- (november 2007)
What a mess.
Pervez Musharraf is under attack from all fronts. He created enemies among
the Islamists when he supported the USA war against Islamic terrorists and
let Bush remove the Taliban from power. Islamists have repeatedly tried to
assassinate him. Tensions with the home-grown Islamists peaked in 2007 when
73 students and clerics were killed in clashes between security forces and militants (led by cleric Abdul Aziz) holed in the Lal Masjid/ Red Mosque of Islamabad, and hundreds of people were killed in subsequent bombings by Islamists.
In parallel he has de facto been conducting a war against the tribes that
control the border with Afghanistan, where presumably Osama Bin Laden and many
other Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders have found a sanctuary.
Suicide bombers have struck repeatedly in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan, some targeting Chinese workers in Pakistan.
Then he defied the judges by firing chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, an event
that began the "lawyers' movement". While they don't use suicide bombers,
their demonstrations have probably done more harm to Musharraf's reputation
than anything else.
Last but not least, he is deeply hated by the supporters of former
prime minister Nawaz Sharif (who ruled Pakistan from november 1990 to july 1993 and then from february 1997 to october 1999, when Musharraf overthrew him) and
by the supporters of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto (who ruled Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and from 1993 to 1996).
Sharif is best remembered as the man who almost started a nuclear war with
India. After his counterpart in India (another international idiot) detonated
a nuclear bomb, in 1998 Sharif order Pakistan's first nuclear test. Pakistan
became the first Islamic country to go nuclear, a fact that still stirs
national pride. The following year he tried to seize territory from India,
thus causing the brief "Kargil War". Bill Clinton in person had to intervene
to avoid an escalation that could have caused hundreds of millions of
casualties. Pakistan had to withdraw after suffering huge casualties.
That humiliation was part of the reason that Musharraf removed him from power.
(Today we know that in reality Musharraf, then chief of the army, engineered
the Kargil War and Sharif had no choice but to go along with it).
Sharif was always close to the Islamic "fascists" (the right-wing of Pakistan's
parliament) and was the main supporter of the Taliban while they imposed a
religious dictatorship over Afghanistan and expelled or executed all
non-Muslims. At the time Clinton himself protested with Sharif because he was
protecting Osama Bin Laden who was already wanted by the USA.
Sharif even tried to introduce shariah law in Pakistan (imagine a nuclear power
governed by shariah law that prescribes unlimited war against the infidels...)
Sharif is Saudi Arabia's favorite because he is close to the Saudi-born
Wahabi sect (the same sect that spawned Osama Bin Lande and modern Islamic
hyper-terrorism). A Saudi friendship may be viewed by Bush as a plus, but
the rest of the world thinks it is a bad sign.
Sharif's biggest mistake was to appoint Musharraf head of the army: years later
it was Musharraf himself who removed Sharif from power (at the time with the
approval of the vast majority of Pakistanis).
Benazir Bhutto is, by definition (being the first woman ever to lead an Islamic state), a lot more secular and westernized than Sharif. Alas, she has
consistently been in trouble for corruption. She was fired both times because
the evidence of corruption was overwhelming. She and her husband got in trouble
with the justice of several countries (France, Poland, Spain and mainly
Switzerland). At least one company (Dassault, a French aircraft manufacturer)
admitted paying bribes to Bhutto's husband. Evidence has surfaced that her
Swiss bank account is worth more than 1.5 billion dollars. That is roughly
the amount that she and her husband are estimated having collected as bribes
while she was prime minister.
She is also widely suspected of having
engineered, along with her husband Asif Zardari, the 1996 assassination of her
own brother Murtaza Bhutto (who was being increasingly outspoken about the
corruption of her regime).
It was during her second term that Pakistan helped the Taliban seize power in
Afghanistan, although at the time the Taliban had not fully displayed
fundamentalist fanaticism yet.
It is amazing that these two scoundrels, Bhutto and Sharif, are the only
alternatives that Pakistan has to Musharraf. It is not surprising that more
and more voters choose to support the Islamic fascists. At least they are
honest. They also have another advantage:
Bhutto, Sharif and Musharraf hate each other and may end up destroying each
other, an outcome that will leave the door open for someone else to emerge
and wipe them off the political horizon.
(If Sharif thinks that the religious extremists will hand him the power,
he is daydreaming).
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (July 2007)
Pervez Musharraf
is an embarrassing ally for the USA: a dictator who proves
that everything Condi Rice has been saying about democracy is just words.
However, few statesmen have risked so much personally to fight Islamic
extremists. When the USA was attacked by terrorists based in nearby Afghanistan
(which at the time was de facto a Pakistani colony), Musharraf did not hesitate
one second to side with the USA against his former allies (the Taliban came from
Pakistan and were assisted by Pakistani officials).
During the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Musharraf quickly became
a favorite target. He survived at least three murder attempts. He presides
over a country that has never exercized full control over its border areas.
Nonetheless, he did not hesitate to launch a war against the tribes that
have ruled those areas for decades. Whenever the Islamists have tried to
spread terror in the major cities of Pakistan, Musharraf has not hesitated
to crack down on them. In july 2007, he did not hesitate to launch a military
attack against the Red Mosque in Islamabad that had become the hotbed of
Islamic insurrection.
The price paid by the Pakistani military has been high, with suicide bombers
blowing themselves up regularly around the country.
His timid overtures to India have been no less risky, because hostility towards
India is not only deep-seated among the population but also aomng his own
political and military apparatus. Nonetheles, he has been more courageous than
any of India's leaders he has dealt with.
At the same time, many analists believe that Musharraf's dictatorship and
his alliance with George W Bush has created more extremists than there were
before. Many within and outside Pakistan call for Musharraf's resignations and
the reestablishment of democratic rule as the best defense against Islamic
extremists.
This might be wishful thinking. The fact that Hitler's army kept increasing
in size was not a sign that the British were wrong in fighting against Hitler:
it was a sign that Hitler was determined to fight the war. Today the forces
of Islam are determined to fight a world-wide war in name of their presumed
god and their presumed prophet. The more the world defends itself from Islam
the more "militants" Islam has to enroll. Sure: Hitler would have stopped
enrolling soldiers if the entire world had surrendered to him. And Islam would
stop launching suicide bombers if the entire world surrendered and converted
to Islam. If we don't want to be Nazists or Muslims, then we have no choice
but to fight Islam. Just like the Quran prescribes, the jihad against Islam
can be carried out in different ways, and the armed one is only one option
(the least desirable). Education is still the most desirable. But the militants
often attack education precisely to remove that option.
If Pakistan is at war against a ferocious enemy that keeps increasing its
army, is it really so wrong that the country is run by a general
and not by a democratically elected official?
Musharraf's mistake may have been his inability to explain to the Pakistani
people that they, like all inhabitants of Islamic regions, are under attack by
Islamic extremists who want to impose a terrible kind of order. Had he
explained that this "is" a war, he might have gotten the popular consensus
that would make the whole issue of democracy irrelevant.
In a country in which Islamic parties only win 12% of the vote, this should
not have been too difficult.
His main allies are, in fact, the extremists themselves: whenever they strike,
the Pakistanis are reminded of why Pakistan needs someone like Musharraf for
the time being.
(His other allies could be the old "democratic" politicians themselves, i.e.
the alternative to Musharraf. However,
the Pakistani people seem to have forgotten how corrupt and inefficient those
politicians used to be).
- Articles on Pakistan before 2007
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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