Emergency in Pakistan

It began with an attack near the official residence of General Musharraf on the heels of the operation red mosque July 2007 and came full circle on October 29 a little away from the same residence when the ruler of Pakistan was in a meeting half kilometer away as a motorcyclist drove against an air force bus killing seven and ending himself. That is awesomely momentous.


The highest moment of emergency was in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack on the twin towers of World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. President George W Bush had put Pakistan in a very difficult situation. Either you are with the US or against it. General Musharraf had gone on the air and told the world that extremism in religion was not Islam. He would fight terrorism along with Pakistan’s traditional ally, America. It proved him much wiser than any ruler his country had seen so far. His foresight saved his nation from perceived threat on the cusp of becoming real. He saw it coming, his hard-line opponents did not.

Lal masjid imbroglio produced the next emergency he has still not come out of, nor has his nation. The relentless attacks on the security forces by the heavily armed extremists opposed to his regime have led to death and destruction unprecedented in the history of Pakistan. Many observers proved themselves wrong when they said that the general had deliberately allowed the situation to worsen to make the people there view the waywardness unleashed by sections opposed to him. They thought that he had choreographed everything to achieve his hidden agenda of postponing election and thereby remaining in power. Now also his critics may be having the same thought.

But rising fatal terrorist attacks in quick succession since his solders entered the red mosque not far from his house is a gamut of blitzkrieg. The onus of carrying on administration after March 2007 with a showdown with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Iftikhar Choudhry and the July stand off at the red mosque and the military solution which sparked off retaliatory attacks can hardly be palatable for any military rule. The military junta of Myanmar acted far swifter than the Pak leader.

Situation vis-à-vis forthcoming election is precarious. Nawaz Shariff enjoys the support of the people in the Punjab, Benazir Bhutto in Sindh province. The rest of the country is quite chaotic. There is no single leader who can claim popular acclaim as did Zulfikar Ali Bhutto or his daughter once and General Zia though for different reasons. Overthrowing a very unpopular leader is not at stake now nor was it in 1999 when Musharraf seized power. However, many supporters of the Muslim League of Pakistan may not support Musharraf after the action in the sprawling complex of the red mosque of Islamabad. It might not be untrue to say that this time around the general is in fact saving his nation as he claimed while he declared emergency on Saturday November 3, 2007.

Of the two reasons for imposing emergency one was immediate and the other was much pervasive. The general’s trouble with the judiciary was one time phenomenon which jarred on his mind. The Supreme Court had postponed until Monday giving its opinion about whether the general can run for election/form government. The general saw which way the wind was blowing. He put the Chief Justice Choudhry under house arrest. This would be for the immediate purpose. Hashim Javed, spokesperson of former premier Sharif, is also under arrest. But the incarcerating of the Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Asma Jahangir is for the much longer purpose. Suspension of the constitution inevitably ultra vires the human rights. Lawyer opponents Munir A Malik and Aitzaz Ahsan are the bete noire of the general and were arrested and put under detention for a month.

It is a strange coincidence that a single month saw India reacting to two different countries confronting demand for democracy. India is the largest democracy in the world. New Delhi’s response to Myanmar monk protest against the military rule was tardy. To Pakistan it was knee jerk reaction. The cause of concern is different though as a practicing democracy it should be one.

India and Pakistan are both fighting terrorism. For the first time they have just exchanged dossiers on mutual cooperation on fighting terrorism. New Delhi blames Pakistan for the mess in Kashmir and terrorist attacks in the rest of the country and Pakistan blames India for the situation in North West frontiers. In the aftermath of the attack on Parliament India had raised stake so high that we mobilized our defence forces and would have let the situation escalate into a war had not the wiser counsel and mediation by US prevailed upon New Delhi. Arundhati Roy and other distinguished journalists, jurists and human rights activists in a book on that Attack on Parliament December 13 would have us believe that it was fake! So a new denominator or divisor (terrorism) has entered into the response of the one into the democratic changes in the other. Some leaders of a national party evoke mian Musharraf to fight election in India when ironically he cannot fight his own election in his own country.

However, Pakistan has to walk a much tighter rope in its acrobatics of politics than a democracy like India. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s declaring emergency after an adverse court judgment and the general’s declaration after a perceived and feared would be adverse decision signify differences of the two countries.

The western powers are very much worried that any emergency would entail Pak losing their support and assistance. Admiral Fallon of the US landed in Islamabad a day before emergency was declared. His aim was to discuss the rising militant attacks and the emergent situation. In August Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice had phoned the general at 2 a.m. and prevented him from declaring emergency then. But now she is asking for a “quick return to constitutional law.” After having pumped $ 10 billion into the Pakistan army since 2001 the Americans are feeling desperate as much as the general himself as his current rule ends on November 15.

Was there any choice left for the general? Ahsan remarked that “President Musharraf is illegal”. That precluded any succor to the beleaguered president from the judiciary which not only declared that Nawaz Shariff could return now but was determined to give a verdict against the president when it would have reconvened on November 5. The ascendancy in suicidal terrorist attacks had cost 700 lives in the last four months. Attacks on army runs into two scores and more. So alarming was the situation that the soldiers were now wearing civilian dress and traveling in unmarked cars to avoid becoming easy identified targets. Desertion from army was also reported.

There is a saving grace still left. If the people of Pakistan can see that howsoever unpopular, the general is still struggling to keep the country from a slide into chaos they may rally around him. Not the individual but his action. At the time of going to press we hear that he has got 200 soldiers released by the militants in exchange of releasing their leader and about forty of the militants from jail. That is a flicker of hope; the emergency may not be a setback after all. Still the Swat valley may take time to return to tolerable armed neutrality if not truce.