Pakistan’s new crisis of democracy

Think Stanley McChrystal’s comments in London crossed a line generals should not cross? Try Pakistan, where the military has just shown a bald-faced willingness to dictate political outcomes when its core interests are threatened.

The story: After days of public protests, top Pakistani commanders have gone dramatically public with their objections to some of the strings attached to the new $7.5 billion U.S. aid bill, and especially to a provision requiring the State Department to report on whether the Islamabad government is maintaining "effective civilian control over the military."

I’m sure my colleagues at the AfPak Channel will be weighing in on this topic tomorrow, but here are some quick late-night questions.

First, why didn’t anyone in Washington see this firestorm coming? Didn’t the Pakistani military raise objections quietly during the many weeks this bill has been in the works? As cosponsor Sen. John Kerry announced when the bill was unanimously approved in the Senate, "The legislation passed today … is the product of two months of bicameral, bipartisan, and inter-branch consultation." So there was ample time and opportunity for the Pakistani military establishment to make its red lines clear.

Second, how did we in the media fail to understand the likely depth of Pakistani domestic opposition to some of Kerry-Lugar’s provisions? Were we too distracted by the McChrystal review and the U.S. domestic debate over Afghanistan?

Third, why is the three-way nonaggression pact between the civilian government led by President Asif Ali Zardari, the political opposition led by the Sharif brothers, and the military — one of the unheralded achievements of U.S. AfPak envoy Richard Holbrooke — suddenly breaking down? Is there something else going on?

One obvious answer: politics. As this Daily Times editorial explains, the opposition is trying to force midterm elections and has "decided to go for the jugular" on Kerry-Lugar. It’s notable, too, that the military’s top general met this week with Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif, the brother of former prime minister and bitter Zardari foe Nawaz Sharif — raising the specter of a return to overt military involvement in politics. The civilian government is now reportedly in a panic, and the Pakistani media is swarming all over the controversy while Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Reza Gilani furiously backtrack on their once-vocal support for the bill.

Some of what is happening in Pakistan is surely the usual Kabuki theater, but there could be real consequences for U.S. goals in the region. As Imtiaz Gul warned last week on this Web site, if Kerry-Lugar’s conditions "are viewed as coercive by Pakistani officials, they could prompt elements within the civil-military establishment to stonewall the aid and obstruct military cooperation." Never underestimate the power of parochialism.

One other casuality of this fight could be Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who has been visiting the United States and is being fingered by anonymous sources in the Pakistani press for failing to protect the country’s national interests — i.e., those of the military establishment. And some powerful folks in the military are clearly gunning for Amb. Hussain Haqqani, who has a long track record of criticizing the military and its meddling in politics, and is being accused of failing to keep the Army adequately informed.

Those two men, and the Zardari government, might survive this latest crisis of Pakistani democracy, but I’d bet the military takes its pound of flesh one way or another. Last July, when the civilian government clumsily tried to tame the ISI by putting it under the control of the Interior Ministry, the military swiftly showed everyone who’s boss by rejecting the move. I expect this fight to be no different, and there are already signs that the Pakistani government may now reject the aid bill it had negotiated.

If that’s indeed the case, then one of the barely disguised aims of the Kerry-Lugar bill — boosting the civilian leadership over the Army brass — will have backfired in spectacular fashion.