmare is of soldiers refusing to fire on crowds made up of people like them. A severe warning of this possibility has been given by the refusal of a number of Pashtun-majority units to fight against fellow Pashtuns in the tribal areas. This doesn't apply to nearly the same extent when it is a case of soldiers suppressing violence perpetrated by people of ethnicities different from their own.

But whatever happens, the army will remain the most important force in the Pakistani state and a key factor in every future Pakistani administration. The army is Pakistan's only effective modern and meritocratic institution. It is in fact more modern and meritocratic than most of Pakistan's "democratic" civilian politicians, whose beliefs and loyalties are generally centered on traditional family and clan allegiances, and who in many parts of Pakistan have an extremely autocratic attitude toward their tenants, followers and women. And, as long as the army sticks together, it will fight successfully to prevent both Islamist revolution and ethnic secession.

Only if the army splits will Pakistan be in danger of disintegration, as opposed to violent unrest, something which is both containable and, alas, all too common in South Asia. The only really likely scenario for that is a U.S. attack. At that point, as Pakistani sources close to the military told me, there would be a strong risk that sections of the army would mutiny against their generals and march off to fight the United States.

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In the short term, Ms. Bhutto's assassination will probably produce a large sympathy vote for the PPP in the coming election. In the long run, however, it may perhaps further strengthen the military. If Ms. Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, and the bigwigs of the party cannot agree on how to share the party leadership among themselves, then bits of the party will split off.

The PPP is and will probably remain the largest party, but like all other would-be ruling parties, it will still have to cobble together a coalition from other parties, some of which loathe the PPP for historical and dynastic reasons. The deep divisions in Pakistan's political society simply do not allow any one party to gain an absolute majority of either votes or parliamentary seats. This will always give the army tremendous opportunities to shape politics and government by using its powers of patronage and pressure to encourage or block particular coalitions. These opportunities will be strengthened if the military has to deal not with one strong party, but several bits.

One reason why we haven't seen any attempt by PPP leaders to stir up violent mass unrest since Ms. Bhutto's murder is probably that none of the possible successors to Ms. Bhutto want to burn their bridges to the military. Though politicians have falsely accused the army of being responsible for the assassination, they still want the army to help them to power in the future at the expense of political rivals. Once again, this confirms the staying power of the military.

By the time the dust has settled somewhat in Pakistan, a new administration will have taken over in Washington. Ideally, this should provide the opportunity for a fresh U.S. strategy. For now, we should wait to see how things develop on the ground: how bad violence and unrest become, and whether any new leader can emerge in the PPP to credibly replace Ms. Bhutto. Nothing is to be gained by a policy of heavy pressure on Musharraf if the United States has no clear idea of whom it would like to see as Musharraf's civilian partner -- since Musharraf, though technically a civilian since he stepped down as chief of army staff last fall, is still very much a military figure.

The need for caution applies both to the waning Bush administration and to the politicians seeking to succeed it. There has been a tendency in both parties, but especially among the Democrats, for leading figures to emphasize their toughness vis-à-vis Pakistan. Genuine anger at Pakistan aside, this presumably seems a cost-free way of embarrassing the Bush administration and emphasizing Democratic toughness on security issues and a commitment to spreading "democracy." Threats by Barack Obama to raid Pakistan in pursuit of the Taliban, and by Hillary Clinton to take control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, produced a brief resurgence of mass support for Musharraf when in mid-January he warned the United States publicly, and very strongly, to attempt no such thing.

This game of the Democrats may seem harmless. It is, after all, a game that both parties have played with China when in opposition, only to adopt the pragmatic approaches of their predecessors when they actually come to power. U.S. presidential candidates would be well-advised to understand, however, that in Pakistan they are dealing with a vastly more volatile area than China, where unexpected events on the ground may require rapid and critical choices if they do in fact become president. They should take care lest their present rhetoric trap them in future decisions that they and America will later bitterly regret.

This doesn't mean a totally hands-off approach. Aid to Pakistan should continue and even increase, since nothing is to be gained by helping create an economic crisis that can only serve the Islamist militants. There is great merit to Senator Joseph Biden's (D-DE) suggestion that aid needs to be directed away from the military and toward economic and infrastructure goals. Socioeconomically, Pakistan remains in flux.

And the Pakistani military's contacts with the Taliban need to be seen by the West not simply as a problem, but also as a potential opportunity. It makes little sense to damn Pakistan for maintaining such links at the same time that Britain and the United States are seeking to create them in the hope of splitting the Taliban and drawing some of them into the Afghan administration. However, for a Pakistani government to play this role it would have to be assured that the United States was truly serious about the talks and would not subsequently use Pakistan as a scapegoat for failure.

As every opinion poll demonstrates, the great majority of Pakistanis may not want Islamist rule, but they are bitterly hostile to U.S. strategies in the "war on terror." The Pakistani people do support the government in efforts to curb extremism, since it threatens to destabilize Pakistan. But they also oppose their government acting as a U.S. proxy, which is seen as humiliating and destabilizing. When I talked to ordinary people in the Northwest Frontier Province capital, Peshawar, in May, every single one was opposed to large-scale military action against Taliban supporters in the tribal areas, though fewer than a quarter favored Islamist revolution in Pakistan itself.

No lasting improvement in the Afghan conflict can be achieved without a great deal of Pakistani help, since the Taliban draws so much of its support from the Pashtuns of Pakistan. The Pakistani military's contacts with the Taliban could one day make Pakistan a very important and useful player in bringing an end to the war on terror. But forcing Pakistan to do things to help the fight against the Taliban that would radically destabilize the country would be a fool's bargain.

And to imagine squaring this circle by bringing pro-Western democracy to Pakistan is to engage in an ideologically based fantasy. It is in fact desirable that elections be held and elected politicians be brought into the government, in alliance with the military. But this is because it may help restore some stability to Pakistan itself -- not necessarily because it will have any direct effect on the West's struggle against the Taliban.

Current Western analysis relies too heavily on clichés -- "dictatorship" versus "democracy," "fundamentalism" versus "moderation," "free and fair elections," "corruption" and so on. All too often, such words in a Pakistani context have quite different real meanings from those attached to them. The West should keep in mind that Pakistan will only be able to generate a real democracy if the country's society and economy are transformed and modernized over time.

A rational goal for U.S. strategy toward Pakistan therefore should not be democracy as such -- since Pakistani society at present is incapable of real democracy in our sense of the word -- but a stable working alliance between the military and an effective coalition of civilian forces, capable of acting firmly against the spread of Islamist violence within Pakistan and, ideally, helping to broker a future settlement in Afghanistan. On this basis, it may also be possible to safeguard and continue economic and social development, which alone can help that country make real progress toward prosperity, stability and ultimately democracy.