The International Atomic Energy Agency’s governing board today adopted a resolution that “deplores” Iran’s lack of full cooperation with the agency, just as new evidence emerged that Iran could be concealing additional nuclear activities, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, June 17). Iran was censured in the resolution, in which the agency says it cautioned that “Iran’s cooperation has not been as full, timely and proactive as it should have been.” The resolution does not impose any deadlines for improved transparency, demanding only that Tehran deal with outstanding issues “within the next few months.” It also does not contain a “trigger mechanism,” by which Iran’s case could be referred to the U.N. Security Council for violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a clause long sought by the United States. Just as the agency was deciding on final changes to the wording of the resolution last night, diplomats said the IAEA was looking into emerging evidence that Iran was razing parts of a restricted area next to a military complex in a Tehran suburb, according to the AP. Satellite photos indicated that buildings had been leveled and topsoil had been stripped at Lavizan Shiyan, one diplomat said. Iran’s chief delegate at the IAEA board meeting denied Iran was concealing evidence of wrongdoing and said the agency was welcome to inspect the site. “There is nothing there,” said Hossein Mousavian. The United States accused Iran of a cover-up. Iran’s deception, “has gone to the extent of bulldozing entire sites to prevent the IAEA from discovering evidence of its nuclear weapons program,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher (Associated Press/CBC News, June 18). The United States also said it still wanted Iran reported to the U.N. Security Council for “noncompliance,” stating that its nuclear activities were a “threat to international peace,” AFP reported. The United States “continues to believe that Iran’s documented noncompliance should be reported to the U.N. Security Council and that its nuclear program presents a threat to international peace and security,” said U.S. Ambassador to the IAEA Kenneth Brill. Though the resolution did not refer the matter to the Security Council, Brill said the agency board took a positive step today, demonstrating that the agency rejected “Iran’s continuing tactics of delay, denial and deception.” Maintaining pressure on Iran was essential, he said, because “every passing day” allowed Iran to come “closer to producing the enriched uranium needed for nuclear bombs.” He added he was disappointed that the agency did not set a deadline for concluding its now 15-month-long probe (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, June 18). Meanwhile, Iran’s deputy energy minister yesterday called for his country to suspend its participation in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in response to the IAEA resolution, AFP reported. “I would propose that Iran’s adhesion to the NPT be suspended for as long as the problems created for Iran in the IAEA are not resolved,” said Reza Amrollahi. “We should also suspend the process of adopting the Additional Protocol [to Iran’s nuclear safeguards agreement with the agency] while these problems persist,” he added (Agence France-Presse/Borneo Bulletin, June 18). On Wednesday, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said Tehran was no long obligated by any “moral commitment” to continue its suspension of uranium enrichment, the Christian Science Monitor reported (Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor, June 18).
By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The United States should develop a new strategy based on the principle of “universal compliance” to help strengthen the international nuclear nonproliferation regime, according to a draft report released yesterday by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (see GSN, June 10). While praising the progress made in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons since the establishment of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty regime in the late 1960s, the report also notes several incidents that occurred within the past 10 years that have “cast a shadow” over nonproliferation efforts. Such incidents include Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests in 1998, the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States and last year’s disclosure of an international nuclear smuggling network orchestrated by top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. These incidents “showed that despite major nonproliferation successes, the spread and potential use of nuclear weapons remains all too real. These and other events showed that much more needs to be done to reduce the possibility of nuclear war,” says the report. To help improve the nuclear nonproliferation regime, the report proposes a new strategy of “universal compliance,” intended to address both countries that have joined the NPT and those that have not. Such a strategy would based on five “obligations,” according to the report, including the prevention of new nuclear weapons states, the securing of all fissile materials, the prevention of illicit nuclear technology transfers, the devaluation of nuclear weapons and a commitment to resolving regional conflicts that prompt some countries to seek weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear nonproliferation experts have praised the report. “The Carnegie scholars have made an important contribution to the debate on strengthening the nuclear nonproliferation regime,” Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said today. The “Three-State Problem”According to the report, the universal compliance strategy would be especially useful in confronting the nuclear weapons-related challenges posed by India, Israel and Pakistan, which have never signed the NPT and therefore retain a “right” to possess nuclear weapons. Under the strategy, the report says, the United States would no longer encourage the three countries to join the NPT as non-nuclear states, and would instead work to persuade them to accept the same nonproliferation obligations as those held by the NPT members recognized as nuclear weapons states — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. “In return for explicitly shouldering the obligations of responsible international citizenship, India, Pakistan and Israel would gain relief from unproductive, ritualistic hectoring or possible coercion to eliminate their nuclear arsenals before others do,” the report says. The new strategy also envisions, though, that the United States and other countries would agree to continue to not provide India, Israel and Pakistan with nuclear reactors; as pursuant to the guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a multilateral export control regime that governs nuclear-related trade, which prevent the transfer of nuclear technology to countries that possess nuclear facilities not under IAEA safeguards. Such a restriction would continue to be needed, the report says, to reward other countries for complying with their obligations to not obtain nuclear weapons. Matthew Bunn of Harvard University’s Project on Managing the Atom yesterday praised the report for recognizing the “reality” that India, Israel and Pakistan are not likely to soon dismantle their nuclear arsenals, and that there is a need to better integrate them into the nuclear nonproliferation regime. Kimball said today, though, that the “de facto” recognition of India, Israel and Pakistan as nuclear weapons-states, as suggested by the report, came close to outright legal recognition, which would be “counterproductive.” Additional MeasuresThe Carnegie report also proposes a number of additional measures to help fulfill the obligations envisioned by the universal compliance strategy, some of which have been proposed or implemented by the Bush administration. For example, to prevent the development of new nuclear weapons states, the report calls for no new countries to develop uranium enrichment and/or plutonium reprocessing capabilities, which can be used to both produce fuel for civilian nuclear facilities and weapon-grade materials. In exchange, countries that abide by International Atomic Energy Agency requirements should have access to fuel for civilian nuclear facilities on a “guaranteed” and cost-effective basis, the report says. Earlier this year, U.S. President George W. Bush proposed a ban on exports of enrichment and reprocessing technologies to countries that do not already possess such capabilities (see GSN, Feb. 12). Members of the Group of Eight global economic powers agreed during a summit held last week to a one-year freeze on new initiatives to export enrichment and reprocessing capabilities and to use that time to develop new guidelines for such transfers (see GSN, June 10). The Carnegie report also proposes urges the U.N. Security Council to approve a new resolution that would hold countries that withdraw from the NPT responsible for any violations committed while still a treaty member and that would bar countries that leave the treaty from legally using any nuclear technologies acquired internationally before their withdrawal. In addition, countries should agree to end all nuclear-related cooperation with any country not found by the IAEA to be in full compliance with nuclear nonproliferation obligations, the report says. To help prevent terrorists and rogue states seeking nuclear weapons from obtaining the necessary fissile materials, the report proposes the creation of a “contact group,” consisting of countries that possess nuclear weapons or fissile material stockpiles, that would establish security standards for nuclear materials and aid countries in meeting such standards. The United States should also conduct what the Carnegie experts labeled as a “Global Cleanout” to secure and remove nuclear materials from vulnerable sites around the world, according to the report. Late last month, the U.S. Energy Department announced the launch of the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, which calls for working with Russia to repatriate all Russian-origin fresh highly enriched uranium fuel by the end of 2005 and accelerate and complete the return of all Russian-origin spent fuel by 2010 (see GSN, May 26). In addition, the United States also plans to accelerate efforts to recover U.S.-origin research reactor spent fuel within a decade (see GSN, May 27). Citing the need to prevent illicit transfers of nuclear technologies, such as those that occurred through the A.Q. Khan network, the report proposes creating an “obligatory” system to declare all transfers of controlled nuclear technology, based on the information exchanges between the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the IAEA. Under such a system, the report says, undeclared exports would be “illegal on their face,” while declared transfers would be subject to national export control systems. The report also calls for the expansion of the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative, a multilateral effort to interdict WMD-related cargo shipments, to cover international waterways as well as those subject to national jurisdiction. The report includes a number of recommendations to help resolve regional conflicts that prompt countries to seek weapons of mass destruction, and might ultimately lead to the use of such weapons. For example, the report calls for creating a Middle East WMD-free zone and for encouraging Israel to join the Biological and Chemical Weapons Conventions and to adopt a moratorium on plutonium production. In South Asia, the report calls for increased efforts to persuade India and Pakistan to implement nuclear risk reduction measures (see related GSN story, today), as well as increased efforts to resolve the two rivals’ long-standing dispute over the Kashmir region, which has threatened previously to become a military flashpoint. The report also calls on countries to attach a diminished importance to nuclear weapons in their national security policies. As an example, the report calls on the United States to disavow the creation of new nuclear weapons, counter to White House plans to research new low-yield “bunker-busting” warheads (see GSN, June 16); to reaffirm the nuclear test ban moratorium and to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. In addition, the United States should develop a “detailed road map” of the steps needed to “verifiably eliminate” its nuclear weapons stockpile as part of its obligation under the NPT to work toward nuclear disarmament, and should use the NPT Review Conference scheduled to be held next year to call on other countries to do the same, the report says (see GSN, May 10). “By defining the level of transparency and accounting accuracy necessary to verify elimination of all nuclear weapons, this process would begin to illuminate whether total disarmament is actually feasible,” the report says.
By Julie Kosterlitz
National Journal WASHINGTON — Pakistan is a riddle wrapped inside a mystery, in a volatile region, atop a nuclear stockpile. Either it is a staunch and indispensable ally against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Or, it is rife from top to bottom with terrorist sympathizers who continue to protect Islamic extremists. Either it is pursuing a rigorous crackdown on a huge underground nuclear weapons network run by a renegade nuclear scientist. Or, it is withholding information about a deadly serious nuclear proliferation scheme in which its top leaders are implicated. Its president, Chief of Army Staff Pervez Musharraf, is either a critical bulwark against Muslim extremists and economic chaos. Or, he is heightening the nation’s political and economic instability by further undermining democratic institutions and the rule of law. It would be nice to know which of these portrayals is accurate, because since 9/11, the United States has cast its lot with the current leader of Pakistan, in a bid to eradicate Osama bin Laden and his Taliban hosts from Afghanistan and its neighbors. This effort has required high-stakes triage among three foreign-policy goals — all of which the Bush administration has billed as vital to American and global security. Which matters most: rounding up and killing terrorists, getting a grip on the spread of nuclear weapons, or promoting democracy? If you picked one of the first two, you have some high-level company. The Bush administration has come down squarely on the side of rounding up terrorists, at the apparent expense of the other two. Democratic challenger John Kerry says he would put keeping nuclear weapons out of the reach of radical Islamists in Pakistan at the top of his priority list, with the hunt for al-Qaeda a close second. Dead last in either calculus comes the promotion of democracy, viewed by some Americans — and even by many Pakistanis — as a nicety for calmer times. Lower-level Bush administration officials give lip service to the issue, but the silence at the top is deafening. And Kerry acknowledged to the Washington Post that although Musharraf is “a strong man to a degree” who promised “elections that have not occurred,” the senator didn’t see promoting democracy there as something that is going to make America immediately safer. “It is a long-term goal.” Yet it is precisely this third priority that many U.S. foreign-policy experts and many Pakistani intellectuals say America ignores at its own, and Pakistan’s, peril. Husain Haqqani, a Pakistani columnist and an aspiring politician who has also advised most of Pakistan’s recent elected prime ministers, believes that the United States is repeating old mistakes that have come back to haunt it. “Historically, the Pakistan military has always been consolidated in its power through American economic and military assistance,” he says. Haqqani is not naive about the shortcomings of his country’s earlier attempts at democracy. He was arrested in 1999 and tortured at the behest of the democratically elected but increasingly autocratic Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The arrest came as part of a broader press crackdown following a spate of news stories critical of the Sharif government. (Haqqani has also been threatened and harassed by the Musharraf government, and he has spent the past two years living in the United States as a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.) “Sometimes a nation elects bad leaders,” he says simply, noting a few examples from American history. “It should also get to vote them out.” Why should the United States care? Because, Haqqani says, it risks ending up “with a semi-ally that has tremendous structural flaws.” Those flaws, he argues, predispose Pakistan to make “wrong policy decisions with major implications for global security.” And, he adds pointedly, “Pakistan always goes to war under military regimes.” If that line of argument has a familiar ring, it may be because it echoes one of the most basic tenets of the Bush Doctrine. As President Bush put it in a February speech arguing for the need for democracy in the Middle East, “We seek the advance of democracy for the most practical of reasons: because democracies do not support terrorists or threaten the world with weapons of mass murder.” Pre-9/11If the United States truly meant to wage a war on global terrorism after Sept. 11, 2001, it should have focused on Pakistan instead of Iraq. So argues Richard Clarke, a former national security analyst and adviser under seven presidents, who a few months ago famously went public with his brief against the Bush administration’s foreign policy in a book titled Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror. “Once an example of an Islamic democracy with a high-tech future, Pakistan could become what bin Laden dreams of: an Islamic nation controlled by radicals, with popular support for fundamentalism and terrorism, armed with nuclear weapons,” Clarke wrote. And he is not alone in his belief. How Pakistan failed to fulfill the dream of its founder, Muhammed Ali Jinnah, as a shining homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims, and became an impoverished nation beset by sectarian violence, periodic military coups, and volatile relations with neighboring India is a long and tangled story. Much of it owes to the region’s precolonial as well as its colonial history. But how Pakistan — which America had traditionally, if opportunistically, counted as an ally — came to pose such a clear and present danger to the United States owes more to recent history. U.S.-Pakistani relations had perhaps reached a zenith during the 1980s, when Washington enlisted Pakistan to help fight a proxy war to oust the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. The United States funneled money, materiel, and advisers through the military dictatorship of Gen. Zia al-Haq to a growing irregular army of Muslim true believers from near and far. Pakistan also became home to thousands of Afghan refugees. But in the 1990s, after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the relationship declined — even as Pakistan was entering a decade of democratic rule. The United States directed its attentions and aid elsewhere, while Pakistan’s economy deteriorated and the military continued to sponsor Muslim militant groups to advance its own regional interests in Afghanistan and Kashmir. By the end of the 1990s, ties grew increasingly strained by Pakistan’s support for the Taliban government in Afghanistan, its 1998 testing of a nuclear device, its 1999 incursion into Indian-controlled Kashmir, and the army’s ouster of the elected government later that year. Sept. 11 did, of course, refocus the United States’ attention on Pakistan, although the Bush administration says it had already been approaching Pakistan about an array of dangers in the region. Hell-bent on putting both Al Qaeda and the Taliban out of business in Afghanistan, the United States knew it could not proceed without Pakistan’s assistance. U.S. and Pakistani officials praise Musharraf’s considerable courage in allowing the United States to use its bases and air space to attack Al Qaeda. But it’s also clear that a wrathful United States left him little choice. According to Bob Woodward’s Bush at War, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage directed a visiting Pakistani official to tell Musharraf: “Pakistan faces a stark choice. Either it is with us, or it is not. This is a black-and-white with no gray.” Secretary of State Colin Powell followed up with slightly more-diplomatic phraseology in a phone call to Musharraf himself. “Speaking candidly, the American people would not understand if Pakistan was not in this fight with the United States,” Woodward quotes Powell as having told Musharraf, who readily agreed to Powell’s demands. Post-9/11Since 9/11, both sides characterize the current U.S.-Pakistani relationship as one of continuing mutual benefit. Beyond its initial help in the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan rounded up some key Qaeda operatives, among them Ramzi bin al-Shib and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and it continues to share intelligence with the United States. In recent months, Pakistan has sent its military into its largely lawless, tribal Northwest Frontier Province to hunt for more Qaeda members and to crack down on the tribal leaders who harbor them. Musharraf’s cooperation has entailed risks. Pakistani troops have sustained significant casualties. And sending the army to fight countrymen and fellow Muslims has not been popular with either group. On the second anniversary of 9/11, bin Laden’s top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, publicly urged Muslims to go after Musharraf, calling him a “traitor who sold out the blood of the Muslims in Afghanistan.” Musharraf has already been the target of at least two assassination attempts that are presumed to be in retaliation for his cooperation with the United States. Washington has been quick to reward Musharraf for his help. Most of the myriad sanctions slapped on Pakistan following its nuclear tests and the military coup have now been waived. For Pakistan, the Bush administration has requested one of the most generous foreign-aid packages seen anywhere: $3 billion over a five-year period, in addition to $1.5 billion in debt forgiveness, which would cut Pakistan’s debt to the United States in half. Since 9/11, Bush has hosted Musharraf twice: at the White House in 2002 and at Camp David in 2003. The Bush administration has also taken pains not to push Musharraf when it fears doing so might undermine him politically. The most striking instance of this came earlier this year when he pardoned his top nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan, on the heels of revelations that Khan had peddled the military’s nuclear technology to Libya, Iran, and North Korea, the latter two on Bush’s storied “axis of evil” list. Pakistan has refused to make Khan available for questioning by the United States or the International Atomic Energy Agency. It has instead promised to share the fruits of its own inquiries. Not only has the Bush administration acquiesced; it continues to publicly echo Musharraf’s rationale — that tougher action against Khan was politically impossible, given his hero status as the father of Pakistan’s, and the Muslim world’s, first nuclear bomb. Then, on a swing through South Asia in mid-March, Powell announced the administration’s intent to designate Pakistan as a “major non-NATO ally” — a designation that allows it to buy various kinds of military gear and to conduct joint military research and development programs with the United States. This designation was quite to the consternation of Indian leaders, who had been given no inkling of the impending announcement when they hosted Powell just days before. Top administration officials continue to publicly heap praise on Musharraf. In a February congressional hearing, CIA Director George Tenet called him “a courageous and indispensable ally who has become the target of assassins for the help he’s given us.” In another, Armitage described him as “the right man in the right place at the right time.” Indeed, since 9/11, Musharraf’s global stature has risen, and not merely for his role in the war on terror. Western leaders often cite his efforts to turn back the rising tide of Muslim extremism in Pakistan. He has purged several high-ranking military leaders believed to have extremist ties, and he has proposed to try to mainstream the many thousands of religious schools, known as madrassas, that have sprung up in the absence of a functioning Pakistani state education system. Graduates of madrassas are prime candidates to join the extremist Islamic movement. Musharraf also wins praise from the Bush administration for his willingness to engage in discussions with India, after yet another confrontation over Kashmir escalated uncomfortably close to a nuclear war last year. The United States clearly hopes that the talks will eventually resolve that endless and debilitating struggle, allowing for strengthened economic and political ties between the two nations. Musharraf, when he was chief of army staff under Prime Minister Sharif, was widely considered to be the instigator of Pakistan’s disastrous incursion into Indian-held parts of Kashmir in 1999. But even this dubious distinction seems to count in his favor these days. Who better than an acknowledged hard-liner on Kashmir to strike a credible deal with India? Musharraf’s economic reforms have impressed the international financial community. Under his tenure, after a decade of anemia, when GDP growth averaged just more than 3 percent, the country has returned to the robust growth levels of the 1980s, approaching 6 percent. Pakistan’s nearly crippling foreign debt is coming under control. Musharraf is even getting credit in certain quarters for moving his nation back toward democracy. He has made at least some gestures toward fulfilling his mid-2000 promise to abide by a Pakistani Supreme Court ruling that he must hand over power to civilian rule within three years. Local elections in 2001 were followed by what the United States deemed “relatively free and orderly” National Assembly elections in 2002. In May, the Commonwealth of Nations — a group composed of Britain and many of its former colonies — voted to readmit Pakistan, which had been suspended in the wake of the 1999 coup. The commonwealth cited Pakistan’s “progress made in restoring democracy and rebuilding democratic institutions.” An Equivocal RecordBelow the surface, however, large and nagging questions remain about the United States’ relationship with Musharraf, and about the direction he’s taking Pakistan. Some of those questions concern the core of the relationship: the war on terrorism. Periodic grumbling has been heard in the United States that for all the big to-do accompanying the Pakistani army’s dispatch to the border region with Afghanistan, nothing much has been accomplished. Despite Musharraf’s premature claim that the army had a “high-value target” in its sights, no high-profile foreign fighters — including that most sought-after foreign fighter, Osama bin Laden — were captured. In April, local tribal militants who’d been nabbed in the border area with great fanfare were pardoned in return for a pledge to remain peaceful and to register foreign militants, but that deal now appears to be breaking down. Also in April, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, broke with the prevailing administration line when he suggested, in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, that Pakistan was not being sufficiently aggressive. America, he warned, couldn’t allow “terrorist sanctuaries” in Pakistan to “fester indefinitely,” and U.S. officials had told Pakistan’s leadership that “either they must solve this problem or we will do it for ourselves.” The speech drew angry protests from Musharraf. Secretary Powell, meanwhile, has pronounced himself satisfied with the information Pakistan is providing about Khan’s nuclear endeavors, with its efforts to uproot his nuclear black market, and with its attempts to put in place controls to prevent future scandals. But some experts are dubious. Pakistan’s cooperation “is likely to be limited,” Gaurav Kampani of the Monterey Institute of International Studies wrote recently in the Webzine Erudition Online. “Islamabad’s own nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs have profited from such trade and remain dependent on it.” And Washington’s low-key reaction to the Khan episode, and to earlier nuclear transgressions, could hurt future deterrence. Already, in late 2002, U.S. intelligence turned up evidence that Pakistan, in exchange for North Korean-made ballistic missile parts, had been giving Pyongyang blueprints for gas centrifuges to use in its nuclear weapons program. Powell downplayed the incident. Musharraf, Powell told reporters at the time, had given Powell “four hundred percent assurance that there is no such interchange taking place now.” The secretary added, “We didn’t talk about the past.” Teresita Schaffer, director of the South Asia program at CSIS, said that against this background of twice “letting bygones be bygones,” Pakistan is unlikely to fear repercussions from its future nuclear transgressions. Proposing to give Pakistan the status of major non-NATO ally only compounds the problem, argues Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., a member of the congressional India caucus. He disputes the administration’s contention that the move is mainly symbolic, saying that it allows Pakistan to purchase “dual-use” technology that has nuclear applications. “If they can’t keep control of their own technology, how can they keep control of ours?” he asks. He has introduced legislation to require that before granting major-non-NATO-ally status to any nation, an administration must certify that the nation getting the designation is a democracy and that it abides by international nonproliferation agreements. Pakistan’s relations with India are always unpredictable, and Musharraf’s intentions toward India remain obscure. Even before the Congress Party’s upset victory in India’s May elections cast greater uncertainty on bilateral talks, Musharraf had been sending mixed signals. His willingness and his ability to stop incursions by jihadists into Indian-held parts of Kashmir come into question with each new incident and will face a new test this month, now that the snows that provide a natural restraint in the Kashmiri passes are melting. Although he has spoken eloquently on the need to end the conflict in order to ensure regional stability and growth, Musharraf has also repeatedly rejected India’s preferred approach to negotiations: making progress on less-contentious issues first, and saving the incendiary Kashmir question for later. Kashmir, he insists — perhaps to placate his own hard-liners — must come first. “I could see the Indians not making concessions, and Musharraf calling off the talks, and we could have another crisis in the fall,” said Stephen Cohen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of an upcoming book on Pakistan. On the economic front, Musharraf’s macroeconomic miracle — part effort and part luck — can’t be sustained without a pickup in foreign investment, which is thus far lacking. Despite growth and a large influx of aid, shockingly high poverty rates of around 33 percent persist, worrying even his boosters in the international lending agencies. Meanwhile, many of Musharraf’s ambitious social and institutional reform goals — including reining in the madrassas — remain just that. “He’s talked about reform since day one,” said Brookings’ Cohen. Musharraf, he says, “has undertaken too many changes for anyone to tackle and is not good at implementing what needs to be done.” Marvin Weinbaum, a former analyst in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and now a scholar-in-residence at the Middle East Institute, says that Musharraf “has a marvelous capacity [for knowing] all his constituencies and what he has to do to keep them all minimally satisfied. He’ll do whatever is necessary to convince us he’s doing all he can on proliferation, the frontier, the madrassas, and Kashmir. And we’re willing to give him lots of slack on the democracy thing.” Faltering DemocratizationMusharraf is fortunate that Washington gives him a lot of slack, because the “democracy thing” isn’t going so well. Most U.S. observers consider Musharraf’s nods toward democracy as largely meaningless. The commonwealth’s vote, says Weinbaum, “doesn’t mean a hill of beans. [Pakistan’s] prime minister is not an independent actor, and the military is more ensconced than ever.” The 2002 elections for the National Assembly excluded the leaders of the two most popular opposition parties; in fact, those leaders — former Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Sharif — remain in effective exile. Bhutto fled a prison sentence for corruption, and Musharraf’s government struck a deal requiring Sharif to remain in Saudi Arabia for a decade. For nearly a year after the elections, legislative action was deadlocked over Musharraf’s efforts to single-handedly amend the constitution to grant the president the power to, among other things, dissolve the assembly and to appoint military chiefs and provincial governors. Musharraf survived the confrontation by striking a deal with a coalition of Islamic parties, known as the Muttahida Majils-e-Amal, or MMA: The coalition would legitimize his constitutional change and support him in a vote of the nation’s elected leadership (national and provincial legislators) to let him retain the presidency through 2007 if he would agree to resign his post as army chief by the end of 2004. Musharraf won the vote in January, getting nearly 60 percent. Now, however, Musharraf appears to be wavering on his promise to doff his uniform — the symbol and substance of his power, many observers says. And earlier this year, he created a new Pakistani National Security Council — a sort of supraparliamentary body tilted toward the military — that some argue further entrenches the military’s role in government decision-making. Political freedom remains limited: In April, Javed Hashmi, the acting president of Sharif’s Muslim League Party, was sentenced to 23 years in prison for “defaming” the military. Due process and the rule of law are elusive: When Sharif’s brother returned to Pakistan last month, for example, he was intercepted at the airport and immediately flown out of the country — despite a Supreme Court ruling that he had a constitutional right to return home. According to local press accounts, the government barricaded roads, detained more than a thousand members of the Muslim League, kept reporters and spectators away, and blocked cell phone coverage around the airport. The U.S. government isn’t blind to the shortcomings of Musharraf’s government. A recently released State Department report concluded that Pakistan’s human-rights record “remained poor.” It cited some serious abuses by the security forces, “extremely poor” prison conditions, arbitrary arrest and detention, and low credibility of the judiciary. The press is “relatively” free, the State Department said, but journalists practice self-censorship and report “central government intimidation.” Provincial and local governments, meanwhile, “occasionally arrested journalists and closed newspapers.” Freedom of association, religion, and movement were also problematic. Discrimination against religious minorities was widespread, as was abuse of women and children, according to the report. “Honor killings” of women accused of adultery persisted, and “traditional social and legal constraints continued to keep women in a subordinate position in society,” the report said. Realism Trumps IdealismThe same State Department report that details Musharraf’s shortcomings on human rights also highlights U.S. efforts to support what it calls “President Musharraf’s vision of a moderate Islamic democracy.” Those efforts consist mainly of several speeches by the U.S. ambassador to Islamabad, Nancy Powell, and the assistant secretary of State for South Asian affairs, Christina B. Rocca, and a series of small grants to support civil institutions. But the public silence at the top of the U.S. government about democratization in Pakistan has convinced most observers that the Bush administration is keeping its eyes on the prize: the routing of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has argued that engaging Pakistan is a far better tack than applying sanctions on the country or shunning Islamabad, as the two prior administrations did. “Among the difficulties that Musharraf has to overcome in doing some of the pretty amazing things he’s accomplished is that a lot of damage was done to our relationship, over the previous decade of more or less isolating Pakistan,” he said at an April congressional hearing. “We’ve had to work on rebuilding that, and I think with some considerable success.” This triumph of realpolitik toward Pakistan over the pro-democracy, neoconservative idealism Wolfowitz and others want in the Arab world doesn’t seem to trouble the administration and its defenders. “Our No. 1 p | 
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