Notwithstanding the fact that President Pervez Musharraf's control over the Army – and indeed over the state’s counter-terrorism campaign – still continues, the new dispensation in Islamabad and in the militancy affected provinces may force him and the Army to dilute operations against the Islamist terrorists and others. Furthermore, Musharraf will find it increasingly difficult to hold on to power with a hostile Parliament and could be progressively marginalized, even if he is able to ward off the threat of impeachment from some political constituencies, particularly the Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N).

Crucially, irrespective of the regime that will be installed in Islamabad, it is the Army that will have to continue the fight against the extremists across Pakistan. The February 18 mandate has secured nothing dramatic in terms of the transformation of the structure of power in the country. The Army remains the dominant power in the state structure.

However, there is bound to be divergence in the overall strategies to be adopted against the militants since the Elections have led to a 'polarisation', with each of the four provinces 'going in different directions'. The North West Frontier Province (NWFP) has gone to the Awami National Party (ANP); Punjab will be controlled by the Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N), supported either by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) or the independents; the PPP will be in power in Sindh; and the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) is expected to be in the saddle in Balochistan.

With the defeat of the extremist Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) in the NWFP and Balochistan, the jihadis have lost significant over-ground space. Consequently, they could now be driven deeper into the underground. In fact, the rout of the MMA at the hustings is likely to have a far-reaching impact on the socio-political landscape of at least three regions – NWFP, North Balochistan and FATA, where the pro-Taliban/al Qaeda militancy has been entrenched over the last six years. The vote share of the MMA has decreased from approximately 11 percent in the rigged elections of 2002 to around three percent in 2008. The MMA, which had 59 seats in the outgoing National Assembly, and was the ruling party in the NWFP after the 2002 elections has been trounced, winning only three seats in Parliament and nine in the NWFP Provincial Assembly. However, the MMA were a divided lot in the NWFP during the current elections, with the Jamaat-e-Islami boycotting the polls and leaving the Maulana Fazlur Rehman faction of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JuI) stranded. While Fazlur Rehman, the former Leader of the Opposition and a leading backer of the Taliban, lost in his home town of Dera Ismail Khan to PPP candidate Faisal Karim Kundi, he did win a seat from another constituency in the Bannu District. Three of Rehman’s brothers, Maulana Ataur Rehman, Maulana Lutfur Rehman and Maulana Obaidur Rehman, who were contesting for National and Provincial Assembly seats, lost their elections.

Another reason for the loss of the ‘Mullah’s Party’ is that the Rehman faction of JuI could not overcome the impact of the Jamaat-e-Islami’s boycott. The MMA’s defeat is also being attributed to the alliance’s inability to stop military operations against the jihadis in NWFP and Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s vacillation against adopting a tough line vis-à-vis President Musharraf. At the same time, the ANP is reported to have "regained its lost territory in its former strongholds of Peshawar, Nowshera, Charsadda, Mardan and Swabi. It has surprisingly won all the seats in the troubled Swat region as well as the adjoining Buner District." The PPP won most of its seats from "Peshawar, Mardan, Nowshera, Upper Dir, Lower Dir and Malakand in the former strongholds of the Jamaat-e-Islami." The Jamaat boycott and a MMA ‘split’ meant that the ANP and PPP were direct rivals in most of the NWFP.

Formed in 2002, the MMA had won in the Frontier largely as a result of rigging in its favour, and on the basis of a furious anti-American sentiment after US-led troops overthrew the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in late 2001. And their electoral success had led to considerable international apprehension about a rising power of hard-line Islam in Pakistani politics. The Elections of 2008 have, however, exposed the fact that it was the Military-Mullah nexus that was principally responsible for the rise of radical forces like the MMA. Nevertheless, with their control over seminaries and mosques, the jihadi armies and their street power untouched, the Islamist parties, consequent to their electoral defeat, could seek refuge in aggressive mobilization, as well as political and extremist action, which could lead to widespread violence. In the proximate future, there could also be a consolidation of the over-ground Islamist formations and this would add to the complexities arising out of the ongoing mobilisation of extremist cadres across Pakistan.

It is important to note that no militant formation has been effectively demobilized since Musharraf’s seizure of power in 1999. While the Taliban have de facto control over most of Waziristan, they and a mélange of local jihadi groups also have full freedom of movement and activities across the FATA, NWFP, North Balochistan and certain other pockets. The current spate of subversion and violence can be expected to continue, indicating a deepening retreat of the state. More importantly, however, the strategy against the widening arc of extremism could run into critical difficulties. The ANP, which is expected to form the Government in the NWFP, has already voiced its disapproval of Islamabad’s strategy in the Province. ANP spokesman Zahid Khan, while indicating that his party was against military operations, stated, "We want to end the problem through dialogue, not by military action." In fact, both the PPP and PML-N have indicated that they would adopt a ‘new approach’ towards militancy by pursuing more of dialogue than force. PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari said that Musharraf had played a ‘double game’ leading to an increase in militancy. "We feel they in the Government are running with the hare and hunting with the hounds," he said. Indicating that his party would hold talks with the militants in the FATA and the insurgents in Balochistan, Zardari said, "We will have a dialogue with those who are up in the mountains and those who are not in Parliament."

Past experience has, however, shown that alternating military operations with peace accords with the militants is fraught with immense danger. In fact, the new regimes in Islamabad and in the provinces are confronted with crucial choices in prosecuting the campaign against Islamist extremism and the accompanying terrorist violence. Musharraf’s own counter-terrorism strategy and his over-hyped ‘enlightened moderation’ failed, on the one hand, to neutralize the militants and, on the other, were unsuccessful in securing support at the local level through a succession of peace accords. Simply put, both force and dialogue, or a combination of the two, have already failed to bring order to Pakistan. These options and their associated risks will play out in the proximate future along with added pressure from the election-bound US, which will increasingly press Islamabad to ‘do more’.

President Musharraf, who continues to battle survival issues, has, in addition to the new Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani, now to contend with a hostile Parliament as well. There is also a clear lack of national consensus on how to deal with Islamist militancy. Analyst Kamran Bokhari rightly notes that, "on a tactical level, while the Pakistani Army has a history of supporting insurgencies, it is ill-equipped to fight them." According to Bokhari, the prospects for an effective national policy on dealing with the Islamist militancy are slim and "circumstances will require that the new Government be a coalition — thus it will be inherently weak. This, along with the deteriorating ground reality, will leave the Army with no choice but to adopt a tough approach — one it has been avoiding for the most part."

The new regime in Islamabad will, moreover, have little impact on the situation in Indian Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), since the Kashmiri jihad still constitutes the principal raison d’etre for the Pakistan defence establishment. The declining trend of terrorist violence in J&K since the peak of 2001 is expected to continue in the foreseeable future. Viewed purely in terms of fatalities, the conflict in J&K has now crossed the threshold from a high-intensity to a low-intensity level. For the first time since 1990 (when they were 1,177), fatalities in this terrorism-wracked State – at 777 in 2007 – fell below the 'high intensity conflict' mark of a thousand deaths. This decrease in levels of violence is, however, not due to any change in Pakistani intent, but is largely the consequence of "changes in capacities and compulsions in Pakistan." On the peace process with India, the new Government, with its own priorities, may not be interested in proceeding with the Musharraf sketch and consequently, there could be a further slowing down of the India-Pakistan dialogue.

Almost all state institutions in Pakistan are now intimately and intricately linked to the trajectory of terrorist and political violence. Pakistan, which, as Salman Rushdie expressed it, was perhaps "insufficiently imagined", currently faces several daunting challenges with a direct bearing on its own survival as a nation-state. Amidst the euphoria of ‘democracy’ it is, nevertheless, impossible to overlook the fact that virtually the entire terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan, including the leadership of all the purportedly 'banned' terrorist groups, operates freely in the country. Given the tremendous and irrational hope generated by a new political order, the uncertainty accompanying the transition and the overall chaos in the country, the new Government would find it extremely difficult to find its feet or reverse the trends towards anarchy.

The author is Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management, New Delhi, India.

Courtesy : South Asia Terrorism Portal

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