Sunday March 18, 2007
Guardian.Co.UK
Anyone who wants political power in Pakistan, so say the street pundits, must hold three aces - America, the army and Allah. As Pakistan plans its 60th birthday celebrations this year, it may hope for a future less in thrall to its military, to its mullahs and to Washington. President Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a bloody 1999 coup, is facing a crisis.
Far from being Nato's calm eastern ally, a new front in the fight against terrorism, Islamabad's streets feel shaky, divided and waiting for the worst.
Pakistan is neither dictatorship nor democracy.
Its newspapers are louder in criticism of their President than the anti-Blair or anti-Bush press in the West. Its intellectuals roam the world, trashing their country. Opposition politician, Cambridge-educated billionaire, Benazir Bhutto, is free to return home when she wants.
But General Musharraf and his army are in charge. The house arrest of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, after he refused Musharraf's demand to resign, has caused outrage. In a nation that reveres high office, the manhandling of the judge shocked even the most cynical of Pakistani politicians.
...The rise of religious intolerance is now a political danger from the Christian West to the Muslim East.
Yet it is all too easy to patronise Pakistan.
Britain is currently gushing over India with its clever graduates and Midas-touch businessmen.
But India's record on human rights and the illiteracy of half its population is little better than Pakistan's. India is rightly seen as a strategic partner for the West, especially the US, which is playing a balance-of-power game using India against China.
But Pakistan, not India, is key to stability in the new world order.
...Pakistan is endlessly reproached about not doing enough.
It is told to close its frontier, as if the US can close the Mexican border or 30,000 British soldiers could seal the border across which IRA killers roamed.
Pakistan is pressured to hunt bin Laden, but Nato can't find Radovan Karadzic or persuade the Serbian army to stop protecting Ratko Mladic.
The time is overdue to acknowledge the sacrifices Pakistan has made. It has 80,000 soldiers along the 2,300km frontier with Afghanistan; 500 have been killed, far in excess of Nato casualties in Afghanistan or Britain's in Iraq.
India could join the war against terror by removing its 700,000 soldiers from Kashmir and opening the border.
Musharraf has been braver than his predecessors in acknowledging that Indian-controlled Kashmir is not going to return to Pakistan.
If Pakistan felt its eastern flank was secure, it could transfer its military to the west - Afghanistan.
Britain in recent years has given £1bn in aid to India, while India spends £200m on aid to Afghanistan. UK aid is, in effect, subsidising India's efforts to pull Afghanistan into its orbit.
India is opening consulates in parts of Afghanistan where no Indian has been seen in years. From Pakistan's perspective, this looks like India seeking influence in order to keep up pressure on its old foe.
...Pakistan is the key to defeating the new threats to the world.
Time and again, the West has turned its back on Pakistan. That mistake should not be made again.
Britain, with its close links to Pakistan, its able, articulate Muslim MPs, and its duty to tell America to change tactics, should help before it is too late.
· Denis MacShane is Labour MP for Rotherham and was a minister at the Foreign Office until 2005.
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