Tag Archive for 'General Musharraf'

Pakistan looks to life without the general

Published on August 17, 2008 in Pakistan. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Jason Burke was the first reporter to interview General Musharraf when he seized control in 1999 from one of the men who today threaten to impeach him. Now he reports on the critical changes transforming the nuclear-armed state as the pro-US strongman’s power ebbs away. And these changes may not be welcome to the West. From The Guardian:

Tomorrow morning two convoys of luxury four-wheel-drive vehicles will speed from the leafy western suburbs of Islamabad on to the newly widened dual carriageway through the centre of the Pakistani capital.

Barely braking for the police checkpoints, they will converge on the National Assembly. The two most powerful politicians in Pakistan – Nawaz Sharif, the head of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), and Asif Ali Zardari, the husband and successor of assassinated Benazir Bhutto as leader of her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) – will either be burying President Pervez Musharraf or praising him. If negotiations to secure an ‘honourable exit from power’ for the military strongman have been successful, it will be the latter: speeches disingenuously praising his contribution over nine years of rule to the Pakistani people. If not, it will be impeachment.

‘Musharraf’s days in power are numbered,’ Ayaz Amir, a PML-N MP, said yesterday. Makhtoum Shahabuddin, a former PPP minister and recently re-elected MP, agreed: ‘He is batting on a very, very sticky wicket.’

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On the long road to freedom, finally

Published on March 2, 2008 in Pakistan. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

In Tehelka William Dalrymple writes of the role of Pakistan’s emerging middle class in shaping a democratic future

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Two events in the last three months have radically changed the course of Indo-Pak relations, and have the potential to radically alter the future direction of South Asian history.

The first of these events took place on November 24, 2007. On this day, a suicide bomber detonated himself beside a bus at the entrance of Camp Hamza, the ISI’s Islamabad headquarters. Around twenty people died in what is the first known attack by an Islamist cell against the Pakistan intelligence services. Many of the dead were ISI staffers. This event, coming as it did after three assassination attempts on General Musharraf, several other bomb attacks on army barracks, and the murder of many captured army personnel in Waziristan, is credited with persuading even the most pro-Islamist elements in the Pakistan army, and the agencies, that the jehadi Frankenstein’s monster they have created now has to be dispatched with a stake in its heart, and as soon possible.

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