That last move was a mistake. Far from remaining a minor, fringe party, the mullahs of the MMA hit a chord with the Pakistani electorate by pushing an anti-American line and by being united for the first time, catapulting themselves from their pair of seats to 50. The election results were a bombshell that “shocked and upset” Musharraf, according to a senior Pakistani official. “He doesn’t know what hit him,” adds a Western diplomat in Islamabad. Musharraf claims to be uninterested in the newly elected politicians’ maneuverings to form a new government. But behind the scenes he and his top aides are now working overtime on damage control.
The president’s top lieutenants are already meeting secretly in safe houses with political leaders of the major parties, including the MMA, in an attempt to engineer a new government that Musharraf can live with. Above all, Musharraf would like to prevent the MMA and Bhutto’s anti-military Pakistan People’s Party from teaming up, leaving his PML-Q out in the cold. A senior Pakistani official says Musharraf and the military have concluded, “It’s better to have the mullahs inside rather than outside the tent.” Musharraf’s cabinet recently approved a secret plan to foster a coalition government between the pro-Musharraf PML-Q, which won the most seats in the 342-member Parliament, and the MMA.
If they seal the deal, they’ll certainly have a lot to disagree about. The mullahs want to send the small number of U.S. soldiers and FBI agents in Pakistan packing, as well as end the joint hunt for Taliban and Qaeda remnants. They wish to overturn the constitutional amendments that give Musharraf supremacy over Parliament and they reject his economic reforms, which they call “foreign dictated.” In the lead-up to the elections, MMA candidates charged that the United States was dictating Pakistan’s foreign- and domestic-security policy, calling Musharraf an American “stooge.” More broadly, these fundamentalist politicians object to most of the cultural life of Musharraf’s secular state.
Despite these differences, though, the mullahs may be Musharraf’s best allies right now. A vociferous opposition comprising the outspoken mullahs and the PPP could devastate the new PML-Q government. If the PML-Q tries to lead by patching together scores of small parties with only one or two representatives apiece, the new government’s majority will be razor thin and unstable. Nor is a coalition between the PML-Q and Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party in the cards. A major thrust of his pre-election moves was to banish Bhutto from Pakistani politics. Musharraf simply won’t stand for giving her any influence in the new regime. All of which makes the MMA the linchpin of any likely coalition. “The MMA is now in the driver’s seat,” says Fakhar Imam, a former government minister.
Musharraf is hoping that the power, perks and privileges of office will entice the mullahs to moderate their hard-line Islamist ways. “Musharraf hopes that if the goodies are spread around, he can co-opt them,” says a senior Pakistani official. Some may be for sale. Maulana Fazlur Rahman, an MMA leader, earned the nickname “Maulana Diesel” because of the fuel contracts he was widely believed to have accepted from Benazir’s government in return for his political cooperation. And Musharraf’s ploy of quietly wooing the mullahs may already be tempering their ambitions. So far they don’t seem to be demanding too much, too soon. Even crucial foreign-policy matters, such as the question of the presence of U.S. troops on Pakistani soil, seem to be negotiable. “Our position on the [foreign policy] issue is strong but not without flexibility,” the MMA’s Qazi Hussain Ahmed told NEWSWEEK.
But some disagreements probably can’t be finessed. “From day one there will be problems in Parliament,” predicts Imam, a former parliamentary speaker. “The mullahs, and others, will challenge the president’s legitimacy and the legality of the amendments that keep him in power.” And their long-term agenda is clearly the Islamization of Pakistan. In North-West Frontier province, where the MMA won an outright majority in October’s local elections, provincial officials are already acting on the mullahs’ fundamentalist beliefs. Police have begun removing “vulgar” videos from video-rental shops and theater owners are taking down provocative advertisements of Hollywood films. At the national level Pakistan television has begun broadcasting Muslim calls to prayer five times a day instead of just once.
Senior Pakistani officials also fear that the MMA’s provincial control could create a “benign environment” for Taliban and Qaeda fighters who are operating in the remote mountains of the northwest. The mullahs’ provincial administrations won’t be able to stop Pakistani and U.S. patrols, but they can quietly encourage local officials and sympathetic tribesmen to shelter the “Islamic warriors.” Some senior officials even fear that the region could become a rear area for Taliban actions against Hamid Karzai’s Afghan government across the border. “MMA control of the two border provinces is a major setback to U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and the survival of the Karzai government,” says a senior Pakistani official.
By trying to micromanage the national and provincial elections Musharraf may have unleashed forces that could eventually force him from power. “Musharraf is acting like he’s still in control,” says Imam. “But he may have engineered himself out of existence.” He may temporarily regain the advantage by roping the mullahs into a coalition, says the Western diplomat, but “Musharraf is losing control of the game.”
