What do they have in common? all demanding unky Mush skin. Same day editorials, same demand. Makes one wonder if they r part of some *international saazish *going to the highest echelons of power :hmmm:
**** Pakistan’s Dictator**](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/11/opinion/11mon1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin)**
*Published: June 11, 2007
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If Gen. Pervez Musharraf were the democratic leader he indignantly insists he is, he would not be so busy threatening independent news outlets, arresting hundreds of opposition politicians and berating parliamentary leaders and ministers from his own party for insufficient loyalty to his arbitrary and widely unpopular policies. But nobody takes General Musharraf’s democratic claims seriously anymore, except for the Bush administration, which has put itself in the embarrassing position of propping up the Muslim world’s most powerful military dictator as an essential ally in its half-baked campaign to promote democracy throughout the Muslim world. Washington needs to disentangle America, quickly, from the general’s damaging embrace.
Ever since his high-handed dismissal of the country’s independent-minded chief justice in March, the general has been busily digging himself into an ever deeper political hole.
Last week, he issued a decree giving himself increased powers to shut down independent television channels, but under mounting pressure he withdrew it over the weekend. More than 300 local political leaders in Punjab were arrested in an effort to head off protests against the decree. Still, thousands of lawyers, journalists and political activists gathered to protest the firing, the censorship and the general’s continued rule. Pakistan seems to be rapidly approaching a critical turning point, with a choice between intensified repression and instability or an orderly transition back to democratic rule.
Were Washington now to begin distancing itself from the general, it would greatly encourage civic-minded Pakistanis to step up the pressure for free national elections. That’s a process the chief justice was trying to make possible when he was fired. And that is what Pakistan’s last two democratically elected leaders — Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif — are both campaigning for from abroad. The United States should be supporting these efforts, not continuing to make excuses for General Musharraf.
Pakistan has its share of violent Islamic extremists, military and civilian. But they are clearly in the minority. The best hope for diluting their political, and geopolitical, influence lies not in heating the pressure cooker of repression, but in promoting the earliest possible democratic elections.
*Published June 11, 2007*
Since 2001, poverty has plunged by 10 percent in Pakistan, according to the CIA's World Factbook. The country has privatized its banking sector, increased access to global markets and bolstered government investment in economic development. The welcome result: Pakistan's gross domestic product grew by 6 to 8 percent a year from 2004 to 2006.
The economic news is mostly good. Yet President Pervez Musharraf faces rising anger from citizens who have grown tired of his government’s tyranny and inefficiency. Street protests have been growing, especially since March, when Musharraf suspended Iftikhar Chaudhry, the chief justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court.
When Musharraf took power in 1999, in a military coup that ousted an elected government, he promised to clean up corruption, limit his own power and liberalize the press. He has failed on all three counts.
According to Transparency International’s 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index, Pakistan ranks near the bottom, 142nd most corrupt out of 163 countries. Musharraf has repeatedly broken promises to limit his term in office. And as protests against the government have multiplied in the three months since he suspended Chaudhry, the government has done its best to muzzle the press, essentially banning live coverage of opposition rallies and live political talk shows while raising fines for violations to prohibitive levels.
This creates a problem for the U.S. in a region where it has more than enough problems. Musharraf has been a U.S. ally against Al Qaeda (if at times an uncertain one.) If he were not in power, the world would face the risk of extreme elements running the nuclear-armed Pakistan.
But Musharraf’s strong-arm routine has been going on for 7 1/2 years, and it is building resentment in his nation – a welcome development for extremist elements there.
Musharraf needs to give his people a voice in running their nation. That means ensuring that the country’s next elections, expected later this year, are fair, free and open, devoid of violence and intimidation. That means giving them a vote, soon, on whether he should stay in power.
Granted, that’s not an easy task. Pakistan’s six-decade history as a sovereign nation has been dominated by military coups and multiple rewritings of its constitution. Democracy has been little more than a rumor based on a myth based on a fairy tale.
There is the danger that if Musharraf is removed from office, a new government would not be as friendly to the U.S. as he has been. But his rule by force is creating more potential for violence, and stands in glaring contradiction to the U.S. campaign to promote democracy in the region. Pakistan is on a dangerous path.
***By MAX BOOT, June 11, 2007; Page A13
*Pakistan may be reaching a crisis point. Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who is chief of both the country and the armed forces, is facing the most serious threat to his rule since he seized power in 1999. His high-handed suspension in March of the chief justice of the supreme court, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, has galvanized opposition from the urban middle-class that had hitherto acquiesced in his rule. On May 12, street protests got out of hand in Karachi, leaving 48 dead and contributing to a sense of worsening crisis. Mr. Musharraf has since tried to regain control by cracking down on independent media outlets and by jailing hundreds of opposition political activists, but the protests continue.
The Bush administration is reaching a decision point: Will it continue to provide unqualified support for Mr. Musharraf on the grounds that he is too valuable an ally to give up in the Global War on Terror? Or will it pull the rug out from under him and insist on a transition to civilian democratic rule? In this matter as in so many others, George W. Bush should ask himself the WWRD question: What Would Reagan Do?
As it happens, Ronald Reagan confronted a crisis remarkably similar to this one 21 years ago involving another pro-American dictator in another strategically important country. Ferdinand Marcos had ruled the Philippines, home to two of America’s biggest overseas military bases, by martial law since 1972. He had loyally stood by the United States and fought against a communist insurgency, but his rule started to unravel when opposition leader Benigno Aquino returned to his homeland in 1983 and was assassinated on the tarmac.
Evidence pointed to conspiracy involving Gen. Fabian Ver, commander of the Philippine armed forces. But a three-judge panel acquitted Ver and 25 others, and Marcos promptly reinstated him. He then shamelessly stole the 1986 presidential election from Benigno’s widow, Corazon Aquino.
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest. “People power” was supplemented by a rebellion within the Philippine armed forces. But Marcos still had the loyalty of much of the army, and was prepared to use it to hold onto power by force – unless the U.S. intervened.
President Reagan confronted a difficult choice. He felt personally loyal to Marcos and was afraid of the consequences of toppling him, having little confidence in Ms. Aquino’s leadership abilities. Reagan abhorred the way Jimmy Carter had abandoned the Shah of Iran in 1979, and didn’t want to make the same mistake.
But his Secretary of State, George Shultz, had seen early on that Marcos’s legitimacy was eroding. “I became increasingly convinced that Marcos was the problem, not the solution,” Mr. Shultz wrote in his memoirs. The secretary of state had refused to call for the dictator’s ouster, but he had insisted that the Philippines hold elections – demands that Marcos had finally agreed to.
The crisis came to a head on Sunday, Feb. 23, 1986, as Marcos was massing troops in Manila to crack down on the post-election protests. The top-level National Security Planning Group met that afternoon in the White House Situation Room to decide whether to continue backing him. Only White House chief of staff Don Regan offered any support for Marcos. The rest of the foreign-policy team said his day was done. The president was reluctantly won over. He authorized his friend, Sen. Paul Laxalt, to call Marcos and convey the message. By Tuesday, the dictator and his gaudy wife Imelda were on their way to exile aboard a U.S. Air Force jet.
This was no aberration. Even while protests were erupting in the Philippines, a similar situation was occurring in Haiti. Here, too, another pro-American dictator – Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier – was sinking. And here, too, the Reagan administration refused to throw him a lifeline, forcing him into exile.
The Reagan administration also played a role in getting the military regime in South Korea to give up power and hold free elections in 1987. The same year, with American encouragement, Taiwan’s Chiang Ching-kuo ended martial law and began the transition to democracy. The following year, again with U.S. backing, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet held a referendum, which he lost, bringing his long reign to an end.
All these actions were taken notwithstanding the very real risk, at a time when the Cold War was still going strong, of what would follow in the wake of pro-American strongmen. Back then, just as today, lots of “realists” made the better-the-devil-you-know argument. (Henry Kissinger wrote an op-ed expressing “grave concerns” about Marcos’s overthrow.) But what Reagan and especially Mr. Shultz realized was that giving a blank check to dictators was a bad deal. Sooner or later, it would lead to an explosion that would make an anti-American regime – of the kind that arose in Nicaragua and Iran in 1979 – more, not less, likely. The best way to prevent such a disaster was by pushing for civil-society reforms culminating in free elections, something that previous administrations failed to do with Somoza or the Shah.
The choice is made more difficult in the case of Pakistan because, unlike the Philippines or South Korea, it possesses nuclear weapons. Our ultimate nightmare is for those weapons to fall into the hands of Osama bin Laden’s allies. But that is extremely unlikely. The coalition of religious parties, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, won only 12% of the seats in the legislative assembly in 2002, even though Mr. Musharraf hindered more secular parties from competing. There is no reason to think it is any more popular today. The two main opposition parties, the Pakistan People’s Party led by Benazir Bhutto and the Pakistan Muslim League led by Nawaz Sharif, have their own shortcomings, including corruption and a history of dealings with Islamic radicals. But they represent the broad middle of Pakistani society, not the extremist fringe.
Moreover, Mr. Musharraf has talked a better game than he has delivered. He has taken at least $10 billion in American subsidies since 9/11, and in return he has sent his troops to fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban. But he has also struck deals with tribal authorities in South Waziristan, North Waziristan and Bajaur that essentially turn over those vital border regions to Taliban control. No wonder terrorism in Afghanistan is exploding. Taliban fighters receive training and support in Pakistan, possibly still from their historic patrons in the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency which reports to none other than Mr. Musharraf. There have even been a number of incidents in recent months of Pakistani troops providing covering fire from their side of the border for Taliban militants assaulting Afghan army positions. Mr. Musharraf has been useful, but he is either unwilling or unable to do enough to combat the terrorists in his country.
There is no need for President Bush to call for his ouster at this point, any more than Reagan called for Marcos’s ouster early on. What he should do – what Reagan did in the Philippines – is to insist that the constitutional process play itself out. That means that, if he wants U.S. aid to continue, Mr. Musharraf should give up either the presidency or his post as army chief and allow free elections in October that could be contested by all legitimate political parties.
Reagan’s words at Moscow State University in 1988 still ring true today: “Democracy is the standard by which governments are measured.” Mr. Musharraf is not living up to that standard.
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Mr. Boot, winner of the 2007 Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism, is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of “War Made New” (Gotham Books, 2006).
yeh log kyoon hamaray Emperor kay peechay haath dho kay par gayee hain? The benevolent and ubiquitously famous Dictaor. :bummer:
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