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Headlines : InternationalPakistan: A General State of Disarray
As Pakistan’s elections draw close, resistance to President Pervez Musharraf is growing on several fronts.
The president’s plan to remove Judge Iftikhar Chaudhry blew up in his face. On top of that the latter has gained incredible support from even Pakistanis who do not ideologically identify with him simply because he stood up to Musharraf and refused to resign as ordered.
Meanwhile Musharraf’s pro-U.S. line has alienated many Muslims who are flocking instead to the political parties of former Pakistani prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Naqaz Sharif and also the Islamic Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal.
Musharraf responded by having his ethnic Mohajir-based Muttahida Quami Movement party attack supporters of the judge and other dissenters like the Pushtun Awami National Party supporters. The latter responded and this led to a gun battle that left scores dead.
Pakistan may be slipping into tribal violence as more groups stand against the current president, who will have a tough fight on his hands when elections come around.
[Posted By mercenary]Republished from The Economist Print Edition
On May 12th the port mega-city of Karachi, a great and seething Asian bazaar, returned to the violence that has scarred its modern history. Around 40 people were killed and scores injured in two days of gun battles. Corpses were dragged from shot-up cars and displayed on the tarmac. Along Shahrah-e-Faisal, the main thoroughfare, shop-fronts were smashed and set ablaze. As the carnage spread, 15,000 police and paramilitary troops stood by, unwilling or unable to intervene.
Many reports suggest the violence was perpetrated by Karachi’s ruling party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), an ethnically-based mafia allied with Pakistan’s president and army chief, General Pervez Musharraf. Its target was an anti-government rally planned for Karachi on May 12th, at which thousands of lawyers and opposition supporters were to protest against General Musharraf’s efforts to remove the head of Pakistan’s Supreme Court, Iftikhar Chaudhry. Mr Chaudhry was due to address the rally.
Posted by mercenary
Exiled from Dubai to Vancouver, I cite media, politics, and of course, the meaning of Liff. I've been a media student, a Lit. undergrad, a radio host and a few other things to pass the time. Been around the third world, as well as a bit of the first. And it...
“Pakistan: The Tabliban Takeover”:http://www.newstatesman.com/200704300025
From New Statesman
A “vengeful” judge. How very right wing fundamentalist of the economist. Twas not, of course, simply because Mushie “fired” him. Said Judge was getting in the way of privatisation momentum. And. Asking too many questions about disappearing dissidents.
The reports do not “suggest” that the MQM perpetrated the violence – they’ve been caught quite flagrantely in delicto.
Plenty big time.
It was no “gun battle” it was a sniper fest.
What Pakistan is doing is Waking Up. As the Economist piece goes on to say, actually (never count on the first few paragraphs to tell you anything but what the editors want to hear) :
OPEN QUOTE
Pakistani democracy is stirring from the coma it slipped into eight years ago, when General Musharraf seized power.
Its awakening, if that is what it is, may be traced to March 9th and a previously unimaginable event. In the presence of six other uniformed generals, at his army headquarters in Rawalpindi, General Musharraf ordered Mr Chaudhry to resign. The judge—eccentric, vain, some say incompetent—had upset his colleagues on the bench, and had given populist rulings against the government. More audaciously, he had demanded investigations into several of an alleged 400 cases where people have disappeared, mostly from his native Baluchistan, where an insurgency is flickering. These were probably the work of the powerful military intelligence agency, whose boss was one of the generals present.
Indeed, wherever Mr Chaudhry heard so much as a rumour of injustice—for example, in the reports of kidnapping and rape that fill the margins of Pakistani newspapers—he summoned officials and demanded investigations.
END OF QUOTE
LOL. A “rumor of injustice” — kidnapping and rape fills the margins of Pakistani newspapers and the Economist wants to laugh at the guy who is feeble enough to stand up and protest.
Recent events in Karachi, at least, have NOTHING to do with Jihad. It’s more of a workers-of-the-world-unite kind of thing.
never count on the first few paragraphs to tell you anything but what the editors want to hear
I dont. but i did read this a while ago and had forgotten the main angle of it, it was more of a related item than my own opinion…
but still, you are right about that.
the economist piece is really pissing me off right now. sorry. snide callous racist pos publication that it is. i must first finish reading it (as it’s packed with useful information (it does look like the tide is seriously turning in Pakistan (thanks for the post, btw, merc))) and then go puke.
“Loud opposition is not advised” pendejos pendejos penDEjos.
ONE MORE QUOTE and then ya basta
“According to a poll in February for the International Republican Institute, 54.2% of respondents said they approved of how General Musharraf was doing his job”
Quelle surprise.