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

1 Frontline Pakistan
the military. The MMA leaders had targeted Musharraf personally, but
their loyalty to the military had remained unchanged. That was one
reason for the military’s continuing conciliatory approach towards the
Islamists, whom it regarded as its logical ally. The MMA was more than
willing to play by the military’s rules. The mullahs and the military had
worked together against common foes during the cold war and the
Afghan jihad and had shared the military’s national security perspective
and its views on regional issues. The MMA leadership had also been
engaged in secret negotiations with ISI officials involved in political
fixing. However, because of political considerations, they stopped
short of entering into an alliance with the federal government, despite
the alliance in Balochistan.
The military, however, pulled out the required number of votes by
manipulating a split in the PPP. It was made possible after Musharraf, in a
highly controversial move, suspended the ban on floor-crossing which
allowed opposition members to switch sides. Most of these turncoats
had faced corruption charges and could easily be blackmailed. Almost
all of them were given important positions in the cabinet. Faisal Saleh
Hayat, a prominent PPP leader, had been charged for defaulting on the
repayment of loans from state-owned banks and had spent months in
prison, making him extremely vulnerable politically. He was made
Interior Minister after the defection. A senior general walked up to
him during the oath-taking ceremony to congratulate him for what he
described as a ‘courageous move in the national interest’!
With all the manipulation and horse-trading engineered by
intelligence agencies, Zafarullah Jamali, the pro-military candidate for
Prime Minister, barely scraped through. His controversial one-vote
majority came as a relief to Musharraf who wanted a pliable prime
minister in place. A tribal leader from Pakistan’s western Balochistan
province, Jamali had a reputation of being an establishment person
who was unlikely to take a stand against a powerful military president.
An easy going, stoutly built, soft-spoken politician, he had served as
Chief Minister for three brief terms in his native province, most recently
in 1996. He had also been a federal minister in the military regime of
late General Zia ul-Haq in the mid 1990s. His friends called him ‘Jabal’
(mountain) – a nickname as a young man for not crying after a bad
injury during a hockey match.
Musharraf was also sworn in for another five-year term as President,
the same day that the new Parliament met. He had extended his term
through a controversial referendum in April. The newly elected Prime