Hypocracy of the religious right

When Dr Sarfraz Naeemi, who had challenged the Taliban idealogy, was killed in a suicide attack in the compound of a Lahore mosque quickly followed by another assualt on another mosque in Nowshera, it brought to the fore a contradiction in the thinking of the Pakistani Jihadhists and the religio-political parties. They are quick and venemous when a madrassa or a mosque is targeted by the Pakistan Army or the American drones and try to incite the feelings of the naive fathful. They have still not forgotten the military operation against Lal Masjid when its affiliated seminary’s students occupied a children’s libraray in Islamabad and stalked the streets and roads of Islamabad to kidnap those with ‘loose morals’.

These jihadhists bomb out mosquesful of faithful with no remorse while their supporters and champions of Islam show no courage to issue a statement of criticism. Little they know that when they themselves violate the sanctity of the mosque and reduce to smithreens the practicing Muslims, they give a message to the outside world that even places of worship are not that sacred when it comes to their lust for power.

In the pre-partition Charsadda, a person was shot dead when he was saying prayers in a local mosque. When the British Royal Police personnel came to examine the site of the crime, they went inside the mosque while their shoes on, people present there protested that they violate the sanctity of the mosque. To which one of the English police men replied: “When you kill a person inside the mosque, it is no disrespect to the mosque, while walking inside the mosque with boot on is.”

It is time for the religio-political leadership to jettison their hypocracy and take a clear stand on what is going on in Pakistan in the name of Islam.

Gillani’s bid to step in the wrong shoe

When Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani was addressing the Formation Commanders at a banquet at the Prime Minister’s House on Thursday, he did not know how close he resembled Ziaul Haq, the bête noire for the PPP. “Pakistan Army, unlike armies of other countries, has double responsibility of protecting not only geographical boundaries of the country, but also its ideological boundaries,” Mr. Gillani told the glittering gathering.

This added responsibility of guarding the so-called ideology of Pakistan was assigned to the army by Ziaul Haq who toppled Z.A. Bhutto in late 70s. Like every military dictator he also promised to have been forced to scuttle democracy, and to hold fair and free elections within stipulated 90 days–a promise he never honoured. To the bad luck of the country the Afghan war started. Since it shares a long porous border with the land-locked Afghanistan, Pakistan became central to the U.S. designs to trap the Soviet Union’s Red Army across the Durand Line. The U.S., the West and Arab countries started pampering the military dictator to make Pakistan the staging post for a protracted war inside Afghanistan, and it came in as a double jeopardy for Pakistan and its people.

To ensconce the armed forces, his only constituency, in the political matrix of Pakistan, Ziaul Haq coined the slogan that our armed forces are the guardians of not only the geographical borders of Pakistan but also of its ideological borders. It raised the stakes of the army in the political structure of Pakistan. Like the much-abused term “national interests”, the ideology of Pakistan is also a vague term which was framed much after the formation of the country in 1947.

Probably, it was during Ayub Khan’s martial law that the term ‘ideology of Pakistan’ was formed. Since we have a very short and blur view of our otherwise short history, people at large owned up this slogan. Thus Pakistani politics, which was very pluralist, was constrained by an ideology. Every political force has to adjust itself to the new reality. Those who tried to oppose were dubbed traitors.

This turn towards ideology bolstered the reactionary a la religious forces. Being the guardians of the ideology the army found its allies in religious outfits like Jama’at-i-Islami and centrist parties like Muslim League which never changes in character; it adds a new letter to its name whenever there is guard of change in the corridors of power. [There is a long list of PML (Q, N, F, J, ...)] However, Nawaz Sharif, going through tough moments of his life, has made his faction of the PML into a coherent party.

The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which has a long history of struggle against military dictatorship, always ended up on the wrong side of the establishment. It sacrificed yet another Bhutto on December 27, 2007 when the charismatic Benazir Bhutto fell to the bullets of the assassins at Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi after addressing a public meeting. It looked the end of an emerging bonhomie between the PPP and the establishment. But, it was not so.

Prime Minister Gillani put a seal on it while addressing the banquet also attended by among many President Pervaiz Musharraf and Chief of the Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Pervaiz Kiyani. Things have changed a lot since the days of Ziaul Haq. Today Pakistan is embroiled in another kind of war which is eating into its vitals. Our social fabric is in tatters. The writ of the state is challenged within the confines of the state–even Islamabad is no exception what to talk of Swat and Waziristan.

All this mayhem visited us when our rulers hugged a narrow ideology only to please a lunatic fringe that has a lot of nuisance value and no vision for a prosper future. It is time to do away with this politics of ideology and focus on building democratic institutions. Democracy is the best ideology if we need any to latch onto. Prime Minister Gillani must weigh words before uttering them in formal gathering, because the powers that be will take him for his words when they strike a blow on democracy.

Lifting ban on student unions: a bane or boon?

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani in his first speech to the National Assembly, after being elected with a two-thirds majority, announced the lifting of ban on student and labor unions. Two kudos and too much trepidations. Many hailed the decision. They are of the view that democracy starts at the grass-roots level where young students learn the intricacies of leadership. There are no two words about that. However, the announcement raised many an eyebrow also fearing the politicization of the already polarized educational institutions.

Since 1984, when the military dictator Ziaul Haq slapped a ban on student unions, the Islami Jamiat Talaba (IJT), the student wing of the Jama’at-i-Islami, monopolized the educational institutions across the country. Unchecked by any, the Jama’at students terrorized the whole community on the campuses in their zest for ‘Islamising’ the students and the education itself. This led to the emergence of a highly polarized situation on one hand; on the other, it circumvented pluralism on the campuses. Students and teachers found it difficult to expound their views on anything freely. Because everything was to be seen and debated within the parameters of a narrow ideology. Life was reduced to black and white without any grey areas. The fact is that life is all about the grey area which faded away in our society. While other student groups were hounded, the IJT had a field day to terrorize not only the students but even the teaching faculty.

The ban was imposed ostensibly to stop politicking in educational institutions. However, it produced the reverse results: atmosphere at the campuses became more polarized—and in many cases militarized. It caused a brain drain when the liberal-minded intellectuals were forced to leave the campus for greener pastures where they could breathe freely and express their thoughts without any fear. Pakistani universities, since then, are ruled by mediocre who stifle debate in the name of ideology and morality.

Ridiculously enough, during this period of regimentation in the name of Islam and morality, plagiarism flourished—as if intellectual stealing has nothing to do with religion and morality. University of the Punjab, which has been in the throttle grip of the IJT since long, has been in the press but for the wrong reasons. Five teachers at its Center for High Energy Physics have been found guilty of plagiarism. A professor of Applied Psychology Department has been dismissed from service after his MSc degree showing first division was found to be based on bogus notification.

This is the morality that has been pushed down the throat of the university students and teachers. What is more intriguing is that the Punjab university administration is finding it difficult to take any action against the plagiarists because they are protected by the Jama’at. The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has stopped funding to the university for its dithering over the plagiarism issue.

From 1984 onwards the campuses saw more violence and less peace. Educational institutions are considered the breeding ground for the future leadership. By electing their leaders the student develop a taste for democracy, while the elected ones, while speaking for the rights of the students, learn how to negotiate on behalf of the community.

However in Pakistan, the student unions turned into a bane when they became hand tools of the mainstream political and religious parties. At their beck and call, the student unions are being used by the parent parties for their own political ends. Thus the dirty politics of the streets creep into the campuses. Egged by the support from the outside the education institutions, the student unions fought their war among themselves spilling a lot of blood.

One expected that before lifting the ban on student unions the government would have evolved a mechanism to ‘free’ the students form the stranglehold of mainstream political and religious parties. It is hard to oppose student unions, but it is far harder to see them play puppets to the religious and political parties. The 24-year old ban did not help our education system, but the lifting of ban in the present circumstances is going to radicalize the environment on the campuses.

Towards a citizen media

Democracy and media go hand in hand. Democracy cannot flourish without a free and pluralist media. Media cannot grow in a dictatorial or autocratic environment. In short, democracy and media supplement each other. Diversity in the marketplace of ideas is a must for democracy, while dictatorship and autocracy strive for uniformity of opinion. In autocratic regimes, dissenting voices are silenced in the name of national interests and national cohesion. [The term ‘national interests’ is a loaded phrase which is open to many definitions, but they always come in handy for dictators and autocrats in times of crisis, with Pakistan no exception.]
Autocratic governments are not the only threat to a free and pluralist media. Free market economy and conglomerates have emerged as the greatest threat to the freedom of the press. Advertisers, who have become the economic lifeline of the media, determine what news to be published—and what qualifies to be a news. They don’t pressurize the media to publish news in their favor; they use their economic clout to stop the publication of a certain news. Adverts compete with news for audience attention, and at the end of the day audience gets lots of adverts and little news.
This reminds one of Shorash Kashmiri’s famous quote that “we don’t charge for what we publish, we charge for what we don’t publish.” Important news just gets “killed” to appease the advertisers. Over the years, journalists in Pakistan have developed a tendency of self-censorship for a variety of reasons. Since the dark days of Ziaul Haq, Pakistani press, apart from the government and state agencies, is facing other enemies as well.
Political parties and religious groups, egged by the government, started targeting newspapers and individual journalists not falling in line. Karachi, otherwise the hub of newspaper industry, was the worst-hit area where outspoken newspapers were stopped from publishing by militant groups while the government looked the other way. Individual journalists were physically harmed to silence them and sow fear in the hearts of the whole journalist community.
The sad part of the story is that the newspapers managements entered into deals with the militant groups instead of standing by its victimized journalists. After being ditched by their respective organizations, the journalists felt more threatened and found safety in not challenging the demons. For fear of being killed by the one of a kind militants, the journalists opted for “killing” the stories that could tempt the ‘providence’.
Another outgrowth of the myopic rule of Ziaul Haq was the radicalization of institutions by inducting religious activists in them. Journalism, which till then was the forte of leftist intellectuals, was contaminated by religious parties’ zealots who are more of activists than journalists. This again reinforced self-censorship. But this time not for the fear of journalist’s life, rather to serve a narrow ideology in the guise of journalism. Any news story, which is against the ideology or parent party of the journalist, is “killed” conveniently.
Now come conglomerates: these are in fact “private ministries of information” that generate their own news and control others. Conglomeration, an outcome of free market economy, encroaches on the free marketplace of ideas. Every newspaper has become a publishing house churning out more than one newspaper in more than one language. Now every publishing house has a cable TV service as well. This surge in conglomeration has lead to monopoly of news, while journalism itself has become an industry. The large publishing houses work like the notorious corporations. Much to the loss of the audience new technologies have accentuated monopoly in media by increasing the power of big corporations to exercise more power and increase their range.
Conglomeration is nibbling away at audience’s choice of plurality which results in uniformity of opinion and the lacking of diversity. When diversity of opinion gives way to a uniform worldview, democratic discourse comes to an end. Democracy, shorn of diversity of opinion, leads to dictatorship where a single individual or institution drives the whole society. People embrace, out of their free will, the yoke of slavery in the name of democracy and ‘national interests’.
In such a situation the culprit is not the dictator but the corporate media. The media creates certain imagery by giving news which is fragmented and sketchy that makes it difficult for the audience to see the connections across issues. It becomes difficult for the common people to follow the development of a particular issue over time. This situation promotes apathy, cynicism, and quiescence at the expense of political participation. Common people become mere spectators in a democracy which otherwise should be a participatory business.
No situation is more congenial for hijacking democracy than this. Media becomes part of the power troika along with the bourgeoisie and the army that take the common people for a ride in the name of inculcating real democracy. Thus democracy and a free media get sacrificed at the alter of free market economy which is the linchpin of capitalism.
In case of Pakistan, alternative media is also no panacea. Not content with the mainstream media and the state-run PTV a new media has emerged. But, unfortunately, this media espouses a narrow and distorted worldview in the name of alternativity. For arguments sake, the press run by religious and sectarian organizations is the only alternative media, but it is heavily laden with issues that have nothing to do with democracy or free market of ideas.
This downslide of the media can be balanced by the emergence of citizens’ media which is run by the community instead of a corporation, a family enterprise or a religious/sectarian organization. In citizens’ media common people are part of the whole journalistic activity which develops a sense of belonging in them. Citizens’ media does not compete for circulation or for corporate adverts. Its interest lies in the interest of the community and community is the owner of the media. Mainstream press, because of its widespread reach, has a larger agenda in which smaller communities and their problems find little space.
No time is more opportune for the emergence of a citizen media than today. Corporate media can be countered by a network of small community media with no commercial interests and with strong roots in the community. The voice of any community should not get lost in the din of corporate culture.

People have spoken, they deserve to be honored

It was like a refreshing, cool breeze in a sweltering hot summer. The pall of gloom that had overtaken the wretched masses, gave way to the hope of a new morning. Years of machinations were undone in a day. By voting against the ‘king’s party’ and the religious right, the people of Pakistan in general and those of the NWFP in particular, shattered many a myth. What the guns of the U.S. and the men of Musharraf could not do in years of bloodletting the poor people did it joyfully in a single day on February 18: empowering the liberal and secular forces of the country and dislodging the obscurantist forces.

The message was loud and clear that the people of Pakistan can make a good choice once given a chance. The results of the general elections may be flabbergasting for Musharraf and his masters, but this is what the common man/woman had on her/his mind while trekking to the polling stations on a sunny Monday. And that they turned out in such an impressive number (43%) shows how they longed for this day and time to register their faith in ballet and show their disdain for the bullet.

It also showed that even the illiterate can make a decent choice, but our educated ones are not decent enough to honor their mandate by stepping out of the way to let people’s leaders in. It was a referendum against Musharraf who failed to see the reality and kept bathing in the illusion of ‘silent majority’s’ support. If still the president thinks that he enjoys even a modicum of popularity, it is a plain case of delirium that needs hospitalization. And if the U.S. and the West still think that Musharraf can deliver in their ‘war on terror’, they need to refashion their line of thinking on democracy and the public will.

What else could be more soothing when television screens flickered with images from Wana in that ‘wild’ Waziristan where women, undeterred by the Taliban and the ongoing war against them, flocked to the polling stations to exercise their right to universal suffrage. Not to be left behind, the better half of men in Jamrud and Landikotal also voted unhampered to elect their representatives. Is it not a slap in the face of extremism and fanaticism? If yes, then why helicopter gunships and the dreaded drones haunt the skies of the tribal belt?

This much for the euphoria: the hard reality is that the new government has already inherited piles of problems: to top it all, the war against terror, which is straining the very social fabric of our society. One fails to fathom it at all: the more they rain bombs, the more the resistance stiffens. So much so that the militancy spills into the city centers. Our armed-to-the-teeth soldiers find it difficult to set foot on the militant’s land; for militants even the brims of the GHQ are not no thoroughfares.

Militants and terrorists need to be isolated from the larger society. Nothing can isolate them more than empowering the common man. To vote freely is the exercise of power. This s what the people of Frontier, especially in Swat, did. Till recently in the spot light as the bastion of militancy, the people of Swat proved everyone wrong by voting for the secular ANP in toto. Guns and bombs may have dislodged the mediaeval-minded Fazlullah and his combatants, the people of Swat defeated them on February 18 by simply voting against them.

This much for the militancy: Next is the question of restoring the judiciary. The relentless struggle that was spear-headed by the lawyers’ community and aided by the civil society won votes for three parties—the PPPP, the PML (N) and the ANP. To vote for one of these parties was in fact voting for the ‘deposed’ judges as well. The quest for an independent judiciary has woven the three popular parties and the civil society in a common thread. If any of the parties falters in restoring the 60-plus judges, it is going to send the whole movement helter-skelter. So far Nawaz Sharif is forthright on this issue, but the PPPP seems to be having second thoughts.

This is what dampens the euphoria and makes one cynical. But this time round there is a realization that the gaze of media and an intense interest of the outer world in a democratic Pakistan may keep the power brokers and wielders in check. It is the last chance for the democratic forces to deliver. No time is more opportune than the present one. Political parties and their leaders may have squandered many opportunities, but still people have more confidence in a democratic dispensation than a dictatorship, howsoever benign it may be.

If the civil society can empower political forces, they can also confine them to the dustbin of history—the way they did it with Q-League and the MMA. In this age of a pluralist media environment, political leaders may find it hard to take the common man for a ride. And for President Musharraf no time is more opportune than the present to step down honorably and let parliament take the reins of power. The U.S. can easily pressurize a single person, howsoever powerful he may be, than a parliament, howsoever weak it may be.   

A lacklustre election that may not happen

Still many things are standing between the lackluster elections and a weary public to meet on February 18. To vote or not to vote is a riddle that has numbed the public psyche. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the disqualification of Nawaz Sharif dimmed the already flickering zeal of the public. The ensuing violence took away the steam from the electioneering that had never gotten on a popular note.

Blasts in public rallies, topped by the one in Charsadda on Saturday where 27 people were killed while attending a corner meeting of the ANP, are making the election a bloody drama. If this level of law and order remains, people are more likely to stay at home instead of risking their lives to cast vote. This atmosphere of terror and uncertainty, which otherwise should have been a festive time, cast aspersions at the rhetoric of President Pervaiz Musharraf that the elections will be fair, free and peaceful.

The president and his coterie of sycophants à la the Chaudhries, Durranis and others of their ilk wanted from the day one to have an election without public meetings. And their ‘wisdom’ was understandable: none of them are street-smart to pull a sizable crowd of supporters around them. While a charismatic Benazir Bhutto and a re-anointed Nawaz Sharif were capable to swell their ranks in rallies and public meetings.

Big public meetings in a free environment win over the floating votes, which decide the fate of the contesting parties. That’s why political parties vie for the floating votes who have no political conviction but still hold the key in deciding the fate of a candidate or for that matter a whole party. Public rallies also make positions of the political parties known before the votes are polled. Since no one wants to vote a losing candidate or party; in other words, everyone wants to be on the winning side, parties that hold the largest rallies win over the indecisive votes.

In short, free campaigning before the elections make projections for the media as well as the public to have a guess on who or which party is going to win here and lose somewhere else. This makes rigging a bit difficult, if not altogether impossible. Now that there is no electioneering with the prospects of a low turnout, stuffing the boxes or engineering results is no more a risky business. Since most of the people are likely to stay at home on the election day, because of fear or no interest, whatever results may the Election Commission announce would be no surprise for the people.

But the way things are moving and shaking, especially in the NWFP, yet another postponement of the election in imminent. No election is a win-win situation for the embattled president who has a lot more bizarre tricks up his sleeves than his antic of electing himself for the second time from the same, but truncated, electoral college. With a hand-picked judiciary it is not difficult for him to validate an election even if a dismally low turnout itself is a no-confidence in President Musharraf and his select government which is an extension of the PML (Q).

 

Taming the tribals; using the guns

In blithe defiance of President Pervaiz Musharraf’s claims in the West, his war on terror is expanding alarmingly at home. Descending from the thick wooded hills of South and North Waziristan, the war has reached the barren hills of Darra Adamkhel, just 40 kilometers from Peshawar. This war is not only expanding, but is also getting aggressive where the so-called local Taliban are becoming more brazen in attacking the Pakistan army.

Earlier over-running two strategic forts in Waziristan, wherefrom they took away a large cache of arms, the local Taliban took away four truckloads of weapons the Pakistan army was moving through Kohat to the war-stricken Waziristan. These three incidents, preceded by the capturing of more than 200 army men last August without firing a shot, are enough to put the Musharraf administration to shame.

There can be two explanations: one, the local Taliban have become powerful enough to fight an offensive war against a regular army that prides itself on its professionalism and discipline. Second, the Taliban have their supporters in the ranks of the armed forces that stage-manage such incidents to replenish their depleting stocks and extract more concessions from a shaken administration.

Whatever may be the case, the most dreadful thing is that the Pakistani brand of ‘war on terror’ is not receding; rather it is throwing up more ominous signals of attrition and expansion. In the face of all this, the government seems to be pointless in how to tackle this situation and bring peace to the country. The tactics being employed by the government from the day one are inconsistent and murky. They start from a full-blown war in which every weapon in the army stockpile, except for the atom bomb, is used against the hardened Taliban. And end up signing a deal with them on their (read Taliban) terms.

These deals give a respite to the over-stretched state forces to count their dead and an opportunity to the militants to count their gains and regroup. At the same time they also get concessions from the government, which overawe the local tribal population, bringing them home the impression that the Pakistan army is not that invincible and the government not that powerful. The Taliban win over even those tribesmen who are sitting on the fringes.

Taliban or talibanization has unfortunately become a mindset which cannot be changed with the thud of bombs or the ricochet of the gunfire. Neither is it a spell that took the tribal people overnight. Talibanization or religious extremism has been sown in the soil of the NWFP over the years to weaken the Pakhtun nationalist forces and thus find a strategic depth in Afghanistan. This quest for strategic depth has now become a strategic folly that sees no easy end. In the process we see a rabid extremism.

It took Ziaul Haq and his American masters more than a decade to radicalize the Pakhtun society to raise a parallel army of the zealots to counter nationalist forces. It would now take more than a decade to make these zealots unlearn their militancy. It is an irony of fate that one military dictator, with an open support from the U.S., militarized the whole society, while another, this time on the dictates of Washington, has launched a war against militancy. All in the name of yet-to-be-defined national interest.

The rising talibanization needs to be checked, but only the use of force will never deliver. Unless the tribal areas are brought into the mainstream through economic development coupled with political changes by undoing the centuries-old Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR), tribal areas one after the other will erupt to challenge the writ of the government and keep the Pakistan armed forces embroiled in an internal war. The millions of bucks that Pakistan gets every month from the U.S. to recompense its expenses in the ‘war on terror’ need to be diverted towards the development of the tribal areas.

Since media persons are not allowed access to first hand information on whatever is going on in the different hotspots, many conspiracy theories are doing the round. One is that Pakistan does not want to silence the guns lest it loses its strategic importance for the U.S., which would cost it dearly in terms of finances and as well as diplomacy. If this is the reality, then the whole situation is not that troubling. But if the reality is what the government says that local Taliban are up against the state and fight such ferociously, then it is a threat to the very integrity of Pakistan.

For the last month or so it seems that the Taliban have scaled down their activities against the Nato forces in Afghanistan to give a beating to Pakistan on its soil and regroup for a summer offensive on the other side of the Durand Line. Pakistan’s efforts to employ jirga system for bringing peace to the war-battered areas are bearing no fruits. There are many reasons behind it. The Zia-sponsored radicalization has changed the power structure in the country in general and the tribal areas in particular.

Egged by the open support from the army and the government (which has been one and the same in Pakistan throughout except for a brief period: 1973-1976), mullahs started calling the shots in the tribal areas. Maliks, who worked as brokers between the political administration and the tribesmen, were rendered irrelevant. In case of any dispute the maliks would call a jirga, which had the power to implement its decision, even by force if need be.

Mullahs, who tasted power for the first time, disrupted the centuries-old cultural matrix of the tribal people in the name of religion. Since common people were already grueling under the FCR, they found a new hope in the mullahs who challenged every tradition but kept a mum on the black law that has no precedent after the end of apartheid in South Africa. This stand suited the political administration as well which extended support to the mullahs by giving them a free hand to impose their own brand of Islam and subject people to newer punishment without improving their lot by any means.

Now disputes are being resolved by ‘Sharia courts’ instead of the collective wisdom that rested in the tradition of jirga. It is does not mean that one still longs for the jirga system, but it was never expected to be replaced by something like ‘Sharia courts’ that sacrifice justice in the name of religion, thus bringing a bad name to Islam as well. Of late, the government realized the importance of jirga to reconcile the Taliban in Waziristan and Bajaur. But the realization dawned on the rulers after much water has flown down the bridge.

In the present circumstances the only way-out is to bring the tribal areas to the mainstream by scrapping the dreaded FCR. It should be coupled with a plan for economic development of the tribal areas which is not possible without promoting education. When people suffer economic deprivation in an environment of total ignorance, they very happily swell the ranks of fanatics like the Taliban. They vent their pent up rage in the name of jihad. Economic development and education will give the tribal people the hope of a happy life. And this hope will hold them away from fanaticism and radicalization.

Honobbing for democracy

President Pervaiz Musharraf met the self-exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in Abu Dhabi on Friday to shore up his fledgling regime by hammering out a deal on power-sharing. Both the leaders have so far avoided to deny or accept the summit meeting, though it has–and was–never a secret.

This meeting is going to have a far-reaching adverse effects on the future political despensation in Pakistan. It was a meeting of the like-minded who have the least regard for the sentiments of the common people. Benazir Bhutto, headiing a feudal but popular party of Pakistan, is in collusion with a feudal but unpopular entity i.e. Pakistan Army, to have her share in the cake.

The teaming up of Musharraf and Bhutto is not going to help democracy in Pakistan. It is also not going to stem the rising extremism in the country. Instead this alliance is bound to stoke the flames of militancy by alienating the common people who will easily rally behind the radical forces.

The Musharraf regime has already lost public support and any party that is going to hob-nob with it is bound to lose its vote as well.

Musharraf and Bhutto met in the backdrop of a popular movement that restored the Chief Justice of Pakistan who had been removed by the military ruler on flimsy charges to make his second term election from the present assemblies possible.

That movement has given the masses a new hope to take on the military head-on and restrict them to their barracks. Half way through its success, the Abu Dhabi meeting was meant to fizzle this movement out.

Whatever may be the results, one thing is sure that the new found hopes of democracy in Pakistan are about to shatter. When two feudal entities meet the common man loses for sure.

Ominous signals from the U.S.

When the Chief Justice of Pakistan was restored by the Supreme Court on Friday very few people knew that it would send ripples as far as Washington, DC. The restoration of Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, who had been removed by President Pervaiz Musharraf on March 9 on charges of misusing his authority, has nibbled at the power of the military strongman in Pakistan and his influence in the United States.

The U.S. has been banking on Musharraf in its global war on terror since 9/11 because apart from Afghanistan and Iraq tribal areas of Pakistan are one of the theatres.

Pakistan’s support to the United States has been crucial to crush the Taliban resistance inside Afghanistan and wipe out their hideouts in the bordering Waziristan. Musharraf sent in thousands of forces in the mountainous area bordering Afghanistan that was no-go area for the army.

But this operation from the very outset had not been that easy. Pakistan army was badly bruised by hardened militants, forcing the government to change its strategy and enter a deal with them.

The September 2006 deal between the government and the militants of Waziristan was taken by the United States with a pinch of salt. The Supreme Court verdict on Friday sent a chilling message to Washington that the man they are banking on is not that strong.

Now, every move that Musharraf would make to enconse himself in power can be challenged in the rejuvenated Supreme Court. This gives Musharraf and his supporters in the White House a cause for concern.

If Musharraf goes, one way or the other, the United States sees no one else who could carry on the work undertaken by him. This leaves the White House with no other option but to act themselves directly.

This is the reason that for the past one week disturbing signals are emanating from the United States. Every second White House aide talks of direct hits inside Pakistan to take out ‘Taliban targets’.

If the United States opts for this military option, it is wrought with more dangers than the ongoing war. Any single bomb that the U.S. would drop inside Pakistan would send hundreds of people, who so far float on the fringes, into the ranks of the militants.

Waziristan is no plain area like Iraq; it is a labyrinthine of thick wooded hills where bombs can be least effective. Enter the ground forces of the U.S. and they are in for a long haul with no success in near future.

Any direct action inside Pakistan would catapult the fundamentalists to power.

If there is any delibrations in the White House on post-Musharraf scenario it should focus on promoting a democratic despensation in Pakistan. For this fair and transparent elections are a must. Fundamentalism or militancy can be defeated only in polls. People of Pakistan have always elected moderate forces whenever free and fair elections have been held.

By propping a military dictator the U.S. has always helped strengthen militancy and fundamentalism. It is time the U.S. recompense the people of Pakistan in particular and other Muslim countries in general by supporting democracies. Pampering dictators in the name of war on terror would fan the flames of war every where.

Judicial victory

For the first time in Pakistan’s chequered history, the Supreme Court redeemed itself by standing up to a dictator and restoring its Chief Justice. The full court decision that sent the whole country in jubilations was the culmination of a four-month long but tough struggle that also saw the closing of ranks among the otherwise diverse ideologies.  The Friday judgment was also an expression of ‘no-confidence’ in the policies of Gen. Pervaiz Musharraf who had–and still has–the delusion of being the most popular leader in the country.

The Supreme Court decision would go a long way in realigning the different power centers in the country. No dictator, both civil or military, would in future dare to take the apex court’s seal of approval for granted. From now on every decision, whether at the top level or lower level, would be taken by keeping the judiciary in mind. The change that this decision has brought would percolate down to the lower courts where majority of the litigation takes place.