http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071227/pakistan_analysis_071227/20071227?hub=World
'No rosy picture' on Pakistan's horizon
Updated Thu. Dec. 27 2007 7:25 PM ET
Saira Peesker, CTV.ca News
The assassination of former prime minister and recent parliamentary
candidate Benazir Bhutto leaves Pakistan with two obvious choices:
proceed with elections that lack credibility or return to the highly-
contested state of emergency that was only recently lifted on Dec.
15.
"I am afraid there is no rosy picture on the horizon," Louis Delvoie,
Canada's high commissioner in Pakistan in the mid-1990s, told CTV.ca.
"The elections may well satisfy certain formalities but it won't
resolve the problems confronting Pakistan by any means."
Killed on Dec. 27 while campaigning for the Jan. 8 election, Bhutto
was seen by western interests as a progressive and moderate voice in a
country plagued by military rule and instability.
Her assassination while on the campaign trail has already begun to
unleash a torrent of violent unrest, which comes on the heels of weeks
of citizen uprisings after president and former military leader Pervez
Musharraf declared a state of emergency in early November.
Delvoie, currently a senior fellow at Queen's University in Kingston,
Ont., said Thursday that the country's future looks very uncertain,
with disarray the only definite.
"You could see a return to emergency rule by the president or you
could see him decide to carry on with the elections and see some very
contested and violence-ridden elections," he said. "It is going to be
very difficult to hold the elections on Jan. 8."
No party leaders
The main issue with pushing forward with the elections, said Delvoie,
is that both major political parties are now without leaders.
Bhutto, a former Pakistani prime minister, headed the Pakistani
People's Party and was left with no clear successor. Foreign affairs
expert Eric Margolis, also a personal acquaintance of the late leader,
told CTV Newsnet that her death leaves a void that will be next to
impossible to fill in the span of a week.
"Benazir did not allow any people to come up in the party and
challenge her position," he said. "I don't see how elections can go
ahead."
The Pakistan Muslim League is also leaderless going into the elections
after Nawaz Sharif (also a former prime minister) was barred following
corruption charges. His party announced late Thursday that it planned
to boycott the elections and demanded Musharraf step down.
Fear of civil war
Citizens throughout the country have taken to the streets to protest
Bhutto's killing, a demonstration expected to reach a crescendo when
her funeral procession makes its way through her home province of
Sindh. A date for the funeral has not yet been scheduled.
"You can expect demonstrations and protest and circulation of all
sorts of rumours that the government is responsible for her
assassination," Delvoie told CTV.ca. "That could make a volatile
situation in Karachi, which has a population of 12 to 14 million. We
could see quite a bit of disorder there."
Depending on how Musharraf's government handles the situation, the
immediate chaos could devolve into regional fighting if not quickly
contained, Margolis said. "In Pakistan, it's really tribal warfare
described as politics," he said. "Violence is going to increase. It's
already in a state of low grade civil war."
In addition to factional fighting, there is also the chance the army
might try to depose Musharraf, who took the presidency from former
prime minister Nawaz Sharif in a coup in 1999.
"The army is very uneasy that it's getting unpopular in Pakistan
because it's seen as siding with Musharraf and fighting for the
Americans," Margolis said.
The militant Islamic groups who have been operating throughout the
country may also try to seize power, he said.
Trouble for NATO
Delvoie says if Islamic militants were to gain control of Pakistan,
the government would suddenly be run by Taliban supporters who want
NATO troops out of Afghanistan -- including Canada's 2,500 soldiers.
But even if the country were to remain in civil war, it would mean
significantly decreased attention on the border areas that act as a
launching pad for Taliban insurgents.
"If the Pakistani government is occupied with trying to stay afloat,
it will be much less concerned with the Taliban and the people in the
tribal areas," said Delvoie.
"For Canadians operating in Kandahar province, the solution is not
going to come from Pakistan. It comes from beating the Taliban on the
ground and gaining the proverbial hearts and minds of the Afghanis."
The real problem, said Margolis, would be if fighting in Pakistan
became so intense that NATO was no longer able to safely reach its
armies in Afghanistan.
"Pakistan is the world's staging area for military operations in
Afghanistan and if things get too bad, these NATO forces could be
isolated," he said.
The nuclear issue
When looking at the situation with a long-range lens, analysts are
quick to note that Pakistan remains a nuclear state with long-running
friction with neighbouring India, which also has nuclear weapons.
According to Delvoie, the worst possible situation would be the rise
of militant leaders who lack interest in maintaining the fragile
relationship currently held by the two countries' leaders.
"I don't think there's any great risk of heightened tensions with the
current leadership," he said. "However, if Islamist military leaders
were to gain the upper hand, that would be a purely different
situation. In India, you have a weak situation and elections coming up
where the Hindu nationalist party might do much better.
"One cannot rule out the possibility of heightened tensions between
the countries."
A fragile state
With so many factors at play, it is by no means clear just how things
will go in Pakistan in the coming weeks and months. The outlook from
all sides, however, is overwhelmingly negative.
"Another possible scenario is Pakistan becoming a totally failed
state, with secessionist movements and insurrectionist movements
tearing the country apart,'' Delvoie told The Canadian Press.
"Pakistan is a fragile state. This only makes matters worse."
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HOOROO
UNCLE WALLY
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