NYT Pakistan News
OVERVIEW | Updated: Nov. 30, 2009
Pakistan was born as an explicitly Muslim state, and the wrestling between its secular and Islamic natures has never been so pronounced as in recent years. The country's other troubling traditions are the military's role as the arbiter of power — there have been four coups in its 60 years of independence — and its rampant corruption and waves of economic and political unrest.
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the country entered into an alliance with the United States that it later claimed was the result of coercion. In 2002, Pakistan came to the brink of war with India after Islamic members of a Pakistani militant group attacked India's Parliament.
The following years were tumultuous even by Pakistan's standards, as its military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was forced from office and a combination of the Taliban and home-grown Islamic militants spread their control from country's mountainous western border ever further toward the capital.
By May 2009, the insurgency appeared to pose a threat to the very existence of the state, and the nation's military, which had stayed focused primarily on its tense border with India, decided to initiate a head-on fight to take back the regions seized by the militants. With strong public support — many Pakistanis who had previously seen the "war on terror" as an American import expressed revulsion against extremist acts by the Taliban — the army unleashed air and ground forces in tribal areas along the country's western border with Afghanistan and areas like the Swat Valley and South Waziristan from the militants.
The military campaign produced massive refugee flows out of contested areas. While President Asif Ali Zardari sought to preserve American support and funding, many of Pakistan's 173 million people remained furious over American drone airplane attacks, which were seen as breaches of national sovereignty. Anger at the Taliban, however, seemed to outweigh even their frustration with the military campaign that has crushed their houses and killed their relatives.
A new aid package for Pakistan passed by Congress in September 2009 unwittingly thrust the United States into the center of the uneasy relationship between Pakistan's powerful military and its weak civilian governments by insisting on greater civilian oversight of the military as a condition. The conditions were seen as an infringement on Pakistan's sovereignty, and rather than improving America's relations with Pakistan, the bill threatened to undermine Mr. Zardari and lay bare the troubles at the heart of the two countries' alliance.
During the same period, a wave of attacks against top security installations demonstrated anew that the Taliban, Al Qaeda and militant groups once nurtured by the government were tightening an alliance aimed at bringing down the Pakistani state.
At the end of November, Mr. Zadari abruptly ceded his position in his nation's nuclear command structure to his prime minister. The political maneuver is widely seen as a fresh sign of turmoil on the eve of Mr. Obama's strategy announcement for the region, which is expected in early December.
THE END OF THE MUSHARRAF ERA
In 2007, Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was forced from power. He was replaced by neither of his longtime rivals, Nawaz Sharif or Benazir Bhutto, who was killed by a bomb at a campaign rally. A tide of strong emotion swept Bhutto's party into power in parliamentary elections in 2008, and her widower, Mr. Zardari, became president.
General Musharraf's tenure was dominated by the aftermath of the Sept. 11th attacks, by political instability and the rise of Islamic extremist groups. Pakistan's intelligence services and portions of the military had been backers of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. After 9/11, the United States demanded that Pakistan turn against the Taliban and al Qaeda. Mr. Musharraf agreed, but then walked a tightrope between satisfying the Bush administration without inflaming Islamic groups that strongly support al Qaeda. The mountains of western Pakistan became haven for Al Qaeda and the Taliban and a launching pad for increasing numbers of extremist attacks in Afghanistan and within Pakistan.
Mr. Musharraf's downfall began with his attempt to force out the chief justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, in the spring of 2007, which was widely protested. Mr. Musharraf was forced to backtrack. Under pressure from the Bush administration, he began negotiations with Ms. Bhutto, a former prime minister then in exile, about a power sharing agreement.
No agreement was reached, and on Nov. 3, fearing that the reinstated court was about to rule against him, Mr. Musharraf declared a state of emergency. Hundreds of political opponents were arrested and a majority of the Supreme Court was forced to resign. On Nov. 28, 2007, Mr. Musharraf gave up his military rank, and two weeks later ended emergency rule. By that time, Ms. Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister Mr. Musharraf had deposed, were vigorously campaigning against Mr. Musharraf in the run up to parliamentary elections.
THE ZARDARI PRESIDENCY
On Dec. 27, 2007 Ms. Bhutto was killed by a bomb detonated as she left a large rally, throwing the country into deep mourning. A parliamentary election was postponed until February 2008, when Mr. Musharraf's party was routed. Mr. Zardari and Mr. Sharif formed a governing coalition, which in August declared that it would seek the impeachment of Mr. Musharraf, who soon after announced his resignation.
Before then, the coalition had dissolved over the unwillingness of Mr. Zardari to reinstate Mr. Chaudhry and the other Supreme Court members forced out by Mr. Musharraf. In September 2008 Mr. Zardari was elected president, completing a remarkable swing from prisoner to exile to marginal political player to the country's central figure.
In November 2008, tensions with India returned to the forefront after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which were quickly linked to a Pakistani militant group, Lakshar e-Taiba. The country soon faced a financial crisis as well, as the global financial crisis cut Pakistan off from credit it desperately needed. The government reached agreement with the International Monetary Fund for a $7 billion loan.
In February 2009, the rivalry between the president and Mr. Sharif boiled over when the Supreme Court barred Mr. Sharif and his brother, the governor of Punjab, from holding office. The move was widely seen in Pakistan as a raw political maneuver engineered by Mr. Zardari to diminish the power of the two popular opposition figures. Mr. Zardari followed up by appointing an ally as the new governor of Punjab, the country's most populous region and the heart of Mr. Sharif's support.
As protests increased, in March the government banned a national protest march and arrested hundreds of political workers. As Mr. Sharif led a huge convoy toward the capital for a mass protest, Mr. Zardari capitulated and reinstated Mr. Chaudhry, but the episode left him weakened.
After the Supreme Court reversed its ban on Mr. Sharif, he emerged as the most popular politician in the country. Mr. Zardari has seen his popularity ratings plummet, largely because of concerns about Pakistan's faltering economy and a general sense that the country is headed in the wrong direction.
THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE TALIBAN
Pakistanis long supported the Taliban and other militant groups as allies to exert influence in neighboring Afghanistan and as a hedge against India. Unlike Afghans, they never lived under Taliban rule, and were slow to absorb its dangers. But the experience of those Pakistanis who have now lived under the Taliban has left many disillusioned.
After Mr. Zaradari took office, he agreed to launch an aggressive campaign against the Taliban in the western provinces. But American officials soon began to doubt whether he had made a real commitment to the project. In many ways, Mr. Zardari appeared to be walking the same tightrope as had Mr. Musharraf, seeking to appease both the United States, a military with close ties to militants and a populace angry at what was widely seen as American interference in the country's government.
Through 2008 and early 2009 the influence of the Taliban spread from the remote mountains along the Afghanistan border. The region of Swat, formerly a lure for tourists not far from the capital, became the scene of infiltration, intimidation and constant fighting, and in early 2009 the government reached a truce agreement with militants there. Mr. Zardari signed a measure that would impose Islamic law in the valley. Taliban militants, most of them under the leadership of Mullah Fazlullah, continued usurping and attacking the government anyway. They used the let-up to press their hard line crackdown on morals even further, alienating many residents.
Soon afterward the Taliban took over Buner, an adjoining district only 60 miles from Islamabad. The conquest shook the central government, as well as the middle and upper classes across the country. It also caused American officials to apply enormous pressure on Pakistan to act.
The ensuing campaign, begun in May, seemed to be prosecuted with a new resolve, in what appeared to be a change of heart in the Pakistani Army, which had supported the militants for many years. Unaccustomed to urban guerrilla warfare, the military first concentrated on fighting in the rural and mountainous areas of Swat. The ensuing exodus of 1.3 million refugees was the largest mass migration of Pakistanis since the country was partitioned from India more than 60 years ago.
As the battle in Swat died down, the army's mission turned to the rugged Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan, home to Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistan's enemy No. 1. Mr. Mehsud was killed in August 2009 in a United States drone strike, but thousands of fighters remained entrenched in mountain terrain that is nearly impossible for conventional armies to navigate.
TERRORISM IN THE PAKISTANI HEARTLAND
One factor that turned public opinion in Pakistan against the Taliban was a string of deadly terrorist attacks in Pakistani cities.
Units of the Taliban have linked up with militants in the province of Punjab, home to half of the country's population. The deadly assault in March 2009 in Lahore, Punjab's capital, against the Sri Lankan cricket team, and the bombing in September 2008 of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the national capital, were only the most spectacular examples of the joint campaign. Intelligence officials said the Taliban's effort to move into the country's heartland was motivated partly by the need to find new safe havens, as bombing by American drone aircraft increased in the tribal areas. But it also represented a decision by Punjabi militants to make common cause with the Taliban after the government's siege of Islamic hard-liners at the Red Mosque in Islamabad, in mid-2007. The siege became a rallying cry.
Taliban leaders warned Pakistanis in May that they were preparing "major attacks" in large cities in retaliation for the military's ongoing campaign against the insurgents. A suicide bombing in broad daylight in one of the busiest districts of Lahore killed at least 23 people. In June, in Peshawar, militants rushed a small truck packed with explosives through the gates of a five-star hotel, detonating the payload in the parking lot and killing at least 16 people.
As the military prepared the assault on South Waziristan in October, a wave of attacks against top security installations underscored the closer ties between the Taliban and Al Qaeda and what are known as jihadi groups, which operate out of southern Punjab.
Tolerated by the government for years, the Punjabi groups have entrenched domestic and political constituencies, as well as shadowy ties to former military officials and their families. Many Pakistanis consider them allies in just causes, including fighting India, the United States and Shiite Muslims.
The attacks included the suicide bombing of the headquarters of the World Food Program in Islamabad, which killed five people and led the United Nations to shutter its offices in Pakistan, and a 20-hour siege at the army headquarters in Rawalpindi that showed the deepening reach of the militant network, as well as its rising sophistication and inside knowledge of the security forces.
A suicide car bombing against a military vehicle in a crowded market in the northwest, killed 41. More than 30 people were killed on Oct. 15 in Lahore when three teams of militants assaulted two police training centers and a federal investigations building. Nine others were killed in two attacks at a police station in the northwest and a residential complex in Peshawar.
Despite the shift in the public mood against the militants, and what seemed to be a growing confidence to confront them, cooperation between the militant groups had made the threat to Pakistan more potent and insidious than ever, analysts said.
Mr. Zardari's sudden move in November 2009 to cede Pakistan's nuclear command structure to his prime minister was an all-out attempt to head off domestic political pressure as Mr. Zardari's two-year presidency hit a new low. With the end of a political amnesty program on Nov. 28, the president and his allies face potential corruption and criminal charges, and the opposition is demanding that he relinquish many of his powers or resign.
Analysts did not expect the move to harm Pakistan's nuclear security, but political stability in the country is critical for the Obama administration, which is set to announce its new strategy for Afghanistan in early December. Until his latest move, Mr. Zardari held the top civilian position in the organization known as the National Command Authority, which controls every aspect of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal — decisions to move or launch any of its 60 to 100 nuclear weapons, to expand the country's nuclear stockpile and to oversee the security of the weapons and nuclear laboratories.