Pervez Musharraf says the biggest threat to his country is extremism and terrorism by the Taliban, al-Qaeda and by the extremists in society. In The Hindu, an edited excerpt from Karan Thapar’s Devil’s Advocate (on CNN-IBN).
India-Pakistan relations have suffered in the wake of the terror attack in Mumbai. If you had been President, how would you have responded to Mumbai?
Well, certainly we would have cooperated in the investigation, because we wouldn’t like Pakistan to be blamed for being an accomplice — the government, or the Army, or the ISI… We would’ve joined the investigation and brought whoever has done it to book.
Why is Hafiz Saeed detained under the Maintenance of Public Order Act and not charged with terrorism?
I don’t know these legalities, frankly. I won’t be able to answer that. more
Brig Gen Shaukat Qadir, a retired Pakistani infantry officer, in the National:
When Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari finally inked the Swat peace deal two weeks ago, handing that region over to the Taliban, he left an indelible mark on the nation’s history; and just as two of his predecessors did, he established his legacy for the people of Pakistan.
If General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s legacy is the initiation of religious extremism in Pakistan, and General Pervez Musharraf’s is its flowering into the terrorism that the country is riddled with today, then Mr Zardari will go down in history as the one who succumbed to those terrorist threats – although that ignominy is not his alone, and has to be shared by the parliament that approved the deal, legitimised the Taliban’s activities and handed over a part of the country to them.
Already, Sufi Muhammed, the militant who brokered the deal and is the estranged father-in-law of Maulana Fazlullah, leader of the Swat Taliban, has categorically stated that none of the previous acts of the Taliban can be prosecuted under the Islamic laws being imposed in Swat: so in one sentence they have been granted amnesty for murder, rape, pillage and other crimes.
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What do former presidents do while in retirement? Pakistan’s General Pervez Musharraf has hit the lecture circuit, delivering a talk recently at Stanford University. A report filed by Adam Gorlick for the Stanford News Service.
Pakistan’s former president defended his country’s record on combating terrorism Friday, and said Pakistan hasn’t received enough financial support or international credit in its fight against groups like al-Qaida and the Taliban.
“We have been a victim of terrorism,” Pervez Musharraf told a capacity crowd in Memorial Auditorium. “It is wrong to think of Pakistan as a perpetrator, as a cause of terrorism.”
Musharraf, who resigned his post in August under the threat of impeachment, was defensive about the money Pakistan received under his watch from Western countries in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He said the $10 billion contributed by the United States was a miniscule amount compared to the funds given to Afghanistan and Iraq.
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As can only be expected, not everyone was thrilled with Stanford’s choice of speaker. Friends of South Asia distributed a pamphlet listing reasons while Pakistan’s Pinochet should not have been invited. To read the pamphlet click here [via Teeth Maestro]
Rageh Omaar in the National:
I was the last television reporter inside the madrassa at the Red Mosque in Islamabad before the Pakistani army surrounded the compound in July 2007. The 10-day standoff marked a turning point in Pakistan’s struggle with militants – the moment when the Taliban-backed insurgency moved from the tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan into the capital city and the heart of government. The confrontation ended with the death of the religious leader Abdul Ghazi and many others – the exact death toll was never divulged – and the destruction of the madrassa.
People in Pakistan, as well as the international community, were shocked by the violence of the assault. The incident sparked a fresh wave of disruption inside Pakistan and witnessed the beginning of President Pervez Musharraf’s demise. Until then, he had appeared unassailable to his western allies. He was the man who, in the wake of the attacks of September 11, had overnight turned Pakistan into Washington’s indispensable ally in the overthrow of the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan and in the wider war on terror.
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The ‘rogue scientist’ Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan blamed for selling bomb secrets has strong popular support, writes his confidant Simon Henderson in The Times:
Dr A.Q. Khan
Khan was not a rogue agent selling centrifuges to enrich uranium – and enrich himself. He was a loyal and obedient servant of a succession of military and political regimes in Islamabad. Generals and prime ministers traded his talents, which also included making an atomic bomb and two different missiles capable of carrying it, for a range of diplomatic and political favours.
That, at least, is his story. He has been telling it to me for more than a year, correcting what he regards as the falsehoods and errors in the books published about him. Their authors never managed to contact Khan so relied on the claims of his detrac-tors. But, circumventing his guards, I did manage to reach him and made a simple request: tell me your version. I have hundreds of thousands of his words, as well as letters, photographs and video. My biography of him is nearly complete.
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From The Times:
Islamabad: Number 1A Park Road looks, at first glance, like many other houses built by Pakistan’s plutocrats on the outskirts of Islamabad: it has a swimming pool, a five-acre garden and a four-bedroom villa in a Moroccan and Mediterranean style.
Only the shiny new razor wire on the 8ft perimeter wall hints at what sets it apart from the rest of the posh Chak Shahzad neighbourhood, five miles outside the capital.
This is the house that Pervez Musharraf built.
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Triumphalism over a Musharraf impeachment won’t hide the failings of Pakistan’s ruling coalition. Fatima Bhutto in The Guardian:
Fatima Bhutto
The murky abyss of Pakistani politics has been especially murky over recent months, and true to form it just keeps getting murkier. The one thing that is absolute when dealing with the dregs that run my country is this: nothing is ever as it seems. Nowhere is that more true than in the current scenario involving President Musharraf’s likely impeachment by the ruling coalition.
“It has become imperative to move for impeachment,” barked Benazir Bhutto’s widower, Asif Zardari, at a press conference in Islamabad last week. Sitting beside the new head of the Pakistan People’s party was Nawaz Sharif, twice formerly prime minister of Pakistan. Zardari snarled every time Musharraf’s name came up, seething with political rage and righteousness, while Sharif did his best to keep up with the pace of things. He nodded sombrely and harrumphed every once in a while. The two men are acting for democracy, you see. And impeaching dictators is a good thing for democracies, you know.
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Musharraf will be gone in days
The Pakistani president is likely to quit soon. But don’t expect democracy to rush in: the military’s habits die hard. Tariq Ali in The Guardian:
Tariq Ali
There is never a dull moment in Pakistan. As the country moved from a moth-eaten dictatorship to a moth-eaten democracy the celebrations were muted. Many citizens wondered whether the change represented a forward movement.
Five months later, the moral climate has deteriorated still further. All the ideals embraced by the hopeful youth and the poor of the country – political morality, legality, civic virtue, food subsidies, freedom and equality of opportunity – once again lie at their feet, broken and scattered. The widower Bhutto and his men are extremely unpopular. The worm-eaten tongues of chameleon politicians and resurrected civil servants are on daily display. Removing Musharraf, who is even more unpopular, might win the politicians badly-needed popular support, but not for long.
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The president must recognise that Pakistan cannot afford more instability. Going gracefully, will, at least, bring him some respect. Hassan Abbas in The Guardian:
Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan stands virtually alone today while facing the most serious challenge to his presidency: possible impeachment by the new democratically-elected government.
The potential charges are serious: conspiring to destabilise the government that was elected last February, unlawfully removing the country’s top judges in November 2007, and failing to provide adequate security to Benazir Bhutto before her assassination last December. Allying himself with the Bush administration has increased his unpopularity, especially following missile attacks by the US in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
Despite earlier differences over how to deal with Musharraf, Pakistan’s leading political parties are now united against him. Feuding between the Pakistan People’s party, led by Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, and the Pakistan Muslim League (N), led by Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister, had given Musharraf a chance to regain some standing after his allies were defeated in the February elections. American reluctance to abandon Musharraf – together with prolonged electricity shortages, which made the new government appear incompetent – also raised his hopes.
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Benazir Bhutto’s widower is accusing President Musharraf of siphoning off millions from aid intended to support war on terror. Christina Lamb reports from Islamabad in The Sunday Times:
Asif Ali Zardari
The embattled president of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, has been dealt his latest and most serious blow with the accusation from the leader of the ruling party that he misappropriated hundreds of millions of dollars of American aid given for supporting the war on terror.
Asif Ali Zardari, who took over the Pakistan People’s party (PPP) after his wife Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in December last year, made the charge in an interview with The Sunday Times.
He also detailed for the first time Musharraf’s attempts to sabotage his government which, he says, forced him to take the drastic step of demanding his impeachment.
“Our grand old Musharraf has not been passing on all the $1 billion [£520m] a year that the Americans have been giving for the armed forces,” he claimed. “The army has been getting $250m-$300m reimbursement for what they do, but where’s the rest?
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Is Pervez Musharraf looking at a retirement plan? Declan Walsh has the story in The Guardian
Nobody knows how or when, but according to a growing consensus inside Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf’s days as president are slowing coming to an end.
A flurry of political tirades, aggressive news reports and changes to sensitive army positions have fuelled speculation that Musharraf is considering retirement.
The talk has hit the streets, where rumours are rife of frenetic bag-packing and a newly arrived jet to whisk Musharraf into foreign retirement. Stock prices dived last week as a result of the rumours.
Musharraf aides, meanwhile, insist their boss is going nowhere. “This is absolute lies. He’s not packed even his golf bag,” said his spokesman Rashid Qureshi.
Qureshi, a long-time loyalist, said Musharraf was being smeared by the Jang group, a media conglomerate whose television stations were temporarily shut by Musharraf last year.
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James Traub in the New York Times Magazine
In April, on the highway outside the little Punjabi town of Renala Khurd, Aitzaz Ahsan was waylaid by a crowd of seemingly deranged lawyers. The advocates, who wore black suits, white shirts and black ties, were not actually insane; they just seemed that way because they were so overcome with excitement at greeting the mastermind of Pakistan’s lawyers’ movement, perhaps the most consequential outpouring of liberal, democratic energy in the Islamic world in recent years. The 62-year-old Ahsan was on his way to address the bar association of Okara, 10 miles away, but the lawyers, and the farmers and shopkeepers gathered with them, were not about to let him leave. They boiled around the car, shouting slogans. “Who should our leaders be like?” they cried. “Like Aitzaz!” And, “How many are prepared to die for you?” “Countless! Countless!”
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In All Things Pakistan, Adil Najam on the famous alumni of Forman Christian College
At the new Prime Minister’s oath-taking recently, the body language of Gen Pervez Musharraf as well as Yousuf Raza Gillani made it obvious that neither was comfortable being with the other. Each has deep reasons to distrust the motives of the other. One doubts, therefore, if they took any time to reminiscence about their college days. Both, after all, went to college at Lahore’s famed Forman Christian (FC) College; although at different times.
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Vir Sanghvi in his Counterpoint column in the Hindustan Times says that unlike in the West where appearance matters, Indian voters don’t really care about how politicians look. So where does this leave Pakistan where politicians like Nawaz Sharif have recently had a hair transplant?
Okay, so it isn’t just me. A few months ago, as the political scene in Pakistan hotted up, Indian TV channels all began telecasting ‘exclusive’ interviews with a man who was described as Nawaz Sharif. I am not an expert on Pakistan but, even to my untutored eye, there was something odd about this Sharif.
It was the hair. The Sharif who had welcomed AB Vajpayee to Lahore had a head like a billiard ball. So distinctive was his baldness that Pakistani papers claimed that Nawaz and his brother Shahbaz were affectionately called ‘Do Ganje’ by their friends in the Punjab.
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Adam B. Ellick in The New York Times:
In Queens, New York, a vibrant Pakistani community has been closely tracking the country’s political chaos since the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in December.
As Pakistan remains politically divided, so, too, are the eight Urdu-language newspapers published in the city. And perhaps no place reflects that split more than a simple storefront in Jamaica, where two rival weeklies are divided not only by politics, but also by a mere wall. The Pakistan Post is published by a determined journalist [photo: top] who favors Ms. Bhutto’s party. A few feet away, The Urdu Times [photo: right] is run by an advertisement-obsessed editor who supports President Pervez Musharraf.
In 1991, the two editors ran the same paper. But after a bitter dispute over finances, they split and mostly ignored each other over the next 16 years. Seven months ago, the two reunited in an unlikely friendship, and although they still disagree on politics and ideology, they are now best friends.
The New York Times followed them over the past five weeks. Read the rest of the story and watch the video report: More:
Manoj Joshi in Mail Today:
The general elections may be around the corner, but Pakistan continues to careen dangerously out of control. Specific incidents and events are not the issue, but the totality of developments that have been taking place, beginning last year.
A convenient date would be March 9, 2007, the fateful day on which President Pervez Musharraf began his ill-advised campaign to edge out Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry from the country’s Supreme Court. This enraged the community of lawyers, who have since led the civil protest movement against Musharraf.
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Sahabzada Abdus-Samad Khan in World Security Network
No one expected that one fatal move – the removal of the Chief Justice – would have unleashed such a rash of democratic forces that would so rapidly lead to the serious political impasse Pakistan is faced with today. In the process, President Musharraf lost much of his most important constituency – the professionals and the middle class.
For the U.S., the assassination of Benazir Bhutto means that it is left with little or no options, seeing that Washington had pinned its hopes on the “Musharraf Plus” package. The latter envisaged the President in control of foreign policy and national security matters, and a Benazir Bhutto-led government focusing on all other matters of state (and giving the country a democratic façade).
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Kamran Rehmat on Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on aljazeera.net.
In a poignant moment captured by the media during his tour of European capitals last month, Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, pulled out a handkerchief, wiped his forehead and wondered aloud: “The temperature is rather warm … or is it just that I am talking.”The remark highlighted Musharraf’s increasingly difficult task to project himself as the right man to lead Pakistan in the face of increasing acts of terrorism and political instability.
The European tour, which was publicised as a mission of “correcting Pakistan’s image”, was further set back when a Pakistani journalist in London asked the president about the recent escape of a high-profile terrorist from government custody.
The fracas which ensued between the president and the journalist seemed to indicate that Musharraf is losing not only his media savvy but more importantly the perception of indispensability.
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John F. Burns in The New York Times:
Who killed Benazir Bhutto? How was it done? By bullet or bomb, or both? And who sent the killer – Islamic militants with links to Al Qaeda, rogue elements of the Pakistani Army, or political rivals in the election scheduled for Feb. 18?
Six weeks have passed since the assassination, and Pakistan seems no closer to a consensus on some of the most basic facts, making it ever more likely that the circumstances of Ms. Bhutto’s death will become grist for the political mills that grind remorselessly in that country, revitalizing the revenge and mistrust that have poisoned public life almost since the country’s founding in 1947.
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Bernard Gwertzman interviews Ashley J. Tellis, Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, on CFR.org:
Ashley J. Tellis, a leading expert on South Asia who has served in the National Security Council and State Department as a senior adviser, expects a coalition government of the late Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) party, which backs President Musharraf, to emerge from the February 18 elections. He also says Pakistan has a mixed record on anti-terrorism and still tolerates Taliban elements that operate from Pakistani territory into Afghanistan.
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American journalist Nicholas Schmidle was kicked out of Pakistan by the Musharraf government. He tells his story in The Washington Post.
The police came for me on a cold, rainy Tuesday night last month. They stood in front of my home in Islamabad, four men with hoods pulled over their heads in the driving rain. The senior officer, a tall, clean-shaven man, and I recognized one another from recent protests and demonstrations. Awkwardly, almost apologetically, he handed me a notice ordering my immediate expulsion from Pakistan. Rain spilled off a nearby awning and fell loudly into puddles.I asked, somewhat obtusely, what this meant. “I am here to take you to the airport,” the officer shrugged. “Tonight.”
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Almost as lethal (but not deadly) as the suicide bombers are men who have played politics with Pakistan for the sake of their own twisted logic. Anjum Niaz in the Dawn Sunday Magazine.
Ever heard any leader in Pakistan apologise to his people for a fault or a sin s/he committed? I can’t recall. We are a proud nation. Our DNA is not designed for such humbling admissions before all.
It’s a practice of the West. From presidents and prime ministers down to the CEOs of companies; from top commanders in the military down to governors and congressmen, the guilty come before the television and admit their mistakes asking for forgiveness. The arc of sin embraces marital infidelity to sexual misconduct; from misuse of power and perks to insider information; from taking bribes to tax evasion, from committing perjury to being declared a felon. They then walk into the sunset losing themselves forever.
Mea culpa, a Latin phrase, is a formal acknowledgment of personal fault or error. Even Pope Benedict apologised to Muslims when he made a controversial remark about our Holy Prophet (Pbuh) some two years back. He said he was “deeply sorry.” Earlier, his predecessor, Pope John Paul II made an unprecedented apology for the sins of Christians through the ages, the culmination of the Church’s “examination of conscience.” Late Pope John acknowledged “for the part that each of us, with his behaviour, has had in these evils that have disfigured the face of the Church, we humbly ask forgiveness.”
Imagine a Muslim holy father saying he’s sorry. Even if he wanted to, the fanatics around him would lynch him.
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When the February 18 elections bring a new parliament in Pakistan, civil society will continue to pressure it, says Ejaz Haider in The Indian Express.
Will the February 18 election change Pakistan? Yes and no. Let’s consider the negative first. If change relates to structures of power, the answer is largely a ‘no’. The army will retain its primacy in the system; political parties will not emerge as reformed entities; institutional inefficiencies will remain intact; the poltergeist of political instability will keep haunting the house; and terrorism will continue to threaten the country.
Yet, and this is important, much will also change.
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Salman Masood in International Herald Tribune.
Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the former chief justice of Pakistan who was removed last year when President Pervez Musharraf imposed a state of emergency, has finally broken his silence.
A letter from Chaudhry to Western officials was circulated Wednesday. It lambasted Musharraf for quashing Pakistan’s independent judiciary and illegally detaining him and his family, and noted that the Supreme Court had not had a chance to rule on whether it was legal for Musharraf to run for re-election in December.
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Like America’s overt support for the Shah, assisting Musharraf is risky for several reasons, writes Malou Innocent, a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute, in The Washington Post.
America’s most vulnerable ally in the war on terror is Pakistan. But our alliance with the nuclear-armed Islamic state may be exacerbating that country’s instability.
For eight years, Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf has delayed, deferred and ultimately denied his citizens the right to freely choose their next leader. U.S. policymakers and analysts concede that Musharraf’s autocratic rule is a problem but fear that whoever replaces him may be worse.
Once before in that part of the world, Washington backed a high-profile ruler without regard to his constituents’ wishes: Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran. The result was a fiasco for American foreign policy.
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Eurasia Group, a global political risk advisory and consulting firm, released on Wednesday its list of 10 leaders to watch in 2008. The list, published in Mint, includes leaders whose performance will have global implications.
“The first four leaders on our list-from Iran, France, Russia, and Pakistan-will be making decisions for their countries that have powerful geostrategic implications,” said the Eurasia Group.
Iran’s conflict with the West and Pakistan’s internal conflict could have dramatic implications for global security in 2008, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Pervez Musharraf are key players in these struggles,” it added. The list also includes those who will exert considerable influence on their own countries which, in turn, have important roles to play in the emerging global order.
The list includes Mayawati, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.
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Editorial in the New York Times on President Pervez Musharraf’s failure to fight extremism, despite $10 billion in American aid since 9/11
For more than a decade, Pakistan’s powerful and secretive intelligence service has fueled a treacherous dynamic in South Asia by supporting Islamic militants in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Now comes the distressing, but not surprising, news that the ISI, or Inter-Services Intelligence, has lost control of some of these Taliban and Al Qaeda-linked networks. The militants have turned on their former patrons and helped carry out a record number of suicide attacks inside Pakistan in 2007, including possibly the one that killed Benazir Bhutto.
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Before he leaves for Europe, President Pervez Musharraf ends the blackout of Geo, Pakistan’s most popular private news channel, reports Salman Masood in the New York Times
With the notable absence of two hard-hitting political talk shows, Pakistan’s most popular private television news channel was allowed to resume cable broadcasts within the country on Monday, ending a blackout that had lasted more than two months.
The channel, Geo, and other television networks, were taken off the air after President Pervez Musharraf imposed a state of emergency in the country on Nov. 3 as he suspended the Constitution, fired the Supreme Court and blocked all independent news media.
Almost all of the news networks were allowed to resume broadcasting by December as Mr. Musharraf lifted the emergency, and after the networks had agreed to sign a controversial “code of conduct.” But executives at Geo, known for its aggressive news coverage, refused to sign and so it remained off the air in Pakistan.
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Before assassins struck on December 27, Pakistan’s ex-premier kept up frenetic pace but also found time for a prayer, report Griff White and Emily Wax in The Washington Post
Gripping the podium with both hands, Benazir Bhutto spoke in a shout that filled the cavernous park and echoed into the streets beyond.
“Wake up, my brothers!” she implored, her trademark white shawl slipping off her head to her shoulders. “This country faces great dangers. This is your country! My country! We have to save it.”
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