By JANE PERLEZ
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The new aid package for Pakistan passed by Congress last month - a promise of $7.5 billion for civilian needs over the next five years - has unwittingly thrust the United States into the center of the perennially uneasy relationship between Pakistan's powerful military and its weak civilian governments.
A meeting between President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan and the head of the army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in March.
In this case, the United States stepped into the middle of what politicians describe as a deteriorating relationship between the head of the army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and President Asif Ali Zardari, by insisting on greater civilian oversight of the military as a condition of the aid.
With its economy in tatters, and a tenacious insurgency that last weekend breached the military headquarters outside the capital, Pakistan would seem more in need than ever of the kind of assistance Washington is offering.
Instead on Monday, virtually on orders from the military, the foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, was sent to Washington to tell American officials that Pakistan would not stand for being micromanaged.
Now it appears that the aid bill, rather than assisting Mr. Zardari and improving America's relations with Pakistan, threatens to undermine the president and lay bare the troubles at the heart of the two countries' alliance.
In supporting Mr. Zardari at what appeared to be the expense of the military, the Americans hit a raw nerve, several Pakistani politicians said.
General Kayani has made clear that he supports democracy in Pakistan, and that the military has no intention of overturning the civilian government, Pakistani politicians said.
But what appears to be his distaste for the Zardari government is barely disguised. In the middle of the military headquarters siege, the general took a helicopter to the presidential palace Saturday to meet with the president, Mr. Qureshi and the prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani. Afterward, Mr. Qureshi was sent to Washington to tell the Obama administration that Pakistan had deep reservations about America's intentions.
The military, no doubt, also has deep reservations about ceding powers it has long accumulated, and the perks that go with them, to an inexperienced government it criticizes for mismanagement of the crumbling economy.
"The army is saying privately that despite everything, the army remains the one rigorous, merit-based institution in Pakistan, and if the politicians get their hands on promotions, that will be the end of it," said a member of Parliament, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to disclose military thinking.
American and Pakistani officials who support the aid package voice increasing concern that critics of the bill are manufacturing a crisis to discredit and undermine the civilian government.
The stipulations in the aid bill, they note, are no more onerous than those of past aid packages, including those on aid given during the eight-year rule of the previous government under Gen. Pervez Musharraf. At that time, the military raised no objections.
What is more, the aid for civilian needs is in addition to more than $1 billion a year the United States already gives the army.
"This is a created crisis, by people who either haven't read the bill or don't want to describe it accurately, and whose goal is either to destabilize the government or challenge some of the Pakistani military's priorities," said Representative Howard L. Berman, a California Democrat who leads the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Mr. Zardari's spokesman, Farhatullah Babar, has been on Pakistani television, seeming at times a lone voice in defense of the legislation, charging that the fierce criticism of the American largess is intended as a direct hit at Mr. Zardari.
The bill has also placed the Americans in the middle of a potential tussle between Mr. Zardari and General Kayani over future army leadership. The three-year tenure of General Kayani, with whom American commanders say they are enjoying an increasingly good relationship, ends in November 2010.
Mr. Zardari might like to appoint his own general, Pakistani politicians say, though officials in the government say the president has yet to make any decision. It is believed that General Kayani would like an extension of tenure, unheard of in Pakistani military history for a general who has not served as president.
But General Kayani has been riding high. The fact that 10 militants managed to raid a military intelligence building seemed only to strengthen the standing of the military in the eyes of the public and Pakistan's boisterous and patriotic talk shows. Questions about the soundness of the security at the military nerve center were offset by accolades for the commandos who rescued 39 hostages, some of them officers who had sat in a room with a suicide bomber for 20 hours.
The army remains the country's most revered institution. Its prickliness over American intrusions dovetails neatly with a widespread feeling of anti-Americanism here that has not changed with the Obama administration.
Surprisingly to the Americans, anger against the legislation has spread so widely that even civic leaders and lawyers who took to the streets two years ago against General Musharraf offered no vocal support for the American aid.
"Criticisms coming from outside affects the Pakistani ego," said Athar Minallah, a leader of the lawyers movement that eventually won reinstatement of the chief justice dismissed by General Musharraf, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. "People ask: Why should this dictation come from the outside?"
Pakistanis tend to have good memories, and view the up-and-down American record in Pakistan with deep distrust, a history that colors the current attitudes.
The lawyers would seem to be a natural constituency to help generate support for the new civilian assistance. But under the Bush administration, Washington remained silent when the lawyers took on General Musharraf, and the lawyers feel little obligation to help Washington now.
A common theme in the Parliament in the last few days has been to label the $1.5 billion a year as "peanuts" - the same term used by the military dictator Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq when he turned down $400 million from President Jimmy Carter. A year later, General Zia won a six-year, $3.2 billion package from President Ronald Reagan.
But Washington has a good memory, too. American officials have not forgotten about the nuclear proliferation network once run from Pakistan, nor about support the country has given to terrorist groups that oppose India.
But when it comes to Pakistan, Washington has had a tin ear, said Maleeha Lodhi, who served as the Pakistani ambassador to Washington at the time of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "The offending part of the legislation sets up the country as hired help and puts the military in the dock, presumed guilty on many counts and having to prove its innocence to Washington."
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