'Lollypop Summit' Puts Gen. Musharraf on the Spot
By Shaheen Sehbai

PAKISTANI General Pervez Musharraf has received enough sugar-free, fat-free lollypop samples from President George Bush to go back home, jumping with joy on his controlled media, to convince confused Pakistanis that he was returning as a conqueror of Camp David and not a man put under greater scrutiny and pressure.

The high-sounding, outwardly confident Musharraf as he may appear on Pakistan TV, must be a very worried and concerned man deep inside because what he has got, along with a lot of patting on his back, is a bagful of tasks to perform, benchmarks to meet, orders to deliver.

In the words of a senior Punjabi diplomat in the Pakistani side, Musharraf has been told in so many words: "Puttar Hunh Sher Bun" (which is the punch line of a dirty joke involving a jungle lion and a domestic donkey, and when
put in decent words means: "Get ready for the real pain").

The bottom-line of the Camp David deal is that Musharraf has to keep his Masters happy, he will be under close scrutiny for almost two years before any of the goodies that have been promised actually start flowing and he will have to behave in terms of nuclear technology and on Kashmir (according to what the Indians want: 100 per cent stop to Cross Border Terrorism). For rewards, basically for now it is a mouthful of promises and more promises.

American officials are very apt at putting the record straight in such matters as they have to keep a domestic audience intelligently informed, a Congress adequately satisfied and a Press reasonably managed. That is exactly what a "Senior Administration Official" (SAO) did on the same day as Musharraf and Bush had their "Lollypop Briefing" at Camp David.

This SAO is normally a very senior person, sometimes the Deputy Secretary or the Under Secretary who is present in the talks, who answers media questions on back ground, which means he or she cannot be named. That briefing did take place on June 24 and took out all the joy and excitement out of Musharraf's claims.

Just for quick reference here is what the SAO said on what the US side expects from Musharraf:

"This is a multi-year program, Congress has to approve it, we have to make sure that it makes sense. That is where -- I'm not using the term, conditionality, but basically you've heard me raise major issues, as I was talking earlier. And for Congress to appropriate the funds -- and, indeed, for the government to seek the funds -- I think we're going to have to be satisfied that Pakistan is indeed working vigorously with us in the war against terrorism, is working vigorously to ensure that there is no onward proliferation and is moving smartly towards democracy...I'm not calling
those conditions, but let's be realistic, three years down the road, if things are going badly in those areas, it's not going to happen. We're not going to request it, Congress won't appropriate it. And that is a bargain that the Pakistanis are entering into with their eyes wide open."

When a journalist pointed out that those kind of "conditions" have been considered, the SAO said: "Yes, and you know -- I mean, any of those would blow apart in assistance programs. So that's the understanding." And the
SAO also made it clear that the assistance would begin in 2005, two years from now after Congress had passed it in the Budget for 2005 presented next March.

When bluntly asked did the US show any concern for the so-called road to democracy in Pakistan that General Musharraf has engineered, the SAO said:
"Well, as I've sort of implied a couple times, the President made it clear that Pakistan's movement towards democracy must continue, that this is really sort of the -- part of the bedrock of our relationship. And President
Musharraf reiterated that he's committed to moving down that road and we expect him to continue to do so."

These are the basic tasks Musharraf has been given by the Bush Administration for whatever he has been promised. Can Musharraf deliver all or most of them? He is not clear and does not know because the way he has been phrasing the issue is confusing. In one of the speeches after meeting President Bush, Musharraf said this regarding democracy in Pakistan:

"There are anti-democratic forces waiting to take advantage of the democratic process to undo reforms and restructuring [that] my government has introduced during the last three years."

What does he mean? He leads the biggest anti-democratic force in the country as a military dictator who came through an army coup against an elected government and introduced fundamental changes in the Constitution using
an intimidated and largely subservient judiciary. So is any one working against his dictatorship to be called an anti-democratic force. This argument is hanging upside down.

What is the US administration expecting in terms of democracy? This is what the SAO had to say: "Obviously, a functioning parliament...But, basically, a functioning democratic system with functioning parliaments and functioning
representation, including down to very low levels."

What Musharraf has succeeded in selling, and Bush people have agreed to buy for the moment, is the topsy-turvy idea that Pakistan has only two choices in terms of its political future --- either the present military dictatorship which supports the US or an out of control fundamentalist Mulla regime which will turn everything in the region on its head and force the US to do in Pakistan what they did in Afghanistan or Iraq.

This concept is totally flawed as Musharraf has conveniently sidelined and ignored the large liberal, secular and modern mass of political spectrum which has won all the elections, including the one Musharraf conducted under
supervision of his secret agencies. This part of the political landscape is exactly what the US should be working with. It is pro-West and both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif have been almost obediently working with Washington.

It is anti-fundamentalism as in all free elections it did not allow the religious right to get more than 2-3 per cent of seats. It wants better ties with India as Nawaz Sharif and Benazir demonstrated by hosting Indian Prime Ministers in Pakistan.

What Musharraf has done is to secretly boost the Mullas, give them all establishment support and props to turn them into a formidable electoral force in Parliament so that he could then present them as a threat to the West and seek concessions. Enough evidence has already surfaced to prove this secret Mulla-Musharraf alliance.

What Washington should now demand from Musharraf in the 24 months before the money starts flowing into Pakistan, should be a serious effort by Musharraf to bring back the mainstream liberal political parties into play,
sidelining the Mullas as these parties form the natural allies of any US administration in the long term. Washington cannot depend for ever on military dictators, or the Mullas as these dictators are presenting them as the only
alternative.