The news that its high-paid buddy in
Pakistan - General President Pervez Musharraf, the democracy-crushing dictator who has received billions in U.S. taxpayer dollars - is being challenged and may be on the decline can't be good for Team Bush.
Dragged down by its costly, failed adventure in Iraq and mired in corruption scandals back home, the Bush administration has no enthusiastic allies left. If Musharraf falls, it won't look good for Team Bush to have aided him for so long, literally buying his support in its aimless "war on terror." If Musharraf uses heavy-handed tactics to crush Pakistan's pro-democracy movement, that won't look good either for a
U.S. administration that still claims to be a big promoter of
democracy around the world.
Just what kind of challenge to his regime is Musharraf, the army general who would be president - and has been, since he stole his country's government in 1999 - facing? After he fired
Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the chief justice of Pakistan's High Court, several weeks ago, claiming the high-ranking judge had used his influence to help obtain a police job for his son, many lawyers and members of the country's legal community have thrown their support behind the ousted jurist. ("World Views," May 8, 2007)
For them, Chaudhry has become a symbol of the abuses of Musharraf's dictatorship. Over the weekend of May 5-6, Chaudhry traveled by motorcade from
Islamabad to Lahore, greeted by large crowds of supporters along the way. Upon arriving in Lahore, he addressed a pro-democracy rally (which was regarded, in effect, as an anti-Musharraf protest demonstration).
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As I watched Pakistanis demonstrate their desperate desire for the rule of law over the past two weeks, I found myself wondering if they had at last, in CJ Chaudhry, found a figure who could unite secularly-oriented democrats sickened by the misrule of Pakistan’s benighted PPP and ML. I certainly don't want a reputable judge to go into politics, but after all these years, Pakistani voters have no honest party to represent them. If either of the major political parties had ruled Pakistan responsibly while in power, there would have been no pretext for periodic Army intervention. First there was Ayub Khan. Then Zia-ul-Haq. And now there’s Pervez Musharraf, who has masqueraded as a moderate in politics.
But now Musharraf’s bluff has been called. He can tolerate
firebrand maulanas threatening to impose immediate implementation of a strict version of sharia law. He can allow veiled girl students to
rampage through Islamabad, harassing people they consider immoral and holding authorities to ransom. He can give Al Qaeda a safe haven on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan. He can even allow
Islamists to impose their own version of Islam on everyone in North Wazirastan. As a
Dawn editorialist complains, the Taliban have
banned the sale of music and even listening to it in public places. They did it in their usual threatening manner, forcibly removing tape players from buses or destroying CDs. That they have no legal right to order such prohibitions means nothing to them, nor does it seem to affect the government which looks the other way whenever the Taliban try to impose their notions of Islamic laws....In the last few months, one has heard of men being ordered to be beheaded on suspicion of being spies, music or barber shops being blown up, girls being prevented from going to school and other equally appalling do’s and don’ts...This must stop. No one has the right to enforce religion in this matter. It is the government’s responsibility to maintain law and order...and one else’s. Any failure to do so will have grave consequences.
The grave consequences, of course, are already underway: the attempts by emboldened Taliban sympathizers to impose a similar regime on Islamabad and elsewhere outside the tribal areas. But Pervez Musharraf can do nothing about such challenges, it’s said, because Pakistan’s army is increasingly sympathetic to conservative Islam and the notorious ISI has long been cozily in bed with the Taliban.
So what’s a military dictator-cum-president to do if he wants to stay in power? Why harass the real enemy, the people who believe in the rule of law. When lawyers without guns take to the streets, they must be stopped at any cost.
Dead Ringers You'd think, then, that Musharraf would be a strange ally for an American president. In fact, the similarities are striking. US President George W. Bush won his first election illegitimately, stays in power by currying the support of Christian fundamentalists, has encouraged his operatives to rig elections by hook or by crook, has done his best to subvert the judiciary and the rule of law and pays no attention to the voice of the majority of the voters in the 2006 election when it comes to the conduct of the war in Iraq. So where's the difference?
(h/t
Salon)
Pakistan militants kill American soldierWhere is Bush?
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