Pakistan's man in the
middle By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - Pakistan's judicial crisis,
highlighted by a mass rally in Islamabad planned
for Tuesday, has given the political opposition
the opportunity once again to take on the military
administration of President General Pervez
Musharraf, who has defied all previous efforts
since assuming power in a coup in 1999.
Spearheading the current campaign is Qazi
Hussain Ahmed, head of the Islamist political
party Jamaat-i-Islami Pakistan (JI). Qazi is also
president of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), a
grouping of six religious
parties opposed to Musharraf that seeks increased
democratization of the country.
Qazi
issued the call for Tuesday's rally in front of
the Supreme Court to express support for the
independence of judiciary, respect for the
constitution and to protest against Musharraf.
On March 9, Musharraf told Chief Justice
Iftikhar Chaudhry to resign for allegedly abusing
his authority. When Chaudhry refused, he was
suspended, and is due on Tuesday to appear before
the Supreme Judicial Council to answer the
charges.
The JI and other parties of the
MMA will be joined at the protest by lawyers and
the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy, an
opposition political group campaigning for a
return to civilian rule. Its main parties are the
Pakistan Muslim League (N) and the Pakistan
People's Party Parliamentarians.
Opposition to Musharraf is not confined to
the political parties, though, as militants are
also exploiting the unrest set off over Chaudhry
in their bid to bring down the general. In this
volatile situation, Qazi is in a delicate
situation as both political activists and
ever-expanding militants see him as a savior
because of his conviction against Musharraf's
government.
Qazi has been on talking terms
with the West; he was once a guest of the US State
Department for a month. Yet while he is often
invited as a speaker by prominent US think-tanks,
he is not prepared to condemn Osama bin Laden.
The man in the middle Asia
Times Online caught up with Qazi when he visited
the JI's Karachi headquarters.
"People
should protest against such things [as obscenity
and vice]. The problem is that people do not speak
up," Qazi said.
"I was in London and in my
presence a group of Muslims complained to a senior
editor of a leading British newspaper against the
biases of the British press against the Muslim
community. The editor responded that the Muslims
never protested. [The editor] said if they have
problems, they should protest like the Jewish
community does and nobody could dare be biased
against them. I think that the editor was right.
People should speak up and protest, but rest
assured, until and unless the whole system is
Islamized, you cannot eradicate obscenity and
vulgarity from society in bits and pieces," Qazi
said.
The judicial crisis provides the
potential opportunity for political movements to
cooperate with Islamic militancy, such as the
Pakistani Taliban, which is rapidly making inroads
into settled regions beyond the tribal areas. I
suggested this to Qazi.
"The problem is
General Pervez Musharraf. He is the cause of every
problem, and I think if the country is not put on
a real democratic path, things will really be
problematic. I think a much broader political
alliance is the need of the hour. It would launch
a campaign against Musharraf and then, under a
neutral setup, elections could be convened and
power transferred to a real democratically elected
government," Qazi said.
Nevertheless, I
reminded Qazi that he is the only political leader
of the country to have visited Lal Masjid in
Islamabad, a hub of militancy in the federal
capital. Further, he has expressed solidarity with
the two brothers who run the mosque and who are
vocally pro-Taliban - Ghazi Abdul Rasheed and
Maulana Abdul Aziz. And this is at a time when all
other political leaders - and even some religious
ones - are trying to distance themselves from the
mosque.
Qazi's move is widely interpreted
as supporting militancy.
"The purpose of
my visit was to investigate the problems of the
Lal Masjid administration, and second, yes, I
found their grievances genuine [over government
plans to demolish a seminary associated with Lal
Masjid]. Of course the madrassa they run
has been there for the past decade or so and it
has not emerged in a matter of a day or so, so why
does the government want to remove the
madrassa now?" Qazi said, adding that any
bid to impose Islam on people forcibly is just not
acceptable. "The situation is clearly leading
towards chaos and anarchy in the country."
I suggested that the growing militancy in
the country and Qazi's campaign against Musharraf
would simply allow another military dictator to
take over.
"No, not at all. The masses are
against the military, and they will just not
accept another dictator. The people are not
against Musharraf only. They are against the army.
They are not against the military as an
institution, but its political role. I am a
pro-army person, but I hate the military's role in
politics," Qazi said.
Qazi said that the
present anarchy in the tribal areas, where the
Pakistani Taliban exert strong influence, is the
result of the government's policies. "There was a
proper solution to abolish the tribal system in
the tribal areas. There was a comprehensive plan
to implement a municipality system as an initial
phase and then introduce an electoral system.
Gradually then the tribal areas would become a
part of North West Frontier Province's
administration.
"But the Musharraf
government did not allow any democratic system to
work in those areas and applied dictatorial
tactics, including a military solution to the
problems, which just messed up everything," Qazi
said.
Qazi envisages a broad alliance
between the JI and the Islamic seminaries to bring
about change, but he sees the "establishment's
Byzantine intrigues" as an obstacle.
"The
government deliberately created a situation
through which chaos and anarchy would spread and
military rule would flourish. These campaigns to
kill hairdressers and music-center owners in the
tribal areas are what? These are only prompted by
the establishment to create anarchy so that the
Musharraf government can justify its existence and
also give justification for the US-led war on
terror in the region," Qazi said.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia
Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be
reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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The man in the middle 
