Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

1 Frontline Pakistan
Musharraf misjudged the rising support for the Islamists. A couple
of weeks before the polls he had assured senior American officials
that the religious parties would not get more than five per cent of
the vote. MMA leaders had started campaigning long before the
other parties entered the field. They fully exploited the anti-American
feelings among the Pashtuns who were incensed by the US attack on
Afghanistan. The absence of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, 7 the
crowd-pullers for the Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim
League, also helped the MMA.
It was a virtual revolution through the ballot box when the Islamic
alliance swept the polls in the North West Frontier Province, deposing
the traditional power elite. The landslide victory took even the MMA
leaders by surprise. 8 The Islamists also consolidated their position in
Balochistan. Success was, however, restricted to these two provinces.
In Punjab and Sindh, the alliance’s influence was marginal. In these,
the most populous provinces, the voters did not respond to the anti-
US rhetoric and Islamic fervour. Because of the heavy concentration
of the vote in one ethnic belt, it translated into a higher number of
seats for the alliance in the National Assembly where it emerged as the
third largest block. The election result was, however, not an indicator
of the rising influence of Islamic fundamentalism. There were several
anomalies that helped to amplify the actual strength and popular
base of the religious parties. While the MMA was third in the popular
vote (11.6 per cent of votes cast), it won 63 national assembly seats,
including ten reserved for women, out of 342.
The MMA might not have been directly involved in the militancy,
but its components like the JI and the two factions of the JUI had
long been associated with jihadist politics. 9 Their activists overlapped
with those of militant and sectarian organizations. Former Taliban and
jihadist commanders were among MMA candidates for the National
and provincial assemblies. The banned jihadist organizations openly
campaigned for the alliance. They saw the success of the MMA as
a triumph for their cause. There was a visible stridency among the
radical elements after the MMA formed the government in the North
West Frontier Province and became a coalition partner in Balochistan.
Although their success was confined to the Pashtun ethnic belt, the
Islamists, for the first time in Pakistan’s history, took the political centre
stage. They emerged as a major power player, holding the balance in
the divided National Assembly.
Despite the military’s best efforts, the election results reflected a no-