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I knew it would be hard, but I did not have this in mind when I said Pakistan's next stab at democracy would be a turning point for the nation, as it tries to redefine its destiny.
Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf on Saturday placed his country under a state of Emergency (after “rejecting” it once earlier this year), suspended the Constitution, pulled the plug on Pakistani private television news channels, disbanded the Supreme Court and placed several opposition leaders under house arrest -- all days before the apex court was set to rule on the legality of his re-election last month and months before the scheduled general elections.
For Pakistanis and Indians alike, this comes as no surprise. General Musharraf is a military general, after all, and this is not for the first time that the country has been taken over by the military. For Indians, he's the Pakistani General who led the 1999 incursions into the Indian territory of Kargil, a conflict that stopped short of a full-fledged war between the nuclear-armed neighbors. And he is no elected leader either. Soon after the Kargil conflict, he took office in a bloodless coup, promising to lead the country towards true democracy.
Post 9/11, that has turned out to be too heavy a challenge for Pakistan. While grumblings about his leadership were getting louder at home, Pakistan took on the unenviable task of clearing its border areas with Afghanistan of pro-Taliban and pro-Al Qaeda militants, with over $10 billion in support from the United States.
This has led to what is now being termed as the West's dilemma. Questions are being raised about whether the U.S. is getting its dollar's worth trusting a dictator to join its war on terror.
Will Musharraf be able to rein in the extremists, as he claims was the sole purpose of the Emergency, or will Pakistan slowly slip away into the hands of militants as the General busies himself calming democracy-loving citizens? Reports of Western border cities slipping out of state control have started coming in.
Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (who had once
welcomed Musharraf's leadership eight years ago, and is reported to have negotiated -- with him-- her recent return to Pakistan from a self-imposed exile) wrote in an op-ed piece in The New York Times on Wednesday:
NOV. 3, 2007, will be remembered as theblackest day in the history of Pakistan. Let us be perfectly clear: Pakistan is a military dictatorship. Last Saturday, Gen. Pervez Musharraf removed all pretense of a transition to democracy by conducting what was in effect yet another extraconstitutional coup.
[...]
The United States alone has given the Musharraf government more than $10 billion in aid since 2001. We do not know exactly where or how this money has been spent, but it is clear that it has not brought about the defeat of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, nor succeeded in capturing Osama bin Laden, nor has it broken the opium trade. It certainly has not succeeded in improving the quality of life of the children and families of Pakistan.
The United States can promote democracy — which is the only way to truly contain extremism and terrorism — by telling General Musharraf that it does not accept martial law, and that it expects him to conduct free, fair, impartial and internationally monitored elections within 60 days under a reconstituted election commission. He should be given that choice: democracy or dictatorship with isolation.
The People of Pakistan:
Much like Myanmar, Pakistan's latest battle for democracy has been spurred by an interest group: Lawyers. With the Supreme Court and its Chief Justice smack in the middle of the crisis , the lawyers are leading the revolt. Reports say the ousted Supreme Court chief justice (now in house arrest) is urging lawyers to keep up the civil disobedience movement. Several hundred lawyers have been detained. Now students have begun organizing themselves.
But sporadic and limited protests by one or two groups are unlikely to last long. Bhutto has finally come out with plans to lead her Pakistan People's Party – the only political party at the moment that can draw out supporters in large numbers -- at a demonstration on Friday in the garrison town of Rawalpindi. The state has warned against it (it's illegal now to march against the government). She has also called for a march next week from Lahore to Islamabad.