Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf imposed emergency rule on Saturday, deploying troops and sacking a top judge in a bid to reassert his flagging authority against political rivals and Islamist militants.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan’s internal security has deteriorated sharply in recent months with a wave of suicide attacks by al Qaeda-inspired militants, including one that killed 139 people.
State-run Pakistan Television said Musharraf had suspended the constitution and declared an emergency, ending weeks of speculation that the general who seized power in a 1999 coup might impose emergency rule or martial law.
Greetings.
In response to Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf’s declaration of martial law and illegal dismissal of a Pakistani Supreme Court Justice, I am encouraging all bloggers out there who want true democratic rule for Pakistan’s 165 million people to unite in opposition.
From now on, I am asking bloggers to consistantly refer to Musharraf as “Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf” consistantly linking back to a post I made explaining this idea in greater detail.
The post allows threaded comments, so that those opposed to Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf can start discussing ways that we can organize and unite in opposition to his dictatorial actions.
My hope is that a consistant message of opposition to martial law and support for democracy in Pakistan can help to influence the media away from legitimizing the Musharraf regime by referring to him as a President. By definition, he cannot be a President if he refuses the right for his government’s Supreme Court to decide whether his running for office is legal or not.
Please drop by the post, leave a comment as to what ideas you have on how we can best unite in opposition to martial law, and please do consider using the phrase “Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf”, linking back to the post.
Thank you,
Mark Kraft
And when Musharraf is gone…who will rule Pakistan?
Isn’t it possible that this step by Musharraf is also about squelching any growing support for Ms. Bhutto? Just wondering. I do think it makes sense to talk about the Pakistani dictator, even if we do also grant the volatility of this country.
Sorry Mark, democracy in an Islamic country always turns into a totalitarian state.
Why? Because once the conservative Muslims are elected (aka, the Islamists) they will not permit a fair election again. Democracy is fundamentally opposed to Islam, has always been so and will always be so.
You want to give the Pakistani nukes to the Taliban? Best way to do it is democracy.
http://www.islamdom.tk
Head for the hills the dictator is coming.
I’m no backer of dictators or military strongmen, and I think Musharraf should welcome Benazir Bhutto back as a force for democracy (though she is the scion of a spectacularly corrupt politician). But if the choice is between Musharraf and a jihad-crazed madman with his trembling finger on the button, I know which way I jump.
Jefferson (#6), you are ‘right on.’
Most American politicians have highly uninformed ideas regarding the way in which events occur outside of their ‘cocoon of privelege’ within the United States. In other words, most of our politicians are ignorant people.
International politics and the dynamic forces influencing those politics are so complex, that the only safe approach for the United States in its attempts to achieve a reasonable ‘state of peace/non-warfare’ in the world is for its foreign policy to be pragmatic and empirical.
Pragmatism requires the need to look at issues from the viewpoint of our interests and the interests of the other influential nations involved in any situation/region/economic ambition. And then, work with the key nations to achieve a reasonable and achievable stasis in any particular situation.
Empiricism requires the need to look into the past and to extract from that history the essential elements of what it takes to work out amicable solutions with sovreign states and to deal with rogue states in an economical and decisive manner.
Unfortunately, too many of the politicians who have achieved leadership roles in the United States are neither pragmatists nor empiricists.
Instead, we are beset by ideologically driven politicians who either want ot be or are congressmen or senators. And now some of them want to be president.
The problems with these ideologists is that substance of their personas is neither pragmatic or empirical. They are just telling us what they think that they need to tell us in order to be elected.
Most of our politicians completely fill the political definition of ‘fluff.’
Now, with respect to Pakistan. We cannot afford to have the government of that country, which possesses nuclear weapons, controls a major part of our access to Afghanistan, and which is attempting to counter radical Islamicists within its own borders to be controlled radical Muslims.
However, it is my fear, that our mindless and politically driven political ideologues will provide the environment for such an event to occur. Already, our president and secretary of state have done so, and I believe that it is only a short time before our congressional leaders start doing the same thing.
Look back in history. What did Jimmy Carter do to the Shah of Iran? What did Congress do to the South Vietnamese people in the early 1970s when John Kerry was an outspoken enemy of the South Vietnamese people? Look at what Richard Nixon’s “cover up” did to ensure that the radical left in Congress had the political opportunity to leave the South Vietnamese ‘hung out on a limb’ and extremely vulnerable to a North Vietnamese invasion.
Even India, the world’s largest democracy, is in fact dominated by religious factions and dynasties. An educated Indian woman told me that she when she despaired over her country and its problems, she remembered Pakistan and was grateful to be Indian. Pakistan was founded to be an Islamic state. I believe the name means “land of the pure.”
Would Bhutto be any better? Maybe not. Would the radicals of the Red Mosque be worse? Definitely. And these people have nuclear weapons. Only think of Iran, next door, with its ancient history of empire, its radical Islamic ruling clique, and nuclear weapons.
Abu Daoud is right. Islam and democracy are incompatible, as experience throughout the world shows. See how non-Muslims are queuing up to get out of Malaysia and into Australia. Even if you get British-style institutions, courts and parliaments, eventually Muslims will try to subvert common law with sharia and ignorant populism (and Muslims are, educationally speaking, among the most ignorant people on the planet). For that reason, I concluded a little reluctantly that the Iraq Experiment is unlikely to succeed.
Pakistan combines Islam, illiteracy and profound corruption to a remarkable degree, and its tiny, impoverished Christian community gets the worst of it.
[/i]”. . .democracy in an Islamic country always turns into a totalitarian state. Why? Because once the conservative Muslims are elected (aka, the Islamists) they will not permit a fair election again.” [/i]
Simply not so, though I would welcome you citing numerous examples of this to try to prove your point.
A look at the history of Pakistan and Iran makes it pretty clear what is most commonly the cause for the spread of the worst kind of aggressive fundamentalism — corrupt governments that use military force to deny their people legitimate democratic means of self-determination.
These kinds of governments give rise to radical Islamist uprisings, which are seen as popular reformers by a public demanding an end to corruption and state violence and repression. That’s what led to the Taleban uprising against the corrupt warlords of Afghanistan, and the Iranian revolution against the U.S. supported Shah of Iran.
It should be noted that Iran was once a democratic country, until the U.S. and Britain overthrew their government back in the 1950s, installing a Shah / dictator in the place of a democratically elected leader.
(Search for “Operation Ajax” in wikipedia for more information.)
If Pakistan’s Supreme Court decided that Musharraf could not legally run for office, all hell would not break loose. Rather, one of Pakistan’s two prior leaders would likely be elected to office. The leader prior to Musharraf’s coup was actually a legitimately elected leader who wasn’t transparently stealing from the state, like Benazir Bhutto did, who reportedly stole over $1B from the government, and who bought her parents a huge house.
Really, can you name one single popular fundamentalist leader in Afghanistan who could possibly win a national election? There simply aren’t any who have a significant level of national support at this point. That said, Musharraf’s steps towards dictatorship have actually strengthened support for radicals, effectively proving their anti-government propaganda to be correct.
It’s time that U.S. foriegn policy started thinking about what’s best for the people of Pakistan and their longterm democratic government, as opposed to maintaining a dysfunctional alliance with a dictator. Isn’t that how we got into a mess with Saddam in the first place?
Also, what do you think Americans would think if Pakistanis so casually discussed who our leaders are and should be, as if it were their job to decide who should rule our supposedly democratic country?
The whole point of democracy is that you allow other nations to decide for themselves who their legitimate leaders should be. Perhaps the big problem here is that many Americans simply don’t believe in democracy. No, democracy isn’t perfect. It is, however, far superior to any other form of government.
If Pakistan’s Supreme Court decided that Musharraf could not legally run for office, all hell would not break loose. Rather, one of Pakistan’s two prior leaders would be elected to office. The one prior to Musharraf’s coup was actually a legitimately elected leader who wasn’t transparently stealing from the state, like Bhutto did.
It’s time that U.S. foriegn policy started thinking about what’s best for the people of Pakistan and their longterm democratic government, as opposed to maintaining a dysfunctional alliance with a dictator. Isn’t that how we got into a mess with Saddam in the first place?
Democracy is fundamentally opposed to Islam, has always been so and will always be so.
You want to give the Pakistani nukes to the Taliban? Best way to do it is democracy.
I’d have to be convinced by evidence that the Islamist regimes aren’t just as corrupt as their predecessors. Corruption is a way of life across much of South Asia and parts of the Middle East. Government functionaries count on the bribes as part of their basic income. The Islamism gives it a veneer of religious duty.
Turkey was able to remain Muslim and be democratic because Ataturk forcibly required a secular government and suppressed many Islamic practices, notably the covering of women.
For what it’s worth, President Musharraf has my complete support. We would have also been much wiser to have continued our support of the late Shah of Iran.
[i]”We would have also been much wiser to have continued our support of the late Shah of Iran.”[/i]
The U.S. and Britain helped depose a democratically elected Iranian leader to impose the Shah. The CIA trained the SAVAK, a repressive secret police force. The U.S. government supported the repressive reign of the Shah of Iran militarily all the way up to his government’s collapse, much to the anger of the Iranian people. And, when the Shah was deposed and fell ill from cancer, rather than honoring the extradition treaties we had with Iran to allow them to try the Shah on corruption charges, the Shah was allowed to stay in the U.S. to recieve medical treatment, as he had terminal cancer. That act is what prompted Iranian students and fundamentalists to storm the U.S. Embassy.
Really, I have no problem with anyone having differing opinions to me, but perhaps they should actually read history and consider basing their opinions on reality?
The reality is that while pro-U.S. dictatorships can sometimes bring about significant periods of stability, they eventually fall… and when they do, it tends to lead to fundamentalist governments, as democratic reformers are either marginalized in the prior system, or discredited as trying to work with a corrupt system.
That, incidentally, is part of the reason why the pro-Western, pro-democracy forces in Iraq have largely failed to succeed politically while those who are likely to gain the greatest control in the aftermath of the war are fundamentalist organizations like SCIRI and Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. While neither are as bad as Al Qaeda, it’s still bad news that they’ll be the ones largely calling the shots in Shi’ite Iraq.