The crisis in Pakistan.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but has there been an actual condemnation of what is currently occurring on the streets of Pakistan? Thousands of those opposed to General Musharraf have been arrested, including a number of well-known political activists, the police have been viciously beating those who ignored Musharraf's declaration on Saturday of martial law to protest, television stations have been shut down, the media has in some cases been silenced, yet the only real comment we've made is that Musharraf must keep his promise of holding elections and stepping down as the head of the army. As for all those currently imprisoned for challenging Musharraf's second coup, they may as well consider themselves forgotten.It's clear that Musharraf's one and only intention in declaring an emergency is to enable him to hang on in power. Although recently overwhelmingly re-elected president after the opposition parties mostly boycotted the vote, the real challenge to his authority has come not from the likes of Benazir Bhutto, who has returned to Pakistan to almost unaminous fanfare in the western media, but rather from lawyers and a number of recalcitrant judges, led by Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, a judge who Musharraf suspeneded earlier in the year before he was reinstated after mass protests, with the supreme court overruling Musharraf's initial misconduct charges. It was widely expected that the supreme court was about to similarly declare Musharraf's re-election null and void, with the general preemptively acting against the threat.
While Musharraf's other justification for declaring a state of emergency, the spiraling Islamist violence across the country after the siege of the Red Mosque, which lead bin Laden among other takfirists to call for a jihad against the country, has been widely parroted abroad, little mention has been made that the "judicial interference" was also a major factor, with Musharraf claiming that it was making Pakistan ungovernable. Apart from the defiance of Musharraf's will, Chaudhry's other crime was his and other judges' approach to the mass human rights abuses being committed in Pakistan's own "war against terrorism", involving torture and the disappearance of some of those arrested. While no one can deny that Pakistan is in the frontline when it comes to tackling jihadists and extremist Islam, the brutal tactics involved are undoubtedly having the usual effect of filling the ranks of those not only involved in the insurrection in Waziristan, but also that of the Taliban and the insurgency in Iraq.
To begin with it was thought that Musharraf might well have overplayed his hand in declaring an emergency, but the slow and far from unanimous response to what has happened since have quashed any such hopes. The BBC might have just reported that President Bush has personally called Musharraf to urge him to hold elections as planned and step down as army chief, but his real interests have already been overwhelming served. His most bitter opponents in the courts have been removed; the opposition politicians are either in hiding or under house arrest; the public is cowed, thanks to the way the police have cracked down on the few protests that some have staged; and those who were already in negotiations with him about power-sharing, such as Bhutto, have been so slow to respond, partly due to how her party, the Pakistan People's, was mostly ignored to begin with, further undermining any remaining real political standing she had. Even if elections are to be staged as planned now, it seems unlikely that they could be any way be either free or fair, which is exactly what Musharraf intended.
The rehabilitation of Benazir Bhutto shows how desperate politics within Pakistan has become. Anyone would think that she was a new, untainted figure, not someone who spent her time while previously in office turning at best a blind eye to the emergence of the Taliban, at worst using the ISI, Pakistan's security services to help them take control, or a figure with numerous corruption charges in multiple countries hanging over her. There is however no accounting for someone's personal vanity, or for their ability to woo foreign politicos with talk of democracy, human rights and opposition to extremism, all of which Bhutto didn't have much time for previously except as long as it kept her in power. The lack of personal criticism which followed the horrific suicide bombing that targeted her return parade, killing at least 140, was shocking: the takfirists made clear how they would attempt to attack her, yet she still showered in the adulation of her remaining supporters in the most nauseating fashion, endangering them far more than she did herself.
Parallels with Burma and the response to what occurred there only a matter of weeks ago are apt. Burma may not be as quite as internally fracturous as Pakistan currently is, but the crackdown could have been modeled on how the Burmese military and police responded to the mass protests by the Buddhist monks. As opposed to how the world responded to the situation there, Musharraf could not be more pleased with the lack of demands for the instant reinstitution of democracy and release of those arrested.
Like with so much else, post 9/11, it all comes down to Pakistan's admitted major role, not just in stopping fighters from crossing into Afghanistan, something it's failed to do, but also in the increasingly lawless and violent regions in the west, with the Grauniad reporting on how the Swat valley, previously popular with tourists has itself fell victim to "Talibanisation," giving all the more ammo both to Musharraf and the US in continuing the support given to him and the military assault on Waziristan. The last thing the US, or even Nato wants to consider while both are tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively is the increasingly likely spread of the conflict into Pakistan itself. Democracy, despite all the rhetoric, will undoubtedly come second to the further shoring up of the discredited and bankrupt Musharraf.
Labels: Benazir Bhutto, emergency rule, General Musharraf, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Pakistan, war against bullshit
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