Musharraf the Destroyer

Pakistan: violence in the name of power and property. General Pervez Musharraf officially took over as president of the country. Now he must step down as commander of the army and hold fair parliamentary elections. However, the opposition says: Musharraf came to power 8 years ago as a result of a military coup and will keep power with the same instruments of violence; the state of emergency in Pakistan is directed not against extremists, but against civil society; the general and his military are not protecting the country, but the colossal property in the form of land and businesses worth billions of dollars, which they have acquired in recent years

Ahmed Rashid Lahore (Pakistan) - specially for The New Times

Pakistan's three previous military rulers over the past sixty years have selectively imprisoned politicians, journalists and dissenters. But never before has a military ruler given an order to law enforcement agencies to massively beat up lawyers, journalists, women, representatives of civil organizations on the streets, throw them into prison, and then accuse them of treason. This is what President Pervez Musharraf is doing to secure his continued rule of Pakistan.

The Taliban were not hurt

As a result of Musharraf's imposition of a state of emergency ¹ the Constitution was suspended, justice was diluted, meetings were banned, political activists and leading lawyers were arrested, and local electronic media were closed. More than 6,000 people have been arrested, and many prominent lawyers and political activists are now being tried by military tribunals on charges of treason, which could face up to 24 years in prison.

The hard crackdown is directed entirely against the country's secular civil society and against political parties, and does not at all pursue the stated goal of the military regime: to curb Islamic extremists and the Pakistani Taliban, who, in alliance with the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda, continue to capture cities and entire territories in the north of Pakistan, establishing their power there.

Characteristically, not a single Islamic extremist, not a single leader of a terrorist organization, or anyone from the leadership of those madrasahs where courses for suicide bombers are taught, was arrested. Quite the opposite: on the same day the state of emergency was declared, the army released 28 Pakistani and Afghan Taliban from detention, two of whom were close aides of the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, and two more were convicted suicide bombers.

Elections under control

At a press conference on November 11, Musharraf announced that parliamentary elections would be held no later than January 9, but the state of emergency would not be lifted. After taking the oath by the Interim Transitional Government on November 16, Musharraf promised to step down as commander-in-chief by December 1 ² .

Anyone who "violates law and order and wants to sow anarchy under the guise of elections and democracy, we will not allow this", Musharraf said, and quite in a Kafkaesque spirit declared that the state of emergency "will ensure absolutely fair and transparent elections."

Since Musharraf held elections in 2002 with massive fraud, no one doubts that, under the state of emergency, there will be even more fraud in favor of pro-army candidates.

Army and militants

Pakistan is on the fault line of the global international crisis, and this is its difference from the recent or currently experiencing political crises of Burma, Venezuela and Georgia. Successive regimes in Pakistan have harbored terrorists, sold nuclear weapons technology to rogue states like Iran, Libya and North Korea, and encouraged Islamic radicals to gain an edge against India. Pakistan is the only Muslim country with nuclear weapons, and although the military maintains tight control over them, recent chaos has raised fears in the international community that they will fall into the hands of extremists.

Moreover, according to US intelligence, the country now serves as a command and control center for the leaders of al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban and extremist groups from Central Asia. The army is deeply demoralized, over the past few months more than 600 soldiers have surrendered to the militants instead of fighting them. The country's many intelligence services are now more concerned with arresting and - according to the Pakistan Human Rights Commission - torturing lawyers than catching terrorists.

At the same time, the reaction of the United States was the most restrained. President George W. Bush said on November 11 that Musharraf's announcement of an election date was "a positive step." Musharraf confidently stated that he was not afraid of US sanctions or the reduction of assistance to Pakistan from other states, despite the authoritarian measures. The European response has also been minimal, even though Europe is setting higher standards for democracy.

Agony of the middle class

Washington presents Pakistan's dilemma in a naive either-or paradigm: The US is supporting either the democratic process and civil society or the military in the fight against terrorism. Unfortunately, the Bush administration has succeeded in swaying many of the mainstream US media to the view that there are no other options and that the US should side with the military.

In fact, no government can ever wage a successful war against terrorism without stability, a certain level of political legitimacy, and the support of a majority of its people. Political stability is essential to the fight against terrorism, but Musharraf's actions have destabilized Pakistan more than ever, and Bush's support for Musharraf is contrary to common sense and US long-term interests.

Anti-Americanism is on the rise in Pakistan, especially among the educated middle class, which has borne the brunt of the crackdown. When local and foreign news channels are shut down, when women and students are being brutalized on the streets by law enforcement forces, and all this is happening against the backdrop of a sharp economic downturn and accelerated inflation, the middle class, which should be a natural ally of the authorities in the war against terrorism, involuntarily begins to sympathize with the Islamists.

The Americans tried to broker an alliance between Musharraf and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who returned from a nine-year exile to an enthusiastic popular reception in Karachi. ³ , albeit marred by a terrorist attack in which 152 people were killed and 500 injured. Washington hoped that Bhutto, if elected prime minister, would give Musharraf the legitimacy he lacked. However, in his heart, Musharraf was never inclined to such an alliance, and after the introduction of a state of emergency, Bhutto found herself between two fires. The Pakistan People's Party, which she leads, and the country's public demand that she unite the fragmented opposition and lead the campaign to remove Musharraf. The Americans insist that she cooperate with Musharraf. Benazir Bhutto understands that if she continues to hesitate, she will lose public support and her nuclear, that is, the main electorate ⁴ .

What about the judges?

The state of emergency imposed by Musharraf destroyed the entire constitutional order in Pakistan. Over the past year, the judiciary has been trying to achieve independence from the army. During the summer, for four months, tens of thousands of lawyers staged unprecedented demonstrations for the reinstatement of Iftikhar Chaudhry, the chairman of the Supreme Court, dismissed by Musharraf. Since his reinstatement, Chaudhry has become a symbol of the struggle for constitutional rule, the rule of law and an independent judiciary - a serious attempt to break with the tradition of the past, in which the country and its judiciary were resigned to the rule of the military.

On November 3, Chaudhry was again deposed and placed under house arrest. 14 of the 17 members of the Supreme Court refused to take a new oath of allegiance, ordered by the military authorities under a temporary constitutional decree, and are also placed under house arrest. 60 out of 97 senior judges of the four provincial high courts have resigned.

On the political front

The most serious threat comes from several well-armed groups led by Pashtun mullahs who call themselves the "Pakistan Taliban". With the assistance of al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban, using connections with numerous Pakistani and Kashmiri extremist groups in major cities, the Pakistani Taliban now controls large areas in the Pashtun tribal belt adjacent to Afghanistan. This month, militants have virtually taken over the entire Swat Valley north of Islamabad, the country's largest tourism hub.

Now they are taking advantage of the country's political chaos to extend their tentacles into the densely populated areas of the Northwest Frontier Province. The Taliban can be seen in major cities around Peshawar, the provincial capital. They also organize combat training and provide shelter for hundreds of foreign fighters from Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe. German intelligence tracks down eleven members of a group of German Muslims who have been training in the tribal administrative region of North Waziristan and planning to blow up American bases in Germany.

Much now depends on the army and whether it is ready, as before, to support Musharraf. Senior career officers hoped that elections and civilian rule would take them away from the political frontier. But Musharraf's actions again pushed them, unable to stop the militants on their own, to the front line, under the reproach of an angry public. Unless international pressure on Musharraf to restore normalcy is strong enough, increased instability in Pakistan could well affect the entire region.

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1 Since November 3, 2007.
2 Musharraf has been in office since 1998.
3 October 18, 2007.
4 Since November 13, ex-premier and opposition leader Bhutto, who planned to hold a protest march from Islamabad to Lahore, has been under house arrest in Lahore.