Pakistan: Now or Never?

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.

The most destructive of Pakistan’s leaders

If India is agonising over a book that seeks to demolish the conventional view that Muslim leaders forced the division of the subcontinent in 1947, across the border some Pakistanis are attempting a bit of introspection too.

The popular All Things Pakistan blog is running a poll this week asking readers a single question: which leader did the most harm to the country in the past 60 years, not counting the current administration which came into office only this year after elections in February.

It’s a small poll by the very nature of the medium, confined to people who visit the blog and so not very representative or even very professional by the standards of  surveys. But it offers  a fleeting glimpse of a nation wrestling with multiple challenges. Even the question itself tells you something about the prevailing mood.

Quick results : General Zia-ul-Haq, the military dictator who turned Pakistan into a frontline state against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, comes out as the leader who’s done the most damage to the country with 42 percent of those polled picking him. 

Does that reflect a belief that Zia’s self-declared Islamicisation policies created a “culture of jihad” within Pakistan which threatens to consume it now ? 

General Pervez Musharraf is the leader next seen to have inflicted the most damage, with 21 percent choosing him, followed by Field Marshal Ayub Khan at 12 percent.

America’s expanding war in Pakistan

U.S. military operations crossed another threshold in Pakistan this week when a Predator ‘drone’ aircraft fired missiles into Bannu area in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), away from the seven Federally Administered Tribal Areas where it has conducted raids with impunity.

Attacking the self-governing and semi-autonomous FATA on the Afghan border, considered a haven for al Qaeda and Taliban,  is one thing. Targeting the North West Frontier Province, or settled areas as Pakistanis call it, is quite another.

This is a  province governed by the national assembly – unlike the tribal areas which are not subject to the national assembly – and therefore  represents an expansion of U.S. operating area into Pakistan proper.

Pakistanis are worrying that if the United States can attack deep inside the North West Frontier Province, then what stops them from raining down missiles on Pakistani cities in pursuit of al Qaeda, according to a report in The Hindu. They are wondering just how far will the United States go in its battle against the militants. (more…)

ICG calls for judicial reforms in Pakistan

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari told a joint session of parliament last month he was committed to wide-ranging constitutional reforms including surrendering the power of the president to dismiss elected governments — a power that many Pakistanis feel has brought much grief to the nation. He also pledged his faith in an independent judiciary and said all outstanding matters would be resolved in line with the constitution.

Those promises have slipped somewhat from public view in recent weeks, preoccupied as the nation and those with a stake in it are with the multiple security challenges and a looming economic meltdown.

But according to the International Crisis Group,  the worsening violence has made it even more necessary that judicial reforms be carried out so that the country’s transition to civilian rule is strengthened after eight years of military rule.

In a report on reforming the judiciary, the influential Brussels-based think tank says the civilian government has an opportunity to reverse the tide of  radicalism in Pakistan by restoring the rule of law and repealing discriminatory religious laws that it says restrict fundamental rights, fuel extremism and destabilize the country.

It lists measures such as the blasphemy law, anti-Ahmadi laws, Hudood Ordinances and Qisas (retribution) and Diyat (blood money) as part of the legacy of military rule that it says discriminate on the basis of religion and gender. 

Here is the full report as a PDF file calling for the honouring of a pledge to repeal Article 58 -2 (b) which gives the president power to dismiss elected governments, and for the reinstatement of all deposed judges, including Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

Pakistan’s Iftikhar Chaudhry cited as outside candidate for Nobel Peace Prize

Former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry has been cited as an outside candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The recipient of this year’s prize will be announced in Oslo on Oct. 10 from among 197 nominees, with those fighting for human rights among those tipped to win in the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), an independent research institute, ranks Chaudhry in fourth place, though PRIO director Stein Toennesson says the most likely winner this year will be a Chinese dissident.

“An even more interesting possibility is to award the prize to one of the senior judges, who in several countries have stood up against pressure from the executive, in defence of human rights and against unconstitutional practices,” it says.

“Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the Chief Justice of Pakistan who was unseated by former President Musharraf in 2007, is the most likely candidate, but the French, Italian, British, and Zimbabwean Chief Justices or Supreme Court Presidents have also shown great courage in defending human rights and judicial independence. Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to one or more of them would assist the construction of an international system for the enforcement of human rights.”

After championing the opposition to former president Pervez Musharraf last year and leading the lawyers’ movement in a campaign for an independent judiciary, Chaudhry’s star has been fading since the election of a new civilian government in February and departure of Musharraf in August. The lawyers’ movement, as this story in the Daily Times says, has now run out of steam.

Chaudhry may have only an outside chance, but winning the Nobel Peace Prize would certainly be a powerful way of getting his star back on the ascendant again. Views please?

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.

Pakistan’s lawyers: recovering from the anti-climax

With hindsight, it seems clear that a mass movement named after Mao’s Long March but also claiming Gandhi’s principles of non-violence risked disappointing its supporters.  The failure of the Long March by Pakistan’s lawyers to restore judges sacked by President Pervez Musharraf, and its dispersal last Saturday, has prompted much debate about why its leaders gave up without at least staging a sit-in.

Defence analyst Ikram Sehgal called the Long March a logistical success in its ability to garner mass support without violence, but a tactical failure. “The tactical failure of this long-lasting tremendous effort founded on great principles has become a strategic disaster for Musharraf’s opponents,” he writes in The News.  “About Pervez Musharraf, ‘with such friends who needs enemies’, one can paraphrase the saying for him: ‘With such enemies why does he need friends?’”

The blog All Things Pakistan says supporters of the Long March “are justifiably feeling let down by the grand posturing, thundering rhetoric and the subsequent retreat from agitation”. But it adds: “The lawyers’ movement is profoundly significant. It constitutes the finest historical ‘moment’ in our troubled history.”

Aitzaz Ahsan, the leader of the lawyers’ movement, writes in Newsweek  that the Long March was “an act of collective and nonviolent defiance perhaps unrivaled in Pakistan’s checkered history”.

“As the first rays of the Saturday sun streaked over Parliament, I delivered the concluding speech, and this remarkable crowd, the biggest in Pakistan’s recent history, dispersed peacefully for the trip home,” he writes. “Not a shot was fired or a pane of glass broken. Yet more than 200,000 Pakistanis had managed to make their point: they wanted their judges back.”

Yet why did the lawyers’ leaders give up without staging a sit-in that might have forced home their point? 

Was it simply poor judgment, as suggested in this piece in the Khaleej Times: “The mystery behind the decision of Aitzaz Ahsan, the man who had so successfully and so untiringly spearheaded an unprecedented campaign of lawyers and civil society, may not be unveiled in near future,” it says. “Those who saw him delivering the concluding speech to close the long march say that he was not in his usual self and was witless.”