[R-G] Ali: Pakistan Sinks Deeper Into the Night

[Anthony Fenton]

Weekend Edition
November 3 / 4, 2007
Intoxicated by the Incense of Power
Pakistan Sinks Deeper Into the Night
http://counterpunch.org/
By TARIQ ALI

For anyone marinated in the history of Pakistan yesterday's decision  
by the military to impose a State of Emergency will hardly comes as a  
surprise. Martial Law in this country has become an antibiotic: in  
order to obtain the same results one has to keep doubling the doses.  
What has taken place is a coup within a coup.

General Pervaiz Musharraf ruled the country with a civilian façade,  
but his power base was limited to the Army. And it was the Army Chief  
of Staff who declared the emergency, suspended the 1973 Constitution,  
took all non-government TV channels off the air, jammed the mobile  
phone networks, surrounded the Supreme Court with paramilitary units,  
dismissed the Chief Justice, arrested the President of the Bar  
association and the civil rights activists of the Human Right  
Commission of Pakistan, thus inaugurating yet another shabby period  
in the country history.

Why? They feared that a Supreme Court judgement due next week might  
make it impossible for Musharraf to contest the elections. The  
decision to suspend the Constitution was taken a few weeks ago.  
Benazir Bhutto, was informed and left the country. She is reportedly  
on her way back. Till now she has offered no comment on the new  
martial law, despite the fact that a senior leader of her party,  
Aitzaz Ahsan has been arrested for denouncing the coup. Intoxicated  
by the incense of power she might now discover that it

Remains as elusive as ever. If she supports the latest turn it will  
be an act of political suicide. If she decides to dump the General 
(she has accused him of breaking his promises and it will be  
difficult for her to remain allied to a dictator) she will be  
betraying the confidence of the US State Department, which pushed her  
in this direction. At a recent off-the-record gathering at Ditchley  
Park(a British Foreign Office think-tank), the would-be Secretary of  
State, James Rubin, became short-tempered when Pakistani participants  
challenged his view that Bhutto was a decisive player in the 'war on  
terror' on the Western borders of the country.

The two institutions targeted by the Emergency are the judiciary and  
the lively network of independent TV stations, many of whose  
correspondents supply information that can never be gleaned from  
politicians. Geo TV the largest of these continued to broadcast  
outside the country. Hamid Mir, one of its sharpest journalists,  
reported yesterday afternoon that according to his sources the US  
Embassy had green lighted the coup because they regarded the Chief  
Justice as a nuisance and 'a Taliban sympathiser'.

For a whole year now, the regime was confronted with a severe crisis  
of legitimacy that came to a head earlier this year when General  
Musharraf's decision to suspend the Chief Justice, Iftikhar Hussein  
Chaudhry, provoked a six-month long mass movement that forced a  
government retreat. Some of Chaudhry's judgements had challenged the  
government on key issues such as 'disappeared prisoners', harassment  
of women and rushed privatisations. It was feared that he might  
declare a uniformed President illegal.

The struggle to demand a separation of powers between the state and  
the judiciary, which has always been weak, was of critical  
importance. Pakistan's judges have usually been acquiescent in the  
past. Those who resisted previous military leaders were cajoled,  
blackmailed, bullied and persuaded to retire. Pakistani judges spring  
from the same milieu as the rest of the ruling elite, which is why  
the decision of this chief justice to fight back was surprising, but  
extremely important and won him enormous respect, a commodity in  
short supply.

Global media coverage of Pakistan suggests a country consisting of  
Generals, corrupt politicians and bearded lunatics. The struggle to  
reinstate the Chief Justice presented a different snapshot of the  
country. This movement for constitutional freedoms revived hope at a  
time when most people are alienated from the system and cynical about  
their rulers, whose ill-gotten wealth and withered faces consumed by  
vanity inspire nil confidence.

That this is the case can be seen in the heroic decision taken by the  
Supreme Court in a special session yesterday declaring the new  
dispensation 'illegal and unconstitutional'. The hurriedly sworn in  
new Chief Justice will be seen for what he is: a stooge of the men in  
uniform. If the constitution remains in suspension for more than  
three months then Musharraf himself might be pushed aside by the Army  
and a new strongman put in place. Or it could be that the aim of the  
operation was limited to a cleansing of the Supreme Court and  
controlling the media. That is what Musharraf indicated in his  
broadcast to the nation. In which case a totally rigged election  
becomes a certainty next January. Whatever the case Pakistan's long  
journey to the end of the night continues.

Tariq Ali's new book, Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope, is  
published by Verso. He can be reached at: tariq.ali3 at btinternet.com