Serious Trouble in Pakistan
Sun, 11/04/2007 - 1:46pm
From time to time we turn our attention to international matters here at the Blue, and when we do it usually isn't good. That is the case with Pakistan, and the moves President Musharraf has made in the last several days which indicate he is exerting force control over the state to maintain power.
Citing "activist judges," and probably as a response to some Taliban activity that is more aggressive than usual, Musharraf has declared a state of emergency, which essentially means that he is using his position as supreme commander of the Pakistani Army to enforce a state of martial law. He has also suspended Pakistan's constitution. The AP has a list of rights that are no longer guaranteed:
_ Protection of life and liberty.
_ The right to free movement.
_ The right of detainees to be informed of their offense and given access to lawyers.
_ Protection of property rights.
_ The right to assemble in public.
_ The right to free speech.
_ Equal rights for all citizens before law and equal legal protection.
_ Media coverage of suicide bombings and militant activity is curtailed by new rules. Broadcasters also face a three-year jail term if they "ridicule" members of the government or armed forces.
Now activists are being arrested, and in this case 'activists' can also mean 'members of the opposition party.'
The New York Times has a good run down here. If you pay attention at all to foreign policy, you know this means that wheels are close to coming off some pretty important carts. If you don't pay attention to foreign policy, well... you'd better start.
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Oh What A Tangled Web We Weave
By Patrick M McLeod
Mon, 11/05/2007 - 3:22pm
The International (Karachi) news site yesterday reported that the government had arrested former ISI Chief Hamid Gul.
For those not familiar with the plots and twists and turns of the grand opera that is Pakistan and Afghanistan, ISI is the acronym for Inter-Services Intelligence, kind of like a Pakistani CIA. ISI was the key player in funneling American money and resources to the Afghan mujahedin during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Approximately 5 million Afghan refugees fled to and resided in Pakistan over the course of the Soviet occupation, mostly in the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan. This area of Pakistan is also mostly ethnic Pashtun, like most of southern Afghanistan.
And you know what group is also mostly Pashtun, the group that grew out of the fundamentalist religious schools paid for by Gulf Wahhabi oil money in those refugee camps in Pakistan?
Our old friends in black, the Taliban.
Hamid Gul was a key supporter and promoter of the Taliban during his tenure as ISI Chief and after his retirement. He is also thought to be the person responsible for tipping off Osama bin Laden about the Tomahawk strike launched on his Afghan training camps in 1999, the tip that got him far away from the camps when the cruise missiles hit.
I think his arrest combined with the continued successes of the Taliban in gaining control of the NWFP points toward some dynamics worth considering about the health of Musharraf's rule. How about the possibility of the Taliban and their ideological allies taking control of not Kabul, but Islamabad and getting their hands on the grand prize, A.Q. Khan's baby, Pakistan's nuclear force? My provincial amateur reasoning leads me to believe this is a much more immediate threat than Iran...if we're actually concerned about fundamentalists gaining access to nuclear weapons, that is.
One thing that is true of politics in this area is that every story has at least three or four subplots to it...kind of like this comment.