For most Pakistanis 2008 went from bad to worse, writes Graham Usher in Islamabad Pakistanis began 2008 with the election of a civilian government pledged to democracy, the rule of law and an end to the military's role in governance: three hopes almost as old as the Pakistani state. The year ended with another curse from history: the threat of war on the eastern border after India's charge that "elements" from Pakistan were behind the massacre in Mumbai. It summed up the year: one long fall. The Pakistan People's Party (PPP) came to power in the February elections on the wave of emotion caused by the murder of its leader and former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto. The Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif (PML-N), another ex-prime minister, came to power in Pakistan's largest Punjab province on its pledge to reinstate 63 senior judges sacked under General-President Pervez Musharraf's martial rule. The PML-N was also helped by the antipathy many felt towards the PPP's new leader and Bhutto widower, Asif Zardari: a man for many Pakistanis synonymous with graft. If Benazir was the PPP's election mascot, sacked Pakistan chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry was the PML-N's. The PPP's appeal was to the poor, whose lot had worsened under Musharraf's laissez-faire economics. The PML-N's pledge was to the urban middle class, which believed the struggle for a free judiciary was a struggle against military dictatorship. Between them the two parties swept aside the "military-mullah alliance" that had been the political base for Musharraf's eight- year rule. Long-time adversaries, the PPP and PML-N forged a coalition committed to three goals: to reinstate the purged judiciary, especially Chaudhry; to use negotiations and cooperation rather than war to tame nationalist and Islamist insurgencies in Pakistan's Baluchistan and Frontier provinces; and to assert the primacy of parliament in decision-making, in particular prizing foreign policy from the grip of the army. With civilian supremacy, many believed Pakistan's fractious relations with Afghanistan and India would heal. Ten months on the government has failed on all fronts. Zardari, in particular, was never serious about reinstating the judges. He feared an independent judiciary would rend the deal struck between Musharraf and his late wife. She had agreed to back Musharraf as president if he amnestied her, Zardari and the PPP on corruption charges. It was a sordid trade Zardari knew any independent judge would hurl out of court. So he wriggled out of his pledge, displaying a cynicism brazen even by Pakistani standards. On two occasions he signed oaths with Sharif vowing to reinstate judges only to then pronounce that "political agreements are not the Holy Quran", and renege on his signature. Unwilling to restore the judges, he persuaded Washington and the army that he was unable to "coexist" with Musharraf as president, no matter the guarantees given by his wife. The US and the army agreed, providing the former chief of staff would exit "gracefully". In August an unimpeachable Musharraf "retired". With Musharraf out -- and to the surprise of Washington and the army -- Zardari accepted his party's nomination as presidential candidate. In a shoo-in election in September he became Pakistan's most powerful Civilian politician, shedding not a single one of Musharraf's authoritarian powers. "It's a one-man civilian show after a one-man military show," said a senator wryly. Others call Pakistan a civilian dictatorship. But it's a job several sizes too big for the widower. For example: despite warnings that Pakistan was hurtling towards a balance of payment crisis, Zardari did not put an economic team in place until August, nearly six months after the elections. On the edge of bankruptcy -- and with inflation at 25 per cent -- the government was compelled to turn to the IMF. Redemption came the usual way: via cuts in public expenditure, a hike in taxes and the removal of subsidies protecting wheat, fuel and electricity: all measures that hurt the poor, the PPP's core constituency. The government's approach to Islamic militancy -- perhaps the gravest challenge Pakistan faces -- is similarly ad hoc. At first the PPP backed peace deals with the Taliban in Swat and North and South Waziristan on the Afghan border. These were widely seen as "premature", granting the militants space to regroup and rearm: one army officer described them as "accords between a predator and its quarry". Under pressure from Washington -- which opposed "talking to the Taliban" -- the government then authorised force against the militants. This has triggered retaliatory attacks across the country, including at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad in September where 50 were burned alive. Last year saw more suicide attacks in Pakistan than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Finally, in June, the government simply delegated policy on militancy to the army. But the military's counterinsurgency is not uniform. In the border area of Bajaur -- where it faced a Talibanised "state within state"-- there is a full- blown offensive that has so far killed 1,500 people and displaced 300,000, the largest population shift in Pakistan's history. In Swat there is a bloody, un-winnable impasse, with rifts between the army and government. In the Waziristans there have been truces, mediated by the Afghan Taliban. Washington praised the Bajaur and Swat campaigns. But it was outraged by "peace" in North and South Waziristan. According to the CIA these are terrains from which the Taliban not only powers the Afghan insurgency: they are "safe havens" where "Al Qaeda... is plotting attacks against America," insists George Bush. In July he approved a "secret" order allowing US Special Forces to strike against Taliban and Al-Qaeda "targets" inside Pakistan "without the approval of the Pakistan government". Since then there have been one ground invasion and 24 rocket strikes overwhelmingly in North and South Waziristan: several "high value" Al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders have allegedly been hit, as have many more tribesmen, women and children. The strikes have caused outrage in Pakistan -- far more than Taliban and Al-Qaeda attacks that have killed many more civilians. The US says it has a "tacit" deal with Pakistan about the strikes. The government denies this. The army says the incursions are illegal and "completely counterproductive" to its policy of trying to turn the tribes against the militants. Nor is there anything but the most rudimentary sharing of information between the armies. "The Americans think we will hand any intelligence to the Taliban," says an officer. There has been a like chill in relations with India. After three years of relative peace, 2008 saw a rise in militant infiltration from Pakistan into Indian-controlled Kashmir, the border territory claimed by both states and cause of two of their three wars. In July India accused Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency of complicity in the bombing of its embassy in Kabul. Pakistan has accused India of fuelling insurgencies in Balochistan and Bajaur. This spike in tensions has not been caused by Kashmir -- despite mass protests this summer that called for "independence" from both Indian rule and Pakistani manipulation. It stems rather from what Pakistan sees as India's increasingly hegemonic role in Afghanistan -- not just over the Karzai government (which has always been pro-Indian), but also on US policy. Washington publicly endorsed India's claim of Pakistan's involvement in the bombing of its Afghan Embassy. And the Pakistan army sees India's fingerprints all over America's current policy of unilateral strikes. It says the CIA has been persuaded by Delhi that the army is unable and/or unwilling to tackle the Taliban and Al-Qaeda "havens" on its border with Afghanistan. The CIA -- backed by the fledgling Afghan army (many of whose officers have been trained by India) -- should therefore move in and fill the breach. This is why Mumbai is so inflammatory: many in India see the attacks as part of a proxy war waged by Pakistan over Kashmir and Afghanistan. They say it is inconceivable that a commando operation of such caliber could have happened without the input of at least rogue or former ISI or army officers. Pakistan denies this. Washington hovers between the adversaries. It insists there is no evidence of an ISI "link" to Mumbai. But it has "irrefutable evidence" that the gunman belonged to the outlawed Pakistani group Lahkar-e-Taiba and that Pakistan must act against it and its civilian "front" Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Publicly Zardari says he cannot do this without "evidence"; privately, he says he dare not do so without the support of the army. And the army may be reluctant to move against an erstwhile "proxy" at the behest of its historical "enemy". Figuratively and in fact Pakistan is on high alert as 2009 commences and the absence of peace sinks into a prospect of war.
