The state of Pakistani democracy

For the first time that I can remember, Pakistan had a bloodless, peaceful, democratic transition of power. Over the weekend, a democratically elected government handed over power to a different, democratically elected government. After years of military coups and otherwise decidedly undemocratic governance in Pakistan, this is a very welcome step in the right direction. However, there are still massive concerns about the stability of the country, and how it will interact with the United States in upcoming years.

The first question to look at is: Why do we care about the state of Pakistan?

Well, one reason is the War on Terror. It is on the border of Afghanistan, and for years has been accused of harboring and even training Taliban soldiers to fight against the United States. The inability (or unwillingness) of Pakistan to secure it’s border with Afghanistan makes it virtually impossible to achieve a significant victory against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Also, recall the Osama Bin Laden debacle. Many people believe that Bin Laden had been given more or less asylum by the Pakistani government before the United States killed him in Pakistan. This has lead to a good deal of mistrust on both sides, as the US did not warn the Pakistanis that they were going in to Pakistan to kill Bin Laden until after the fact.

Before moving on, I want to explain why it is that Pakistan is so willing to tolerate the presence of groups such as the Taliban in their country. Pakistan’s number one security concern has always been India, and will probably always be India. As a result, that is where most of the military focus of the country goes. Additionally, with Pakistan being an Islamic country, they would rather see a group such as the Taliban in control of Afghanistan than a government sympathetic to India.

The other major reason we care about Pakistan and it’s stability is the fact that it has nuclear weapons. If Pakistan were to go into a state of chaos, and groups such as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda that are known to have a presence in the country were to potentially get access to nuclear weapons… Well that would be a major problem.

So what exactly happened in the election over the weekend?

To start off, the Pakistani Taliban threatened to use suicide bombers at the polls to attempt to dissuade people from voting. In spite of that, turnout for the election was historically high, at around 60% (which is higher than the US had in the 2012 Presidential election).

One of the reasons for that was military involvement. The military put up a staunch front during the election, with a massive presence across the country at polling places. This is a fundamentally different approach for the Pakistani military. The elected Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, had been removed from power via a military coup twice before, and the military has not been afraid to take steps such as that in the past. However, the military appears to have lost its appetite for ruling directly, and is content to simply have influence in the government.

Make no mistake, the Pakistani military is still an influential group, especially on domestic security and foreign affairs issues; but they are longer the be all end all of politics in the country. This is a good sign for the country.

Prime Minister elect Nawaz Sharif is a very interesting persona. During the campaign, he spent a good deal of time bashing on the United States, as there is still a good deal of anti-American sentiment within Pakistan. However, in his first public comments about the US after being elected, he was much more cautious, saying that both sides had to listen to one another.

One of the things that will be watched closely under Sharif is what changes are made with regard to drone policy. He stated that:

Drones indeed are challenging our sovereignty. I think this is a very serious issue, and our concerns must be understood properly. (Star Tribune, May 14th 2013)

However, one of the things to keep in mind is that the Pakistani government has a long history of rebuking US drone attacks in public, but allowing them to occur in private. If Sharif actually takes action against American drone attacks in Pakistan, then there will be a lot more interesting policy decisions to be made down the road – especially with aid.