In his address to the nation in Urdu, which he extended with a flourish in English for the sake of the international audience, particularly his friends in the West, Musharraf identified two or three key factors that forced him to declare Emergency. There was this very understandable dig at the judiciary, which for the first time in Pakistan’s 60-year history had refused to bend before the president. He painted the politicians in the usual black colours as he ordered arrests of many leading opposition figures and also gagged the privately owned media.

The opposition and the media in Pakistan will not be able to criticise the president, the army and certain important government policies. That leaves scope for criticism in only one area: India. Since that is a role that the Pakistanis have traditionally relished a spurt in anti-India tones would not come as a surprise. Whether that will have a serious impact on the current state of bilateral relations, at least on people to people basis, cannot be said just now. But if allowed over a long run, the fallout is bound to be adverse.

But India will be more interested in watching how he is going to take on the growing Islamic militancy in the tribal regions of his country, ostensibly a key factor behind his decision to impose Emergency. If he fails in that attempt, and most Pakistan watchers seem to think he well may, India could well be facing a graver problem from its western borders than it has so far. The failure will arise because he has shown little faith in dialogue, preferring the gun to do the talking on his behalf.

Not only in much of the outside world but much of his own country sees Musharraf as the problem, not the solution, to the problem of the epidemic of Islamic militancy in Pakistan. There are very few Pakistanis today who do not hold him responsible for the ‘crisis’ he had referred to in his midnight address on November 3 in which he said he was saving Pakistan from committing ‘suicide’.

Not that the US really ever used its leverage over Pakistan to drastically alter the patently anti-Indian mindset of that country’s establishment, the imposition of emergency in Pakistan signals that the US may be less favourably placed to influence Pakistan’s India policy. Days ahead of the declaration of the Emergency the US had subjected Islamabad to some high pressure diplomacy with ‘warnings’ coming from the US secretary of state and a top US military commander as well through third parties such as the king of Jordan. Musharraf, sensing serious trouble from the Supreme Court, went ahead with the Emergency regardless of what he was told by each of them. Interestingly, he told his American interlocutors that he did not want their advice but wanted US dollars and more sophisticated weapons to fight the ‘war on terror’.

After his famous U-turn following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on US targets, Musharraf had never tired of declaring that he would rid Pakistan of its militant and intolerant traditions. He has also claimed that the overwhelming numbers of Pakistanis are ‘moderate’. But after eight years of his rule what is clear is that militancy and religious intolerance in Pakistan has grown, not reduced. The vast majority of ‘moderate’ people in Pakistan are actually pro-Al Qaeda and pro-Taliban with men like Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar counting among the most popular figures. The non-stop and ever increasing flow of money and armed equipment from the US to Pakistan will become a matter of more worry in India in the coming days if a desperate Musharraf ups the ante against India.

Under Musharraf’s rule, the bigoted forces have not only dug deep in the tribal societies of Pakistan but also started to fan out into the mainland. The now Taliban controlled picturesque Swat valley is only a two-hour drive from the Pakistani capital. Peshawar, one of the larger cities in the country, is well on way to becoming a Taliban-ruled city. The attack on Islamabad’s Lal Masjid showed that the Taliban supporters also lurk in the national capital.

Clearly, Musharraf only wanted to fool his Western benefactors to get money and guns from them when he told them he would fight militancy and religious fanatics at home. This fight of his has seen the western and northern parts of Pakistan become safe havens for Al Qaeda type forces. Most observers are sure that both Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar are hiding in Pakistan. Musharraf also makes a distinction between Islamic militants fighting the US and those who foray into Kashmir.

If for fear of losing a large hamper of gifts of cash and ammunition from the West he did take some half-hearted measures against the Kashmiri militants operating out of his country he would now be tempted to let them loose completely to show some ‘results’ to his restive people. The Pakistanis would not mind militant activities intensified in Kashmir as they think this is the only way for them to get that piece of Indian real estate.

Indian fears would arise from the apparent American resolve not to goad Musharraf too much, whatever be the political situation in Pakistan. Just as Pakistan is focused only on Kashmir when it deals with India, the US has only one objective in mind in its relations with Pakistan: the so-called war on terror which has made Musharraf the army strong man who rules Pakistan indispensable. What he does with militants trained to fight in India is only of marginal concern to the US. It is enough that he keeps reassuring the West that he is ‘determined’ to fight Islamic extremism. And, of course, there is no question of the US preaching democracy sermons to Musharraf in the style reserved for some other oppressive rulers of the world.

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