Making Sense of Pakistan's Civilian-Military Matrix

Byline: Aqil Shah The international community, including the United States, has a major stake in Pakistan's stability, given the country's central role in the US-led effort to, in US President Barack Obama's words, "disrupt, dismantle, and defeat" al Qaeda; its war-prone rivalry with India over Kashmir; and its nuclear arsenal. As a result, US policy toward Pakistan has been dominated by concerns for its stability - providing the reasoning for backing Pakistan's frequent military interventions - at the expense of its democratic institutions. But, as the recent eruption of protests in the Middle East and North Africa against US-backed tyrants has shown, authoritarian stability is not always a winning bet.