Arriving at the airport in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, reminds one of the vast gulf between the First and Third World.  Chaotic, frenetic, disorganized, dilapidated—when I visited a couple months ago I almost longed for New York’s JFK airport, which I normally loathe.  The government is building a new facility, but no matter how modern the buildings, the new airport is likely to end up much like the old one:  chaotic, frenetic, and disorganized, if not quite so dilapidated.

Pakistan’s recent election was much like the country’s capital airport.  Except violence and murder added to the chaos.  Nawaz Sharif, of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz emerged as the likely new prime minister.  The only unambiguous good news, beyond the generally free vote, is that the religious parties did not gain.

Sharif, a former prime minister who was ousted in 1999 by military chief Pervez Musharraf (whose recent attempt to return to politics was blocked by Pakistan’s courts), has spent a lifetime seeking political power.  However, the prize may be a poisoned chalice.

Pakistan is a tragic land, an Islamic state increasingly turned fundamentalist and violent.  For the first time in the country’s more than six decade life, a civilian government fulfilled its full five-year term.  However, the unimpressive performance of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party left it fighting outsider cricket star Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Party to avoid a third place finish.  Moreover, President Asif Ali Zardari’s term ends in September and he has no chance of being reappointed by the parliament.

The government’s failure was sweeping.  Observed Vali Nasr, author and former State Department adviser, Pakistan “is nuclear-armed, in near conflict with India, has a dangerous civil war with its own extremists, is now subject to one of the most brutal terrorism campaigns against its population, and is now coming apart along sectarian lines.”

The state does not even rule its own territory.  Much of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Balochistan are beyond Islamabad’s control.  At least 4,000 Pakistani soldiers have died since 2004 fighting the Pakistani Taliban.

Conflict crosses the Afghan border while extremists strike with bombings and assassinations elsewhere.  Religious minorities, including Christians, Hindus, and Shia Muslims, face constant private violence and official discrimination.

Indeed, in this election radicals waged a murderous campaign against democratic politicians, essentially shutting down campaigning in some areas.  Federal ministers and state governors have been assassinated for their liberal views.

Islamabad remains relatively safe, but only because of the overwhelming security.  Barricades and checkpoints dot the streets.  I recently stayed at the Marriott, which was turned into a veritable fortress after a bombing a few years ago.  The city is the kind of place where you can walk safely while not actually feeling safe.

Attempts by the Pakistani government to micro-manage the economy have failed.  The latest Economic Freedom of the World report ranks Pakistan tied for 111-114 out of 144 countries.  Islamabad sits below Bangladesh, another chaotic and violent land that once was part of Pakistan.

The ill consequences of government economic control have been exacerbated by political instability.  Only brave or foolish outsiders enter the Pakistani economy.  In fact, foreign investment has collapsed since 2008, dropping by more than four-fifths.  Unemployment and inflation are high; economic infrastructure is decrepit; even Islamabad suffers routine power outages.

The practice of democracy has been consistently corrupt, incompetent, and disillusioning.  The political system is essentially authoritarian with a democratic veneer.  Despite the presence of an educated and talented elite, Pakistan lacks the lush civil society that characterizes most Western nations.  The government is simultaneously ubiquitous and ineffective, discouraging individual and communal action.

Moreover, the elections are formally but not practically free.  Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif sought power democratically but were essentially feudal lords in their home provinces who focused on dispensing patronage.  Even sports hero Imran Khan has yet to break the political duopoly of the PPP and PML-N.  Violent attacks on the PPP and other secular-minded parties, such as the Awami National Party and Muttahida Quami Movement, hindered their ability to compete.  (In fact, one of former PPP Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani’s sons was kidnapped at an election rally on the last day of the campaign.)

Even when civilian politicians formally ruled, they did not control the military and especially the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, which long aided the Taliban against the American-installed government in Kabul.  Most previous democratic administrations ended badly, usually with military intervention.

During the Cold War Washington cheerfully supported whatever thug in uniform happened to rule, most ruinously Zia ul-Haq, who promoted Islamic fundamentalism to buttress his undemocratic rule.  Five years ago General turned President Musharref relinquished power, but the murder of Benazir Bhutto left her less loved husband, Asif Ali Zardari, as president in 2008.  Despite frequent predictions of military intervention, the armed services stayed out of politics, allowing the PPP government to finish its term.  Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani may not have wanted to be stuck attempting to govern the ungovernable.

Solving Pakistan’s problems is made even more difficult with war in next door Afghanistan.  The Afghan-Pakistani border is an artifact of history, artificially dividing what some people call Pashtunistan.  So long as the U.S. supports a government in Kabul viewed as hostile in Islamabad—even worse, which has warm relations with Pakistan’s hated adversary, India—Islamabad is going to meddle, often against American objectives.  Moreover, incidents like the killing by NATO forces of 24 Pakistani soldiers in November 2011, which led Islamabad to shut down allied resupply columns for seven months, are inevitable.

Washington’s drone war may pose an even bigger problem.  Islamabad cannot be trusted to confront the problem of terrorism.  For instance, few analysts doubt that alerting the Zardari government to Osama bin Laden’s presence would have ensured his escape.  Even if the civilian authorities are willing, the military has too many ties, both formal and informal, with extremists to inspire trust.

In contrast, drones work.  They kill terrorists and there are terrorists in Pakistan to kill.  It is widely assumed that Islamabad has acquiesced if not encouraged the drone campaign so long as the government can maintain plausible deniability.  The Pakistan military has done the same thing, falsely but publicly claiming that it had ended drone flights from Shamsi Air Force Base, for instance.  As a result, it is believed that extremists now are less likely to seek sanctuary in Pakistan.

However, promiscuous use of drones has made Washington hated in Pakistan.  A February poll found that 92 percent of Pakistanis disapproved of American leadership while three-quarters of the population considered the U.S. to be their enemy.  (Americans return the favor; the same month 81 percent of those polled professed an unfavorable view of Pakistan.)

No surprise, Khan and Sharif directed much of their campaign ire at the practice, which probably kills more innocents than terrorists, though an accurate accounting is impossible to make.  Mistakes—wiping out those merely in proximity to terrorists—are morally horrid.  They also are practically counterproductive.  To the extent that the Obama administration has expanded its targets to enemies of Islamabad rather than Washington, the former has ended up creating even more enemies of Washington.

Finally, for those who worry about an Islamic Bomb in Tehran, one already exists in Islamabad.  Pakistan has between 90 and 120 warheads, and is producing more plutonium than any other nation on earth.  The result likely will be an expanded arsenal.  Observed Tom Hundley of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting:  “Pakistan could end up in third place, behind Russia and the United States, within a decade.”  Yet the contest with India has left Islamabad officials “hobbled by fear, paranoia, and a deep sense of inferiority,” in Hundley’s words.  At the same time, Pakistan has increasingly dispersed its warheads to frustrate any U.S. attempt to seize the weapons.  The practice increases the possibility of radicals grabbing a warhead or fissile material.

Nine of ten Pakistanis say they are not satisfied with Pakistan’s direction.  Into this imbroglio will step Prime Minister Sharif, whose last term as premier was highlighted by friendship with violent fundamentalists, arrest of critical journalists, and an unsuccessful attempt to prevent Musharraf, then army chief of staff, from returning to Pakistan from a foreign trip.  That plan left Sharif out of power, under arrest, and eventually exiled abroad. Reported the Washington Post, Sharif “was power-obsessed, arrogant, impulsive, unwilling to collaborate—and that’s according to his friends and most loyal supporters.”

Obviously, Sharif’s return should fill no one with optimism.  The basic question is:  has he matured?

So far he has emphasized conciliation and appeared to take his presumptive duties seriously.  For instance, he backs a freer economy, chose the fiscally responsible Ishaq Dar as finance minister, reached out to Imran Khan despite the latter’s sharp campaign criticism, invited Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to his inauguration, supported negotiation with the Pakistani Taliban, and advocated good relations with Afghanistan.

Sharif also told the Wall Street Journal:  “the relationship with the U.S. was quite good when I was in power.  I’d like to take this relationship further.  We need to strengthen the relationship.”  However, reconciliation with Washington will be difficult, given Sharif’s criticism of U.S. drone policy and notable silence about Taliban violence.  Noted Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies:  “The initial indicators are the U.S.-Pakistani tensions won’t get better and Pakistan’s limited support of U.S. and Afghan efforts to deal with the Afghan Taliban will get worse.”

Pakistan has great potential, but remains hobbled by artificial national boundaries, decades of conflict in Afghanistan, metastasizing home-grown radicalism, and persistent economic malfeasance.  Washington should do what it can to help—particularly wrapping up its involvement in the Afghan war, deploying drones more sparingly, and reducing foreign aid which has encouraged creation of an over-politicized, spectacularly intrusive, and strikingly incompetent state.

However, ultimately the destiny of Pakistan is in the Pakistani people’s hands.  They, and we, must hope that Nawaz Sharif’s third time as prime minister ends up being the charm.  Much is at stake, for his nation, South Asia, and the world.

Author Doug Bandow is Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is also a Senior Fellow in International Religious Persecution with the Institute on Religion and Public Policy. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire, The Politics of Plunder: Misgovernment in Washington, and Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics. I am a graduate of Florida State University and Stanford Law School.

 Nawaz Sharif tells President Obama about Pakistan’s special relationship.

Source: New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/opinion/global/pakistans-special-relationship.html?_r=0

The tough test of character comes in a waiting room. We are all heroes in a drawing room, stoking plans toward fantasy as far as the tensile strength of imagination will permit. While waiting, the lacklustre kill time and die of boredom . The ambitious dread the possibility that time will kill them before desire becomes reality.

Nothing became Nawaz Sharif better than the manner in which he played out the waiting game. Fourteen years is a lifetime, particularly when it begins with an epic collapse from supreme power to an Army dungeon devoid of hope. The Old Testament, which can be pessimistic about God’s mercy, notes that seven lean years are followed by seven fat ones. Nawaz Sharif doubled the Biblical average, and maintained his patience through the desert of exile, and the torture of standing by as the credibility of an usurper, Asif Zardari, peeled off in heavy layers. Sharif did not panic, did not fuss and did not rush. When Zardari sought to make a meaningless point by completing his full term, he kept his counsel and waited.

Sharif’s confidence should be familiar to any student of elections: once people have lost trust in a government, they do not change their minds. A shrinking government never forsakes the desperate hope that some last-minute miracle will reverse anti-incumbency . Zardari believed till the last minute that he would manage to cobble together a new coalition for another term, much like UPA in Delhi preserves the hope of continuing beyond the next election. God reserves miracles for saints, not politicians.

Sharif reached Islamabad in two strides. Five years ago his party won Punjab. He has converted that opportunity into a triumph this year, taking 49% of the vote and 116 out of 148 seats in Punjab. His principal rival, PPP, has been reduced to a fading rump, its vote down from 29 to 11%. Sharif also fought off a robust challenge from Imran Khan. Nawaz Sharif won Pakistan because he swept Punjab.

That was the easy part. This election has skewered Pakistan’s political map into ethnic citadels. No major party has a significant presence anywhere except in its fortress. Imran Khan dominates Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; a tattered PPP nurses its wounds in Sindh; a dented MQM holds on to its Indian-refugee base; the Sharifs are lions of Punjab, but Cheshire cats elsewhere. A cynic might even suggest that the only force with a presence in all regions is the Taliban.

The Taliban were kind towards Nawaz Sharif during polls; will Sharif return the favour in power? The question is addressed to Sharif; the answer will be on every radar between India, China, Middle East and NATO. Pakistan has become a land of parallel wars which may or may not intersect , but which erode Pakistan internally and whose objectives spill far beyond its borders. Sharif’s pragmatic solution during the campaign was to soft-pedal the problem. That luxury will not be available in office.

Taliban and its allies have already set their first marker. Unremarkably, it is India. The most interesting commitment Sharif made in his manifesto went far beyond merely better relations with India; he offered to open the land route for trade between India and Afghanistan. He has been strengthened now by the endorsement of the electorate, but that has not stopped the jihadists from issuing a warning against any excessive warmth towards Delhi. Their agenda supersedes the popular will. They showed their hand when Atal Behari Vajpayee went to Lahore on a bus that could not cross the border. Even 15 years ago the threat of violence was palpable; today, the hostility would probably be unmanageable. The Pakistan Army welcomed that effort with Kargil.

We cannot fault Sharif’s genuine desire for better relations with India; he genuinely believes in it. Delivery is another story, and it is linked to militias consumed by misplaced jihad. India is not their only target; their violence seeks death everywhere : Shias, parties that have sinned by being secular, Christians, Hindus, and of course rivals in battles for power. There is no description of “purity” in “pure” Pakistan that will ever be holy enough for holy warriors.

The great enigma of this election was Balochistan, which absented itself. Balochistan often slips out of mainstream consciousness for it lies, geographically and perhaps psychologically , on the edge. Distance should be measured by more than miles. A lingering secessionist movement could have healed with development; instead incremental state violence, torture and death have deepened identity assertion into a septic fissure that now seems immune from the appeal of unity in the name of faith. With so much to burden him, perhaps Sharif will not worry too much about the superstar he marginalized, Imran Khan. Sharif should. If he plays the waiting game as well as Sharif did, Khan will be president of Pakistan in 2018.

Source: Times of India http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/thesiegewithin/entry/winning-the-waiting-game-in-pakistan

MJ Akbar is one of India’s most distinguished editors and authors. He has written several bestselling books on life and politics in modern India. “The Siege Within” appears as a weekly column in The Times of India.

There is reason for hope in Nawaz Sharif‘s victory in the recent Pakistani elections. Sharif, who has twice served as Pakistan’s prime minister, has said he wants to build a more robust democracy, revive the country’s shattered economy and end the military’s 40-year domination of its politics. He has also promised to improve relations with India and take on the radical Islamist terrorism that has tormented Pakistan. The United States should assist him in every way possible to achieve those goals.

But there is also ample reason for caution. The U.S. has a long history of “betting on the come,” of unwarranted optimism that the transfer of billions in unconditional aid will influence Pakistan to withdraw its support for the Afghan Taliban insurgency based in Pakistan. With a new Pakistani leader in place, it is time to begin linking Washington’s huge military and economic assistance programs more directly to U.S. interests, including anti-terrorism and regional stability.

Perhaps Sharif’s greatest challenge — as he knows all too well — will be ending the Pakistani military’s outsized influence on foreign and defense policy, which is implemented largely through its powerful intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. In 1999, the last time Sharif served as Pakistan’s prime minister, he attempted to improve Indo-Pakistani relations and replace the head of the army, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Instead, the army ousted Sharif in a coup, and Musharraf assumed power. Since 2008, Pakistan’s elected leaders have tended to cede key decisions to the military in order to survive.

Moreover, Sharif does not have an unblemished record in his willingness to confront extremists. During his second stint as prime minister in the 1990s, he played an influential role in the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, which was seen to be in Pakistan’s interest. Recently, Taliban extremists in Pakistan spared Sharif’s party in their violent pre-election attacks on political rallies and candidates. Against this backdrop, and given Sharif’s stated opposition to U.S. drone strikes, it seems unlikely that the new prime minister will vigorously combat extremism in Pakistan.

This sobering environment makes it incumbent on Washington to conduct its relations with Pakistan patiently, positively, candidly and in a transactional manner, emphasizing both equality and give-and-take. America’s ineffective policy through successive administrations has seemed paralyzed, tolerating Pakistan’s phony insistence that it does not support Mullah Mohammed Omar‘s Afghan Taliban insurgency and the notorious Haqqani network operating from Pakistani territory. With the new prime minister comes an opportunity to change that dynamic.

Sharif, for his part, must understand that he will not be able to accomplish any of his goals — including economic prosperity and stability in Pakistan — unless the ISI’s radical Islamist infrastructure in Pakistan is dismantled.

Another part of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship that needs resetting is Washington’s continuing hope, against much evidence to the contrary, that Pakistan will be useful in guiding Afghan peace talks. In fact, any Afghan political process organized by foreigners, including the U.S.-sponsored Qatar initiative that has languished since 2010, is doomed to failure.

Rather than trying to act as the catalyst for talks between the Taliban and Afghan President Hamid Karzai‘s government, the U.S. should step back, encourage the Afghans to reach agreement on their own and insist that Pakistan also step back. It would be nothing less than foolish to continue to work with Pakistan to convert the ISI’s Taliban and Haqqani network proxies into genuine peace negotiators instead of what they are: Al Qaeda-linked terrorists bent on violence to achieve their extremist version of an Afghan Islamist state.

Last year, Congress and President Obama officially designated the Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist organization. Congress should now move quickly to add Mullah Omar’s Quetta Shura to the list. The group’s suicide bombers are no different from those of the Haqqani network, having killed hundreds of American and coalition troops in Afghanistan, along with thousands of Afghans. Both operate with Al Qaeda and share the same ideology, and both were created and sustained by the ISI, and have been supported or unofficially tolerated by Pakistani civilian leaders.

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Strategically, Washington should support Sharif’s policies to strengthen the Pakistani economy, democratic institutions, civil society, human rights and gender equality. American responses to Pakistani requests, including on an upcoming International Money Fund bailout, must be conditioned on the military’s cessation of support for its Afghan terrorist proxies operating from Pakistani soil.

Concurrently, the U.S. and its allies should urge Pakistan to join a multilateral consensus to revive Afghanistan’s classic buffer role in Central Asia between larger powers. The Afghan government, like Austria during the Cold War, would adhere to nonaligned neutrality. Outside powers, Pakistan included, would honor Afghanistan’s territorial integrity and exercise mutual restraint from interfering in Afghanistan. The outcome — opening up Central Asia to a new era of intercontinental commerce through Afghanistan — would benefit both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Pakistan is an important, populous Muslim nation poised to move forward under the leadership of a new prime minister. Its success or failure will depend largely on whether its leaders have the strength of will to resist military domination of the Pakistani state and confront radical Islamists. The U.S. should do everything in its power to help should Sharif choose to follow this path.

Source: Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-tomsen-pakistan-20130519,0,2911344.story

Author, Peter Tomsen was special envoy and ambassador on Afghanistan from 1989 to 1992 and ambassador to Armenia from 1995 to 1998. He is the author of “The Wars of Afghanistan: Messianic Terrorism, Tribal Conflicts, and the Failures of Great Powers.”

There is good news from Pakistan. After Nawaz Sharif was displaced as prime minister in 1999, it seemed Pakistan would always have a cycle of democratic rule cut short by military dictatorships. Now, at last, we have for the first time a transition from one legitimately elected government to another. Nawaz Sharif has cemented a commanding lead in the number of seats over his rivals. Imran Khan has enriched the menu by offering another alternative. The voters have not fallen for his lure but not rejected him out of hand either. His party will be the regional power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as the PPP is in Sindh. Sharif heads the PML-N which is the Punjab party. Punjab is for Pakistan what Prussia was for old Germany, a guarantee of stability thanks to its sheer size in relation to the whole nation.

There have been many alarmist stories about the future of Pakistan from Indian as well as foreign authors. We were told Pakistan was on a powder keg or that it was a difficult country. Many said it would break up or that Islamist fundamentalists —Taliban or someone else—would come to power. I had always felt that the Punjabi elite, which controls the country, would never let anyone deprive it of its possession. It has run the country off and on for the last 67 years, finding one agent or another and it seems like it will go on doing so.

Along the way there were several problems. But the central problem was that Pakistan had no clear definition about its national identity. Jinnah had argued that there were two nations in pre-independence India. Even so, there were not two separate ‘nation states’. Muslims may have been a nation as Hindus were, but each was scattered across the entire territory of pre-Independence India. Had everyone agreed to the Cabinet Mission proposals of 1946, we would have had an undivided India broken into three large regional sub-federations—roughly Pakistan as it is now (with an undivided Punjab), India as it is now (except for West Bengal and Assam) and Bengal plus Assam. That did not happen and we got West and East Pakistan. Later, there was a second partition and we have Bangladesh now.

In 1971, Pakistan had to face yet again the question: What was its identity? Jinnah wanted a state for Muslims but not an Islamic nation; he was a Western-style liberal, after all. Later, the motley collection of civil servants and army generals who ruled Pakistan also did not have an answer. When it broke up, Pakistan realised that religion was not enough to unite the two wings; language was a dividing issue. So what was Pakistan?

It is not enough to define a nation by its ‘Other’. Many in Pakistan define their nation in terms of the enmity with India. There are a few people in India, mainly on the Hindutva side, who do the same by defining India in terms of its enmity with Pakistan. But a nation needs a positive definition.

After 40 more years of military generals and democratic leaders, we are back to that issue. Pakistan is not untypical of South Asia in not having a clear identity. India is the exception since Nehru was there to define its identity while Jinnah died soon after Pakistan was born. Bangladesh floundered after its birth before it settled down to a democratic constitution. Sri Lanka has gone through a civil war of 25 years since the Sinhala-speaking majority wanted to monopolise power and marginalise the Tamil minority. From a civilised liberal nation, it has become a brutalised Buddhist republic.

Pakistan now seems to have arrived at a tentative answer. Pakistan will be a modern democracy which has an overwhelmingly large Muslim population but it will not be an Islamic state. It has not done too badly. For the first 50 years after independence, its GDP growth rate was equal to if not better than India. It is not all that different from India in terms of Human Development Index. It has a nuclear weapon like India has.

Maybe Pakistan will begin to look at itself and find out what it wants to be positively. India can only benefit from that.

Source: Indian Express http://www.indianexpress.com/news/the-idea-of-pakistan/1117632/0

Author of this article Meghnad Desai is an Indian-born British economist and Labour politician. He unsuccessfully stood for the Speaker in the British House of Lords in 2011, the first ever non-UK born candidate to do so. He has been awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award in the Republic of India, in 2008.

Seat distribution in National Assembly (unofficial results)

One small step forward for Nawaz Sharif, the new election winner, but one big step forward for Pakistan. The religious parties and their militant, sometimes violent, followers have won so few votes they will play no significant role in parliament.

The overwhelming majority of Pakistan’s ethnically disparate population has made it clear that they identify with secular politics.

Hussein Haqqani writes in his insightful new book on Pakistan that “Most Pakistanis would probably be quite content with a state that would cater to their social needs, respect and protect their rights to observe religion and would not invoke Islam as its sole source of legitimacy.”

If Pakistan’s democracy were allowed to play a central role — as seems to be happening at the moment — the prospects would be much better. For years, particularly under military rule, the Islamists, not least the militant, dogmatic part of them, have been allowed to set too much of the agenda. In foreign policy issues, such as the argument with India over the possession of Kashmir and support for the Taleban in Afghanistan, they have long acted outside the rule of law.

As in 18^th century France when the revolution consumed its own children, so have the Pakistani militants become not just the country’s nightmare but the army’s too despite all the support the ISI has given them. When General Pervez Musharraf was president, leading a military government, he narrowly escaped assassination by militants three times.

Musharraf was never able to get on top of the paradox the military over decades had created for itself — supporting the religious parties while being threatened by them.

He was in many ways a liberal, pursuing an agenda of increased women’s rights, freeing the Press, pushing for improved education, including the curriculum of the madrasas, the religious schools, and promoting the Sufi school of Islam (more given to mysticism than violence). He also allowed the courts more freedom.

Yet these moves were all cautiously made, and he constantly looked over his shoulder at the militants who he allowed to be supported by the ISI because of their activities in Kashmir and Afghanistan — in the latter not because he supported the Taleban but because he wanted to maintain some degree of leverage with them. He always presumed the Americans and Nato would be compelled to withdraw.

Musharraf also wanted to use the militants as a line of defence against the non-religious parties, which constantly manoeuvred to displace him. He recognised the religious parties as the main opposition in parliament despite them having won only 11 per cent of the vote in the election of 2002.

Nevertheless, he bravely took the religious parties head on when he opened up negotiations with India on Kashmir. He dropped many of Pakistan’s previous positions and gave India most of what it wanted. In the end it was India that refused to consummate what looked like a deal. And once he was turned out of office — by the threat of impeachment — the one man who could have made a deal stick in Pakistan was no longer at the helm.

The militants returned to attack in Mumbai that took 164 lives. The government headed by President Asif Ali Zardari was so intimidated by the extremists that it dithered over the extent it would cooperate with India in bringing those behind the attack to book.

Militants are not new. As a power they go right back to the Bangladesh war of independence from Pakistan in 1971 when the military supported religious groups to keep secular leaders out of power in East Pakistan (as Bangladesh then was). In the late 1970s, following a military coup, General Zia ul-Haq took the country in a more theocratic direction, basing the country’s legal and educational system on Shariah. Zia wanted Pakistan to become the centre of a global Islamic resurgence. This was the beginning of militants travelling to Pakistan to be at the centre of the action, which then was aimed at repulsing the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

The US, for its part, prior to 9/11 did little to dissuade Musharraf or his predecessors from turning towards the militants. They were particularly useful in the war against the Soviet Union and many of the groups that US military aid was funneled to via the ISI were those that later backed the Taleban and Al Qaeda, and fought in Kashmir.

This is the Pakistan that Nawaz Sharif inherits. He has a mandate from Pakistan’s secular majority. Can he stay the hand of the militants?

Source: Khaleej Times http://www.khaleejtimes.com/kt-article-display-1.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2013/May/opinion_May36.xml&section=opinion

The author of this article Jonathan Power is a veteran foreign analyst.

Nawaz Sharif speaks to reporters after his win in the Pakistan general election. Photo: Damir Sagolj/Reuters

Pakistan has voted for continuity in replacing one conservative party with another at the national level and rejecting the radical message of a charismatic hero. A new government also comes in a year when the three most powerful men in Pakistan are leaving their jobs.

Aakar Patel is a writer and a columnist based in New Delhi, India.

AMID some tough competition, Pakistan has a reasonable claim to the title of World’s Most Dangerous Nation. It has nuclear weapons, a large contingent of fundamentalists bent on wreaking chaos beyond its borders, a simmering conflict with the big power next door and a long history of unstable governments. The atomic armoury is there to stay; but, after an election on May 11th which propelled Nawaz Sharif to power for the third time (see article), there are good reasons to believe that the place may get stabler, calmer and more prosperous.

Given Mr Sharif’s record, such optimism may seem odd. He was a dreadful prime minister in the 1990s—vengeful and autocratic, subverting the judiciary and undermining the press. Nobody was surprised when he fell victim to a coup led by the then General Pervez Musharraf; hardly anybody regretted Mr Sharif’s departure.

His closeness to the religious right is a concern: his Pakistan Muslim League (N) party, which runs Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province, has failed to crack down on the extremist Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and some of its candidates are believed to have links to the group. Critics suggest his closeness to the fundamentalists explains why more secular parties were attacked during the campaign and the PML-N was not. Yet links to militant groups could prove useful in reining them in.

That Mr Sharif is a successful businessman is probably good news. Militants aside, his party has done a pretty good job of running Punjab, and he understands Pakistan’s desperate need for electricity and roads. So long as his interest in money does not encourage him to pilfer the nation’s wealth, his competence should help it prosper. The markets evidently think so: share prices leapt when he won.

Mr Sharif’s victory was not the only election result worth celebrating. So was the defeat of many of the landowners and clan leaders who have dominated politics in the country since its creation in 1947. As Pakistan’s urban middle class grows, so voters are swayed less by tribal loyalty and more by a government’s policies and performance. That is how governance improves. But the most encouraging result of all is the enthusiasm with which Pakistanis have endorsed democracy. The Taliban said that voting was unIslamic. A 60% turnout said what the voters thought of that. For the first time in Pakistan’s history, one fairly elected civilian government has served a full term and, in the course of a fair election been replaced by another. Pakistani democracy has never looked stronger.

Troubles with the neighbours

None of this will count for much if Mr Sharif messes up relations with the neighbours. Pakistan is both vulnerable to the conflicts on its borders and guilty of stirring them up. In Afghanistan it has played a dangerous double game, helping the Taliban while taking American money to allow drone strikes against militants in its tribal areas. This has poisoned relations between the two countries: of 20 countries Pew Research recently ranked according to their enthusiasm for America, Pakistan came joint bottom, with Jordan. Mr Sharif must play a straighter game in future, helping America in its withdrawal and supporting rather than undermining the government it leaves behind.

But it is how things go with India that will do most to shape Pakistan’s future. That toxic relationship is behind most of Pakistan’s problems: the army’s dominance, the soldiers’ habit of ousting civilian governments, the imbalance between military and civilian spending, the terrorist groups spawned to attack India that have come back to bite Pakistan.

Mr Sharif’s election bodes well here, too. He knows that opening the sluices to trade with India would boost Pakistan’s pathetic growth rate. Last time round, he took a conciliatory line towards India. This week, even before his victory was confirmed, he had a long phone call with Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, and told his countrymen that he and Mr Singh would visit each other. Yet the lobbies with an interest in fostering conflict with India are strong. When Mr Sharif is deciding how to allocate his political capital, plenty should go towards normalising relations with Pakistan’s great neighbour. If he succeeds in doing that, much good will flow from it.

Source: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578059-building-normal-relationship-india-should-be-nawaz-sharifs-priority-hope-fractured