There is more to General Musharraf's pro-West, anti-mullah stance than meets the eye. He seeks the overseas blessings to keep Pakistani democracy at bay.
Marking Pakistan's fiftyfourth Independence Day on 14 August 2001, Chief of Army Stan and self-appointed President Pervez Musharraf unrolled a figurative "roadmap to democracy" that called for his military regime to oversee elections for the national and provincial assemblies and the Senate in October 2002. Musharraf proudly told his audience, a gathering of mayors elected under the military's local-government plan, "today I have fulfilled one of my major promises: to hold elections within the time frame given by the Supreme Court". In May 2000, the Court had upheld Musharraf's coup as legitimate under the doctrine of state necessity, provided that elections were held within three years of the takeover.
Gen. Musharraf and his handpicked economic managers have hoped that the government, facing financial hemorrhage due to the war on its north-western frontier and a massive military mobilisation by India on its eastern flank, would receive substantial economic benefits in return for supporting the US. While the precise nature of the bailout that the Bush administration is offering is not clear, the general is not doing too badly. More International Monetary Fund loans are on the way; Washington has removed sanctions that were imposed after Pakistan followed India with its test of nuclear weapons in 1998; and also lifted were the so-called democracy sanctions put in place after the military coup under Section 508 of the US Foreign Operations Appropriations Act. Gen. Musharraf's latest pilgrimage to Washington has fetched his regime debt relief to the tune of a billion US dollars, in addition to USD 100 million promised for education and USD 142 million in increased market access for Pakistani textile products.
Soon after, the 11 September attacks put Pakistan squarely in the frontline of the US-led 'war on terror'. General Musharraf allied himself closely with the anti-terrorist coalition that the United States was building, thereby securing international acceptance for his bloodless putsch of October 1999 against the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Much to his delight, even token international pressure for a return to civilian rule rapidly faded. 'Democratic' leaders from the United States and Europe descended on Islamabad to pay him homage for siding with the civilised world against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.