Pakistan: Now or Never?

Pakistan’s political crisis

Never in the history of Pakistan has a democratically elected civilian government served out its full term and then been replaced by another one, also through democratic elections. It is that context that makes the latest political crisis in Pakistan so important.

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani is scrambling to save his PPP-led government after it lost its parliamentary majority when its coalition partner, the  Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), announced it would go into opposition.  A smaller religious party, the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F), already quit the coalition last month.  If the government falls and elections are held ahead of schedule in 2013, the opportunity for Pakistan to have a government which serves its full term will be lost. 

The prevailing view among political analysts appears to be that the government is now less likely to last until 2013, even if it manages to survive in the short term. But given the peculiar nature of Pakistani politics, where the military exerts a powerful role behind the scenes, no one is predicting anything with any certainty.

The main opposition leader, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, has shown little enthusiasm for forcing an early election which could propel his Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) into power at a time when the country faces huge economic and security problems. Better to wait it out until an election in 2013 that his PML-N is seen as likely to win. Having been ousted in a coup in 1999, Sharif also remains deeply suspicious of the army, and he has ruled out supporting any moves against the government that might be orchestrated by the military. Giving democracy time to bed down, by allowing the government led by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to serve its full term, could set a useful precedent for a future PML-N administration. 

The army itself has shown no inclination to run the country directly, and it already controls the issues that matter most to it – foreign and security policy.  It has barely disguised its frustration with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari — who also leads the PPP — particularly after he travelled to France and Britain last summer while the country suffered from devastating floods.  But that does not translate into wanting to see Sharif back in power. According to a U.S. embassy cable released by WikiLeaks,  army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani made it clear to U.S. officials that “regardless of how much he disliked Zardari, he distrusted Nawaz (Sharif) even more”.

Another option, possibly more palatable to the army, would be an alternative coalition of smaller political parties which might be able to challenge both Zardari and Sharif in the next election. But that will take time to fall into place, possibly right up to 2013, if at all.  Don’t rule anybody out, however unlikely they seem now, as part of an alternative coalition. That includes former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, who set his sights very firmly on 2013 when he launched his political party in London in October.

A couple of final points. We don’t actually know for sure whether there is a groundswell of popular support in favour of ditching the current government, though there is, as Nadeem Paracha argued in Dawn,  a great deal of populist sloganeering on television channels about the state of the country.  “Akin to a black comedy is the fact that most TV anchors and hosts that go on spouting all these concerns – unemployment, inflation, drone attacks, ‘good governance’, Aafia ki wapsi (jailed Pakistani scientist Aafia Siddiqui)  etc. – are sitting pretty with hefty salaries and perks, and, what some would suggest, an agenda to safeguard the interests of some of the most anti-democracy classes in this country i.e., the military, the mullah and large sections of the upper and middle-classes.”

Punjab minister asks for mercy from Taliban, earns woman’s scorn

After the chief minister of Pakistan’s biggest province reportedly asked the Taliban to spare his region from attacks, he kicked off an uproar and earned the scorn of a woman member of a provincial parliament, who sarcastically offered him her scarf and said “the women of the frontier province” would protect him.

Shahbaz Sharif, chief minister of Punjab province, on Sunday said he didn’t understand why the Taliban were targeting the Punjab when his party — the PML-N — and militants alike opposed the policies of former military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, who allied with the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Gen. Musharraf planned a bloodbath of innocent Muslims at the behest of others only to prolong his rule, but we in the PML-N opposed his policies and rejected dictation from abroad,” the daily Dawn quoted him as saying. “If the Taliban are also fighting for the same cause then they should not carry out acts of terror in Punjab.” (Where the PML-N rules.)

Shahbaz’s reported remark at an Islamic seminary in the provincial capital of Lahore on Sunday was widely seen as an attempt to appease Taliban militants who have unleashed a wave of bombs and suicide attacks across the country. Just two days before, militants killed 45 people in twin suicide bombings in a high-security zone in Lahore.

Because of such attacks, Pakistanis have generally been supportive of the military campaign against militant enclaves in the volatile border regions in the northwest, although the U.S.-led war on al Qaeda militants and their allies is highly unpopular in Pakistan.

But Shahbaz’s remarks were too much for one Nighat Orakzai, the woman who on Monday accused the chief minister of cowardice.

“The statement shows the chief minister of Punjab is afraid of the Taliban. I offer my dupatta (scarf) to him. He should wear this and sit in the chief minister’s house. The women of the frontier province are ready to protect him,” she said as she threw her scarf on the floor of the North West Frontier Provincial Assembly.

Fear drives conspiracy of silence in Pakistan

Many Pakistanis and their leaders may hate the Taliban, but few dare speak openly against them for fear of reprisals from the hardline Islamist group.

The militants have carried out four attacks and killed at least a dozen people since the army launched an assault on their South Waziristan stronghold, while more than 150 people were killed in a deadly spree preceding the offensive – including a brazen raid on army headquarters in Rawalpindi.

Yet despite the attacks, few Pakistanis are prepared to come forward and bear witness against the militants.

While Naveed Haider was not afraid to give his version of events after witnessing the drive-by shooting of an army brigadier in the capital, he said he understood why others were more relectuant.

“They are scared,” he said pointing to a dozen people standing around him. “The shooting took place in front of all these people, but no one will speak because they are fightened.”

“What can we do?” a man in the crowd responded. “We are poor people. How can we speak?”

The apparent fear is not confined to ordinary people and seems even to have struck the country’s leaders — many who don’t move without a heavy bodyguard.

Pakistan’s missing people and judge Chaudhry

Among the black-suited crowd celebrating Pakistani judge Iftikhar Chaudhry’s reinstatement as the head of the Supreme Court outside his home in Islamabad this week was a  woman with a bouquet in her hand and a prayer in her heart.

Amina Janjua’s husband went missing in July 2005, one of hundreds that rights activists allege have been held without judicial process in secret detentions centres as Pakistan’s part in the campaign against al Qaeda and the Taliban. Her husband’s case was one of the dozens that Chaudhry had taken up in his campaign to fix accountability for the missing people, before he was sacked in November 2007.

As the chief judge, regarded as a hero after an opposition-backed lawyers’ protest movement forced the government to  back down, returns to his seat on the top court this weekend, the hopes of people such as Amina are high.

“He is going to reopen those cases, and our near and dear ones will be back home soon,” India’s Hindu newspaper quoted her saying in a report from Islamabad. Amina  is now leading a movement by the families of the missing, which include people from Baluchistan to Punjab.

Can the judge, returning to the bench for the third time, deliver ? Or will his campaign to find out the whereabouts of Pakistan’s missing put him in direct conflict again with the security establishment? What of the United States, ultimately blamed by Pakistanis for many of these disappearances?

(more…)

Pakistan’s “long march” in the streets and on the Internet

Pakistani authorities banned public protests and detained hundreds of lawyers and opposition workers nationwide to prevent them from launching Thursday’s planned ”long march” towards the capital Islamabad to force President Asif Ali Zardari to reinstate a former Supreme Court judge.

Many went into hiding according to these reports, vowing to press on with the cross-country motor convoy that will set off from cities in Baluchistan and Sind and then Puinjab on Friday before culminating outside the parliament building in the capital.

And many others turned to the Internet, using blogs and Twitter to report on detentions, swapping pictures and information about security deployments and in so doing keeping alive perhaps the gravest threat to Zardari’s one-year-old administration.

Here some of the tweets or short messages on the popular Twitter site :

“One sp (superintendent of police)  in Gujranwala refuses to arrest people. Government removes him from his post,” wrote one.

Another wrote : “All fast food & other companies warned by Govt to NOT provide food to LongMarch participants and rest houses warned not to rent rooms.” Another wrote about police raiding the house of a political worker in Rawalpindi who died eight years ago.

Taliban ready to defend Pakistan against India

                  By Robert Birsel and Zeeshan Haider

Pakistan’s Taliban have indignantly criticised what they said were India’s “unfounded” threats against Pakistan in the wake of  the Mumbai assault and they vowed to rally to the defence of the country in the event of an Indian attack.   “If they dared to attack Pakistan then, God willing, we will share the happiness and grief with all Pakistanis,” said Pakistani Taliban spokesman Maulvi Omar.   “We will put the animosity and fighting with the Pakistani army behind us and the Taliban will defend their frontiers, their boundaries, their country with their weapons.

“We will defend the Line of Control in the same way as we are defending the Durand Line,” he told Reuters by telephone referring to the frontier  with India in disputed Kashmir and the border with Afghanistan.   “We will show Pakistanis whether we are miscreants or defenders of the country.”

Pakistan has already said if the tension with India escalates,  it would have to move troops from its Afghan border,  where the Pakistani military is putting the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies under unprecedented pressure, to the Indian border.   The last time that happened was after the December 2001 attack on India’s parliament when the Taliban and al Qaeda  were also under tremendous pressure in the weeks after U.S.  special forces and their Afghan allies ousted the Taliban government in Kabul.   Are those behind the Mumbai carnage hoping that another face- off across Pakistan’s eastern border will again see Pakistani forces leaving the Afghan border virtually unattended?   Perhaps it’s just a coincidence the Mumbai assault came as the  militants seem to be under serious pressure on the Afghan  border.   Speaking of coincidences, some in Pakistan see the hand of  India behind the latest round of blood-letting in Karachi.   At least 40 people have been killed in Karachi since Saturday in clashes between activists from the city’s majority community of Urdu-speakers and ethnic Pashtuns from northwest Pakistan.

Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was on television on Tuesday saying it was strange the violence in Karachi erupted just after the Mumbai attack.   Conspiracy theorists will no doubt note that six small bombs  exploded in ethic Pashtun neighbourhoods on Karachi on July 7,  in what authorities said was a bid to stir up ethnic unrest.   The bombs went off hours after a suicide car-bomber killed 58 people in an attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul. India said  Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency was behind that attack

Guest contribution: Presidential elections in Pakistan

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone.  The writer is Pakistan’s High Commissioner to London and a former advisor to the late Benazir Bhutto.

                                                By Wajid Shamsul Hasan

Ever since the late Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party announced its decision to field the widower of the former Prime Minister, Senator Asif Ali Zardari, as its Presidential candidate, he has become the target of a well-calculated media blitzkrieg especially when he is emerging as a sure winner. Besides an attempt to resurrect the dead horse of alleged corruption, he is also being accused of being unhealthy, of having unsound mind.

Skies had fallen on me when Ms Benazir Bhutto was martyred. It seemed the end of the world. My profound apprehensions were regarding the future of Pakistan – destined to be a failing or a failed state – long before her cold-blooded murder.

I had always looked at her as the only national leader who had the commitment, rare courage, unprecedented popularity, determination and dauntless perseverance that could save the country from a widely predicted dénouement. Her assassination had pushed the country to the edge of a precipice. A sheer nudge – from the deeply grieved angry nation – especially in Sindh where the reaction to her assassination was most pronounced as reflected in the people’s spontaneous outburst that they would not have anything more to do with Pakistan – could have plunged the country into the valley of death and doom but for the timely intervention of Senator Asif Ali Zardari. He grasped the gravity of the situation and stood up to save Pakistan from break-up. His words to angry and violent masses: “Your dear leader Benazir Bhutto had laid down her life to save Pakistan and not to destroy it.” And both he and his resolute 18-year old son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari re-enforced Benazir Bhutto’s life-long philosophy that democracy is the best revenge.

Thus the populist wrath was transformed into an electoral victory to defeat both the dictator and his collaborators. Indeed the worst adversity for him and the nation had made Zardari a man of destiny and he converted the nation’s profound grief into unparalleled strength. In deference to her wishes he set himself on the task of translating her dying commitment to the nation that her death should serve as a catalyst for change. Not a politician in his wife’s mould and having spent more than half of his married life in incarceration, the manner Zardari has handled the post-Bhutto situation has made him past master at the game. SAZ has definitely out-manoeuvred those who wanted to play games with him including the former President. He has achieved the much desired change peacefully and without risking the lives of his people what many other senior politicians had been seeking through confrontation.

During my last visit to Pakistan (June), I found it in the midst of a propaganda vertigo and a campaign that SAZ was allegedly in cahoots with the former President. I had left Pakistan reassured by SAZ when he told me “he” will be out by August. His critics even accused him of giving the former President unnecessary time to regain what they called his hold on power. They failed to understand that the time-delay was well-spent in evolving a fool-proof strategy to outmanoeuvre the President.

A woman president for Pakistan?

A comment recently by Asif Zardari, the powerful head of the Pakistan People’s Party, that the country’s next president could be a woman has set off speculation that he might propose the name of one of his sisters, both members of his party, to succeed President Pervez Musharraf.

What better way to burnish Pakistan’s credentials as an enlightened democracy than have a woman as head of state at a time when the power of Islamist militants is growing, especially in the vital northwest region where they have been burning down schools for girls.

Besides, installing either Faryal Talpur or Azra Fazal Pechucho as president would help tighten Zardari’s grip on power with a handpicked president and prime minister, as The Pakistan Policy Blog notes. The name of National Assembly speaker Fahmida Mirza has also been mentioned as another possible woman candidate.

But then again, and reflecting the pressures on them, Zardari and coalition partner Nawaz Sharif might turn to the troubled North-West Frontier Province, choosing a candidate from there as one way to counter the expanding influence of the Islamists. One of the frontrunners would be Asfandyar Wali Khan, president of the Awami National Party, a regional group with liberal credentials, based in the NWFP. Candidates from Baluchistan, the other region where a low-key insurgency has raged, have also been mentioned in reports

Linked perhaps to the eventual choice is also a decision on whether the presidency should be returned to its ceremonial post as was traditionally the case, or continue with a much more powerful institution as was the case with Musharraf.

Under Musharraf, the president retained the authority to dismiss parliament and make top military and judicial appointments, source of much of the political turmoil that engulfed the final years of his rule. The president is also the head of the country’s nuclear command authority.

Impeaching Musharraf will not end the problems

Pakistan’s fractious coalition has agreed to begin impeachment proceedings against President Pervez Musharraf but can it really pull it off ?  Do they have the numbers — the two-thirds majority required from the National Assembly and  Senate combined? Impeachement is like a trial, so what charges will they bring against him?

And then there is the army, still arguably the most powerful institution in a country of 160 million people battling Islamist extremism, tension on its borders with India and Afghanistan where U.S. led coalition forces are hunkered down, and facing an economic meltdown.

Do Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif have the consent of the army to go after one of its own in such humiliating fashion?

The questions are jumping off the pages as Pakistanis debate the latest twist in a political drama playing out against the backdrop of a country increasingly restless with the heavy weight of its ally the United States on the one hand, and the rising power of Islamist forces on the other.

Is this for real, asks Adi Najam at All Things Pakistan, wondering if the impeachment proposal was more an attempt to keep the four-month-old coalition going, given that the numbers don’t seem to add up.

Then there is the external factor.  Are Washington, Beijing and Riyadh — three of Pakistan’s closest allies — in favour of the impeachment decision, a post on the Pakistan Policy Blog asks.

Who really is in control of Pakistan ?

One of the questions that repeatedly came up during Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s rather eventful trip to the U.S. last month was who was in charge of the Inter-Services Intelligence , especially after the botched attempt to bring the powerful spy agency - that critics see as a state within a state – under the interior ministry.

But at home, Pakistanis are asking an even more fundamental question: Who really is in control of  their country ? A very rough poll conducted by All Things Pakistan among people who visit the blog found that nearly 40 percent thought nobody was in control of the nuclear-armed Muslim nation of 160 million and from where at least the Americans are convinced the next major militant attack is coming.

About 28 percent said Pakistan People’s Party chairman Asif Ali Zardari was in control while 18  percent saw President Pervez Musharraf still calling the shots. But nobody, not one person, thought Gilani who, by all accounts was given a rather blunt message by his American hosts about his government’s failure to fight militants and their allies within, was in charge.

For Pakistan’s transition to democracy after nine years of military rule this is hardly inspiring. “The image of a prime minister who noone thinks has any power is sad and disturbing,” ATP notes in a later post and asks whether he is on his way out. Or, it asks, is the poll a broader warning of a country sliding further into chaos?

Gilani’s government is faced with Islamist militancy across Pakistan’s northwest and an America that is breathing hard down its neck asking for action. On top of that tensions with India on the eastern borders have suddenly and inexplicably risen, which doubtless increases the pressure on an army already overstretched on the Afghan frontier

 Gilani’s four-month-old coalition is fractured following the withdrawal of ministers belonging to Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League over the issue of reinstatement of judges fired by Musharraf. On Tuesday, the two sides were meeting to break the stalemate.