Saturday, January 19, 2008

Nurturing democracy in Pakistan

New Statesman, January 14, 2008

Alex Bigham

The Foreign Policy Centre's Alex Bigham considers how the world should react to a changing Pakistan

There are, broadly speaking, two schools of thought about what the international community should do next to help alleviate the chaos consuming Pakistan. One was emphasised by Simon Jenkins in the Guardian – that we should never seek to interfere in the internal affairs of a country, and that, as is his usual claim, we are the architect of our own misfortune. The other is being taken up by the bulk of US presidential candidates – that the US should be ready to bomb Pakistan if its nuclear sites look threatened by the Islamists, and that the UK and US should provide oversight control of Pakistan’s nuclear programme (a policy advocated by Hillary Clinton).

While I have more sympathy with the Clinton argument, both points of view are a little naïve – the US is not going to sit idly by while Islamist extremists overrun the world’s sixth most populous country armed with WMD, nor are they likely to be able to completely overturn Pakistan’s sovereignty when it comes to security issues. One of the lessons from the Iran nuclear case is that patient diplomacy, which the EU has spearheaded, combined with a carrot and stick approach can yield positive results. As the recent US intelligence report emphasised, it persuaded Iran to suspend its nuclear weapons programme in 2003. One of the great mistakes that have been made in the past in relation to Pakistan is the outside obsession with individuals over institutions. John Negroponte was guilty of this recently, in his overtures to both Musharraf and Bhutto.

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