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Analysis: U.S. Scrambles to Remake Pakistan Policy

Council on Foreign Relations

Updated: February 20, 2008
Author: Jayshree Bajoria

The unstinting support Washington has lent to Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf throughout the past year of tumult has led to something of a crisis for U.S. policy toward Pakistan. White House officials say they still hope opposition leaders will find a way to work with Musharraf. But CFR Senior Fellow Daniel Markey, himself a former top Bush administration policymaker on South Asia, says “Musharraf is obviously a poison pill” (NYT) and that he may be “fading out.” Markey looks at the choices open to Washington, including strengthening Pakistani institutions, in this Policy Options Paper.

Official results (PDF) from February 18 elections confirming the party of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), won the most seats, followed by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s party Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), could have huge implications for Washington’s efforts along Pakistan’s northern border with Afghanistan, too. U.S. efforts to clamp down on terrorist bases in Pakistani frontier areas hinged on military support from the Pakistani army and security forces. But the winners of the parliamentary elections say they will break from Musharraf’s position and seek talks with the militants (NYT) in the tribal areas. In an interview with CFR.org, Frédéric Grare, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says the defeat of the religious parties in the elections brings “a new chance for the United States to seize this opportunity,” and finally understand the nature of the Pakistani society.

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Pakistan, as this new timeline explains, and continues to score low in Pakistani public approval ratings. A poll from the U.S.-based International Republican Institute showed only 9 percent of Pakistanis said their country should cooperate with Washington in its war on terror.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

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.