A New Musharraf?
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that General Ashfaq Kayani, who took over the reins as Chief of Army Staff when Pervez Musharraf shed his uniform in late 2007, played a crucial role in ending tensions between President Asif Ali Bhutto Zardari and opposition rival Nawaz Sharif over the reinstatement controversy. The WSJ article also highlights the strong relationship between Kayani and Chairmen of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen. The two apparently spoke every day leading up to the reinstatement.
Kayani has assured Mullen he has no interest in a military coup, and indeed Kayani’s circumstances are vastly different than Musharraf’s were ten years ago. Before the 1999 coup d’etat, Musharraf had been fired by then-Prime Minister Sharif and decided to seize power rather than acquiesce. Kayani enjoys seemingly civil relationships with the both President Zardari and Sharif. Personal acrimony will not be the motivation for a Kayani takeover.
Still, if Kayani is looking for coup justifications, he needn’t look far. Violence and political instability have plagued Pakistan for months, and according to the WSJ article, are driving fears among Pentagon officials about the viability of Zardari’s government. For the US, a power vacuum in a country full of fundamentalists who would love power would be unacceptable. Kayani, who is respected enough by civilian leaders to have successfully moderated the reinstatement negotiations, might be America’s man for the stabilizing job.
Although Kayani’s middle name is Parvez, he must be a different type of general if Pakistan’s civilian democracy is to survive. Another military coup would dash the hopes of all democratically-minded Pakistanis.
The People’s Judge Returns
Pakistan’s government has reinstated Ifthikar Chaudhry as Chief Justice of its Supreme Court. The move was long overdue, but is not a cure-all for Pakistan’s problems.
After Chaudhry’s sacking at the hands of former ruler Pervez Musharraf, factions competing for control over the nascent civilian government waged pitched battles over the judge’s fate. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, now Pakistan’s opposition leader, defied house arrest in recent days to lead protests calling for the reinstatement in the streets of Lahore. The situation became so tense that the fragile government finally gave in. In response, a planned “long march” of lawyers to Islamabad was called off. Sharif and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani signed a “Charter of Democracy” intended to normalize relations between the government and the opposition.
Later in the day, a suicide bombing in Rawalpindi that might have targeted that city’s nixed reinstatement rally killed fourteen.
What does this all of this mean for Pakistan? US Envoy Richard Holbrooke is hailing the decision as a “statesmanlike” gesture by President Asif Ali Bhutto Zardari. The destabilizing tensions between Zardari and Pakistan’s legal intelligentsia have been temporarily defused. Yet the Chaudhry protests were a phenomenon confined to Pakistan’s relatively well-to-do legal community. As the Rawalpindi attack illustrated, Pakistan is still wracked with violence, with or without reinstatement protests. Tomorrow, Zardari, Gilani, Sharif and now Chaudhry will wake up to find their country still very much in turmoil.
While continuing military conflict in Pakistan’s Federally-Administered Tribal Area or new Rawalpindi-style attacks might overshadow Chaudhry’s return to office at the end of March, one interesting wrinkle could very well give the reinstatement story legs. Because of latent corruption charges against Zardari that date back to his late wife’s term as Prime Minister, Zardari had to be granted amnesty by then-President Musharraf before he could take part in the September 2008 elections. At the time, Chaudhry held that Musharraf’s amnesty order might have been illegal. He was then removed from his post.
Now that Chaudhry is back, a ruling declaring the illegitimacy of Zardari’s amnesty could be forthcoming. Such a ruling would risk throwing the entire country into another round of convulsions and could very well be suppressed by backdoor dealings. Still, Chaudhry has a penchant for strong public statements, owes something of a debt to opposition leader Sharif, and has a history of defying Pakistan’s executive. Undoubtedly, many of Chaudhry’s supporters in Pakistan’s legal community are expecting proof of the judiciary’s independence. This time though, Pakistan’s president (corruption charges and all) has a clear democratic mandate. Prudence is the wisest of Chaudhry’s options.
Lahore in Perspective
South Asia was shocked yesterday by an unconventional terrorist attack that struck at perhaps the one thing the subcontinent has solidly in common – Cricket. The Sri Lankan national team was attacked by eight gunmen on route to Gadaffi Stadium in Lahore yesterday, where they were to play a Test match against Pakistan. Since yesterday, 15 suspects have been brought in for questioning. New Zealand has canceled its scheduled tour of Pakistan, and Pakistan’s hopes to host the 2011 World Cup with India and Sri Lanka have been thrown into serious doubt.
Analysts have speculated on a few usual topics: The similarity of these attacks to last year’s Mumbai seige, the impacts on sporting events in Pakistan, the consequences for the global sporting community and the implications for Pakistan’s internal security environment.
What they should be talking about is the reaction to the attacks by the Pakistani government, which will reveal much about how they plan to approach security policy in one of the world’s most precarious countries. While the new civilian government has been fighting wars in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Northwest Pakistan for some time and faced backlash after Mumbai in November, it has yet to face an internal test on the scale of Lahore.
The Associated Press of Pakistan has reported that President Asif Ali Zardari will deal with the perpetrators with an “iron fist” and that Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani is urging strong continued diplomatic ties with Sri Lanka. This would seem to indicate that the Pakistan is projecting its security concerns inwards, a good sign for the continued stability of the situation in the subcontinent. At the same time, President Zardari has implicated “a foreign hand” in the attacks, as has Interior Adviser Rehman Malik. A Reuters article on the attack warned that arch nationalists “would relish a link to rival India.” If Reuters is right (and Zardari and Malik’s accusations indicate that they might be), the same cycle of accusations and counter-accusations between the subcontinent’s nuclear-armed adversaries might promptly commence.
Given the mixed messages information coming from Islamabad, Lahore and Zardari personally, the Pakistani government’s response to the attacks is not unified. This is no shock, given the existence of independent military leaders within the Pakistani establishment that Zardari probably has to placate to stay in power. The attacks might give Pakistan’s militarist elements the opportunity to rally the government to divert resources and attention from the war of attrition in the FATA and towards the border with India, as was the case after Mumbai. Concerns of heightened tensions are amplified by the fact that the Indian government is said to not be cooperating in the investigation, and has not responded to reports by Pakistan of the attackers’ foreign ties.
But even though the wheel of accusations has already started spinning, the attacks could prompt serious soul-searching by Zardari’s administration and the Indian government. Cricket is religion in South Asia, and to have an attack on the sport that unites the subcontinent be used as an excuse for more of the same bickering would indeed be a tragedy.
Sole Survivor
President Bush ducked two shoes that were thrown at him by a journalist during a news conference in Iraq today. This blogger is not sure if he is more impressed by the journalist’s considerable boldness or by the President’s cat-like reflexes.
Either way, the event speaks volumes about the way America’s president is currently perceived in Iraq and the Arab world in general – being touched by a shoe is quite the dishonor in most parts of the world. Bush shrugged the incident off, but he may lose a bit of sleep over it. Legacy matters to this president just as much as it has for all of them.
A Refugee’s Story
Aside from his seven-foot stature, David Ngaruri Kenney’s life as an immigrant in the United States appears to be quite standard. He seems to be a first-generation pioneer who came to this country to work and is doing so successfully. Yet underneath the surface there is so much more to his story, and that is precisely why it needed to be told.
Over these past few months, I have had the privilege of working with Mr. Kenney during a summer internship. His life story affirms everything that is great about America’s promise, and everything that is broken with America’s immigration system. His memoirs trace back to his days as a simple tea farmer in central Kenya, through his violent persecution for leading a popular protest of fellow tea farmers against price controls and government regulation, and finally into his struggle to remain in his adopted home, the United States. The account of US Immigration Policy in Kenney’s autobiography is top-notch, with real-world context and analysis spelled out in simple language that the untrained can easily understand. Kenney’s account of his struggles alone have opened my eyes to the confusing and often confounding world of immigration law.
What makes Mr. Kenney’s struggle so awe-inspiring, though, is not his time as a heroic martyr in Kenya, his improbable escape to America, or even his courageous stand against myopic immigration officials. What stands out to me is the fact that this man, who barely knew English coming to this country, eventually studied his way to college and law degrees, all while going through his immigration ordeal. Needless to say, reading this book refreshed my resolve to take advantage of all that this country has to offer.
After working next to his office all summer, I now have a real understanding of Mr. Kenney’s life and his struggles, and I’m all the richer for it. Even if you don’t know Mr. Kenney personally, you cannot help but be depressed, inspired, saddened and thrilled all at once by his incredible story.
Boxing’s Day
An absolutely exhilirating fight between Mexican Antonio Margarito and Puerto Rican Miguel Cotto ended last night with a new man atop the World Boxing Association’s Welterweight table. The fight also made this writer think about the reasons why boxing, once arguably among the most universally appealing of all sports, has fallen so far. The reason may have more to do with the general topic of this blog than it does at first glance.
Of course, there could be several non-geopolitical factors behind boxing’s flagging popularity. It could be that boxing has no two rivals like Ali and Frazier, who define this era. Maybe it’s just that there is no great champion, or boredom with the same old formula, or even annoyance at the reduction of fifteen round fights (which tended to end in knockouts) to today’s twelve-rounders. Many have criticized the boxing’s ruling bodies for corruption, complexity, unfairness and the like. It could even be that Mixed Martial Arts is encroaching on the market. Boxing’s ills could be attributed to all of these things. Or it could be attributed to far more grandiose factors.
In the days of boxing’s rise, fighters were metaphors for their countries, and the squared circle a vicarious battlefield. When German Max Schmeling and American Joe Louis fought in 1936, they represented the core values and personalities of their respective nations, even if unwittingly. Then, in boxing’s heyday of the 60s and 70s, the great champion, Muhammad Ali, transcended, and often transgressed against core tenants of his nation and in the process became an international phenom. When he spoke against war, when he traveled abroad for his fights and when he earned headlines in dozens of languages around the world after his knockouts, Ali became a truly universal champion. Boxers today may praise their native land after victories (as Margarito did last night after he came back from an early drubbing to stop Cotto in the eleventh) or have popularity the world over, but they simply do not hold the emotional weight that they once did with the world’s population.
This boxing fan hopes, probably in vain, that the Olympics will renew interest in the sport on the international stage, or at the very least, in countries where boxers could become unlikely heroes by grabbing unexpected medals. Soccer now does for the world every four years what boxing used to do when it was popular. But unlike in soccer, success in boxing takes no induction into a national youth program. Unlike soccer, boxing is a sport that is genetically hardwired into every human being – fighting is as old as the species itself. And unlike in soccer, being a resident of a country with no successful national program does not significantly decrease your chances at international glory. The only requirements for boxers are a mean punch and a big heart, things that individuals the world over possess and ought to be proud of.
Now I acknowledge that boxing is a violent bloodsport which can often end in terrible tragedy, and respect those who stay away because of this fact. But considering the things that nations do to each other over land or culture, there is no shame in sending one of your best out to take on one of their best on that hallowed canvas.
UPDATE: Vijender Kumar, the Indian boxer who was mentioned as a potential medal winner from an unlikely nation in this article, did indeed capture the bronze in Beijing and came home to a hero’s welcome.
Cry ‘Havoc’ In Kashmir?
India and Pakistan seem set to fight another round in their decades-long conflict.
A skirmish between Indian and Pakistani patrols in Kashmir has left an Indian soldier dead. According to reports, the battle has sparked continued fighting that lasted into Monday night and Tuesday morning local time. Combined with today’s military casualty, an official Indian conclusion that Pakistani-backed terrorists were the culprits behind last week’s bombings in Bangalore and Ahmedabad could quickly send things spiraling out of control.
The last time Pakistan and India’s Kashmiri Cold War went hot was in January 2002, following the suicide attacks on India’s Parliament in December 2001. An estimated 1 million troops (about 700,000 Indians and 300,000 Pakistanis) were mobilized around the disputed Line of Control. Both nuclear-armed sides prepared for all-out war, with menacing military maneuvers backing tough talk.
Thankfully, a combination of diplomacy and luck (the monsoons came) pushed war from the realm of possibility in 2002. For the past six years, the Kashmir disagreement has been played out primarily in the diplomatic theater. Yet the possibility of another fight has been simmering on the back burner for that entire time as well. Could now be the time when the possibility of armed conflict moves back to the fore?
With the first shots fired, the dogs of war may have already slipped.
Nepotism in Pakistan
As an American of South Asian descent, dynastic politics at the highest levels of government is something I’ve grown quite accustomed to. As far as I can remember, a Bush or a Clinton has sat at the top of American politics. In India, the Nehru/Gandhi family has dominated, interrupted only a few times since independence. And even with its history of military leaders and democratic turmoil, the trend towards dynasty has emerged in Pakistan as well.
Under the pretense of stability, the late Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) quickly named the slain leader’s 19-year-old son Bilawal its new chairman. Bhutto had named her husband Asif Ali Zardari heir to the chairmanship in her will, a strange choice considering the time Zardari spent in jail on charges of corruption and blackmail (which, in fairness, he claimed were politically motivated). However, Zardari insisted on giving the official title to his son. This was an even stranger choice in that Zardari will continue to run the PPP’s day-to-day affairs and that Bilawal currently has no experience, no qualifications, and no intention of running the party before he graduates from Oxford.
All of this left the outside observer only one logical conclusion: Bilawal was appointed only to ensure the longevity of the Bhutto family’s hold on the PPP. Since the PPP is the only party to consistently mount opposition to Pervez Musharraf and realistically have a chance at beating him in a fair election, the Bhutto family’s hold on the PPP is by extension a hold on Pakistan’s democratic politics. Needless to say, Bilawal’s appointment smacked of severe nepotism.
That’s why it’s refreshing to see pieces such as this one, which features an interview with a politically-oriented Bhutto who, ironically enough, recognizes the harm that cronyism can do to the democratic character of a nation. Fatima Bhutto, Benazir’s 24-year-old niece, is currently an opinion columnist and critic of the Musharraf regime and is cutting her teeth in print and in efforts to enfranchise Paksitan’s masses before turning to politics. This Bhutto sounds like she wants to earn her way to a leadership role – and if that’s true, then who cares that she is part of a powerful political family? Fatima demonstrates that there is nothing wrong with dynastic politics per se if it means that earnest and competent individuals come to power. Pakistan can only hope that Zardari and Bilawal won’t demonstrate everything that is wrong with keeping things in the family.
State of Emergency
Things have finally come to a head in Pakistan. The violence and agitation which has poured into Pakistan’s streets over the past few months has led President (and de facto dictator) Pervez Musharraf to declare a state of emergency. The consitution has been suspended, and all real power placed in the hands of the military and by extension the army chief, Musharraf himself. Unlike previous measures which Musharraf took to quash enemies over the summer, the declaration of martial law is almost universally unpopular and has neither domestic nor western support.
While Musharraf claimed in an address to the nation that he had taken action because Pakistan was a “dangerous” stage in its history in which militant groups were coalescing and terrorizing the entire nation, the facts belie a blunt alternate reality; Musharraf’s star is fading fast, and there is little else he can do to save himself from sure political death. At the forefront of Musharraf’s problems is the Chief Justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court, Ifthikar Muhammad Chaudhry. Musharraf’s sacking of Chaudhry in March led to organized street protests in Islamabad and Karachi, which quickly turned violent . In an attempt to save face, Musharraf reinstated Chaudhry in July. Chaudhry’s return led to a reassertion of authority by Pakistan’s historically independent judiciary – in fact, Chaudhry and company were set to rule on the legality of last months suspect national elections, in which Musharraf was reelected. The inertia of anti-Musharraf sentiments in Pakistan, coupled with a respected enemy in Chaudhry, made the writings on the wall clear. And so the President acted.
Only a year ago, Musharraf appeared to be the most stable among the plethora of unelected leaders in the Muslim world. By largely preserving freedom of the press, supporting the West’s war on terror rhetorically, and masquerading as a democrat by paying lip service to his nation’s constitution while defanging it of all legitimate checks on the executive, Musharraf gained general acceptance both at home and from powerful allies abroad. His fall from grace following this outward expression total power could be meteoric, or as is more likely, might not happen at all. Much rides on two major factors.
The first and by far the most important is how Pakistan’s people react to martial law. If Musharraf tries to order his military to kill or crack down on civilian protesters, he would lose all international legitimacy and would raise the ire of his own countrymen, likely leading to his demise. The Pakistani people have shown that they are ready and willing to march against Musharraf when he does things that are anathema to the national interest. However, chances are that protesters will have a much harder time organizing under the stringent new rules (including roundups of agitators, curfews and absence of communications) than they did when Chaudhry was sacked. And deprived of their major mouthpiece in Chaudhry himself, who has been under house arrest since the state of emergency was declared, any popular movement would not have the same vehemence or organization as it once may have. Other potential protest leaders seem inert. Former prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Bhenazir Bhutto, who are both abroad, urged uprisings. Sharif left the country less than a day after returning last month, and Bhutto was nearly killed in a (possibly Musharraf-engineered?) bombing before she succumbed to apparent fear and fled. Needless to say, both will have a hard time returning to a nation under martial law to lead protests.
The second factor which will determine Musharraf’s future is international reaction. Local powers China, Russia and India have kept mum on the issue since Musharraf’s declaration. The EU has already condemned the emergency. The Bush Administration, a Pakistani ally since 2001, has strongly hinted that it opposed, and will continue to oppose, martial law. Secretary of State Rice is said to have called Musharraf at two in the morning Pakistan time earlier this week to urge him to reconsider, and has said that any rash action could lead to a break in American funds to the Pakistani military. If Musharraf loses his only real ally in the West over his declaration, he may find it harder to continue the charade of legitimacy both abroad and at home. But realistically, America has a vested interest in keeping Musharraf in power – a stable Pakistan is vital to American interests in Afghanistan and really, across the Muslim world. In addition, chances are that neither the US nor India would be particularly pleased with a potential Islamist alternative to Musharraf. Don’t be surprised if Musharraf manages to hold on via Western enablers, even if they don’t support him publicly.
Why the Red Mosque siege matters
Just as both western and domestic support for his absolute rule waned, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf pulled off a political coup by sending his military into Islamabad’s Red Mosque to crack down on Taliban-linked militias. Mosque leader Maulana Abdul Aziz was arrested yesterday as he attempted to escape, following a raging shootout that left twelve dead. Aziz’s brother Ghazi Abdul Rashid, currently in control of the mosque, has offered to surrender to authorities.
The militants’ apparent capitulation marks a huge victory for Musharraf, who had been weakened by domestic tensions and a perception that he could not eradicate fundamentalists. The siege of the rebel mosque clearly burnishes Musharraf’s anti-terrorist credentials and once more sets him on solid footing in Washington. Less obvious but no less important is the positive impact of the raid on Musharraf’s image at home. While the siege was neither decisive nor timely – Musharraf had withheld the attack for weeks for fear of an Islamist backlash – it proved his authority to a skeptical public and genuinely helped many Islamabad residents. Prior to the raid, fighters following edicts from Aziz had become increasingly audacious in their moral policing of the capital’s streets, vandalizing music stores and kidnapping suspected violators of Islamic Law. Reports even indicated that the militia engaged in the torture and murder of some targets. Much of Islamabad must feel understandably vindicated by the siege, which liberated them from a group that had violently attempted to quash the relative freedom which prevails in one of Pakistan’s largest urban areas. And for this liberation, Musharraf can take credit.
What remains to be seen is whether Musharraf will use his newfound political capital to retain his grip on both the military and political structures in Pakistan. With (largely staged) elections approaching later this year, Musharraf has the option to either retain total control or to soothe an angry populace by giving up his control of the military while staying on as president. He has discussed the option publicly, but the decision remains to be made. After the Red Mosque siege, Musharraf will be tempted to stay on as top general. However, counterintuitive as it may be, it is actually in Musharraf’s best interest that he relinquish military command.
If Musharraf kept command, his subjects, accustomed to a free press and not afraid to protest, would grow increasingly tired of one-man absolute rule. As the street protests earlier in the year demonstrated, lack of domestic confidence in Musharraf leads to American discomfort and unwillingness to lend support. It also leads to increased chances of fundamentalist rule in Pakistan – an unpopular leader coupled with an overwhelmingly devout Muslim population was the formula for the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s. This outcome is unfavorable for both the battle-tested self-preserver and those that preserve him. Giving up military rule does dissolve Musharraf’s absolute power, but it also assuages his harshest critics and buys him and his allies time to plan how they will remain in control of his restless nation.
UPDATE: 7/7/07
The standoff has increased in intensity since Tuesday, as Musharraf has informed the Red Mosque militants that they must surrender or risk death. Meanwhile, cleric Ghazi Abdul Rashid has reversed course and declared that he and his followers will martyr themselves before surrendering. Unless the military succeeds in forcing out the remaining fighters by blocking supplies from entering the mosque, the conflict appears headed towards a violent end. According to the Washington Post, hundreds of women, children and noncombatants remain inside the Red Mosque, held against their will by dozens of radicals. How Musharraf handles the situation will go a long way towards determining whether the Pakistani people retain trust in his ability to command the military effectively – a bloody conclusion to this situation would likely erase the respect he had gained by sending the troops in.