PAKISTAN IN 2008

Moving beyond Musharraf

Matthew J. Nelson

Abstract
Following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007 and national
elections in February 2008, Pakistan struggled to distance itself from the dis-
credited military regime of President (General) Pervez Musharraf. Competition
between the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), once led by Benazir Bhutto and
subsequently by her widower Asif Ali Zardari, and the Pakistan Muslim League
(PML-N) led by Nawaz Sharif, however, threatened to thwart the cause of po-
litical stability in Pakistan.

Keywords: Pakistan, party politics, Musharraf, judiciary, FATA

Introduction
Following the assassination of former Prime Minister
Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007, national elections originally sched-
uled for January 8, 2008, were postponed until February 18. These elections
and their aftermath defined a year of extraordinary political hope, bitter dis-
appointment, and growing instability in Pakistan. The February 2008 elec-
tions dealt then-President Pervez Musharraf a crushing defeat and the party
of the late Benazir Bhutto—the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)—emerged
as the largest seat holder in the National Assembly, riding a wave of sym-
pathy and anti-incumbency tinged with strong hints of anti-Americanism
critical of the close relationship between Musharraf and U.S. President
George W. Bush. The mood in Pakistan after these elections was jubilant and
optimistic. Many felt that, after more than eight years under Musharraf,

Matthew J. Nelson is Lecturer in Politics at the School of Oriental

and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Email: <mn6@soas.ac.uk>.
Asian Survey, Vol. 49, Issue 1, pp. 16–27, ISSN 0004-4687, electronic ISSN 1533-838X. © 2009
by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permis-
sion to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and
Permissions website, at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: AS.2009.49.1.16.

16
 PAKISTAN IN 2008 17
the tide had finally turned away from “dictatorship” toward a fully elected
“democracy.”
Short of an outright majority in Islamabad, the PPP sought to con-
struct a coalition government with several of its chief rivals, including the
Nawaz Sharif faction of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), which
performed well in Punjab; the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM, United
National Movement), which continued to play an important role in the
urban areas of Sindh Province; the Awami National Party (ANP, People’s
National Party), which achieved a plurality in the Northwest Frontier
Province (NWFP); and the Fazlur Rahman faction of the religiously con-
servative but politically savvy Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F, Party of
the Ulema of Islam). Indeed, some in Pakistan even dared to imagine the
emergence of a grand coalition led by the PPP with a strong two-thirds
majority in both the National Assembly and the Senate that would give
the incoming government sufficient political strength to press for the out-
right impeachment of Musharraf, the passage of constitutional reforms
designed to strengthen the judiciary, and the possible abolishment of a no-
torious constitutional feature known as Clause 58–2(b), which empowered
the president to dissolve the legislature.
Yet, these hopes were quickly dashed when signs of discord emerged
within the incoming ruling coalition even before it could be formally sworn
in on March 17. Sharif and his party, the PML-N, tried to expand their in-
fluence within the incoming government by demanding a growing list of
concessions from the PPP, but the latter, under its new leader Asif Ali Zar-
dari (Bhutto’s widower), either refused or failed to accommodate these de-
mands. In many ways, the trajectory of Pakistani politics in 2008 can be read
in two parts beginning with the formation of a new ruling coalition led by
the PPP in February and then subsequent dissention within this ruling co-
alition after Sharif began expressing public opposition to Zardari’s con-
tinuation of many policies once embraced by Musharraf—including, most
importantly, his close relationship with the U.S. in the so-called “war on
terror” both within Pakistan and along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Sharif’s pattern of opposition resonated on two levels. The first focused
on efforts to restore Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry—the chief justice of
Pakistan’s Supreme Court—after he was suspended in March 2007, then
reinstated in July following nationwide protests, and finally dismissed
again along with more than 60 other Supreme Court and provincial high
court judges in November after Musharraf declared a nationwide “state
of emergency.” The second dealt with the rapidly escalating unrest along
the Pakistan-Afghanistan border particularly, but not exclusively, in an
area known as the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA), as well
as growing U.S. pressure on Pakistan to address this unrest through
 18 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLIX, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2009

aggressive military action targeting affiliates of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.1

Zardari progressively alienated the general Pakistani public through 2008
by resisting the restoration of Chief Justice Chaudhry and by permitting
greater U.S. involvement in FATA. Zardari, in effect, became closely associ-
ated with the positions once embraced by Musharraf. Sharif, on the other
hand, sought to capitalize on this growing sense of public frustration by
distancing himself from these positions. Sharif, in fact, openly supported
the restoration of Chaudhry and opposed U.S. military action in FATA,
including missile attacks launched from unmanned Predator drones.

Restoring Democracy? Party Politics,

Civil Society, and a Weak Judiciary
In 2007, lawyers throughout Pakistan rose up to resist the dismissal of
the Pakistan Supreme Court’s chief justice. Their movement was “anti-
Musharraf ” but otherwise non-partisan at first. In fact, the lawyers ini-
tially focused on defending Chaudhry’s efforts to prosecute senior members
of Musharraf’s regime for corruption and Chaudhry’s suspected inclina-
tion to hear a series of cases challenging the constitutionality of Mushar-
raf simultaneously holding the positions of president and chief of the army
staff.
This pattern of anti-Musharraf non-partisanship, however, slowly began
to change during the final months of 2007 when, under pressure from his pa-
trons in Washington, Musharraf appeared to reach a “return-to-democracy”
agreement with Bhutto. According to this agreement, known as the Na-
tional Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), Musharraf agreed to resign as
chief of the army staff but retain his position as a civilian president. For
her part, Bhutto agreed to return from exile in Dubai and London; partic-
ipate in the national elections originally scheduled for January 2008; and
work with Musharraf, the army, and the U.S. to support the global “war
on terror” in exchange for having the corruption cases pending against her
and her husband dropped. In the wake of this agreement, however, some of
the anti-Musharraf lawyers—particularly those who maintained some con-
nection with the PML-N)—felt that Bhutto had capitulated to the terms of
an enduring dictatorship in a short-sighted effort to advance her own polit-
ical ambitions. And, in their frustration, these lawyers began shifting their
support away from Bhutto to the party of her chief rival, Nawaz Sharif.

1. FATA comprises seven areas, or “agencies,” administered directly (albeit loosely) by the
central government in Islamabad. The structure of FATA’s administration is unlike other dis-
tricts and provinces in Pakistan. For details, see Naveed Ahmad Shinwari, Understanding
FATA (Peshawar: Community Appraisal and Motivation Program, 2008), pp. 12–21.
 PAKISTAN IN 2008 19
As the election approached, the political landscape became sharply di-
vided between those in Pakistan who wished to construct a “transitional”
government with enduring ties to Musharraf and those who sought to
“transform” the system by rejecting him altogether. The former included
the PPP, the pro-Musharraf PML-Q (Pakistan Muslim League, “Quaid-e-
Azam” faction), and the regional MQM. Those seeking “transformation”
included the PML-N and two major parties within a prominent multi-
party religious alliance known as the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA,
United Council of Action)—namely, the JUI-F and the Jama’at-e-Islami
(the Party of Islam). The Jama’at-e-Islami argued for a boycott of the elec-
tions, but, as the elections drew closer, the PML-N refused to stand idly by
and watch while the PPP seized power. In December 2007, the JUI-F fol-
lowed suit. In fact, when the elections finally took place in February 2008,
the “transformationist” lawyers and an assortment of smaller parties like
Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaaf (Pakistan Movement for Justice) found
themselves boycotting the elections without the support of any major party
except the Jama’at-e-Islami.
The election itself suffered from a rather low turnout, owing largely to
pre-poll violence in the NWFP and concerns about pre-poll rigging in favor
of the pro-Musharraf PML-Q. Nevertheless, the election results were widely
accepted by the Pakistani public; international election observers declared
that the voting was “reasonably competitive.” In fact, the results amounted
to a bitter referendum against Musharraf, not only owing to his dismissal
of Chief Justice Chaudhry but also because of the extensive damage done
to the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad when security forces stormed
it in July 2007 and because of his declaration of a state of emergency in
Pakistan in November of that year.
Before the elections, U.S. officials had hoped that the results would lead
to the formation of a “friendly” coalition government composed of the
PPP and the pro-Musharraf PML-Q, but the PPP rejected the PML-Q
shortly after the elections. Instead, it sought to construct an alternative
coalition consisting of itself (with 124 out of 340 National Assembly
seats), the PML-N (with 91 seats), and several smaller regional parties. In
fact, many believed that the PPP might actually succeed in constructing a
two-thirds majority across both the National Assembly and the Senate
with support from the MQM with 25 seats, the ANP with 13 seats, the
JUI-F with 7 seats, and an assorted array of independents and affiliates.
This would have allowed the government to formally impeach Musharraf,
but this two-thirds majority failed to materialize because of the enduring
dominance of the pro-Musharraf PML-Q in the Senate that had already
been elected—albeit indirectly—by existing members of the provincial as-
semblies earlier in March 2006.
 20 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLIX, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2009

Much to the dismay of the Pakistani electorate, the Bush administra-

tion continued to support a central role for Musharraf in the new govern-
ment even after the devastating defeat of the PML-Q. In a similar vein,
Zardari’s victorious PPP also did not appear especially keen to force Mu-
sharraf out of his role as president after the elections, nor did it seek to
distance itself from the policies of the U.S. On the contrary, Zardari, in
fact, consistently maintained after the election that he would continue to
work with Musharraf, the Pakistani army, and the U.S., thus leaving the
general public feeling somewhat drawn-and-quartered between their sup-
port for the party of the late Benazir Bhutto and their frustration with the
policies of the previous eight years.
The most important issue was the willingness of the PPP to join Mu-
sharraf in refusing to restore Chief Justice Chaudhary. This irked Sharif
who, before agreeing to join the PPP-led coalition, had compelled the PPP
to agree to a specific deadline for Chaudhary’s restoration. A deadline of
March 8, 2008, had been set, but the modalities for this “restoration” were
never clearly specified. In the wake of the elections, it became increasingly
clear that both Musharraf and Zardari shared an interest in keeping Chief
Justice Chaudhary off the bench. Musharraf feared that Chaudhary
would invalidate his re-election as president because this had occurred be-
fore Musharraf resigned as chief of the army staff in 2007, thus poten-
tially violating rules that prohibit the president from holding two positions
at the same time. For his part, Zardari feared that Chaudhary would re-
verse Musharraf’s earlier decision to set aside numerous corruption cases
pending against him and his slain wife as agreed to in the NRO, thus effec-
tively sending Zardari back to jail.
Chaudhry attempted to reassure Zardari shortly after the elections with
a personal visit to congratulate him on his political victory, but Zardari
did not embrace this overture. Instead, Zardari appeared to accept the
chief justice appointed by Musharraf to replace Chaudhry—a long-time
resident of Sindh, like Zardari, by the name of Abdul Hameed Dogar.
Needless to say, this willingness to accept Chief Justice Dogar frustrated
the “transformationist” lawyers—particularly those affiliated with the
PML-N—and Sharif kept this sense of frustration alive to great political
effect. In fact, the PML-N seized upon the PPP’s failure to restore the chief
justice to sustain its vigorous campaign of criticizing Musharraf’s legacy.
For several months after the February 2008 elections, the PML-N sought
to articulate its frustration from within the coalition Cabinet. But, the
PML-N withdrew its ministers in May while continuing to offer certain
types of “cooperation” to the PPP-led government in an attempt to bolster
its relative bargaining power. Yet, neither strategy had much effect and the
PML-N formally resigned from the government altogether in August. This
 PAKISTAN IN 2008 21
forced the PPP to scramble for the support of several smaller parties to re-
tain a majority in the National Assembly. In other words, the grand coali-
tion that had emerged in the wake of the February elections essentially
collapsed within just six months. What began as a movement led by “trans-
formationist” lawyers mildly supportive of the PPP in 2007 was, by the end
of 2008, a movement of “transformationist” lawyers largely supportive of
the PML-N. The same lawyers who had previously demanded Musharraf’s
replacement in 2007 were demanding the ouster of Zardari by late 2008,
largely owing to the lack of substantive political change after the election.

Defeating Terrorism? Party Politics, FATA,

and the “War on Terror”
As the grand coalition led by the PPP began to unravel, the fate and direc-
tion of the “transformationist” opposition led by Sharif was tied, not only
to the lawyers movement, but also increasingly to the provincial politics of
the NWFP and FATA, and to the prosecution of America’s global “war
on terror.” In the wake of the February elections, politics in the NWFP
and FATA shifted dramatically because the coalition of religious parties
known as the MMA—already under considerable stress after the JUI-F
split from the Jama’at-e-Islami over the election boycott—was defeated by
the regional, secular, Pashtun-nationalist ANP. Some argued that this elec-
toral outcome reflected a move away from the “religious” orientation of
the MMA and toward greater support for the U.S.-led “war on terror,” but
an alternative reading suggests that the MMA may have been rejected be-
cause, for many years, it had remained a willing participant in the U.S.-
supported Musharraf-led government. Indeed, for many of the voters who
cast their votes in February, a ballot cast against Musharraf was a vote
against the U.S. Yet, a ballot cast against Musharraf in the NWFP and
FATA was also a ballot cast against the flexibly pro-Musharraf MMA. In
fact, throughout its period in power, Musharraf’s government had main-
tained close ties to the U.S. even while it sustained a close relationship
with MMA-affiliated religious parties like the JUI-F, long associated with
the Taliban. For Musharraf, such complex loyalties were in keeping with a
clear distinction between measured support for the U.S.-sponsored fight
against “foreign” agents associated with al-Qaeda while, on the other
hand, being reluctant to fight against “local” tribesmen often affiliated
with the Taliban. Musharraf also wished to preserve a strategic foothold,
within Afghanistan, via the Taliban.
Both the PPP and the newly victorious NWFP-based ANP insisted that
since 9/11, Musharraf had erred in attempting to impose a purely military
solution on the growing Taliban insurgency in FATA. Seeking to devise an
alternative, they argued that a purely military option should be set aside in
 22 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLIX, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2009

favor of a political approach grounded in dialogue, diplomacy, and deal

making. This alternative was, somewhat ironically, attractive to the JUI-F
quick
as well. Under the nimble leadership of Fazlur Rahman, the JUI-F actually
abandoned Musharraf after the February elections in favor of the PPP and
its former provincial rival—the ANP—in Islamabad. In fact, with its close
ties to the Taliban, the JUI-F insisted that it was particularly eager to sup-
port the new ruling coalition in its efforts to temper the military presence
of the U.S. along the border with Afghanistan, especially in FATA.
Musharraf’s selective pursuit of al-Qaeda affiliates and his initial refusal
to aggressively crack down on the Taliban angered the U.S., which found
itself struggling to counter the Taliban on the Afghan side of the border
while Taliban fighters were provided with a safe haven on the Pakistani
side. Yet, as the Taliban began targeting Pakistan itself, Musharraf started
to yield to pressure from the U.S. by adjusting the terms of several strate-
gic relationships. First, he negotiated arrangements with a group of se-
verely weakened tribal elders in FATA (maliks), who agreed to monitor
the Afghan-Pakistani border and restrict cross-border movement in ex-
change for assurances that the Pakistani army would not attack their vil-
lages while searching for “foreign” al-Qaeda fighters. Second, he deployed
the Pakistani army to regain control of places where local maliks were un-
able or unwilling to maintain control, primarily owing to a campaign of
terror in which the Taliban captured and slaughtered hundreds of elders
accused of supporting Musharraf and the Americans.
The Americans, for their part, were eager to support any efforts to crack
down on the Taliban on either side of the border. Yet, even within this
new approach constructed by Musharraf, many observers perceived reluc-
tance on the part of the Pakistani leadership to completely abandon its es-
tablished military doctrine vis-à-vis the “local” Taliban. For this reason,
American commanders insisted with increasing frequency that U.S. troops
should be allowed to pursue their military goals within Pakistan itself
more directly. These American commanders initially relied on unmanned
Predator drones to attack suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban positions. But
as the bombs dropped by these drones hit more and more civilians while
missing al-Qaeda or Taliban targets, the Americans began suspecting that
their efforts were being thwarted by Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency,
the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), well known for its close ties to the
Taliban. Partially for this reason, the U.S. began in July to act more fre-
quently on its own. President Bush, in fact, approved a secret authoriza-
tion to allow clandestine U.S.-led ground incursions in Pakistan, including
a controversial ground operation during the first week of September.2 By

2. Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti, “Secret Order Lets U.S. Raid Al Qaeda,” New York
Times, November 10, 2008.
 PAKISTAN IN 2008 23
the end of 2008, however, reports of civilian deaths caused by U.S. military
operations within Pakistan began to fill newspaper headlines, and public
frustration throughout the country began to explode. Indeed, one of the
most important features of the political landscape in Pakistan, through-
out 2008, arose from the difficulty of building a strong national consensus
to address the problem of religious terrorism in Pakistan. In poll after poll,
the Taliban were described as being a “marginal” threat to Pakistan in com-
parison to the U.S.3
Throughout FATA, as well as certain non-FATA areas along the bor-
der, this sense of frustration with both local political elites and their Amer-
ican patrons provided ambitious warlords with ample public support. For
instance, a history of tribal competition in South Waziristan involving the
Wazir and Mehsud tribes saw the strength of the latter expand significantly
under the leadership of Baitullah Mehsud. Mehsud’s power grew rapidly
in the wake of his efforts to distance himself from local maliks, supported
by the government, in favor of a Taliban-affiliated group known as the
Tehreek-e-Taliban (Taliban Alliance), which itself was allied with the Af-
ghan Taliban commander Mullah Omar. Similar dynamics were also seen
in the Khyber Agency, the Bajaur Agency, and the Swat Valley, where local
leaders affiliated with the Taliban and their ideology gained power over
their local factional rivals.
Throughout this period, U.S. and Pakistani efforts to tackle the Taliban
militarily remained deeply unpopular within the general population in Paki-
stan. Poorly targeted air strikes causing extensive civilian casualties became
commonplace. For example, the U.N. and other agencies estimated that
the total number of people displaced by the fighting in Bajaur alone was
more than 300,000 by October. When President Zardari called a special
closed session of the National Assembly to provide the army with an op-
portunity to bring local politicians—and, in due course, the general public
—on board, few politicians bothered to attend. Instead, the PML-N, the
JUI-F, and the “transformationist” Jama’at-e-Islami argued, in a direct
challenge to Zardari and the army, that the Taliban should have received a
parallel opportunity to present its own side of the story.
For its part, the general public in Pakistan became increasingly con-
cerned by late 2008 that the U.S. military was prepared to cross over the
Afghan-Pakistani border to engage the Taliban within FATA and the other
border regions. This is a concern that U.S. President-elect Barack Obama
did little to discourage throughout his election campaign. In fact, Pakistani

3. For details, see the public opinion poll conducted by the New America Foundation and
Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public Opinion, May and June 2008, in Pakistan, avail-
able at <http://www.newamerica.net/files/PakistanPoll-summary.pdf>.
 24 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLIX, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2009

soldiers began firing on U.S. helicopters as early as September in their at-

tempt to push the Americans away from the Pakistan side of the Durand
Line separating Afghanistan and Pakistan. As the year drew to a close,
local vigilante patrols known as tribal lashkars, who were supported by
the ruling ANP provincial government in Peshawar to maintain its tradi-
tional political base among the Pashtun tribes of the NWFP, were increas-
ingly being armed with Chinese-made AK-47s to fight off the Taliban in
their own areas. The formation of these lashkars was regarded as an en-
tirely new phase in counterinsurgency efforts against the Taliban, but the ef-
ficacy of this new approach seemed highly questionable because the lashkar
targets also included the Americans as well as many local tribal rivals.

Economic Instability and the Onset of

Global Recession
During the latter half of 2008, the deteriorating economic situation through-
out the world only compounded Pakistan’s worsening security situation.
Indeed, many observers wondered how an imploding economy character-
ized by rapidly rising prices, accelerating unemployment, and a plummet-
ing Pakistani rupee would affect the stability of Zardari’s government.
Under Musharraf, economic growth had been unusually swift but also
quite uneven. After 9/11, for instance, Pakistan benefited from more than
$10 billion in U.S. assistance to support its global “war on terror” but less
than 10% of this was allocated for social and economic development. The
new middle classes in Pakistan encountered an expanding range of service-
based employment opportunities in urban areas, but little changed for the
rural majority. During the second half of 2008, economic expansion came
to a virtual standstill.
After the February elections, the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) expe-
rienced a noticeable bounce. This occurred even though stock prices in
other parts of the world saw sharp declines in January and February, caused
by the ripple effects of the emerging “credit crunch” in the U.S. There was
a brief surge on the KSE in April but, after this, stock prices fell sharply
and, by July, panicked investors were seen pelting the KSE building with
stones. By October, worried analysts noted that the KSE had lost almost
half of its value.
At the same time, the value of the rupee fell more than 25%, pushing
prices for essential imports such as oil to record levels through the sum-
mer. During the second half of 2008, Pakistan also saw its annual rate of
inflation rise to more than 25% before falling back again in November and
December. In Peshawar, for instance, emergency supplies of wheat flour
had to be brought in from Punjab after market prices rose from Rs 515
 PAKISTAN IN 2008 25
($6.75) per 20 kilograms of wheat in August to as much as Rs 710 ($9.50)
for consumers by the middle of October. The Islami Jamiat-e-Tulaba (Party
of Islamic Students)—the student wing of the Jama’at-e-Islami—blamed
the provincial ANP government and the PPP-led central government in
Islamabad for these rapidly rising prices, not the global credit crisis. The
students argued that the defeat of the MMA at the hands of the ANP and
the PPP had exacerbated the economic plight of ordinary Pashtuns through-
out the NWFP.
With a severe recession unfolding throughout the world, remittances sent
by migrant Pakistani laborers working abroad dropped precipitously. The
rate of unemployment both domestically and internationally also rose dra-
matically. The ongoing crisis of political instability in Pakistan raised the
cost of insuring Pakistani government bonds against the risk of default to
one of the world’s highest rates. Indeed, even as Pakistan appealed for in-
ternational assistance to help prevent an accelerating economic meltdown,
it found that it would have to pay an extremely high price for the privilege
of securing any further loans. By autumn, Pakistan’s foreign currency cof-
fers had been depleted to such an extent—from nearly $14 billion in No-
vember 2007 to just $5.5 billion in October 2008—that officials were forced
to request special assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Discussing an emergency loan of $5 billion to $7 billion to avoid an imme-
diate balance-of-payments crisis—including defaulting on its foreign debt
—the government said that ultimately it would likely need more than
$10 billion-$15 billion. Many analysts were concerned that the conditions
attached to an IMF loan would force the government to reduce its spend-
ing, thus exacerbating public discontent. Others feared that the public-at-
large in Pakistan would simply crack under the pressure of this rapidly
contracting fiscal environment. All wondered about the threshold beyond
which Zardari’s government would begin to possibly wobble, buckle, and
fold. In fact, the emergence of a last-minute rescue package from the IMF
did little to calm the nerves of economists and politicians alike.

Conclusion
Throughout 2008, the central front of the U.S.-led “war on terror” ap-
peared to shift away from the war in Iraq to the border between Afghani-
stan and Pakistan. Senior leaders of the Pakistani army struggled, with
varying degrees of success, to shift their attention away from the force’s tra-
ditional focus on preparing for a conventional war with India toward the
growing insurgency within Pakistan itself. Yet, this rather dramatic shift was
resistant
made even more difficult by a pattern of persistent recalcitrance among a
small portion of the army’s rank-and-file, which opted to surrender to the
 26 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLIX, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2009

Taliban (for example, in South Waziristan) in order to avoid engaging their

Pashtun “brothers” in battle. In addition, both the military leadership and
its rank-and-file were reluctant to give up the reins of economic and politi-
cal power in favor of an elected civilian government so clearly divided by
short-term partisan concerns.
Indeed, it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the whole of Paki-
stan was engaged in fighting two major battles throughout 2008. The first
positioned the Pakistani Taliban against the Pakistani army in FATA; the
second pitted the political “transitionists” against the political “transfor-
mationists” in Islamabad. After the defeat of the pro-Musharraf PML-Q
in February, many viewed the Zardari-led civilian government as being a
cathartic departure from more than eight years of some form of military
dictatorship. Yet, by the end of 2008, many of the most important features
of the Musharraf regime appeared to remain firmly in place. In fact, many
Pakistanis began to feel that the most important feature of the domestic
political landscape was no longer Musharraf but rather the enduring in-
fluence of the U.S.—a pattern that seemed to shift, almost seamlessly, from
Musharraf during the first part of the year to Zardari thereafter.

Postscript
On November 26 through 29, a group of 10 terrorists attacked several dif-
ferent locations in Mumbai, India, including a large railway station, two
five-star hotels, and a Jewish community center, killing more than 170 per-
sons. The affiliations of the terrorists were not immediately apparent, but
initial accusations focused on well-known terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-
Taiba (LT, Army of the Pure), based in Pakistan. In fact, the U.N. Security
Council unanimously condemned the parent organization of LT—namely,
Jama’at-ud-Dawa (JD, Party of Religious Invitation) on December 11.
This prompted Pakistani officials to raid JD offices throughout Pakistan.
Many observers surmised that the attack was orchestrated by militants
based in Pakistan in an effort to draw attention away from the ongoing
struggle in FATA—in effect, a calculated attempt to shift the firepower of
the Pakistani army away from a sustained assault on militants operating
along the border with Afghanistan toward Pakistan’s traditional enemy,
namely, India. This assessment appeared to have some merit as a small
number of Pakistani army troops were transferred away from the “west-
ern” to the “eastern” front in mid-December. Intensive diplomatic efforts
around the world, however, quickly reduced the threat of war, shifting the
focus of attention back to the need for a coordinated transnational police
investigation into the attacks in Mumbai and a multilateral response to
terrorism throughout South Asia.
 PAKISTAN IN 2008 27
This effort to stress the need for a coordinated multilateral response
was complicated, however, by a belligerent media response to the attack,
on both sides of the border. Indeed, the extreme fragility of ruling coali-
tions in both countries made it very difficult domestically for Prime Min-
ister Manmohan Singh of India and President Zardari of Pakistan to
promote politically unpopular forms of cooperation. As 2008 came to an
end, intensive international pressure appeared to ensure that expanding
cross-national cooperation would continue to have the upper hand in both
countries’ response to these terrorist attacks.