With a new sense of international isolation and the death of General Zia in a suspicious plane crash that may or may not have involved a case of exploding mangos, Pakistan refocused in the late 1980s. In theory, the civilians had taken charge, and the young, charismatic, beautiful Benazir Bhutto, the Harvard-educated daughter of Zulfikar, now ran the country. But behind the scenes, the military and the country’s intelligence agencies sidelined her. Some jihadi fighters were directed into a shadow war in Indian-controlled Kashmir, while others kept fighting in Afghanistan until the pro-Soviet government finally collapsed. For a decade Pakistan’s leadership was tossed like a football between different civilian leaders accused of corruption—from Bhutto to then military lackey Nawaz Sharif, back to Bhutto, then back to Sharif, who finally delivered that nuclear weapon.
In 1999, another obedient army chief decided it was his turn to run Pakistan. Pervez Musharraf, promoted by Sharif, deposed Sharif. As both president and army chief, Musharraf soon grew popular for a rebounding economy he had nothing much to do with, and for slightly more liberal policies, at least in the cities. After the September 11 attacks, the love affair with America reignited. The Bush administration repeatedly praised Musharraf as a key partner in the war on terror, a bulwark against Islamic extremists.
But by the time I arrived in Pakistan this trip, he had lost considerable popularity, largely because of his professed support for America, his refusal to step down as army chief, and his aggressive megalomania. The removal of the country’s chief justice in March 2007 was close to the final straw. In the West, especially in the Bush administration, Musharraf still enjoyed almost universal support. But some senior officials had started to doubt Pakistan’s actual intentions. They privately worried that Musharraf and the country’s powerful intelligence agencies were playing a double game—taking Western money and hunting Al-Qaeda, while doing little against their old friends, the Taliban. There was a running joke that whenever a finger-wagging U.S. official visited Islamabad and berated officials to do more, the number-three leader of Al-Qaeda would suddenly be killed or captured somewhere in the tribal areas. (Not only a joke; this happened several times.) The numbers backed the doubters—although more than seven hundred Al-Qaeda suspects had allegedly been arrested in Pakistan, few senior Taliban leaders had been captured. Several top militants had mysteriously escaped custody or been released.
The contradictions created by sixty years of obfuscation in Pakistan played out on a daily basis, in the continual whiplash between secularism and extremism, the contorted attempts to hold this fracturing nation together with Scotch tape and honeyed tongues. Islamic clerics forced me to wear a black abaya showing only my eyes, but then privately asked to see my face and hair. One province banned females on billboards, but a subversive drag queen ran one of the country’s top talk shows. The tribal areas—officially the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, seven tribal agencies and six frontier regions—were theoretically part of Pakistan, but the laws of Pakistan didn’t apply. Islamic militants roamed freely there, but very un-Islamic drugs were sold along the roads, advertised with animal pelts. Alcohol was illegal for Muslims, but most Pakistani men I knew tossed back Johnnie Walker Black Label like eighteen-year-olds at their first college party. The Pakistani military and the three major intelligence agencies, referred to simply as “the agencies,” had run the country directly or indirectly for its entire existence and helped form powerful militant groups, which they now disavowed. And, in a particularly brilliant contradiction, Pakistan was still run by a military dictator, who despite seizing power almost eight years earlier and holding on to it through sham elections, had somehow convinced the West that he was setting up a democracy.
A mother and son holding hands at the Karachi airport summed up Pakistan for me. She wore a black abaya and heavy eyeliner. He wore jeans and a T-shirt proclaiming NO MONEY, NO HONEY.
Given my new penchant for punching at rallies, I knew Pakistan had shortened my fuse. What little restraint I had acquired elsewhere had evaporated, largely over issues of personal space. (I was still a Montanan at heart—preferring few people, lots of open range, and boundary lines meant to be respected.) But I knew I needed to dive into the country. I had to stop resisting Pakistan’s pull, because Afghanistan and Pakistan fed into each other, and I needed to understand how. It would not be easy. Reporting a story here was like trying to find a specific needle in a stack of needles using a needle, an endless attempt at sorting through anonymous quotes from anonymous intelligence sources and anonymous diplomats. Most terrorist plots in the West traced somehow back to Pakistan—as many as three-quarters, according to some estimates. After a plot was linked to someone in Pakistan, journalists like myself predictably converged on the alleged militant’s home village in the middle of nowhere, where the most powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), tried to convince us that what we had been told was wrong, and that this was not the village we were looking for, and that there was no way any terrorist would ever come from Pakistan. Wrong town, wrong country. We weren’t allowed to go to the tribal areas where many militants had supposedly trained, we weren’t supposed to roam free, and we were told that this was all for our safety. The subterfuge here was an art that had been institutionalized.
I blamed India. Everyone here did. To understand Pakistan, India was the key. Why did Pakistan direct its militant groups toward disputed Kashmir instead of disbanding them after the Soviet Union left Afghanistan? India. Why did Pakistan support the Taliban regime in Afghanistan? India. Why did Pakistan develop a nuclear weapon? India. Why did Musharraf support the country’s homegrown militant groups even as he arrested Al-Qaeda’s alleged number three at any given time? India. And why did Pakistan continually give me such a crappy visa? India.
Being based in New Delhi did not help my attempts to cover Pakistan. India-based journalists were usually given two-week visas. We were only supposed to go to Islamabad, Lahore, or Karachi, and we were automatically assumed to be spies. As soon as I checked into a hotel, the ISI knew where I was. My phone was tapped. The driver from the Marriott Hotel reported back whom I had talked to and what I had said. Or so I was told. Covering Pakistan was an excuse to let my paranoia run wild. It was like starring in The Benny Hill Show, trying to run slightly faster than that creepy old man. If Pakistan had a soundtrack, it would be “Flight of the Bumblebee.” If it suffered from a psychological disorder, it would be bipolar.
But the chief-justice controversy was a relatively easy way to dig into Pakistan—obvious, messy, and important. This spat between the judiciary and the presidency was the biggest threat Musharraf had ever faced, bigger than the assassination attempts, the Islamic extremists, the squabbling with Pakistan’s neighbors. It could influence the country’s presidential elections and the country’s future. It was that big.
After the suspended chief justice Chaudhry refused to step down, the lawyers nationwide rose to defend him, saying that the country needed rule of law and the judiciary needed to be independent from the messed-up executive branch. Wearing their uniforms of black suits and white shirts, the lawyers held demonstrations, picking fights with police, who retaliated with tear gas. Some lawyers beat a supposed spy with their shoes right in front of me, even ripping off his tie. Momentum built. Lawyer protests grew into anti-Musharraf protests. Every few days, people met in Islamabad, shouting catchy slogans such as “Go Musharraf go,” which meant he should step down, not run for a touchdown, and, my personal favorite, “Musharraf doggie, son of Bush.”