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Haass: Pakistan Faces 'Prolonged Difficult Future'

Council on Foreign Relations

Interviewee: Richard N. Haass, President, Council on Foreign Relations
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor

January 2, 2008

Richard N. Haass, an expert on the Middle East and South Asia from years in government, says that the latest developments in Pakistan lead him to see that country heading into a period of instability. He says that President Pervez Musharraf gets credit for recognizing his government’s lack of credibility and inviting Scotland Yard to help in the investigation of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, but he says that “we need to anticipate considerable drift, by which I mean you will have constant political jockeying and skirmishing, lower economic growth, and probably a messy security situation.”

Please summarize what you see happening in Pakistan since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto last month.

There have been at least four important developments. The first is that the government of President Pervez Musharraf seems to have reacted to the domestic and international criticism about its handling of the assassination, including the continued uncertainty on exactly what was the cause of her death, and more importantly who was behind it. The fact that it now looks as if Scotland Yard will be involved is an important development because there is precious little domestic or international confidence in the ability of the government to carry out a fair and impartial investigation. So potentially this is a good development.

Secondly, you had the meeting of Ms. Bhutto’s PPP [Pakistan People’s Party] and the emergence of a new leadership, which, in fact, is not terribly new. This is in many ways a disheartening reminder of how little democracy there is in Pakistan. This is an indication that Pakistani politics are more familial and feudal than they are representative.

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Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.