A dream deferred in Pakistan

Listening to US President George W. Bush's Inaugural Address on January 20, 2005, people around the world who aspire to democracy, social change, political reform, and human rights heard a remarkable statement of foreign policy for the world's oldest democracy and sole superpower: "We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom which is eternally right. America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies."

Yet, since then, the Bush Doctrine has been selectively applied. The Bush Doctrine, making democracy and human rights the centrepiece of US foreign policy, is waved at countries like Burma and Syria, but hardly applied to political and religious repression amongst US allies. And to me most personally and painfully democracy has been deferred in Pakistan by the United States in the face of the military dictatorship of General Pervez Musharraf. There, the President could be making the same mistake as his predecessors did. The question is: Will America pay the same price in Pakistan that it's now paying in those other hotspots? Historically, the United States often chose to ally with authoritarian regimes out of a perceived "strategic interest". The result, though, was often myopia. America supported the Shah of Iran's regime without pressing for the fundamental reforms that could have legitimised his rule. That gave the United States cheap oil in the short term; in the long term, it gave the US the Ayatollah Khomeini, whose followers are still at loggerheads with Washington.

Similarly, in my country, the "myops" of the 1980s embraced the brutal dictatorship of General Zia ul Haq, indifferent to or ignorant of the consequences.

The "myops" also failed to nurture moderation and democratic values within the Afghan coalition fighting the Soviets, choosing instead to arm, train, empower and enrich the most anti-democratic elements of the mujahideen ostensibly because they were the most accomplished fighters. This tragic miscalculation in the 1980s led directly to the Taliban in the 1990s and, eventually, to Al Qaida on September 11, 2001.

Now, Washington could be making the same mistake in Pakistan. The "war" has changed, but the modus operandi remains the same. An authoritarian ruler plays the trump card of short-term cooperation in exchange for Western acquiescence to his brutal junta. The consequences may be just as tragic. American support for Musharraf could foment distrust and anger among the nation's masses, from intellectuals in the cities to the illiterate and desperate rural villagers in Sind, Punjab, the Frontier, and Balochistan.

The price is unconscionably high for the dictator's minimalist, sham public support for the war on terror especially since Musharraf allows Al Qaida and the Taliban to roam unencumbered in critical areas of the Pakistani frontier. During my tenure as prime minister, my government partly succeeded in reforming the political madrassas by introducing a modern curriculum of maths, science and computers. The Musharraf regime, by neglecting the social and educational sector, has created conditions that make the political madrassas expand and prosper.

Repression of democratic will

These unreformed madrassas are the breeding grounds for young people's rejection of political moderation and could be the direct consequences of the sustained repression of the popular democratic will the destruction of democratic parties, the repression of the press, the choking of NGOs and labour unions and the denial of basic human rights that is the signature of the Musharraf dictatorship. While Pakistan's recent riots seem to revolve around controversial cartoons that depict the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) in a negative light, Washington should not ignore an important subtext at work. Musharraf bans all political demonstrations except for anti-American and anti-Western demonstrations. Thus, Pakistan's people and political parties used the cartoon incident to vent a broader anger; their protests are an explosion of frustration as much as religious piety.

A nation that marginalised extremists in democratic elections from 1987 to Musharraf's military coup in 1999 is being radicalised by dictatorship. The religious parties never received more than 13 per cent of the vote in national elections, but their support may be growing dramatically today. Just as the Palestinian vote for Hamas was a vote against the status quo, the potential spread of support for religious parties in Pakistan may be a parallel "no vote" a parallel cry for change. What will happen to the Pakistani people's deferred dream of democracy? It is unlikely that it will disappear. The danger is that it could explode into violence and a clerical take over because political moderates were not allowed to function in the system.

- Benazir Bhutto is a former Prime Minister of Pakistan.