Religion and politics: A combustible mix

American anti-war activist and author James Carroll says in a recent interview "Religion and politics, religion and military power, are a deadly mix in an age of weapons of mass destruction; and, if the United States of America gets this wrong, there's no reason to think anybody else is going to get it right."

Recently, two seminal developments that have their roots in the politics of religion and military power have set in motion events that look set to decisively alter equations of power at the highest levels in Islamabad and in Delhi. Neither may get it right.

In Pakistan, over the past eight years of military rule, the combustible mix of religion and military power has seen the rise of an explosive brand of Islam ranged against the moderate forces epitomised in the present administration by the country's military ruler. Not unexpectedly, President General Pervez Musharraf is preparing the ground for the bigger battle under the US baton by undertaking a not entirely risk-free gambit - re-election for another five-year term as a civilian president from the sitting assemblies.

In the countdown to that election, he has reshuffled the deck at the very top echelons of the army, seeking to secure his flanks and ensure the men he appoints to top posts in the army and intelligence remain loyal to him rather than any civilian prime minister. Privately, his advisers have sent out reassurances Musharraf will doff his uniform days before the presidential election. But it fails to satisfy some of the Islamist parties in the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) alliance, Imran Khan's vocal if insignificant Tehreek-e-Insaaf and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) still smarting from the treatment meted out to their leader.

Their parliamentarians will quit the assemblies in a show of protest that will rob the presidential re-election of its legitimacy. The gathering storm promises to see unprecedented political unrest if two other elements come into play. One, the powerful Pakistan People's Party led by the charismatic party chairperson Benazir Bhutto whom the administration lured into talks over power sharing in a move that may have had the US playing midwife but was also used by the pro-Musharraf Muslim League faction to discredit her for talking to the military.

Crucial

The role of her parliamentarians is crucial not to Musharraf's re-election, which becomes possible through a simple majority, but to giving the whole exercise the patina of credibility the west craves. The PPP parliamentarians could as easily be asked by Bhutto to quit the assemblies if Musharraf does not keep to his promise to stand down as army chief before the elections. But the question is this - will they abstain, if he does? While this was Bhutto's earlier position as talks were ongoing, it may no longer be the case with the deal running aground.

The second player in this game is the judiciary which has clearly backed off from a head-on confrontation with the president as was evident by its refusal to take on the Nawaz Sharif's deportation case immediately or that of the Election Commission's role in amending the constitution to allow Musharraf to stand for election as president. The lawyers who want to reignite the electric street agitation which reinstated their notional leader, the sacked Chief Justice must have noted the comments made by Supreme Court Justice Javed Iqbal. He had cautioned that it was not the job of the judiciary but the political class to elect or not elect the president, whom they had placed in that position in the first place.

Events will come to a head this week as the Supreme Court passes judgement on the six petitions filed on these issues. This is the first time that any military chief in Pakistan has moved even marginally out of his comfort zone. But it is in keeping with Musharraf, a known risk taker who as Michael Krepon of the Stimson Centre said "deserves our lasting respect" for having shifted Pakistan's traditional antagonistic position on Kashmir. And for that matter Siachen.

Despite the official Pakistan unease over India throwing open the inhospitable glacier to trekking recently, there are more than enough indicators that this is the first step in creating the "zone of peace" that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh envisioned whereby, much like the effort to blur the lines of sovereignty in Kashmir, this is the preferred formula for peace.

But peace with India may be all too elusive. Singh may believe its better to be dead than red but by throwing down the gauntlet to his Communist allies, he raised the stakes on the political viability of his government beyond February 2008. The division in the ranks of the atheist reds are small comfort but a much more significant threat is posed by the looming confrontation between a southern ally, Dravidian leader Muthuvel Karunanidhi and the Congress party's old foe, the Bharatiya Janata Party who have been handed the emotive issue of Hindu icon Ram on a platter. While the military's mix with politics and religion has perennially bedeviled Pakistan, it's the mix of religion into the Indian polity that could undo the Singh government in the weeks to come.

Neena Gopal is an analyst on Asia.