To paraphrase Mark Twain's remark about the best month for investing in the stock market: November has been a bad month for Pakistani politics. The others were January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, and October this year. After a turbulent year of civil unrest and terrorist activity, General Pervez Musharraf reluctantly made good on his promise and shed his uniform, handing over his post of army chief to General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. If he had trusted his own army and done just this in the spring, 2007 may have been a different year.
Now, as political insiders indicate, he is getting ready also to remove the state of emergency that he imposed on 3 November 2007, when he upended the constitution, and the Supreme Court, and muzzled the broadcast media. Since then he has been backpedaling, ostensibly to meet the demands of the United States and other interested parties. He hopes thus to remove many of the obstacles that stood in the way of his elevation to the presidency as a civilian and a return to "normal" politics in Pakistan, howsoever defined. The United States, which noticeably has not called for a restoration of the judiciary, a demand of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and most of civil society in Pakistan, appears to want the status quo to remain and not to go to the status quo ante circa 2 November 2007. (And then it wonders why Pakistanis do not have a soft spot for the U.S. administration!)
Musharraf may have reason to be pleased with his current situation. He managed to remove the legal hurdles to his elevation to the civilian presidency by discarding the meddlesome judges of the Supreme Court that stood in his way and replacing them with his own men. The more vocal media critics have been silenced at home. His overseas allies have been little left to criticize him for, except the prosecution of the "war on terror." In his view, there's nothing new about that. So, for now he seems to be winning. But will it be a tactical or strategic victory?
In the meantime, Pakistani politics continues to simmer with discontent. Newly returned Prime Ministers Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, both popular among the masses of Pakistan, face a quandary: Contest the elections slated for 8 January 2008 and risk a hung parliament that Musharraf can manipulate, or boycott them, depriving Musharraf of the legitimacy that he seeks for his own election, over which too hangs a shadow of illegality. He needs a friendly new assembly to ratify the raft of ordinances under which he has ruled since imposing the state of emergency. Otherwise all his fiats lapse and may be subject to judicial challenge.
But, both former prime ministers and the other opposition parties, including the Islamic conglomeration, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) that has been cleverly sitting on the sidelines for most of the past month, have much to risk by not contesting the elections. If they decide to sit them out, they risk being marginalized for now. Unless they have the numbers to take to the street and the stamina to mount a sustained protest in the streets of the hinterland. If that occurs, the army may yet be called out again and may well balk at fighting their own people, as it once did in 1977 prompting a coup against the government of then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Sharif and Bhutto have been in exile for many years and have yet to re-connect with their vote banks in major way. The actual election campaign will only be 21 days after candidates have been approved and their lists posted by the Election Commission. So, an unhappy and divided opposition faces an uphill task. And it is crying out for leadership.
A key player in this unfolding drama, the Pakistan army, will be glad to be headed by a full-time professional army man again. It can go back to being the army again and not the coercive power and political think tank behind a president who also was the army's part-time but heavy-handed chief. In its new role, it could pressure the caretaker administration to begin economic and social development efforts in the troubled regions of Swat and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) bordering Afghanistan, so that military action would not be the only way to fight militancy there. And it can now go back to re-examining its own operational readiness and training for counter insurgency warfare, an area in which it is woefully inadequate.
If the opposition fails to mount a credible and prolonged challenge to Musharraf through the elections or on the streets of Pakistan and the army remains loyal to its former chief, then Musharraf will have won. However, if Musharraf continues to be the lightning rod that attracts public unrest and terrorist actions and Islamist militancy continues inside Pakistan's borders, the situation is fraught with danger. For now the army, a disciplined institution under an even-tempered and thoughtful new chief, is expected to remain loyal to him. But if 2008 starts resembling 2007 in Pakistan and things get out of hand on the streets of the hinterland, it may yet change its mind about propping him up. In that case his victories of November 2007 may turn out to be Pyrrhic, after all.