Musharraf exits the Pakistani stage as storm clouds gather

Musharraf exits the Pakistani stage as storm clouds gather

By

Rich Bowdenon August 20, 2008 7:40 AM

Pakistan’s former leader Pervez Musharraf resigned yesterday in an emotional address to the nation ahead of impeachment proceedings brought by the country’s newly-resurgent Parliament. Musharraf dominated Pakistani politics for almost a decade and strode the world stage as one of the U.S.’s chief regional allies in the war against terrorism. However the euphoria expressed at the ousting of the one time strongman was tempered with the knowledge that Islamabad is likely to face a protracted power struggle to fill the vacuum.

Musharraf’s ascendancy was the catalyst that brought together the two main parties; the Pakistan Peoples Party and Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), though the two have traditionally been rivals throughout the country’s history. With the chief reason for the parties’ awkward and fragile coalition now gone, the country could face an uncertain, if not violent, political future.

The record of the two parties coalition since obtaining office in February is mixed and there have been squabbles over key issues such as immunity for Musharraf and the vexing question of whether to reinstate the judges ousted by Musharraf, an act which proved to be the tipping point for Musharraf in the eyes of the Pakistani public.

The Destabilization of Pakistan

The Destabilization of Pakistan

The debate is heating up between those who favor and oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan. Put me in the latter camp – I cannot support escalation without first hearing a clear explanation of the strategic changes that would accompany the escalation, along with an explanation of how we’ll address issues of government and development sector corruption. In other words, I think that pumping in more troops without addressing the structural flaws of our approach will yield no results.And since we’re a long way away from solving those problems, I think we should hold off on troop increases.

Building an argument for or against more troops involves answering a number of questions. I’m only going to deal with one sub-point here,but it’s an important one: we need to define more carefully what political and social consequences escalation in Afghanistan might have for Pakistan.

One point that everyone on all sides of the debate loves to make is that x, y, or z maneuver by the US might ‘destabilize Pakistan.’ I think we’re reaching a point where we can talk more precisely about what that means. It’s easy to talk about ‘destabilization’ – it’s a nice buzzword that makes you sound authoritative, and an intimidating prospect to scare your audience or your opponents with. It’s a bogeyman. I myself have used it that way in the past. Admittedly,’destabilization‘ can be shorthand for a range of phenomena that are understood by the parties involved in a debate, but I think in this case we need to bring our use of the word back to more concrete details. The debate about Afghanistan/Pakistan needs to be accessible to as many Americans as possible.

Karzai: A Roaring Mouse

Karzai: A Roaring Mouse; Pak Politicians & Their Base In Diplomatic Enclave

Does Hamid Karzai want to start the Third World War? If the Pakistan Army was to respond, a clash between them and NATO forces could bring the world to the thermonuclear threshold. He shouldn’t forget that, U.S. help notwithstanding, it was we who did what Napoleon and Hitler couldn’t – defeat the Russian Empire and liberate Afghanistan. Karzai was ‘Pakistan’s Karzai’ when he lived on our largesse for two decades, protected by our own ISI. This poor hapless rodent is required to kill all the cats that belong to the fierce breeds known as ‘Taliban’ and ‘Al Qaeda’. If he is lucky enough to avoid the fate of his predecessor Najibullah, he can return to live in Pakistan again to end his days in comfort, telling his grandchildren stories of the ‘glory’ that was once his as the Lord Mayor of Kabul who couldn’t kill cats.

By Humayun Gauhar

Sunday, 22 June 2008.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—Have you ever heard a mouse roar? If you haven’t, you should have heard Hamid Karzai the other day. He called the Taliban leader “Pakistan’s Mullah Omar”, forgetting that the description “Pakistan’s Karzai” fitted him better once – the ingrate lived on our munificence for two decades under the protection of our ISI.

Now the latest occupiers of his country have ineffectively made him Lord Mayor of Kabul rejoicing under the title ‘President of Afghanistan’.

Dick Wittington returned to London when he imagined the bells tolling “Turn again Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London” and became a scullery boy again in the house of Mr. Fitzwarren. He found that his cat that he had sent on his master’s ship to be sold had earned him a fortune because it had killed all the mice in the King of Barbary’s palace. Sadly, Dick Whittington’s cat missed one mouse. Wonder of wonders, America adopted that mouse after occupying his country and has appointed him twice Lord Mayor of Kabul so far. It expects him to kill cats – a pipedream to beat all pipedreams!

The cats the poor hapless rodent is required to kill belong to the fierce breeds known as ‘Taliban’ and ‘Al Qaeda’.

Pakistan adrift without leader

Pakistan remains in a leaderless drift four months after elections, Western diplomats and military officials have said, and Pakistani politicians and Afghan officials are increasingly worried that no one is really in charge.

The leadership vacuum is most stark in dealing with militants, Pakistani politicians and foreign diplomats have said, adding that the Pakistani government and military officials were sending mixed signals about policy in the tribal areas that have become home to the Taliban and to Al Qaeda.

That confusion, military officials and diplomats warn, is allowing the militants to consolidate their sanctuaries while spreading their tentacles all along the border area. It has also complicated policy for the administration of George W. Bush, which leaned heavily on one man, President Pervez Musharraf, to streamline its anti-terrorism efforts in Paksitan.

If anyone is in charge, Pakistani politicians and Western diplomats say, it remains the military and the country’s premier intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, which operate with little real oversight.

While the recently elected civilian government has been criticized for dealing with militants, the military is brokering cease-fires and prisoner exchanges with minimum consultation with the government, politicians from the government coalition, diplomats and analysts said. Meanwhile, politicians in both the provincial and central government complain that they are excluded from the negotiations and did not even know of a secret deal struck in February, before the elections, let alone the details of the accord.

America: Dubious Ally Or Outright Enemy?

America: Dubious Ally Or Outright Enemy?

Have our political and military elites lost the will to fight? Where is the befitting response? Our government, and our military, has reduced us to a laughingstock – a joke of a nation that can be pushed around. The point is, if our military is unwilling or unable to fight those who violate our sovereignty and kill our people, then what is the purpose of continuing to beef up and support this expensive organization?

By Shireen M. Mazari

Wednesday, June 18, 2008.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—What have we been reduced to as a result of our successive leaderships’ kowtowing to the U.S. post-9/11? What many of us had feared and written about at the time seems to have come true — be it the
growing U.S. intrusions into our territory or the periodic diatribes from the U.S. against Dr A.Q. Khan whenever they feel Pakistan needs to be put under pressure. However, nothing reflects our state’s sovereign bankruptcy as much as the audacious threats issued by Afghanistan’s Karzai of sending in his Afghan Army into Pakistan to take out “militants” and “terrorists.”

Here is a man who barely has power in his own capital, Kabul, and has hundreds of occupation forces from the
U.S. and NATO — not to mention some Arab contingents from the Gulf states — and he is actually threatening Pakistan, a country with a massive conventional military, and nuclear capability to boot.

Herein lies the irony of Pakistan’s predicament post-9/11. Our military seems to have no stomach for fighting the violations of our sovereignty by the U.S. and its allies. That has emboldened the U.S. and they now feel they can target the Pakistani security forces directly — as they did in March 2008 in Bajaur, and more recently last week in
the Mohmand Agency which left 11 FC men dead, apart from the civilians that are a constant target of U.S. and NATO forces — especially as their frustration has grown over their lack of success in Afghanistan.

Since the war began in Afghanistan, one has seen only whimpers of protest from the Pakistani military and the government in response to brazen attacks on Pakistani soil by U.S./NATO forces in which many innocent Pakistani civilians have died. Sheltering behind these forces are the ragtag members of the “Afghan Army” — which Karzai now wants to send into Pakistan! Karzai, whose security forces stood helpless in the face of a massive prison break, actually thinks the Pakistani military is so weak that the same ineffectual security forces can simply march into our country and carry out military actions against our people.

Our government, and our military, has reduced us to a laughingstock – a joke of a nation that can be pushed around militarily by all and sundry. The point is, if our military is unwilling or unable to fight those who violate our sovereignty and kill our people, then what is the purpose of continuing to beef up and support this expensive
organization? Here we were thinking our investment in nuclear weapons and updating of conventional weapon systems would ensure that our borders were secure and any military threat from anywhere would be dealt with effectively by the Pakistan military. Yet nothing of the sort has happened. Instead, we continue to be subject to U.S. military attacks as and when they choose. From all accounts, they do not bother to inform us either until after the event. And all we do is whimper a few protests.