Former President Musharraf, was a favorite target of just about everyone.
Islamists of every stripe (Al Qaeda, the Taliban, the religious parties, and many among the religious elite) hated him because of his attempts to rein in (and stop funding/supporting) militant and terrorist Islamists in his country, his attempt to moderate the practice of Islam through “enlightened moderation”, and his alliance with the United States. He survived numerous attempts on his life and lives under the constant threat of assassination thanks to the call to arms local and internationalist jihadist leaders have made against him, his government, and his army.
[Indians and Afghans hated him for the same reason he distrusted them (and if you don’t know why, trust me: you just have to accept it as a given).]
U.S. pundits, politicians, and bureaucrats hated him because of his a-democratic modus operandi and because he was not as successful as they would like in his prosecution of militant Islam (which most assumed to be due to a lack of will rather than a lack of ability).
I have written elsewhere about the inconsistency among some in saying 1) that our administration should use diplomatic rather than military leverage and purse alliances whenever possible and 2) that we should not be working with an imperfect and somewhat ineffective Musharraf regime (a few even go so far as to suggest that we invade/attack targets in Pakistan and do all the work ourselves).
Now let me take the critique one step further to include even more of Musharraf’s critics.
We will soon miss the days of the Musharraf regime; days when we had an ally who had control over his forces and used them in cooperation with our own; that was willing to sacrifice hundreds of its own soldiers and civilians for our common policy goals; and that got better at COIN every year. Perhaps some of us will even regret that we did not give Musharraf and his regime more credit not just for putting steady pressure on Islamists (and violent pressure vs. Islamist extremists), but for keeping his basket case of a nuclear state intact.
One day, historians may describe how Musharraf was able to gradually rein in and reverse the course of both the army and the ISI. Bureaucracies are notoriously resistant to change and hard to control. Secret ones doubly so. Judging from press reports, Musharraf was not completely successful in turning the ISI from a supporter of offensive jihad to one that worked against it; but the press is full of stories about how bureaucrats within even the most advanced democracies have undermined policies they did not like.
A civilian regime will have even less control over the ISI than Musharraf did. It will be trying to control an ISI whose agents will be pursuing a variety of conflicting agendas. While this was probably true under Musharraf, he had enough levers to keep things heading in the right general direction. If a civilian regime tries to control and constrain the ISI, does anyone doubt that it will either force the regime into the corner it wants (provocation in Kashmir, anyone?), or completely undermine it.
Yes, I think that we will miss our erstwhile ally, despite his many imperfections. Many will applaud the new, more democratic government in Islamabad. But enthusiasm will wane as we find it to be even less effective (because it will have both less will and less capability) than its predecessor.
I hope I am wrong. And I hope that if I am right, that the next military dictator is as willing to sacrifice himself and his countrymen in support of civilization as Musharraf was. I also hope that if I am wrong, that it is not because the remaining Islamists within the ISI have found a sympathetic ear in the new regime.
Based on history, I’d say the new regime has about three years to get it right.
