When Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari played the terrorism card Monday appealing for flood relief funds, I had to stop my eyeballs from reflexively rolling back in my head. Zardari called the flood the “ideal hope of the radical” and cast relief efforts as a struggle between his government and Islamic extremists. On the surface, it sounds cheap, it sounds disingenuous. Worse yet, it sounds like something George W. Bush would say. But desperate to spur the international community and its sluggish financial response to the crisis, Zardari made a calculated pitch framed in stark terms: help us or the terrorists win.
The thing is, he might just have a point. The flood might not be the radical’s ideal hope, but there is certainly an opportunity to further divide Pakistani’s allegiances.
Disaster relief is the ultimate test of a government’s competence. Its citizens are dying, homeless, and starving, and they know where the buck stops. If the government fails to address basic survival needs, a vacuum in public trust can open almost instantaneously.
On the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, it’s fitting to examine the dispassionate political parallels. After winning the 2004 election with 51 percent of the vote, Bush’s approval hovered just shy of 50 percent through mid-2005. When Katrina hit in mid-2005, his ratings nose-dived from 48 percent in June to 39 percent by November. After a brief recovery in late 2005, Bush was toast for the rest of his presidency, leaving office with an awesomely bad 23 percent on Election Day 2008.
Zardari has Bush-like unpopularity: the Pew Research Center’s July poll gave him just a 20 percent favorability rating amongst Pakistanis, and a full 77 percent say his influence is downright negative. Just 25 percent rate the national government as having a “good influence”.
It is safe to say that if Zardari’s government continues to fail delivering swift relief aid, that Pakistanis are ready to support whoever will. One of those possibilities is Zardari’s chief rival, Nawaz Sharif, who has garnered a tidy 70 percent approval rating and maintains a deep desire to return to the top of Pakistani politics. While the U.S. should have no great preference for individuals over democratic institutions, a messy political fight in the midst of relief efforts would only cause more suffering.
A more serious concern is the Pakistani Taliban, which could draw on the example of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. That group has won hearts and minds in the public services business in southern Lebanon, too.
Zardari may never be America’s best bud, but he understands that it is in Pakistan’s interest to have a working strategic relationship with the United States. While humanitarian grounds should be enough to motivate the world’s rich countries to give generously to Pakistan, that hasn’t proven the case. Short-term political instability and Taliban opportunism should be.
Photo Credit: DFID – UK Department for International Development’s photostream
