Category: India and Pakistan

Politics and wars in India and Pakistan

Benazir Bhutto assassinated

You probably know by now that Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated, and a couple of dozen other people murdered besides. It is just one of thousands upon thousands of tragedies visited upon the region, but with wider repercussions. It is the last thing Pakistan needs right now, and by extension, the last thing the region and the world needs.

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Pakistan Milbus

I just finished Ayesha Siddiqa’s important book, “Military Inc.” I’ll say a few words about it – I hope to write something more extensive for ZNet in the coming days or weeks as well. But more from Dawn, first.

The situation in Pakistan hasn’t stabilized and there is still some pressure on the regime to lift the emergency and, hopefully, back off even further. The regime has released some of its opponents from house arrest – though, as in other dictatorships (Haiti’s comes to mind) the high-profile detainees always do far better than the no-profile ones.

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Bhutto back under house arrest… and the Toronto Star’s bizarre take on it all

So Benazir Bhutto is back under house arrest – the regime is trying to prevent her from leading a major protest, a cross-country caravan. The regime has also tried to placate international opinion by promising elections in January. But the Americans have said they want the emergency lifted as well – that was their reply.

The counterinsurgency continues in the border areas with Afghanistan. This story, not all of which I understood because I don’t know all the actors involved, describes what seems to be a situation in which different groups of militants from the region where there is active fighting with the Pakistani military are also fighting each other – a kidnap between supporters of Maulana Fazlullah captured Maulana Mohammad Ali alias Maulana Nider.

Another really odd development, that I don’t think is just at “normal” levels but I could be wrong, seems to be that there is more frequent fighting in Kashmir, with the Indian army claiming to be killing “militants”, several in recent days.

I’m on Tarek Fatah’s mailing list and he’s been sending around interesting material on Pakistan. This article from the UK describes some of the Pakistan spy agency’s tactics and how they tried to use sex blackmail to bring the Supreme Court to heel. When that failed, there was always the coup and simply firing them.

Tarek Fatah also takes issue with Haroon Siddiqui, who I have to admit I don’t often read. Tarek Fatah wrote this about Siddiqui: ‘While Haroon Siddiqui of the Toronto Star describes Pakistan’s Military dictators as having “been personally financially honest and, for the most part, have provided stable government”‘, which struck me as an appallingly ignorant thing to say, if Siddiqui had in fact said it.

So I went and looked at Siddiqui’s last three columns (here, here and here) and they are, indeed, very badly informed and quite confused.

Confused because on the one hand, the analysis is at an elite level, about how clever Musharraf is and the moves he’s taking to stay in power, and takes the parochial, “Canadian interests in the region” view of matters, which is among the least interesting ways for Canadians or anybody to look at this situation. And on the other hand, his criticisms of Benazir Bhutto and the judges are based on Bhutto having foreign support and the judges not having street credibility (I won’t speculate on the status of Siddiqui’s street cred since my point is that is an uninteresting game to be playing). Bhutto does have a past that includes elite maneouvering and massive corruption. But her current role and potential role are such that she could be very important in getting rid of a dictator – and one that is as “foreign” supported and imperial as any out there. The same goes for the judges – again, leaving aside that I’m again unsure from where Siddiqui can criticize Pakistani judges for being elite figures – they were overthrown by Musharraf because they exposed the corruption and tortures of the military and because they were trying to uphold some basic legal framework.

As for Siddiqui’s argument that the Americans won’t dump Musharraf because they’ve given him $10 billion, there are plenty of comfortable villas in the first world that house former dictators, heavily invested in by the Americans, that left their countries when the Americans told them the game was up. It’s not worth picking up after someone like Siddiqui on this matter at much more length – but it’s an inconsistent analysis, out of touch with history and out of touch with important elements of what is going on, and presumptuous beyond his knowledge or understanding. It thus combines some of the worst elements of Canadian mainstream punditry, which I probably pay more attention to than it’s worth.

It still seems to me that the good scenario is one in which popular mobilization and pressure from the outside topple Musharraf and have an election that gets a civilian government in power. That won’t get rid of the military’s power, it won’t get rid of the Americans next door in Afghanistan, it won’t get rid of the other structural and regional problems in the country and in South Asia, but it will give people in Pakistan who have been fighting so valiantly all these years a bit more breathing room and space to maneuver. The bad scenarios are multiple.

Bhutto arrested

Musharraf’s self-coup regime has put Benazir Bhutto under house arrest. 5000 of her supporters were rounded up too. The judiciary protests continue as well. Before her house was surrounded by military, Bhutto had announced her intention to reinstate the ousted judiciary that was the main target of the coup. The general announced that he intends to allow elections by February 15, but there is no reason to take that seriously.

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Pakistan reacts!

Let no one say that the people of Pakistan took this coup lightly. Let no one say that the courts and the human rights activists in the cities, who were the coup’s principal targets, went gently. They are taking incredible risks in the streets and their courage has already forced Musharraf’s regime to back off somewhat and the international community to say a few obvious things. Lawyers have been rounded up en masse, beaten and gassed, not for the first time. They are boycotting court proceedings, which will make it difficult for this government to run.

There is a chance the US might exert some genuine pressure on Pakistan if this can keep up. The Americans have suspended defense talks with Pakistan and are threatening more. Some European countries have suspended aid. Pakistan’s government is still fighting, and not very effectively, against militants on the border with Afghanistan, using artillery. Meanwhile the Taliban in Afghanistan itself is succeeding militarily, capturing parts of western Afghanistan and taking on defectors from the Afghan military. NATO is relying increasingly on a combination of Afghan forces and airstrikes to hold territory because they don’t want to take casualties on the unpopular mission. The result is Afghan civilian casualties from the airstrikes and Afghan military casualties from battles with the insurgents, which of course feeds the insurgency.

As I mentioned before, part of the reason Musharraf may succeed (though if the Pakistani people can hold on and the international pressure increases, he could still fail) is because of a lack of alternative to the series of unsolvable problems that he and the Americans have entered into in his country and Afghanistan.

Even those who seek an Islamic revolution in Pakistan can’t believe that that would be a way out – such a regime would kick off first the total isolation and then the possible disintegration of the country.

Any military officer who overthrew Musharraf would then find himself in the same impossible situation Musharraf is in. He can line his pockets, he can control some of the army, but there are still the Americans, there are still the Indians, there are still the Islamists, there are still the insurgents, and there are still the constitutional, political, and economic problems. On the other hand, the military is plenty strong enough to prevent a civilian politician like Benazir Bhutto from holding power without their sufferance.

There is an unlikely path to genuine democratic reform and transition, which is what the people are on the streets of Lahore getting beaten and gassed and rounded up and probably tortured to fight for. They will need help from the outside in the form of political pressure, pressures that are making noise of possibly starting, and they need much more of that and fast.

Musharraf strikes

In trying to decide where to focus some of my analysis in the coming weeks and months, the interface between South and West Asia keeps coming up. Readers may have seen that Musharraf has made his move in Pakistan, declaring a state of emergency, and dismissing the Chief Justice. Presumably this is to pre-empt a political process in which he might lose power.

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