[Mb-civic] An article for you from Michael Butler.

Sun Mar 12 14:15:10 PST 2006

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JILTED
Mar 9th 2006  

George Bush comes and goes. And a nation goes into a sulk

AFTER George Bush's "historic" visit to India, his brief stop in
Pakistan on March 3rd-4th was bound to be an anticlimax. But it turned
out worse than that. It left Pakistan's large anti-American lobby with
plenty of grist to mill into accusations of hypocrisy, fickleness and
untrustworthiness. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, champion of
the alliance with the United States, and a man Mr Bush calls "my
buddy", found himself looking more beleaguered than ever. 

Mr Bush made history in India by rewriting the global rules governing
nuclear power and weapons to make an exception for his hosts. Pakistan,
which, like India, exploded nuclear bombs in 1998 and has never joined
the global non-proliferation regime, is receiving no such favour. Of
course, its record on proliferation is so nefarious that this was never
on the cards. But there could be no starker example of the higher
priority America now attaches to its relations with India. 

Pakistani officials argue that, in substance, Mr Bush's visit brought
them almost all that had been planned for it. The only failure was in
not signing an intended "Bilateral Investment Treaty", because of some
outstanding differences. (So, wags said, India got a great nuclear
deal; Pakistan not even a little BIT.) 

However, even Tasnim Aslam, who speaks for Pakistan's foreign ministry,
concedes that public perception of the visit was "extremely negative".
There was already a long list of popular grievances with America: the
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and an American air-strike in January
inside Pakistan's territory, aimed at alleged terrorists, but also
killing civilians. Against this background, big popular demonstrations
last month over the publication in Europe of cartoons of the prophet
Muhammad, whipped up by Pakistan's Islamist parties, were transformed
into alarming protests against General Musharraf and America. 

In Islamabad, Mr Bush said he had come to see if General Musharraf was
as committed as before to bringing "terrorists to justice". "And he
is," he concluded. Pakistan says it has 80,000 soldiers deployed across
the remote, rugged and lawless Afghan border region, where many believe
Osama bin Laden to be hiding. But this week has seen a bitter row with
the Afghan government. It complained that Pakistan was not doing enough
to stop militants from mounting cross-border attacks. General Musharraf
furiously made exactly the same accusation in reverse. 

So Mr Bush's visit, instead of celebrating Pakistan's staunch
friendship and military help, highlighted its ambiguous role in the
"war against terrorism". Just before Mr Bush arrived, a bomb attack on
the American consulate in Karachi killed four people. During the
president's stay, Pakistan's army was fighting one of its biggest
battles yet, in which more than 140 people were killed, against
pro-Taliban fighters in the tribal area of North Waziristan, next to
Afghanistan. 

For America, which says it wants to spread democracy, it is an
embarrassment that General Musharraf remains army chief, and has only
ever won rigged elections and referendums. So this week the Americans
talked about the importance of free and fair elections being held when
they are due, in 2007. But the leaders of the two main secular
opposition parties remain in exile. The opposition, including even the
Islamist parties, say they have had enough of General Musharraf, and
are campaigning for a caretaker government to oversee proper elections. 

The general himself is also facing a dangerous insurgency in
Baluchistan, one of Pakistan's four provinces, and looks rather
isolated. Mr Bush, however, offered little help. He made it clear that
he would not do much to push India to make concessions on the general's
great foreign-policy endeavour: the search for a just settlement of the
dispute over Kashmir. From Pakistan's perspective, the peace process
with India already looks as though it has stalled. If, as seems
increasingly likely, a Pakistan-based group is blamed for the bombings
in Varanasi this week (see article[1]), it may now go into reverse. 

-----
[1] http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_ID=5609075

See this article with graphics and related items at http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_VGDJDGG

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