certify the new government, expecting that it was likely to impeach him as soon as it was certified. He had earlier fired the chief justice of Pakistan’s supreme court to prevent him from ruling on the legitimacy of Musharraf’s own reelection. The new government was expected to restore the chief justice and had declared its intention to depose Musharraf as soon as the PPP and PML-N came to power. It did not do so. Failing to get PPP support on this important issue, Sharif and the PML-N withdrew from the coalition on August 25, 2008. With pressure mounting from the United States to do something about the use of Pakistani territory as a base of operations for al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and with the Pakistani government itself deeply divided on how to move forward, the country was in turmoil and its future direction was extremely uncertain.
The situation seemed dire not only for Musharraf, but from the American perspective as well. For all of his limitations, Musharraf was an important ally in the war on terror. He had literally put his life on the line by siding with the United States against the Taliban government in Afghanistan after 9/11. By 2007, however, his support seemed to waver. He turned greater authority over the pursuit of militants to local tribal officials along the Afghan- Pakistani border, reducing the role of the Pakistani army. From the American perspective, this hurt the prospects for continued success against the terrorists. Musharraf argued that it would prove beneficial because the locals knew the situation on the ground infinitely better than any outsiders and they had the local clout to get things done. (My own view was that this was a move by Musharraf to extract more economic and military aid from the United States by threatening to allow the situation to deteriorate if the aid was not forthcoming. It’s important to note that my students knew nothing about my personal view.) Although very much his own man and hardly perfect in American eyes, Musharraf was nevertheless the United States’ best source of help in the effort to defeat al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The new government in parliament, in contrast, spoke openly of finding a way to negotiate with the groups identified by the United States government as terrorists.
So what did my students find out? Their analysis showed that the PPP would have even greater policy influence relative to Sharif’s PML-N than the PPP’s advantage in National Assembly seats implied. This was not particularly surprising, but then, if a model only produces the unexpected, we should be suspicious of it. Why wasn’t it surprising? To start with, Sharif did not personally compete in the February election. That left his party without strong leadership in the National Assembly. When he finally decided to run in a by-election, the courts ruled that he was not eligible because of his earlier conviction on corruption charges when he was prime minister. It was, in fact, his earlier corruption case that had sent him into exile in the first place. That aspect of my students’ analysis merely confirmed what any Pakistan watcher already knew. Sharif was not as popular as Bhutto, and neither was his political party as popular as hers. With her assassination the PPP gained even greater influence, riding the crest of an upsurge in sympathy for her, her political movement, and her vision for the future.
What was surprising, and distressing, was the pattern of evolving power among the national leadership that emerged from the analysis. While capturing the conventional wisdom about the relative power of the PPP and the PML-N, they also found a solid answer to a pressing question. Many Pakistan watchers speculated on whether the new leadership in the National Assembly would make a deal with hard-liners. None, as far as I know, had dared to quantify what that might mean in terms of the future distribution of political power in Pakistan and its implications for shaping policy.
The predictions my students made, based on game-theory logic and the data they amassed to seed the model, can be seen in the figures that follow. The first addresses Musharraf’s potential to survive the election’s outcome and the conditions that ultimately would lead to his ouster. At the time their study was done, I think it is safe to say, most people believed Musharraf was finished. A few speculated on whether the United States would somehow save him, but most thought he would be political history right after the February 2008 election. “Not so fast,” said my students’ results.
Figure 10.1, on the next page, tells the story of what could have been and of what was to be. If the two parties in the government, Zardari’s PPP and Sharif’s PML-N, had been willing to work together, then figure 10.1 shows us that Musharraf could indeed have been ousted in March or April 2008, just as the pundits expected. The government parties’ combined power—the heavy solid line in figure 10.1—overtakes Musharraf in the period between March and April. That would have been the opportunity to kick him out, as expected by most Pakistan watchers. But the model tells us that the PPP and PML-N were not willing to work together at that time. The model shows that Sharif believed throughout this period that he could pressure Zardari and his party into doing just what Sharif wanted. The model also tells us that Sharif was wrong. According to the model’s results, Zardari saw no reason to listen to Sharif since the PPP had substantially more clout than Sharif’s PML-N. As we know now, rather than work together, Sharif threatened to withdraw his support for the government in May 2008, because Zardari was unwilling to commit to deposing Musharraf.
FIG. 10.1. How Long Could Musharraf Be Tolerated?
But figure 10.1 tells a more complete story than just that. We can also see that the model projected that Zardari’s PPP (the dashed line in the figure) on its own, without help from Sharif, would surpass the declining Musharraf in power by June or July 2008. At that point, the PPP didn’t need anyone’s help to dump Musharraf. They had the clout to do it on their own. (We now know that they in fact did push him out in August 2008 and that Zardari assumed Musharraf’s role as Pakistan’s president.)
So while the world’s media were counting Musharraf out in February, the students successfully forecast that the divide between the PML-N and the PPP would allow Musharraf to hang on for about six months past when they began their study. But even this is but a small part of the big emerging story played out in advance by modeling key Pakistani policy issues. Figure 10.1 compares the power of only three of many players in Pakistan’s political game. Let’s see what the picture looks like when we throw in the main potential threats to Pakistan’s civil, secular government. I have in mind al-Qaeda, the Pakistani and Afghani Taliban, and even Pakistan’s military, with its long history of coups against civilian governments.
Figure 10.2 tells an incredibly distressing story for any who hold out hope for stable democracy in Pakistan. Pakistan’s Taliban and their Afghan compatriots work together as one, so I present them as if they are one. Looked at this way, they are far and away the most powerful force within Pakistan. And al-Qaeda is next in line according to the model, at least after April 2008, when their power is projected to surpass the government’s. Al-Qaeda just continues to grow and grow. Together with the Taliban they constitute the emerging dominant source of political influence in Pakistan, with only outside influencers like the United States or the Europeans being possible counterweights. Remember, we are plotting power—political influence weighted by salience—based on information known (or at least estimated by my students) back in January 2008 and not after. Yet here is the headline from the
FIG. 10.2. Who Will Have the Clout in Pakistan?
