A disaster is unfolding in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Every few days, unmanned American drones fly overhead, dropping bombs in an increasingly frantic search for results in the fight against al-Qaeda. But all too often the bombs miss their mark. As I write, over a hundred people have been killed in the last ten days, mostly innocent civilians.

This is the most moronic policy anyone could follow. The Bush administration is desperate to win counter-terrorism points for the Republican Party ahead of November’s presidential election. But they seem oblivious to the fact that this bloodshed is creating a nursery for future terrorists. Pakistan’s tribal area has about a million armed men, who see the notion of revenge as a fundamental part of their culture. So if a family member dies, you can be sure the whole clan will move over to the Taliban.

The growing “Talibanisation” of the tribal areas is not religious but political. A small number of religious extremists are being joined by an increasingly radicalised youth, which is reacting to the slaughter of the Pushtun population in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The population of both countries is becoming ever more alienated – even an American puppet like the Afghan president Hamid Karzai has been forced to warn that there are too many casualties. And all just for short-term gains in that November election.

The situation need not have developed in this way. After the atrocities of 9/11, everyone in Pakistan wanted to help the United States in their war on terrorism. Had Pakistan had a leader with integrity, things might have been different. But Pervez Musharraf—who had seized power through a military coup in 1999—was a dictator, interested only in securing American support for his illegitimate rule.

There was a great window of economic opportunity for Pakistan after 9/11. The Americans injected billions of dollars of aid into the country, and remittances from overseas Pakistanis came pouring in at a growing rate. But Musharraf and his government totally blew it. Despite the potential for growth, the money simply was not spent on the people: education spending was just 1.7 per cent of GDP, leaving Pakistan among the bottom five countries in the world. Pakistan slipped to the lowest Human Development Index in the whole of South Asia.

Under Musharraf, corruption—already a major problem in Pakistan—reached unprecedented levels. Musharraf succeeded in blackmailing a host of influential but crooked politicians into helping him form his own party. When he’d got all these crooks into ministerial posts, corruption really took off. This extraordinary behaviour was coupled with a fiscal system reminiscent of pre-revolutionary France, whereby the rich were given tax exemptions. The poor got poorer and the rich got richer; and the consumption-based demand which fuelled the growth rate soon led to the galloping inflation that dogs Pakistan to this day.

But the worst of Musharraf’s crimes was his campaign to undermine the rule of law in this country. Last winter, Musharraf sacked 50 per cent of Pakistan’s judges, including the Chief Justice, and put judges of the Supreme Court under house arrest. He then handpicked judges who could be more easily manipulated, and announced that elections would be held just five weeks later. All this was done under the state of emergency that Musharraf illegally declared last November, giving him almost unrestricted power.

All the opposition parties decided to boycott the elections. But that united stand was swiftly undermined by the Americans. The US-brokered deal between Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was designed purely to ensure that Pakistan continued to toe the line laid down by the Bush administration. Bhutto’s decision amounted to a sabotage of the boycott. An illegal state of emergency remained in force; I was in prison, while former prime minister Nawaz Sharif remained in exile, and the judicial system was in chaos. To choose to contest an election under such farcical conditions was madness.

The moment Bhutto was assassinated everything changed. Musharraf’s party had been all set to cruise to victory, but after the December 27 killing there was a huge wave of sympathy for the PPP. Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, was able to capitalise on this – as well as on the army’s reluctance to help the president rig the election, due to the popular backlash after the assassination. No party, including the PPP, was prepared to solve the country’s problems. But it made no difference. No-one cared about the content of the parties’ manifestos; people simply wanted Musharraf out.

So now Musharraf is gone, forced out of office by Zardari and Sharif. But since Zardari’s landslide win in the recent presidential election, it’s become clear that nothing is going to change. Zardari has simply replaced Musharraf as the country’s absolute ruler: on top of his presidential powers, he’s in charge of the biggest political party in parliament; he has a puppet prime minister; the judges are under his control; and he is theoretically in control of the army. Like Musharraf, Zardari has promised to help the United States in exchange for their complicity in propping up his rule, and making sure he continues to evade corruption charges.

There is a general consensus in Pakistan that Zardari is a crook, with billions of dollars of the country’s plundered wealth stashed in overseas bank accounts. Three previous Pakistani presidents published corruption cases against him, only for the charges to be dropped under American pressure. Zardari has brought back a host of politicians who had been in exile due to corruption cases; not only have these criminals been pardoned, but they are now sitting in key positions in government.

There is an increasing mood of despondency in Pakistan, as the economy totters and the violence gathers pace. The only answer is to reinstate the Chief Justice – only through restoring the rule of law can the country move forward. But Zardari is petrified of an independent justice system. His life would be made much harder, not least because all the old corruption cases might open up.

The PTI is the party that has taken the biggest stand for the Chief Justice. We were predicted to become the third-largest party in parliament in this year’s general election. But we stood with the judges and lawyers in boycotting the poll, and continue to keep the movement alive. It has not been an easy road – last November I was imprisoned by Musharraf as he struggled to cling to power. Zardari is no less notorious for victimising his political opponents. The risks are there, no doubt. But the struggle must go on.