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U.S. meddling in the nation over the years has either strengthened military dictatorships or created a bad name for democracy by propping up leaders who have sponged from the treasury and forced the army to step in once again.
It is a vicious circle out there, as recent Scotland Yard findings reveal an al-Qaida hand in Benazir Bhutto's assassination.
The ghastly experience of 9/11 gave credence to a coup by President Pervez Musharraf against democratically elected leader Nawaz Sharif. By promising to fight al-Qaida in difficult terrain – known to the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan's military intelligence, which had traditional links with them -- Musharraf, a U.S. ally by default, managed to salvage the nation's sinking economy with pumped-in billions from the United States.
More U.S. aid flowed into Pakistan under military dictators than under democratically elected civilian leaders.
And with a traditional mullah-military nexus, Pakistani forces have done little to weed out terror. Swat valley in northern Pakistan, resembling the Swiss mountains and once a haven for international tourists, is a stronghold of Taliban sympathizers. Captured militants are traded for soldiers taken in military operations.
Nearly all terror attacks in the name of Islam in recent years had a Pakistani connection.
NATO commanders battling the Taliban in Afghanistan had earlier warned about fleeing militants taking shelter in neighboring Pakistan's Balochistan province. Allegations about terrorist infiltrations into Indian Kashmir with covert Pakistani military support are nothing new. And several terror attacks in Indian cities in the recent past had links with militant groups operating from Pakistan-held Kashmir.
With newly forged strategic links with the largest democracy, India, the United States may be in a bind. Major U.S. corporations have most of their critical processes outsourced in India and an unstable, nuclear Pakistan could be a major security problem in the region.
Bhutto's assassination in Rawalpindi, the city that houses the military's General Headquarters, highlighted the frailty of a U.S. alliance with a military dictatorship unable to provide adequate security to a hastily concocted democracy-military arrangement and see it to fruition.
Skepticism comes naturally in thinking that Musharraf, who usurped the judiciary in a last attempt to retain power, could have stomached the popularity of a resurgent Bhutto if she rode to power on the strength of elections. Seeing her as prime minister while he retained military power as president, as the United States wanted, would have been difficult for him -- reviled as he is by Pakistani civil society.
In reality, the state of emergency was clamped on the country to stifle dissenting voices rather than to straightjacket terrorists. Pakistani madrassas in villages and small towns, the only institutions for learning, keep their education limited to religion. Soldiers have been drawn from these institutions which proliferated from the time of General Zia ul-Haq. Recent terror attacks in the West have had Pakistani madrassa connections.
So what will the United States do now?
Bhutto's husband Asif Zardari, with the baggage of corruption charges, and his son Bilawal, a bookish Oxford undergraduate, cannot be counted upon. Critics within the family are questioning the co-option of the Bhutto dynasty by the appointment of these two to lead the Pakistan People's Party, founded by Benazir Bhutto's late father, when other direct descendants are still alive.
Nawaz Sharif -- the alternative and former prime minister who was removed in a coup by Musharraf and packed off to exile, until recently at odds with Bhutto's party -- would not cobble an alliance with the military. An alliance or compromise will be most likely with the PPP. This is a possibility, since Zardari declared after Bhutto's death that the fight was not against the military. Musharraf had earlier dismissed corruption charges against him.
The United States' plan for Pakistan ended with Bhutto's death. Going softly on the moderate Musharraf was a deal to avoid a fanatic general usurping him and gaining control of the country's nuclear bombs.
With civil society, ordinary Pakistanis, shards of the PPP and Nawaz Sharif's political party all seething against Musharraf, the United States, with forces in Afghanistan and the enemy in northwest Pakistan, has run out of solutions.
Musharraf has not been able to stop terror or hunt the head terrorists since gaining legitimacy for his dictatorial rule after 9/11.
Can a Pakistani dictator, or a possible civilian government remote-controlled by the army, with traditional Taliban and al-Qaida links, deliver? Can the United States expect to tamp down terrorism in the region where anti-Americanism has turned terror into an industry?
Even if elections are held in February, transparency and a civil-military arrangement may not be easy in such a volatile situation.
Sending U.S. troops to Pakistan or fixing a civilian government without Musharraf are both fraught with danger. In light of this situation, the U.S. presidential hopefuls may have to consider carefully their views about the "most dangerous place in the world."
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(Susenjit Guha is a freelance writer living in Kolkata, India. ©Copyright Susenjit Guha. )
