Musharraf and Bush—A Symbiotic Thing?

General Musharraf is on his annual safari to U.S. at a time when both he and his mentor, George W. Bush are up against a credibility battle.

General Musharraf’s credibility is on line in regard to the issue of his military uniform. He made a clear and categorical pledge to the nation of Pakistan, as well as to the right wing faction of the combined political opposition to him, that he will doff his general’s uniform at the end of 2004. In return for this commitment, the right-wing ‘maulvis’ on the opposition benches threw their weight behind his substantive amendments to the 1973 constitution. The general got all that he had set out to procure whilst his detractors and political opponents got only a verbal pledge from him. Now, in broad view of the whole world, he is dragging his feet on that undertaking of his.

That Musharraf is still hedging his bets on the issue of his uniform was loudly endorsed by him at the dinner hosted in his honour by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in New York on September 20. He made light of the issue by insisting that he hasn’t made up his mind yet whether he should keep his uniform on or discard it.

Bush’s credibility challenge is of a much larger order than Musharraf’s.

Deep in the throes of a presidential election campaign, an American electorate which seemed to be in deep slumber thus far is becoming suddenly awakened on a whole range of imponderables that impinge on both the personality and policies of President Bush. There are huge gaps getting into full public spectrum about Bush’s Vietnam record, or lack of it. This is becoming his Achilles’ heel especially in contrast to his rival John Kerry’s celebrated war record of a decorated war veteran and hero.

Bush has a lot of explaining to do on policy that includes the two ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The debacle in the latter, in particular, is making a lot of Americans queasy and angry about the yawning gap between what they were told before Iraq was invaded and what they are discovering now as the harsh truth. The mounting death toll of American servicemen and women on the battlefields of Iraq is only adding to popular angst and anger. Even a colourless John Kerry, who seemed to have no initiative of his own on an issue as explosive as a president-in-office literally lying through his teeth, is getting energised and rubbing it in with vengeance.

Compared to Musharraf’s challenge, Bush has a high mountain to cross in order to come clean before the American people, although he has, thus far, given no indication of coming clean. But unlike Musharraf, who has a pliant Assembly packed with ‘yes’men on the treasury benches, Bush can’t fall back upon such a facilitator in crisis. He will have to fight this thing out entirely on his own at the bar of public opinion. He has surged ahead of Kerry in opinion polls since the razzle-dazzle Republican Convention in New York last month, but there is still a long home stretch to traverse. There could be a number of trap doors in it ready to devour him and his campaign.

General Musharraf has easier pickings; much easier by any reckoning.

Unlike Bush, Musharraf doesn’t have a public wrath to contend with. There is no public wrath in evidence in Pakistan on the issue, to be fair to the general. And it is highly improbable that he would dare to organise another ‘referendum’ on it, despite his claim that 96 per cent of the Pakistanis are behind him and approve of whatever he might be doing, or contemplates doing.

At best, the general may throw this prickly matter into the lap of the parliament where even the most acrimonious of debates have hardly inconvenienced an autocratic ruler’s decisions, much less bring him down or even dent his authoritarian ways.

Come to think of it, the general’s uniform has never been an issue between him and the people of Pakistan. It has been a bone of contention, from the very outset, between him and the political opposition, which made it a bargaining counter, and its stalwarts and luminaries thought they had forced a concession out of him. But did they really?

The general, for all that we know on the outside, gave them precious little. Nothing more substantive than a verbal pledge, while they gave him a lot in return. They virtually gave him a blank cheque that he cashed immediately to his heart’s content. If the opposition lights are now smarting and fuming, it ought to be out of a sense of grating frustration bred from their monumental blunder.

In the strictly domestic domain, the general’s prevarication on the uniform is a reflection of his distrust in the political dispensation hand crafted by him alone. It is a symptom of great insecurity on the general’s part. He doesn’t feel safe despite having stacked the deck entirely in his favour.

More than anything else, the general’s queasiness over his uniform is a ringing vote of no-confidence in his own brain-child, the National Security Council, and his real constituency, the army.

Musharraf had proudly proclaimed to the whole world, when he wrought major changes in the political order he had inherited from the politicians, that his innovations were meant to rule out another martial law or military takeover in the country. But now he seems to distrust his own saying. He is reluctant to doff his uniform because he is not sure that the next chief of army staff wouldn’t take in his mind the thought of toppling him—a civilian president—and repeating the same old vicious cycle that has haunted Pakistan for so long.

In other words, what Musharraf is saying is that his uniform is the only insurance for him and all other instruments of power—the presidency, the NSC et al….are no more than of cosmetic or symbolic value. He seems hooked on the Maoist dictum of power flowing only from the barrel of a gun.

General Musharraf’s problem with the uniform is more acute in the outside world and could spawn much more embarrassment for him there than on the home front.

The Bush administration had whole-heartedly welcomed last year’s accord between Musharraf and the MMA as a step in the direction of full civilian control of democracy in Pakistan. Spokesmen for Bush have since pursued this line at regular intervals. The human rights watch-dogs have kept an even sharper focus on the issue. The New York-based Human Rights Watch hasn’t wasted the current opportunity of Musharraf’s presence in America to ask Bush to lean hard on him to live up to his pledge of last year.

It goes withou saying that General Musharraf didn’t exist on the world political map before September 11. He came to life only after Bush embraced him, on the morning-after 9/11 and a ‘pariah’ suddenly became a prince- charming. General Musharraf, no doubt, owes his mentor a lot. But does he owe Bush so much as to make the latter’s reaction to, and/or advice on, the issue of the general’s uniform decisive and seminal?

To be brutally frank, Bush couldn’t care less about the form of government, or the colour of democracy, in Pakistan as long as Musharraf remains firmly there: in America’s corner, on Bush’s war on terrorism. Bush’s own credentials on democracy are dubious and suspect, and U.S. hasn’t done itself any honours on the democracy front under him. Bush’s tall claim of making Iraq a haven and paragon of democracy lies in tatters in that strife-torn country.

The current American policy, vis-à-vis Pakistan, is not even a matter of state-to-state policy. Stripped of all its fancy dressing and packaging, it is a one-issue-oriented and one-person-specific policy. The issue is Bush’s ‘war on terrorism’; the person is General Musharraf, a front-line soldier of Bush.

It would, therefore, be naïve to imagine that Bush would choose to lean on the general to let go of his uniform, or if he did his inflluence could be the catalyst of change in the general’s heart.

Much as it may disappoint the pundits in whose prognoses Bush has a decisive leverage over Musharraf on all issues, domestic or external, this issue of uniform will only have a ‘made by Musharraf’ stamp on it, whether one likes it or not.

As for the theory of Bush and Musharraf being in a symbiotic relationship, it may be true but only in a limited sense. The two of them are, for sure, locked in a symbiotic equation over Afghanistan. Musharraf’s international legitimacy and credibility is anchored firmly in the manner, and alacrity, of his decision to jump the sinking Taliban ship and hitch his wagon to Bush’s. Bush, on his part, couldn’t have pulverised Afghanistan with such obvious ease and facility without Musharraf’s considerable help.

Musharraf could still do Bush the greatest favour possible if he could, somehow, become a factor in the capture, dead or alive, of Osama bin Laden—a trophy so desperately sought by Bush before his day with the American electors in November.

But the symbiotic track starts and ends in Afghanistan. It doesn’t even stretch far enough to reach Iraq, for instance, where the general has proved to be his own man, withstanding all pressures and blandishments from his so-called symbiotic ‘partner’ with great aplomb.