The Islamist tide turned, and none too soon

The Islamist politicians who have done so much to make Pakistan the world’s most dangerous nation appear headed for defeat. In 2002, riding anti-American anger after the invasion of Afghanistan, the MMA candidates won an unprecedented 56 seats in the 342-member national assembly, and a power broker role they used in conniving ways to help keep President Pervez Musharraf in power. They also formed a government in the North-West Frontier Province, turning it into a haven for al-Qaeda and other groups who have used the region to launch domestic and international attacks. Now, in the vote, the MMA may win no more than 10 seats, a development that could undermine both Musharraf and, ironically, the terrorists he’s been fighting.

The Islamists have played a double game. Even as they railed against Musharraf’s security alliance with the United States, and his sporadic drives against extremists, they quietly worked with the increasingly unpopular general. The military-mullah alliance goes back to the 1980s, when the military funded Islamist guerrillas fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and survives today. In 2003, MMA votes allowed Musharraf to pass a constitutional amendment to retain simultaneously the posts of president and army chief of staff. But when Musharraf reneged on his side of the deal—that he would later resign his military post—party supporters began defecting in disgust.

Meanwhile, in the tribal areas, radicals began enforcing rigid Islamic rule, bombing music stores, closing girls’ schools. Insurgent attacks multiplied and many Pakistanis blame the mullahs for the chaos. In the provincial legislature, the MMA won 72 of 120 seats in 2002, but may only win 20 this time.

An MMA defeat would also undercut Musharraf’s two-faced claim to the West that he must remain in power as a bulwark against the MMA and the possibility that the mullahs might gain control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. “He will no longer be able to play the mullah card,” says Mohammad Farooq Khan, a prominent NWFP political analyst.