A Pandora’s box?

The prospects of the six-member coalition of hard-line Islamist parties winning a large proportion of the seats in the parliament would inevitably put hard brakes on the US (and India’s) war against terrorism.

Initial results already indicate that this Islamist coalition named Mutihidda Majlis-e-Amil (MMA), has already won a clear majority in the North Western Frontier Province assembly elections. A pro-Taliban, pro-Al Qaeda government in Peshawar — where many Taliban cabinet ministers are reportedly in residence — is likely to knock the bottom out of the US war against terrorism.

Hard-line religious parties have won a large chunk of seats in the National Assembly for the first time in Pakistan’s troubled existence. Although parties like the Jamaat-e-Islami could exercise influential street power, even the combined strength of such parties had not been able to garner more than a small proportion of the votes or seats in previous elections.

The Muslim League, which was the political party that struggled for the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan, had been fragmenting over the decades. The so-called ‘king’s party’, the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam), put together by the ruling elite, is named after the creator of Pakistan.

The party in all probability would form the government relying on the support of the Islamist parties to remain in power. This only adds to the poignancy and irony of the situation. The Quaid-e-Azam, M.A. Jinnah, after he managed to get Pakistan, had sought to make it a secular democracy!

The signs emerging from the elections in Pakistan should make the world sit up and ponder on where the region may be heading. Ultra-liberals in the international system, like the European Union president, may still believe that the problem lies in dialogue between Pakistan and India.

By that logic, the dialogue between Islamabad and Washington should be a higher priority, at least to make an assessment of where the global war against terrorism would head.

In a country that has been the core of the epicentre of global terrorism, the rise to power of political parties on the plank of anti-Americanism and pro-terrorists, pro-Taliban politics, through a democratic election observed essentially as free and fair, could hardly be reassuring to anyone who believes in equality, freedom and human dignity.

When this is seen in the context of the rise of religious conservatism and jehadism in the army, which will remain the final arbiter of power in Pakistan, the future looks rather gloomy.