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Pakistan's sharp learning
curve
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - When the United States attacked
Afghanistan on October 7, it aimed to punish the Taliban
regime for harboring Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda
network, and eliminate the latter in retaliation for the
terror attacks on the US.
To be sure, the
Taliban fled from power, and al-Qaeda dispersed. But
now, as daily reports from Afghanistan testify, these
groups have reorganized and are waging a guerrilla war
across most of the country against the foreign troops
still stationed there.
Yet, in an ironic
twist of fate so characteristic of the
"unintended consequences" that have blighted the region for as
long as superpowers have used it as a playground,
Pakistan - the "staunch US ally" whose support of
Washington was pivotal in the ousting of the Taliban -
finds itself in political turmoil.
The
escalating struggle in Afghanistan has seen the
popularity of the religious parties in Pakistan soar to
a level never before seen in the 50 years of the
country's independence, and their power has been
increased by the ongoing impotence of the opposition
political parties, wrapped up as they are in their
narrow-minded agendas and constrained by fears of
alienating the US.
The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal
(MMA), an alliance of six religious parties that won an
unprecedented more than 40 seats in last year's national
elections, as a result has taken over the mantle of the
lead opposition group, and has skillfully played on
local concerns among Pakistanis to increase its support
base.
The MMA has been at the forefront of a
bitter dispute with President General Pervez Musharraf
over the Legal Framework Order (LFO) that gives him the
right to dismiss parliament and the elected prime
minister, among other weighty powers. Also under attack
is the general's dual role as president and chief of the
army staff.
Now, Musharraf appears to be
fighting back. In a highly-significant ruling this week,
the Election Tribunal in Peshawar, the capital of the
North West Frontier Province, which is governed by the
MMA and which has introduced Sharia law, found that
Mufti Abrar Sultan's qualification from a
madrassa (religious school)did not match a
graduate degree, the minimum qualification set, at
Musharraf's initiative, for the 2002 elections. As a
result he was stripped of his seat in parliament.
The MMA was quick to cry foul. ''We know these
are not the court's decisions but political pressure to
budge the MMA leadership on the LFO," Maulana Hamidul
Haq Haqqani, a member of the MMA supreme council, was
reported in the local press as saying. "'They [the
federal government] do not like our stand on the LFO."
The MMA has vowed to challenge the ruling in the Supreme
Court, as it is legally entitled to do.
In its
ruling, the Election Tribunal mentioned that a ruling of
the University Grants Commission accepted
madrassa degrees as equal to a Master of Arts,
but only on the condition that the person became a
teacher.
The ruling coincides with a bid by a
private lawyer to have all the parliamentarians
belonging to the MMA disqualified on similar grounds.
Interestingly, Musharraf himself was instrumental in
having the madrassa education recognized in the
first place.
Speaking to Asia Times Online, a
top leader of the MMA and member of the National
Assembly, Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, said that the government
was now "trying to test our muscles". "We challenged
Musharraf's qualifications to be the president of the
country, and now they have challenged our qualifications
to be members of the assembly."
The MMA is not
backing off, though, and is preparing to show Musharraf
just how much muscle it has, starting with a
mobilization of the masses on Friday, the traditional
Muslim day of prayer, all the while reinforcing its
position as the main - and only effective - opposition
party in the country.
The two main opposition
political parties, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz)
and sections of the Pakistan Peoples Party
Parliamentarian (PPPP), are bogged down in extracting
political concessions for their exiled leaders - former
premiers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, respectively -
and the PPPP refuses to adopt any policy that clashes
with US interests in the region.
Friday's
rallies are expected to serve as a catalyst for a wider
anti-Musharraf movement to be planned at an all-parties
conference called by the MMA for Sunday. Issues to be
discussed include the LFO, possible government
recognition of Israel, sending troops to Iraq to aid the
US, Pakistan's nuclear program and a road map for
Kashmir that would divide the region along religious
grounds.
These are all hotly contentious issues
from which the MMA will squeeze the last drop of
political mileage, while adding more fuel to the
simmering discontent among Pakistan's volatile masses.
In this regard, the manner in which events are unfolding
bear a disquieting similarity to Afghanistan in the
early 1990s, when that country's political parties were
in such disarray that the Taliban, by appealing to the
common man, were able to step into the power vacuum.
Of course, Afghanistan then did not have a
strongman anything like Pakistan has in Musharraf today.
But in terms of broad appeal, the MMA has all the
makings of evolving into a movement with as much muscle
as the Taliban ever had - should Musharraf wish to test
it further, that is.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times
Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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