The sweet chorus of Musharaf antagonists singing his demise...

[system]

I just thought I would post some of the many anti Musharaf writers in one thread for the reading pleasure of all…
Some of the writers are excellent and really paint a beautiful picture of life under this dictator…

Mullah, military & Musharraf

By S.A. Qureshi

BENAZIR Bhutto died among her people. She would probably not have it any other way. Just a couple of months ago in an article titled ‘A fair investigation’ I had written in respect of the first attempt on her life in Karachi:

“Clearly, a fair investigation may lead to sacrosanct spaces and figures. The burning question is: will Musharraf permit such an investigation? If he does not, he runs the risk of arousing suspicions regarding his own commitment amongst his allies in enlightened moderation. If he does, his own power base may be under threat.”

Benazir Bhutto, writing from her Blackberry, responded to the article and in her inimitable manner of making even an armchair contributor feel important asked for an assessment on the prospects of a fair investigation and the mechanics of the proposal contained in the latter part of the article regarding a purge of the intelligence agencies.

My suggestion for a conditional engagement with the government to take the investigation further as a first step was turned down with the correct judgment: “no association [with the government] until international assistance is available”.

She rightly wanted to test Musharraf’s commitment to the process of change. She knew that if he agreed to international assistance he would move towards a break from the unaccountable manner in which the intelligence agencies in the country have been used. She was perhaps looking for hope where there was none.

Much as she expected, Musharraf chose to protect his own murky power base. In the process he effectively signed her death warrant. She had counted on the fact that Musharraf would realise where his long-term interests lay. She did not realise the web of deceit and incompetence in which the man and his generals are trapped.

Musharraf by being cavalier with her security has undermined Pakistan’s federation. He has also tremendously damaged the United States’ credibility in the war on terror.

The United States has for some time been propagating the new mantra that they will move from their age-old methodology of supporting ruthless dictators to one of supporting democracy. As a godsend they had in Benazir Bhutto a genuinely popular moderate partner for Pakistan to practise this doctrine.

She saw the extremist threat to her country for what it was — a recipe for civil war — and was willing to confront it. Consequently, at great risk to herself, she agreed to work with all forces against extremism in society including the United States.

Her so-called allies were supposed to provide the physical safety and she the rallying call. Instead they entrusted her security to another ally called Musharraf. He was either incompetent, complicit or regarded her as a threat. She lost her life and the United States is now a laughing stock of a superpower around the world.

Should the Americans not have known their ally Musharraf? Musharraf’s history, which everyone but his allies can see, is one of incompetence (Kargil), contempt for the Constitution and his oath (the coup), greed for power (the emergency) and plain arrogance (inability to grasp the lifeline provided by Benazir Bhutto).

Pakistan is as a result blessed with a president who cannot now walk, unescorted, across any busy street of his own country for fear of being lynched. Not by the Islamists (as he might want his superpower friends to believe) but the ordinary people of Pakistan.

The United States and Britain may find it difficult to digest but their latest tinpot in Pakistan is now associated with Benazir Bhutto’s murder and as a result has now almost pegged their last tinpot dictator, Ziaul Haq, as the most reviled man in Pakistan’s history. If they are not careful they may soon find themselves tainted and unacceptable to the same forces they are trying to rally.

The destruction of jails, banks, police stations and schools across the country in response to Benazir Bhutto’s murder was a revolt of the common man against the mullah, the military and the militancy they have together created in Pakistan. If a civilian had been in charge of such a mess, the military would have probably hanged him for being a threat to the federation. Instead, Musharraf does not accept any responsibility. He is shameless enough to not even offer to resign. Even Yahya Khan had more decency.

It was ironic indeed when the United States asked Musharraf for an investigation which would satisfy the people of Pakistan. I am sure if the United States had consulted anyone aware of what the people of Pakistan are thinking at the moment the word ‘unlikely’ would have figured in any conversation regarding confidence in a fair investigation or in Musharraf.

And now for the investigation itself. For most people today, rightly or wrongly, Baitullah Mehsud and the intelligence agencies are two faces of the same coin but let us not as a result of this relationship fall into the trap of Al Qaeda’s reported denial of involvement.

Al Qaeda are known liars and are simply scared of the wrath of the people of Pakistan. Osama bin Laden is known to have financed earlier plots to kill Benazir Bhutto and has had connections with circles in Pakistan’s intelligence set up in this regard.

Al Qaeda’s religious politics is all about exercising power through killing other Muslims. They have no tradition of chivalry where women or children are concerned. Al Qaeda will in one form or the other be involved but it is not clear who they are working with.

The people of Pakistan can best avenge Benazir Bhutto’s murder by forcing the political parties in Pakistan to unite to deal with Al Qaeda and force the military out of politics.

Practically, the only way we the people of Pakistan can cast the first stone is to vote in the next election for Nawaz Sharif, the Awami National Party or the Pakistan People’s Party. Let us clearly tell the military and its collaborators (the PML-Q and the maulvis) that they are not welcome to politics in this country any more. A reduction of religion in politics will automatically emerge.Benazir Bhutto’s death will not be in vain if it brings down the system imposed on this country. If it does not do so because our people and politicians remain blind to reality then at least she will have done what a leader is supposed to do: expose things for as they stand.

The writer is a corporate lawyer and political analyst.

[email protected]

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Re: The sweet chorus of Musharaf antagonists singing his demise…

Another article… Interesting point… Everyone who has ever tried to make deals with the dictator ends up dead!!! hmmm

Election and reconciliation

By Asha’ar Rehman

AUGUST 2006: Nawab Akbar Bugti killed in an operation by Pakistani troops. The action came after the Nawab went into hiding in the mountains following the breakdown of a dialogue between him and the Musharraf government.

The two sides had been engaged in talks for some time, and at one juncture in 2005 it was reported that a Balochistan package addressing some of the crucial issues facing the province had been reached. The official mediators — Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Mushahid Hussain — had then told the media that the two sides had agreed on around 30 issues and only a couple of points remained to be settled. These two points were to be cleared by the president.

July 2007: Abdur Rashid Ghazi, the Red Mosque cleric involved in a stand-off with the government was killed when an official force led by the Pakistan Army stormed the mosque. Ghazi for long held firm against the siege of the mosque, vowing that he was prepared to die as a ‘martyr’ committed to his cause. However, in the hours immediately preceding the official operation, he showed a willingness to end the occupation of the mosque in return for safe passage for him and his mother to their village in southern Punjab. The official negotiators told him that the decision about whether or not he could be provided safe passage lay with the president. The storming came soon afterwards.

December 2007: Ms Benazir Bhutto, the chairperson of the Pakistan People’s Party, assassinated in Rawalpindi after surviving an attempt on her life in Karachi on Oct 18, 2007. The official security cover she was provided with was blown to shreds as the assailant hit her from close range. Ms Bhutto had returned to the country as a result of many rounds of talks between her and emissaries of President Pervez Musharraf. She said she had returned to Pakistan to promote national reconciliation. The National Reconciliation Ordinance was issued and Ms Bhutto held that it would also help others like Mian Nawaz Sharif. The initial amicableness between the PPP leader and the president gradually gave way to a period of mounting tension in which each of them pointed the finger at the other.

Given what each one of them had stood for, Akbar Bugti, Abdur Rashid Ghazi and Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto had little in common. Yet, in the period just before they were killed, all three of them had been advanced the offer of reconciliation with the authority they had been pitted against. All three showed an inclination of giving it a shot and in all three cases the term reconciliation was wrongly applied: there can be no reconciliation without the authority first confessing excesses. Bugti, Ghazi and Mohtarma are no more but the respective groups of people that they represented and continue to represent in death will never be able to reconcile with the past and move towards the future until and unless this serious flaw is removed.

The word reconciliation in its current connotations is borrowed from countries such as South Africa and Argentina and Chile, which are all seeking to make a new beginning after living in the shadow of dictatorship for long. We are applying the term in a hurry without first meeting the preconditions.

According to Commissioner Wynand Malan of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission it means: “the acknowledgment of the dignity of victims for long ignored. It restores the individual’s capacity to take hold of herself and to manage the future and herself in that future. It restores the capacity to live with or alongside the other. It allows us, while remembering, to bring closure to a chapter in our past. It enables us to live in the present, making our life as a nation and our lives as individuals in a shared future. It always remains a never-ending process.”

The violence must end but before we can have an atmosphere as described in the above definition, there is a certain prerequisite that has to be met. In an article titled ‘Truth commissions and national reconciliation: Some reflections on theory and practice’, Charles O. Lerche III says: “When oppressors publicly acknowledge what they have done, knowledge becomes, in a sense, truth, and victims are (to some extent) assured that the past will not repeat itself. This in itself contributes to victims’ healing and, thereby, facilitates dialogue.”

That admission is nowhere in sight. There is no feeling of remorse and those in power continue to rule arbitrarily. A general election can restore the balance in favour of other major players in the political arena of Pakistan and as such can provide the starting point for an understanding putting us on the path of some kind of reconciliation in future. The arbitrary manner in which the polls have been put off for 40 days till Feb 18 in the face of opposition from major political forces such as the PPP and PML-N severely jeopardises hope for a genuine involvement of all parties in the search for a dialogue out of the current turmoil.

http://www.dawn.com/2008/01/05/op.htm

[Undisclosed]

Re: The sweet chorus of Musharaf antagonists singing his demise...

I wonder why whoever tries to strike a deal with "The Dictator" ends up dead.

[system]

Re: The sweet chorus of Musharaf antagonists singing his demise…

And one more excellent piece today… Please add others if you like..

Two contrasting requiems

By S. M. Naseem

THE tragic demise of Benazir Bhutto coincides with the dying days of the praetorian military rule headed by Gen Musharraf whose days seem numbered by every reckoning. The defining characteristic of that era was the deliberate attempt of the regime to establish the supremacy of the military over civilian institutions.

The pervasiveness with which this project was implemented was unprecedented. Both the Ayub and Zia regimes, which lasted much longer than Musharraf’s, were far less prone to establishing such overarching hegemony.

The civil-military face-off reached a climax with the dismissal of the Chief Justice in March 2007 on the basis of an untenable reference against him by the president, which sparked a lawyers-led struggle by civil society against the military regime and opened the possibility of democratic change. Despite the turn in the tide of domestic and international public opinion against him, General Musharraf succeeded in getting himself sworn in as president for a new five-year term. A series of Machiavellian moves beginning with the imposition of the emergency on November 3 by the COAS and ending in its lifting on December 15 by the president after his retirement from the army, with General Musharraf playing his favourite double role of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, helped him achieve this bizarre feat.

However, even before Benazir’s tragic death, which has all but sealed the fate of the Musharraf regime, two events — both tragic and unfortunate— served as the silver lining in the dark clouds that have pervaded since the regime came to power. The first event was the October 2005 earthquake which brought forth a groundswell of sympathy and material support from the people of Pakistan, and resulted in a relief and rescue effort in which the entire nation participated on a scale and with a commitment unparalleled in the country’s history.

For a few months towards the end of 2005, Pakistan stood united and focused as never before, creating opportunities capable of transforming the country from a security-oriented state on the verge of being declared a failed state into a welfare state. But the military never yielded the commanding heights and turned the earthquake-affected areas into a large camp of refugees living on handouts.

The second event that captured the imagination, hearts and minds of a significant and important section of Pakistani society, and raised hopes for its intellectual and moral emancipation, was Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s firm stance against his illegitimate suspension by General Musharraf in March 2007. Instead of meekly giving in to the president’s demand that he resign from his post or face a lengthy process of litigation and humiliation on trumped-up charges, the Chief Justice decided to challenge the legality of the reference against him and his suspension from office, which was itself unlawful. He refused to yield to the intimidation of the intelligence chiefs who were on hand when General Musharraf called him into his military camp office in Rawalpindi.

The general, who had become accustomed to trampling the Constitution at will to suit his needs, seemed to have no idea of the disaster he was going to bring upon himself and the nation by this wanton act motivated by his desire to stay in power. If left unchallenged, it would have permanently damaged a basic edifice of the Constitution, viz. the independence of the judiciary. Pakistan’s superior judiciary, in its 60-year history epitomised by the ‘doctrine of necessity’, had seldom shown such courage before.

Justice Chaudhry’s firm stance, despite the outrageous treatment meted out to him and his family during his trial, inspired the legal fraternity and civil society to rally behind him in almost daily and countrywide demonstrations with the chanting of ‘Go Musharraf, Go’ and other anti-government slogans. This gave the nine-member Supreme Court bench hearing Justice Chaudhry’s petition enough courage to quash the illegal reference and reinstate the Chief Justice. But for the determined efforts of the lawyers, led by Aitzaz Ahsan, both inside and outside the court, it would not have been possible to achieve this near miracle.

Since November 3, with the imposition of the emergency, the country was in a state of suspended animation, notwithstanding the formal lifting of the emergency on December 15. With the independent electronic media banished or put under tight control, the non-PCO judiciary deposed, the political parties half-heartedly participating in elections, Musharraf could hardly have wished for more. He and his minions had felt comfortable enough to rig the elections and install a parliament whose composition would ensure their continued hegemony for the next five years. It would, in due course, have received the imprimatur of his patrons abroad, ensuring the continued flow of the foreign aid which has been the regime’s lifeline.

However, the forces unleashed by the lawyers’ successful struggle to have the Chief Justice reinstated began gathering momentum and thwarted the possibility of this bleak scenario becoming a reality. The lawyers were joined by a broad section of civil society, including the media, educationists, students, civil rights and development and women’s activists, as well as common citizens. Although the numbers of the latter were small, they were bound to grow by leaps and bounds once people become convinced of the correctness of the cause of uprightness, fairness and defiance of unlawful authority which Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and his colleagues have come to symbolise.

A few years ago, a poor peasant woman from southern Punjab, Mukhtaran Mai, had shown similar courage to defy her feudal lords who had made her a victim of gang rape, inspiring the nation by raising her voice against tyranny.These values, to which Benazir’s killing has added reduced fear of death and personal harm, had till now faced the danger of becoming extinct, while hypocrisy, cowardice and lack of integrity were fast becoming the operational norms of society. The March 9 dismissal of the Chief Justice proved a blessing in disguise for the besieged nation. Similarly the December 27 killing of Benazir, which has completely changed the political landscape, may well pave the way for roads not taken and the realisation of dreams which had been turned into nightmares.

The civilian-military confrontation has now reached a new peak with the controversy over Benazir’s assassination and the likelihood of Musharraf’s political supporters being swept out in the coming elections. This has put the regime doubly on the defensive. The general and his legal team have already used up every weapon in their arsenal to contain the public wrath against their diversionary tactics and every red herring to justify their illegal acts. Should the election results fail to follow the intended script, the regime would certainly not be averse to undertaking some more desperate unconstitutional acts to keep itself in the saddle.

But its game is up and the dismissal of the Chief Justice and Benazir’s assassination provide the final acts of the macabre drama staged during the Musharraf era. Its requiem will go largely unsung while the whole nation mourns the death of Benazir Bhutto.

[email protected]

http://www.dawn.com/2008/01/05/ed.htm