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States in crisis / Comment

Already a failed state? Pakistan in the aftermath of Bhutto's assassination

06/02/2008 By Marco Mezzera

Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf is performing a delicate balancing act between pressure from the West and the increasing impatience of conservative religious circles in his own country.
 
The evident trend towards authoritarianism that he has embraced since 2006, and that has culminated in the 4 November 2007 declaration of emergency rule, is often regarded as a mere show of force, but it could also be regarded as a last effort to counter and conceal growing weaknesses in the power system. In that respect, the assassination of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chairperson, Benazir Bhutto, might have opened a new chapter in the growing sense of instability that grips the country. It might become the ultimate event to tip the balance against her main political opponent, President Musharraf. Growing numbers of Pakistanis are finally linking to him all the multiple crises that have been affecting their homeland in the recent past.
 
Western countries have meanwhile regarded the Pakistani army and its leader as the only actors able to contain the risk of an expansion of Islamist violence to Pakistan. Support to them has been awarded on condition of their commitment to cooperate in the war on terror and to ensure that the tribal areas bordering with Afghanistan would not become safe havens for the Taliban and other Islamic terrorists moving in and out of that country, but not much has been achieved by the Pakistani army in terms of stabilising and securing those areas. The main rationale for the West’s support to Musharraf seems therefore to become increasingly void.
 
In the Comment article Marco Mezzera examines the various challenges that the country’s beleaguered leader now faces.

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Publishing groups

Afghanistan and Pakistan: a region in crisis

Keywords

Democratic control Fragile state Middle East Pakistan Terrorism War on terror

Bio author: Marco Mezzera

Marco Mezzera is a Research Fellow at the Instituut Clingendael, in The Hague.