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2 THE ROVING
EYE 'Our' dictator gets away with
it By Pepe Escobar
"[Musharraf] truly is somebody who
believes in democracy." - President
George W Bush
Future historians
will review the Pakistan of November 2007 as a
classic of soap opera geopolitics. The main plot
screams "revenge". Rattled by a know-all exiled
elitist (Benazir Bhutto) imposed on him by a
scheming Washington, the hapless "Mush" - as
President [soon to be ex-]General Pervez Musharraf is
informally referred to by
middle-class Pakistanis - decided not only to sing
his own version of My Way but to follow his
own timing.
In a little over three weeks,
Musharraf proclaimed his own "surge" (aka
emergency rule); sacked the Supreme Court; rounded
up the usual suspects (journalists, lawyers,
students, human-rights activists); kept at least
2,000 of them in custody (according to the
Interior Ministry); got a puppet court to
legitimize his way towards "re-election"; amended
the constitution through executive order; hung up
his uniform; and will become the next (civilian)
president of Pakistan, with General Ashfaq Kiani
replacing him as head of the army.
Meanwhile, Pakistani civil society - from
lawyers to university students - has to be
commended for showing former prime minister Bhutto
the (new) writing on the wall. They exposed the
utmost fallacy of Musharraf-Bhutto back-room deals
forced on Pakistani public opinion for which
Bhutto, the worldwide media darling (stylish,
Oxford English-fluent, well-connected), would
never qualify as a credible third-time-lucky prime
minister. Chances are she would repeat her abysmal
human-rights record and controversy - Bhutto's
husband was known as "Mr 10%".
I'm
ready for my close up, Mr Bush A possible
good alternative as Pakistani premier would be
decent, non-corrupt opposition leader Aitzaz
Ahsan, a former interior minister in the last
Bhutto government and currently in jail.
But Washington instantly came up with
other plans for fast-forwarding the plot - in the
form of sinister John Negroponte, currently number
two at the State Department and the designated
George W Bush administration special envoy to
Islamabad.
Negroponte's lush experience of
deadly counter-insurgency in Honduras and Mexico
in the early 1980s was not handy enough to make
Musharraf see the writing on the wall himself:
clean up your act (that is, cut a deal with Bhutto
as soon as possible) or else. "Or else", with
Musharraf out of the picture, would be Bhutto
cutting a deal with the new top dog in boots,
chain smoker and president of the Pakistan Golf
Association General Kiani, the new Washington
darling.
During early emergency days,
there were widespread rumors Kiani - with US
backing - had taken Musharraf into custody and
assumed power. When Negroponte went to Islamabad
in June to meddle in the crisis between Musharraf
the Supreme Court, Ahsan told the Pakistani press,
"The Americans have got their eggs in one basket
and know only one phone number in Pakistan, and
that is now a dud number because it does not
communicate with any Pakistani citizens." Now the
Americans have Kiani.
Negroponte met twice
with Kiani. According to Urdu-language media, "he
spent more time with General Kiani than with
General Musharraf." Pakistani analysts are
virtually unanimous. Beyond the Ahsan or Kiani
"minor" issue, Negroponte's visit had nothing to
do with democracy, but with guaranteeing the
prosecution of the "war on terror" and the
interests of US multinationals. The White House
didn't bother to utter a single word about the
fierce demands for democracy by Pakistani lawyers,
journalists, students or human-rights activists.
Not a ladies' man Many people
accept that Musharraf seems to have a problem with
women. To counteract what he defined as Bhutto's
"negative vibrations" maybe he should play The
Beach Boys' Good Vibrations. Musharraf has
also defined Asma Jahangir - Pakistan's top
human-rights advocate, as "quite an unbalanced
character". In a statement released while she was
under under house arrest, she wrote: "While the
terrorists remain on the loose and continue to
occupy more space in Pakistan, senior lawyers are
being tortured." Asma - or for that matter any
Pakistani working with non-governmental
organizations providing health and education
support to women in the tribal areas - would be a
more credible premier than Bhutto.
Peripheral characters in this soap opera
can be even tastier than Bhutto and Musharraf.
Take former star cricketer and opposition leader
Imran Khan, who was arrested by hardcore
fundamentalist Jama'at-e-Islami (JI) students at
the University of Punjab campus in Lahore and then
handed over to Musharraf's police.
The JI
was also against Musharraf's emergency - it wanted
at least the restoration of Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court Iftikhar Chaudhry plus free and fair
elections. But the JI cannot stand a secularist
like Khan, who among other sins had been
gloriously married to British blonde glamour girl
Jemima Goldsmith. Jemima, who knows one or two
things about upper-class serial plotters, has
coined the ultimate branding of Bhutto as "a
kleptocrat in an Hermes scarf".
In a
recent text, "The Battle for Pakistan", released
before his arrest, Khan pointed out how during
eight years under Musharraf, only 1.8% of the
country's gross domestic product was spent on
education, "the lowest ever in our history".
Pakistan's state school education system is now in
tatters. Khan also stressed how "Pakistan has the
worst social indicators in South Asia", according
to the United Nations Human Development Index.
"Even Burma [Myanmar] is ahead. On the other hand
in 2006, Pakistan spent US$ 5.1 billion on arms."
Khan, now released, says he's in favor of
boycotting the January elections. Other opposition
parties are still debating. Khan insists if they
all do boycott, "the credibility and value of the
elections is lost".
As for JI's criticism
of Musharraf, it doesn't focus on education or
military spending. To the horror of secularists,
the JI wants Islamic canon law applied in the
whole of Pakistan. The JI cannot be easily
dismissed. The JI's leader, Qazi Husain Ahmad –
who is also the leader of the MMA (Muttahida
Majlis-e Amal - the Islamic Action Council
coalition of Islamic parties), was fiercely
opposed to the US bombing of Afghanistan in 2001.
The MMA holds 20% of Parliament, two key provinces
of Pakistan's five (the ultra-tribal North-West
Frontier Province, NWFP, and Balochistan) and has
wanted to be part of Musharraf's feast since 2002.
The JI is not Salafi-jihadi as an
organization, although some individual JI members
are very cozy with either the Taliban or al-Qaeda.
What's extraordinary is that widespread abhorrence
of Musharraf led the the JI to consider entering a
"joint movement" with Bhutto's People's Party
Pakistan (PPP). That's what Qazi himself revealed
in an exclusive interview to the Urdu-language
Khabrain daily.
But Qazi also stressed how
"Bhutto started issuing statements such as
allowing access to the Americans to [father of the
Pakistani nuclear bomb] Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan. The
media continues to support her on her return.
There has been no substantial increase in support
for Bhutto. If you have money, you can gather
100,000 drumbeaters around you." Qazi's verdict on
Pakistan under Musharraf is straight to the point:
"The behavior of the government is leading to
civil war."
Mrs Bhutto, you're no Aung
Sang Suu Kyi All this time the US corporate
media conveniently shelved the fact it was Bhutto,
in her first term as premier, who enshrined the
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