State of Emergency in Pakistan
Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf has made a second coup. Over his eight years of military dictatorship, he had dressed his government up in the outward trappings of 'democracy.' He allowed (stage-managed) parliamentary elections in 2002. The same year, he ran for president in a referendum with no opponent, such that he could not lose.
The Supreme Court ruled against him in his attempt to dismiss the uncooperative chief justice, and the same court had been set to rule on whether he could remain as president (he was just reelected to the post by the stage-managed parliament he had helped install).
Musharraf appears to have concluded that the Supreme Court would rule against him, thus his coup-within-a-coup, which at last throws off the tattered facade of democratic institutions and reveals the naked military tyranny underneath. Pitifully, Musharraf explained that he had to make the coup in order to ensure the transition to democracy he says he began 8 years ago. Apparently the "transition" (i.e. Musharraf's dictatorship) will last for the rest of his life.
The Bush administration had been attempting to get Musharraf to take off his uniform and cohabit as president with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who has been allowed back into the country. But all that it accomplished was to set the stage for a major confrontation between the civilian political parties and the military.
Keep your eye on Barnett Rubin's blogging from Pakistan on this issue.
For background see my recent Salon.com piece on the collapse of Bush's foreign policy toward the Middle East. And Sherle R. Schwenninger's excellent essay in the Nation on Bush's failed foreign policy.
posted by Juan Cole @ 11/03/2007 08:45:00 PM
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12 Comments:
This is off-topic, but I'd love to read your comment on the Times of London online editorial, The Petareus Curve, arguing that things are dramatically improved in Iraq as a result of the Petraeus strategy and that we should recognize it.
Wherever the blundering, blind Bush elephant rampages, it leaves carnage in its wake. Musharraf was, is and always will be a dictator. Only the extraordinarily naive believe otherwise. And, HE has nuclear weapons. He has nuclear weapons, AND Al-Quaeda lives under his protection, growing stronger by the day. He rides the tiger's back, of course. Whoever thought up the strategy of bringing Bhutto back deserves the prize for Neo-Con Chief Idiot of '07.(There is one for every year since 2000.) It was bound to set off a major uproar. The Middle East is a tinderbox, which Bush has approached with fistfull's of blazing kindling. He antagonizes most of the planet,and has no sense whatsoever of decent limits and boundaries. This is a key diagnostic criteria for personality disorders. When one of those is set loose on the world, armed with military might and delusions of grandeur, the result is what we see today...civilization on the brink.
I think the U.S. administration's desire to have Benazir Bhutto in the picture has less to do with bringing democracy to Pakistan, but rather to have someone in leadership who is willing to cooperate with U.S. interests in every way; a puppet, in other words. (While Bhutto has already agreed to allow U.S. military incursions into Pakistan, Musharraf has firmly rejected any such operations in the past.)
"I would like to ask the whole nation. Why? Why this state of affairs? In my opinion, it is the judicial activism - which is a pillar of states in clash with the other two pillars, the executive and the legislative. The judiciary has interfered with the other two. And now every one is suffering and is paralyzed in every manner and in every department." -- Musharraf
Who does that sound like? Only difference here is that Bush has largely fixed the judiciary "problem". Now the legislative branch is paralyzing his kingdom.
Juan,
I have begun a bit of a web campaign, encouraging everyone to refer to Musharraf as "Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf", and to speak out, encouraging others not to refer to him as a legitimate president.
I'm very glad -- but not surprised -- to see that you've taken this step without any request on my behalf.
We cannot count on the politicians or the mainstream media to automatically delegitimize his regime -- we must do so from the ground up.
Best as always,
Mark
Judging by the US muted reaction (considering they are supposedly democracy merchants,) I would say that the USA is complicit. It is difficult to believe that the general would do such things with no green light from Washington. There must have been some Islamists' angle to it.
A free coup every 4 years a gift from western democracy
It sounds like our beloved CIA finally came to conclusion that governing its pity satellite states are much easier by way of a free coup, then the so called free elections that it was conducting now and then in its client states here and there, so their conclusion looks just like CIA’s old history in 1950’s instead of having a selected elections every 4 years or so as proclaimed recently and worry how informed the population may get by sniffing a little democracy which they may even believe this S..t and want to get serious about our piped in democrac.
In light of fact that with the new information technology and easy access to news out side of the western media CIA no longer has the absolute control and distribution of information and disinformation agency's conclusion must have been it is easier to control with free coups then to have an election and get blamed for why so and so got elected and why are you losoing the hegemony you was suppose to maintain.
So one must think the recent years big mess-ups (starting with the Iranian revolution that gone un detected ) has finally sober up the good old CIA and they came with conclusion of F. that democracy S. lets stick to the old ways and have a coup every 4 years or so instead of the elections and democracy . Now anybody thinks that this foreign policy comes out of a democratic country that peruses the will of it’s people is either dishonest or has know knowledge of what kind of bubble he or she is being raised in.
The President of Pakistan is a dictator, true, but what about the Musharraf closer to home?
On May 9th 2007 George Bush signed National Security Presidential Directive 51.
The Directive says that if the President labels any event a “catastrophic emergency,” he can “coordinate” an “effort among the executive, legislative and judicial branches” to narrow government for the sake of “continuity.”
Unopposed, a single person who “coordinates” an entire government is a dictator.
Pervez Musharraf discussed the possibility of, in effect, coordinating all the branches of Pakistan’s government earlier this year after the Chief Justice challenged his authority. But in the words of one journalist, “the fact that the option has been used sooner rather than later caught many an observer unawares.”
A few months from now will someone be saying that about Bush’s option to simplify government in America? Last week the White House said that the President is now issuing “administrative orders” to “implement policy” without legislation from Congress. The media reported and moved on. So yes, if in a few months there is a new kind of American government, many an observer and many a citizen will have been caught unawares.
Americans had better put aside ordinarily important matters like expanding health coverage for children. These are not ordinary times. With powers taken since 2001, today the President can, without a court order, read Americans’ mail, listen to their phone calls, take their property without explanation and imprison them for years without charge. Bush can torture.
The Bush Presidency is itself a “catastrophic emergency.” Every American who can speak should now be talking about the removal of Cheney and Bush.
The comments about Musharraf are...surprisingly tone deaf to the local situation.
Good ol' Pervez is exactly what he was yesterday, the day before and the year before that. And I don;t mean that as a criticism. He's impressive and in tune with global politics. He's probably better than the Bhutto and successor kleptocracies. We decry Mao, but as awful as he was, the Chinese mainland still has more literacy than the progeny of Chiang in Taiwan.
We need to back off the labels and embraced the realities. There's not much question that Pakistan is in better hands with a realist who doesn't kow-tow to the US than the various ghastly privateers who present a weak tool for our manipulation (friends, they have nukes and the petty profit taking makes these people Pinochets at the very best - and that's very poor indeed).
We need to drop the labels and accept the realities. Regime change is beautiful, but we have never, as far as I can tell, successfully chnaged a regime with any lasting effect. Ortega is back in in Nicaragua. Every right wing death squad regime has been replaced by left wing nativist populist regimes despite our best (read - worst) urgings.
Pervez is there to stay - we deal with this, or we toss Pakistan into chaos - along with their nukes.
You are too kind, Mr. Cole. You say that Bush's Middle East Policy has collapsed...I submit to you that he's never had a policy from day one...no one seems to rise up to the challenge of understanding the Middle East. There is not much to a policy when you have someone like Elliot Abrams responsible for Middle East Policy within the National Security Council. To this day, I am trying to figure out what qualifications he has...does he speak at least one of the languages? Has he had any postings in that part of the world? Just because he's a friend of AIPAC, does not necessary make him qualified. Or does it?
What happened to the translated excerpts from the Urdu press you had online a few minutes back, which blamed the US administration for the current crisis ? They were very informative, considering the Urdu press in Pakistan represents the majority literate opinion.
Apologetics for the Pakistan dictator are being finished and burnished for use in the United States.
Bush will declare himself President For Life as a means to "preserve our democracy against the enemies of freedom."
You heard it here first.
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