News from the New Party

Pakistan: An uncertain future

The resignation of Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, comes at a difficult time for the war against Al-Qaeda in the region.  Pakistan was always problematic as an ally with many officials clearly unhappy with Musharraf’s alliance with the US and with elements of the intelligence service (the ISI) sympathising with Al-Qaeda and the Taleban.  But Musharraf at least seemed determined to support the war on terrorism and there is no doubt that the US considered him a vital ally.

Musharraf has not been a reliable ally of the Western democracies; he made a pragmatic calculation, and has gained far more from allying with the Western democracies than our side has got in return. He has received aid, debt relief and - most significant - a softening of the accurate perception of Pakistan as a state that supports terrorism. He has delivered little in the way of a security clampdown on Islamist terrorism. It's true that the British authorities investigating the 7/7 bombers have been assisted by police action in Pakistan. But Pakistan has not acted as it ought to have done against domestic Islamist cells, only against foreign terrorist suspects.

Musharraf has violated constitutional principles. His political legacy is a highly unstable state. He has pursued nuclear proliferation and thereby hastened the terrible prospect that there will one day be a nuclear-armed Islamist state. Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, is in effect a state within a state, and is widely suspected of links with Islamist terrorists. Ominously, it has repelled efforts to bring it under civilian control.