Stabilizing the Democratic Transition in Pakistan

The new Pakistani government must enter into negotiations with militant groups in the troubled regions bordering Afghanistan, but Pakistan must require militants to disarm and disavow the creation of parallel governmental structures before negotiations begin, Dr. Samina Ahmed said at the Carnegie Endowment on May 2, 2008.

Ahmed, who is the South Asia Project Director at the International Crisis Group, said that the Pakistani military has been ineffective at routing out militants because it has alternated between conducting sweeping military operations and negotiating without conditions. 

The failure of the military’s strategy is nowhere more evident than in Baluchistan, where the Taliban command and control is located, and from where most attacks against the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) originate. Baluchs themselves are anti-Taliban, moderate, and secular, but the indiscriminate conduct of the army has decimated popular support for the military and the central government, said Ahmed.

In addition, the government must extend the rule of law to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATAs), replacing the system of jirgas and collective punishment with the Pakistani justice system.  

Ahmed was optimistic as she described the Pakistan's democratically elected parliament, which has been in session for just one month. The victory of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) over the parties of President Pervez Musharraf occurred despite of attempts to rig the election, she said. Fraud occurred, but on a limited scale. Neither the military nor the intelligence agencies nor the President’s parties attempted massive poll-rigging, said Ahmed, possibly because they feared the potential fallout.

Asserting control over the military is the chief task before the Pakistani parliament, said Ahmed. Civilian politicians must convince military leaders that it is in the institutional interests of the military to succumb to civilian rule, she said, warning that the military’s reputation will be damaged both internationally and domestically if it reverts to intervening in civilian affairs.

The Pakistani parliament must also repeal President Musharraf’s damaging changes to the Pakistani constitution, which included replacing the popular election of governors with their appointment by the President, Ahmed said.

Though military-military cooperation ought to continue, Ahmed said, the United States must engage politically only with the Pakistani civilian government. Interacting with a large, messy, democratic government is more difficult than communicating with military commanders, but, said Ahmed, investing in the Pakistani government is vital to the survival of democracy, and therefore stability in the country and the region. Similarly, Ahmed said that the United State’s reliance on NGOs as channels for foreign aid dollars undercuts the legitimacy of both the Afghan and Pakistani governments.