Saving South Asia From War and Terrorism
Address of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto
at the first meeting of the Advisory Group of the Eminent Persons Group
London – 16 August 2002
Ladies and Gentleman,
I am grateful to Count Albi for inviting me to speak before this distinguished audience of the Eminent Persons Advisory Group.
I come to speak here at an extraordinary and dangerous time for South Asia and the larger world community.
My country Pakistan is critical to the direction that South Asia takes in the twenty first century. It is an ally of international forces in the war against terror. It is also a country that has dangerous tensions with its nuclear neighbour and rival India. It’s a country where a military dictator threatens to rig elections and create greater internal instability.
A series of suicide bomber attacks since this year began indicate the fragility of Pakistan’s internal situation. The brutal kidnapping and execution of Danny Pearl the Wall Street Journalist, underscores the treacherous lack of ground rules in the war against terror.
Danny Pearl’s murder was followed with a series of devastating attacks on hospitals, churches and diplomatic missions. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the remnants of Al Qaeda managed attacks on international forces as well as pro Karzai supporters.
It’s difficult for terrorists to operate without a base, without logistics and without re-supply.
Clearly, someone somewhere is supporting them. According to the bazaar talk in Pakistan, the aim of the terrorists is to kill one hundred members of the international forces to drive them out of Afghanistan. Then, they claim, they will deal with those who supported the war against terror.
International forces do come in and are needed for short term support in areas where security is threatened. In the long run, the war against terror needs sustained commitment. It needs allies that can meet the terrorist threat locally. Long term stability depends on a world community sustained by countries and systems with the strengths to police their own countries and to work together to police their regions.
Clearly Pakistan’s military regime, while claiming to be a strong man regime, failed to deliver a single prize during the war against terror.
The fall of Kabul came because of the Northern Alliance even as Pakistan’s military dictator pleaded with President Bush to stop their advance. Islamabad continued to recognise the Taliban despite the fall of Taliban for some time.
The much talked about security cordon established to stop fleeing Al Qaeda after the bombing of Tora Bora failed to capture Bin Laden, Mullah Omar or any of the key leadership which waged war against the international community.
A key Al Qaeda leader, Abu Zubaydah, found himself a home in the Pakistani heartland of Punjab. His arrest came because the FBI intercepted telephonic communications from the remote areas of Afghanistan to that particular house.
The investigation of the Danny Pearl case succeeded because the FBI found the internet café from where the video of the Danny Pearl capture was sent.
Islamabad has done little to contribute to ground realities except for two exceptions. Firstly, joining the war against terror and second allowing military bases. It could be argued that Islamabad joined the war because it had little choice after President Bush asked Nations to be counted as friend or foe.
As for the military bases, they serve a dual purpose. While mollifying the world community, they act as a warning to neighbour India that taking on Islamabad means taking on the world community.
The country’s military leader makes comments that border on the bizarre. For example, he claimed that Danny Pearl was kidnapped because he got involved in intelligence games. This almost amounted to blaming Danny for his own kidnapping.
This month in the New Yorker, General Musharaf almost exonerated Bin Laden from the attack on the World Trade Center. He said he found it hard to believe that a man in the mountain could have planned such a sophisticated attack.
Clearly the man in the mountain had the support of powerful elements to plan that attack. Clearly the escape of the top leadership needed support.
Al Qaeda and other militant groups were formed during the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The West gave the money and the Pakistan military did the recruiting and the training.
There are many linkages between individual officers and the men they trained. It was thus less than surprising to find that Islamabad’s strong man and the terrorists have common friends. One such friend is the home secretary of Pakistan’s largest province of Punjab.
Omar Shaikh, the self confessed conspirator in the Pearl kidnapping, turned himself over to his friend the home secretary who also happens to be a friend and appointee of Musharaf.
And while Omar Shaikh was in the custody of Musharaf’s friend, the General was claiming that India did the Pearl kidnapping.
Many of General Musharaf’s friends have close intelligence ties. Musharaf himself was chosen by pro Mujahideen leader General Zia as his military secretary. Last October, as the war against terror unfolded, Musharaf sacked two hard-line Generals that brought him to power. However, the entire apparatus they put into place continued.
For example, two Governors worked for the powerful ISI which oversaw the Afghan Jihad. Two diplomats worked for the same organisation. They are presently posted to the critical countries of Saudi Arabia and Morrocco. Other officials from the organisation that recruited and trained the pro Mujahideen forces today are members of the Federal and provincial cabinets and administrations.
And so I would like to ask: will the real Musharaf stand up? For years the Musharaf regime coddled the Taliban. When the war against terror started, the Musharaf regime claimed it was born again. Yet it has done everything in its power to block and marginalise the moderate forces. That it failed has more to do with the wisdom of the Pakistani people and their political awareness.
There are only two powers: the power of the ballot and the power of the bullet. When the power of the ballot is marginalised, the power of the bullet gains in strength. This is why I believe that dictatorship fuels militancy. When political parties are prevented from participating in politics, the Mosque becomes the only safe meeting place.
Yesterday General Musharaf personally met with the head of the religious party Jamaat e Islami. He sought their support to stop the Pakistan Peoples Party from winning the forthcoming General Elections.
The Pakistan Peoples Party is the only civilian and political structure in Pakistan with the popular support and the organisation to form a government outside the influence of the intelligence agencies and the military. The attempts to stop it and crush it are dangerous for the people of Pakistan as well as for the region and the wide world community in which we live.
There always ought to be alternatives that are peaceful available to the people of a country as well as to the larger world we live in. When the alternatives wither away and power is concentrated in a clique, the balance that makes for civilised society and peaceful change is lost.
I caution the world community from putting all its eggs in one basket and that too the basket of a military dictator.
The Pakistan Peoples Party is opposed by military hardliners. Its two elected and democratic governments were destabilised in the past because the military hard liners found that their hawkish policies were undermined by the presence of a political force with an independent base.
The military hardliners are today looking for a dummy parliament and a dummy prime minister so that their policies can continue unabated.
I may add that I am proud of the Pakistan Peoples Party record in office in combating terrorism and in building peace in the region including with India.
Each major act of international terror was organised when my Party and I were in Opposition. During my first stint in Opposition, Islamabad was on the threat of being declared a terrorist state. When I took over, it became one of the ten emerging capital markets of the world. When the PPP was decreed out of office, the economy collapsed and militancy forced President Clinton to curtail his time in Islamabad to a few hours in contrast to India which he visited for five days.
During my second stint in Opposition, the forces of terror launched their attack on America on September 11nth.
The two attacks on the World Trade Center, the attacks on the two U S embassies in Africa, the attack on the Cole ship in Yemen, the Bombay blasts of the nineties; the Indian Parliament attack all took place when the Pakistan Peoples Party was in Opposition.
The Taliban did not take control of all Afghanistan until my government was eclipsed. Bin Laden’s failed to show up in Afghanistan when I was Prime Minister of Pakistan. His finances were exhausted in 1996. It was only after the overthrow of the government I led that Al Qaeda were invited into Afghanistan by the Taliban and allowed to train militants for terror attacks across the world.
The military hardliners oppose the PPP under my leadership. They oppose my policies of building peace within and building peace without. They did everything to destroy my reputation and standing amongst the people of Pakistan and the larger world community. Once they recruited a twice convicted British slum lord to claim that my husband tied a bomb on his leg and held him for ransom. The outrageous stories were made to destroy my leadership and my Party. More dangerously they were made to destroy democracy in Pakistan and the empowerment of its people.
Mullah Omar could seize Afghanistan only after the people lost there were denied all chance of self expression. It’s when people are denied the right to representation and to determine their own future that their destiny can be controlled through fanatics and bigots.
The military hardliners believe they beat the Soviet Union and they can beat the West. They are determined to stop democracy in Pakistan seeing in it a danger to their world view to export revolution through the central Asian republics. Their politics threaten to destabilise South Asia as well as create greater misunderstanding between the great religions of the world.
Since the tragedies of September 11th, the international community rightly focused on eradicating the Taliban regime, destroying Al Qaeda, building a stable government in Afghanistan and reducing tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.
But nuclear tensions still remain between India and Pakistan. Pakistan’s military dictator chose Independence Day on August 14 to make an important declaration. He stated that Islamabad could defend each inch of its territory as well as “take the war across the border”.
It is this belief that Pakistan can win a war with India and militarily dictate its terms that worries me. Perhaps military men are trained to think of wars. Perhaps that’s why it’s said that war is too serious a business to be left to Generals. Its politicians that calculate the different political, diplomatic, financial, legal and other aspects of a situation. Military men look at it through one dimension.
Since my government was overthrown in 1996, India and Pakistan nearly went to war three times. My concern is that unless my Party returns to power, the pattern could be repeated again.
For 15 years, the unanimous consensus amongst the leading security experts of the world community has been that the place most likely to trigger a nuclear confrontation is South Asia. The issue is Kashmir.
Nuclear deterrence – the centrepiece of military strategy for both of south Asia’s nuclear powers – was designed to prevent conflict. Yet since India detonated nuclear devices in 1998, and Pakistan responded in kind, south Asia has thrice come to the brink of war. Intelligence estimates, backed by published reports, suggest that a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India over Kashmir, even if limited to five or six primary targets on each side, would cause millions of immediate deaths, and millions more after long and dreadful suffering from ensuing cancer on both sides of the border for decades to come.
With the military in Pakistan and Hindu nationalist hardliners in Delhi firmly in control, the options for dialogue and confidence-building appear remote.
When two sides believe they can both gain from a military conflict, it makes the world a much more dangerous place. The danger to the region increases with a military dictatorship in Pakistan unaccountable to the people. History teaches us that democracies don’t start wars.
Each war that took place between India and Pakistan took place when Islamabad was under a military dictatorship.
The concern is that with a military junta in Islamabad, and the world distracted by the US-led war against terrorism, the “public check” on political decision-making in the country has ceased to exist.
The Pakistan Peoples Party believes the people of south Asia deserve a future that is better than the recent past. If India and Pakistan disagree on the territorial nature of Kashmir, we can still move ahead without prejudice to our long-held beliefs. The nuclear war threat can recede if the leadership on both sides of the divide has the courage to promote safe and open borders to socially unite the Kashmiri people.
The Kashmiri people are central to the dispute and it is the responsibility of the leadership on both sides of the divide to put these people first. If China and India can have a border dispute and still trade, India and Pakistan can do the same. In the absence of an elected civilian leadership in Pakistan that is accountable to the people, however, the possibility of such a dialogue is remote.
The worry is that the pattern of militant acts provoking a near-nuclear confrontation will continue at regular intervals until it erupts into a full-fledged nuclear war. In the post-nuclear-detonation region that south Asia has been since 1998, those who live there can ill afford a military conflict. In the post-September 11 world, the Kashmiri people can ill afford a world community where terrorism and armed conflict by an occupied people is still to be distinguished.
Catastrophe could also be triggered by accident: with artillery shells whizzing over the line of control when tension rises, hundreds of thousands of troops poised to strike, and elements on both sides willing to throw a match on to the fire, the situation is precarious.
Press reports indicate that nuclear weapons could be given to individual commanders with independent launch control. It is not clear whether these reports are accurate, but if so, the probability of an accidental launch jumps sharply. And with tension so high, an accident could never possibly be explained away and controlled. The genie would be out of the jar for the first time in 57 years.
With the doomsday scenarios in front of us, what can be done to prevent the insanity?
I believe democracies don’t start wars; democracies don’t provoke wars and democracies don’t promote terrorism. Each of the three wars between India and Pakistan was fought under military dictators in Pakistan. The last three major incidents that brought the world to the precipice of nuclear war surfaced after my democratic government was overthrown and the military established ascendancy in the political arena. The best prospect for peace in south Asia is to support the democratisation process in Pakistan.
Political power must be transferred legally, peacefully and subject to the will of the people. Commentators believe that my party and I would be re-elected if transparent elections were held in Pakistan in October. The military regime has decreed several new laws in an attempt to prevent that from happening. Those matters are now before Pakistan’s judiciary.
The people of Pakistan and my Party want me to lead them again. They want me to contest the coming October elections. I want to contest those elections. I am trying to cross each hurdle that is put in my path. General Musharaf has vowed to stop my return through edicts. His attempts to do so are making a mockery of the electoral process and threatening the legitimacy of the new Parliament.
In the higher national interest, my Party kept the doors of dialogue open with the military regime to facilitate the process of democratisation in Pakistan. That dialogue remains inconclusive due to the inability of the regime to address our core issues. These concern the respect for fundamental human rights and the restoration of the democratic process guaranteed by a mutually agreed third party.
Security in South Asia — and as September 11th showed, security for the world — is in grave jeopardy. Only a democratic Pakistan can eradicate the forces of extremism, militancy and terrorism.
The Pakistani people, when given the opportunity in brief interludes of democratic rule, consistently opposed policies that promoted extremism in Afghanistan and tension with neighbouring India.
With militants regrouping in Pakistan the need to crack extremism in society is necessary. It is necessary to domestic peace and global stability.
Political parties can play an important role in preparing Pakistani society for such a clampdown. The parties representing broader public (beyond the army) support are needed to mobilise the man in the street against the forces of extremism.
Democracy and elections are important for more than democracy’s sake.
As the Presidential referendum held last April demonstrated, public discontent in Pakistan is high. A representative parliament provides the right forum for involving the people in the national debate. The danger is that a rigged electoral process plays into the hands of the militants. They depend on the bullet, rather than the ballot.
Significantly, under Musharaf’s writ, the militants manage to calibrate events on the troubled Afghan and Kashmir borders. When the bombing on Tora Bora gets heavy, or when the noose on Al Qaeda tightens in Pakistan’s tribal areas, a militant strike complicates relations with India.
The Indian diversion plays to the advantage of the militants who manage to escape as international energies are consumed in averting a conflict between two nuclear armed nations.
The Musharraf regime held unrestrained power for nearly three years. Their inability to raise revenues domestically despite heavy new taxes reduced living standards. Pakistanis today are further impoverished with a lower per capita income than when their democratic government was in power in 1996. As friendly as General Musharraf may have been to the War on Terrorism, he has failed to offer hope to the legions of disenfranchised in Pakistan.
Specifically, the world community could:
Ask Musharaf to withdraw controversial constitutional amendments taking power from the legislature and concentrating it in an individual. The checks and balances of a pluralistic society are a prerequisite for consensus and tolerance. Giving Pakistan’s Presidency dictatorial powers including the unilateral dismissal of the Prime Minister, cabinet and parliament without elections is a prescription for extremism.
1. Establish an international election monitoring force ensuring that the October 10th Pakistani elections are transparent and open to all parties and candidates. During the recent Referendum to elect the President, the military regime allowed eight year olds to vote while commandeering Busloads of coerced ‘citizens’ to different polling stations for voting numerous times in numerous places.
2. Pressure Musharaf to free political prisoners and allow the return of political exiles, including myself, who are victims of a discredited and politically motivated process. Its time for closure on the past to allow the Nation to focus on the future.
The world community could make it clear that it predicates future aid, international loans and debt relief to the holding of transparent and internationally verified elections that respect the fundamental and democratic rights of the Pakistani people.
The world walked away from Afghanistan when the Soviets withdrew in 1989 without promoting the politics of consensus. That neglect contributed to the rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The world must avoid walking away from democracy in Pakistan. The nightmare of the Taliban and the terrorists who on September 11th rained such unspeakable destruction on the world must never be allowed to happen again.
For the security of South Asia and for the security of our global village, it’s important that the people of Pakistan freely determine their own destiny on October 10th.
Pakistan’s elections are important for the empowerment of the Pakistani people as well as their hopes of fighting terrorism, poverty and unemployment.
Pakistan’s elections are also important for the world community with the disappearing Al Qaeda on one side of the border and one million men mobilised on the other border with India.
The ball is in the international community’s court. The stakes are nothing less than making the world safe from nuclear war and terrorism.