The Real Story In Pakistan.....
Most of you are aware that there’s been a State of Emergency in Pakistan since November 5th, 2007. Pres. Musharraf would have us believe that he has imposed martial law to keep his country from going Islamist, from going the way of Somalia, which is a failed state. Further complicating things is that Pakistan has nuclear weapons and the Western world is terribly frightened that these weapons will fall into the hands of Islamist maniacs, friends of Al Quaeda and the Taliban. Interestingly, this State of Emergency arose soon after the return of former Prime Minister Bhutto to Pakistan last month. As you may recall, there was an attempt upon Ms. Bhutto’s life within 24 hours of her return, a suicide bombing which resulted in the deaths of more than 120 people. It is questionable as to who was responsible for this terrorist attack-the Islamists or people within the Pakistani government who do not want Ms. Bhutto in the government or even in Pakistan. (To be fair, Ms. Bhutto herself doesn’t have an unblemished record-her government reportedly was rife with corruption when she was in power).
Interestingly, shortly after Musharraf imposed martial law, he released a prominent man in the Taliban leadership from prison, as reported in The Long War Journal:
Pakistan frees Mullah Obaidullah, other senior Taliban leaders
By Bill RoggioNovember 11, 2007 2:03 PM
Mullah Obaidullah Akhund.
President Pervez Musharraf's promise to hunt the Taliban as part of its suspension of the constitution and a virtual state of emergency rings hollow as the Taliban's grip on the northwest Frontier Province tightens. Newsweek reported the Pakistani government has released several senior Taliban commanders captured inside Pakistani territory over the past year. The leaders were among 25 Taliban exchanged for over 200 Pakistani soldiers captured by South Waziristan commander Baitullah Mehsud in late August.
Among those freed from Pakistani jails are Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, Amir Khan Haqqani, two brothers of slain Taliban commander Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Usmani, and Baitullah Mehsud's cousin.
Mullah Obaidullah was the Taliban Defense Minister under during the reign of the Taliban from 1996 until the US toppled the government in the fall of 2001. He was the most senior Taliban figure captured to date and "is considered by American intelligence officials to have been one of the Taliban leaders closest to Osama bin Laden," as well as part of the "inner core of the Taliban leadership around the Mullah Muhammad Omar who are believed to operate from the relative safety of Quetta." Obaidullah was a member of the Taliban's Shura Majlis, or executive council, and was thought to be third in command.
Obaidullah was arrested in Quetta in Pakistan's Baluchistan province, which borders Kandahar and Helmand provinces in Afghanistan. The Taliban have established a command and control network for senior leadership to direct operating in Afghanistan in and around the city of Quetta.
Amir Khan Haqqani, the former Taliban military commander of Afghanistan's southeastern province of Zabul, and Abdul Bari, the former governor of Helmand province, were both captured along with Obaidullah in February 2006. Haqqani was released, but it is unclear if Bari is still in custody.
Baitlullah Mehsud, the powerful Taliban commander of South Waziristan who recently fought the Pakistani military to a standstill, demanded an end to military operations as well as the release of the 25 senior Taliban commanders as condition to the ceasefire.
The Pakistani government has caved to the demands of Baitullah. The Taliban leaders have been released, while the government reinstated the 2005 Sara Rogha accord, which prevents the government from operating with no restrictions on Taliban activities inside or outside of Pakistan.
In August, Mehsud captured almost 300 Pakistani troops -- an entire company -- as it conducted a resupply mission in South Waziristan. The company surrendered without firing a shot after the Taliban surrounded the convoy. The government freed over 100 of Mehsud's "tribesmen" immediately after the troops were captured in an attempt to secure their release.
All of the troops have since been released. Several of the troops were beheaded. The morale of the Pakistani military has plummeted after suffering defeat after defeat at the hands of the Taliban in the Northwest Frontier Province. Troops are surrendering or deserting to Taliban fighters in Swat at an alarming rate.
Over 29 Taliban and al Qaeda camps are known to be in operation in both North and South Waziristan alone.
Demonstrations broke out in Pakistan shortly after martial law was imposed. Musharraf had removed the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who is popular with advocates of democracy. During the first few days, ATTORNEYS AND BUSINESSPEOPLE marched in the streets, and many were loaded into paddy wagons as if they had been common vermin. There is nothing like watching a group of men in suits being beaten up by cops. To say that this sight was bizarre is an understatement. Subsequently, I have read that a group of ACCOUNTING MAJORS at university started a demonstration, which police dispersed with billy clubs and tear gas. If you don’t live in the US, perhaps you don’t understand my incredulity. I’m used to watching hippies and ethnic minorities demonstrating and getting hassled by the police, not upstanding pillars of the community.
This is where I have got to comment-Does anyone see an incongruity in Musharraf releasing a major Taliban figure from prison, around the same time as upstanding citizens are being hauled off to jail? Something does not smell right here. I’m no expert in Pakistani affairs, but Musharraf’s actions appear to be nothing more than a power grab, an allergic reaction against democracy. To me, this is government by ego, government by a man, not by laws. I understand that Islamists have threatened the General’s life hundreds of times, but if he’s tired of living on the edge, perhaps that is what term limits are for.
According to the US neo-conservatives, you would think that Pakistan is filled with frothing Islamists, who have been schooled at fundamentalist madrassahs. The Bush Administration would have us believe that Musharraf serves as a thin khaki line between US-friendly order and Islamist chaos. No doubt, there are many poor people in Pakistan, many of whom are vulnerable to Islamist dogma. What many Americans may not know is that Pakistan, like India, has a burgeoning middle class, a group that, ironically, Musharraf has cultivated during his 9 year reign. This group mostly is young to 30-something, well-educated, and technically savvy. The Pakistani middle class is patriotic, sensible regarding their religion, and yearning for democracy. Just out of curiousity, I did a member search on Yahoo of Pakistanis. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of Pakistanis on-line. I spoke to a Pakistani attorney online, who was a bit cautious about revealing what was going on. The man, however, admitted that he had access to the New York Times, the Guardian, and the New York State Bar Association website online. A Livejournal search of Pakistanis revealed a character known as Punkistani, AKA Basim Usmani who provided a link for a report that he had written for the Guardian, which reads as follows:
“The house arrest order for Asma Jehangir reads thus:
"Whereas, the Government of the Punjab is satisfied that the activities of Asma Jehangir Advocate are prejudicial to public safety and maintenance of public order, therefore it is necessary to prevent him [sic] from acting in such a manner."
Her arrest was a Joseph Heller moment for our government; what does it hope to accomplish by jailing a human rights advocate with no political affiliation? First her home was declared as a sub-jail where she would be put under house arrest. Then, some 55 activists were jailed during a raid of the Human Rights Commission offices. For some reason or the other, these activists were detained until today.
Meanwhile, many protesting lawyers and journalists were beaten with batons during demonstrations across the country, where the standard seems to be to punish rather than detain. It's as if the jails cannot contain the flow of protesters, so I spoke with the Superintendant of Jails, Javed Latif, about the preparations taken to cope with the State of Emergency.
"We had no idea about the State of Emergency before it was declared," he told me. "And we were unprepared to cope with the flow of detainees."
At least 2,000 Pakistanis have been arrested since the declaration, many of whom the country's prisons can't contain. Communication must be hard when official orders are written in broken English with gender confusion.
I called the Capital City Police Officer of Lahore to ask him why his men are arresting so many without checking with Javed Latif to coordinate. Our conversation went like this:
"Hello, is this Maliq Iqbal saab?"
"Jee, speaking"
"I'm a journalist and I wanted to know ..."
"Sorry wrong number." Click.
I was given the run-around with the rest of the people who had been CC'ed on the arrest order, but I got to talk with Tariq Azim, the information minister for the ruling party, PML-Q.
"Those who make arrests do so on the spot," he confirmed for me. We are living under a dictatorship that flies by the seat of its pants.
On November 2, I got together with a group of journalists from separate newspapers to discuss the possibility of Musharraf declaring a State of Emergency. Driving down Zahoor Elahi Road, the road where the Chief Minister of Punjab's mansion sits, we noticed an abject lack of police, white checkpoints, and armoured cars. We were intrigued. We asked a policeman deputed near a corner of the minister's house why there were only four police on the entire strip when usually there were upwards of 20. "They are all on holiday," he lied to us. So we drove down main boulevard, en route to Defence, the borough of Lahore owned by the military, where police are usually stationed at every traffic light. On the way there, we found no white barriers or police.
"It's like it's 1947 again and Pakistan has just been freed," one of my associates joked. In Defence, it was the same scene. We spotted slouching guards outside of the closed shops, asleep at their posts, but no government police. We decided to park our car in the centre of a major intersection, right by Mc Donalds, and wait. No one came.
The next day, the government declared a state of emergency. I spoke with Asma Jehangir to make sense of everything. We talked over a bugged phone line running between her home and the office of Child Rights advocate Uzair Sultan.
"This is an old story," she began, describing how the charges levelled against her were drawn according to Ayub Khan's Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, which was drafted in 1960. Public detention back then would last 15 days, at which point the charges would be tested in a tribunal. "Now, under the State of Emergency, I could be detained anywhere from 90 days to 90 years," she said.
All the court justices have been placed under house arrest. Well, all besides those brigadier and general court justices already affiliated with the army. "We are boycotting the courts as they operate presently. The only circumstances in which I'd go to court is to expose them as co-opted by the current dictatorship," she continued.
It was all too heavy to sink in, so I asked her what advice she has for the student protesters, the young journalists, the activists that are just finding our footing. The line went dead.
Uzair Sultan exhaled a puff of smoke with a sigh, and put his cigarette out. "The agencies that have bugged her phone have been cutting it at whim all day", he explained. I set down the receiver. My partner shot me a look, and I began reading through my notes with him. The phone began ringing again, and it was Asma on the line.
"Basim, as a young activist you have to take to the streets. Those who can't have to write for the press. Those who can't do that need to express solidarity. Wear a black armband," she suggested before I could ask the question again.
I asked her if she wanted to say anything to the people bugging her phone. She laughed: "Nothing I haven't been hammering in all day." And so concluded our conversation.
I spoke with Hina Jilani in the UK next. "The response from western media has been good. There's worldwide concern for the military crackdown on the judiciary and civil liberties." She had just got off the phone with a PML - Nawaz worker, so I asked her about the support of existing political parties.
"Their press statements are inadequate, and they need to play a larger role. They cannot let the Pakistani public shift back into cynicism, parties should be a source of confidence." I spoke with her about the pictures being circulated of lawyers and journalists getting beaten by riot police and plain clothes cops at protests with sticks. "I understand the apprehensions to protesting, and extend salutations to journalists and lawyers in Pakistan. But Musharraf has left no option [but] to come out on to the streets."
We were getting ready to pack up when Uzair piped in, "You know, throughout the 70s students played a key role in bussing out to protests and actually instigating change in the political sphere. In 71, they played a big part in Zulfikar Ali Bhutto getting elected, and in 77 when he was effectively captured by Zia, they managed to bring cities to a standstill, clogging up roads protesting."
He said that in the coming years, when Zia was overseeing the war in Afghanistan, an influx of heroine and hash subdued the youth. Now all local news channels have been blocked out, and all we have access to are PTV dramas, and Indian films. "The culture of activism has taken a hit in the years since Zia," he told me. Culture of activism?
For a few moments, I was reminded of a Mother's Day in Boston, 2005. That day, American white power groups were holding a demonstration outside a Holocaust memorial service in Faneiul Hall, and many of the city's student population, which I was a part of, had come out to hold a counter-protest. We got too rowdy for the riot police, and state police on horseback were called in to beat us back. I got a good club in the head, a wallop that knocked me back a few steps but some kids caught me and youths in studded leather jackets formed a circle around me for protection. I don't know what came over me, but I broke into song.
We all woefully sang Cock Sparrer's Riot Squad together, charging the barricades. An anarchist from the crowd yelled "A las barricadas!" through the black scarf covering her face, and our morale shot through the roof. We were punks. And it was that culture, those songs that got me contemplating workers' rights, unions, and eventually moving back to Pakistan in the first place.”
When I regained awareness of where I was, Uzair was shuffling through his drawers to retrieve a CD. "These are the protest songs we used to listen to in the 70s. You're a musician, do something with it."
God (or Allah) bless you and your friends, Punkistani. Because of you, I know what REALLY is going on. You are more courageous than words.
Interestingly, shortly after Musharraf imposed martial law, he released a prominent man in the Taliban leadership from prison, as reported in The Long War Journal:
Pakistan frees Mullah Obaidullah, other senior Taliban leaders
By Bill RoggioNovember 11, 2007 2:03 PM
Mullah Obaidullah Akhund.
President Pervez Musharraf's promise to hunt the Taliban as part of its suspension of the constitution and a virtual state of emergency rings hollow as the Taliban's grip on the northwest Frontier Province tightens. Newsweek reported the Pakistani government has released several senior Taliban commanders captured inside Pakistani territory over the past year. The leaders were among 25 Taliban exchanged for over 200 Pakistani soldiers captured by South Waziristan commander Baitullah Mehsud in late August.
Among those freed from Pakistani jails are Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, Amir Khan Haqqani, two brothers of slain Taliban commander Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Usmani, and Baitullah Mehsud's cousin.
Mullah Obaidullah was the Taliban Defense Minister under during the reign of the Taliban from 1996 until the US toppled the government in the fall of 2001. He was the most senior Taliban figure captured to date and "is considered by American intelligence officials to have been one of the Taliban leaders closest to Osama bin Laden," as well as part of the "inner core of the Taliban leadership around the Mullah Muhammad Omar who are believed to operate from the relative safety of Quetta." Obaidullah was a member of the Taliban's Shura Majlis, or executive council, and was thought to be third in command.
Obaidullah was arrested in Quetta in Pakistan's Baluchistan province, which borders Kandahar and Helmand provinces in Afghanistan. The Taliban have established a command and control network for senior leadership to direct operating in Afghanistan in and around the city of Quetta.
Amir Khan Haqqani, the former Taliban military commander of Afghanistan's southeastern province of Zabul, and Abdul Bari, the former governor of Helmand province, were both captured along with Obaidullah in February 2006. Haqqani was released, but it is unclear if Bari is still in custody.
Baitlullah Mehsud, the powerful Taliban commander of South Waziristan who recently fought the Pakistani military to a standstill, demanded an end to military operations as well as the release of the 25 senior Taliban commanders as condition to the ceasefire.
The Pakistani government has caved to the demands of Baitullah. The Taliban leaders have been released, while the government reinstated the 2005 Sara Rogha accord, which prevents the government from operating with no restrictions on Taliban activities inside or outside of Pakistan.
In August, Mehsud captured almost 300 Pakistani troops -- an entire company -- as it conducted a resupply mission in South Waziristan. The company surrendered without firing a shot after the Taliban surrounded the convoy. The government freed over 100 of Mehsud's "tribesmen" immediately after the troops were captured in an attempt to secure their release.
All of the troops have since been released. Several of the troops were beheaded. The morale of the Pakistani military has plummeted after suffering defeat after defeat at the hands of the Taliban in the Northwest Frontier Province. Troops are surrendering or deserting to Taliban fighters in Swat at an alarming rate.
Over 29 Taliban and al Qaeda camps are known to be in operation in both North and South Waziristan alone.
Demonstrations broke out in Pakistan shortly after martial law was imposed. Musharraf had removed the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who is popular with advocates of democracy. During the first few days, ATTORNEYS AND BUSINESSPEOPLE marched in the streets, and many were loaded into paddy wagons as if they had been common vermin. There is nothing like watching a group of men in suits being beaten up by cops. To say that this sight was bizarre is an understatement. Subsequently, I have read that a group of ACCOUNTING MAJORS at university started a demonstration, which police dispersed with billy clubs and tear gas. If you don’t live in the US, perhaps you don’t understand my incredulity. I’m used to watching hippies and ethnic minorities demonstrating and getting hassled by the police, not upstanding pillars of the community.
This is where I have got to comment-Does anyone see an incongruity in Musharraf releasing a major Taliban figure from prison, around the same time as upstanding citizens are being hauled off to jail? Something does not smell right here. I’m no expert in Pakistani affairs, but Musharraf’s actions appear to be nothing more than a power grab, an allergic reaction against democracy. To me, this is government by ego, government by a man, not by laws. I understand that Islamists have threatened the General’s life hundreds of times, but if he’s tired of living on the edge, perhaps that is what term limits are for.
According to the US neo-conservatives, you would think that Pakistan is filled with frothing Islamists, who have been schooled at fundamentalist madrassahs. The Bush Administration would have us believe that Musharraf serves as a thin khaki line between US-friendly order and Islamist chaos. No doubt, there are many poor people in Pakistan, many of whom are vulnerable to Islamist dogma. What many Americans may not know is that Pakistan, like India, has a burgeoning middle class, a group that, ironically, Musharraf has cultivated during his 9 year reign. This group mostly is young to 30-something, well-educated, and technically savvy. The Pakistani middle class is patriotic, sensible regarding their religion, and yearning for democracy. Just out of curiousity, I did a member search on Yahoo of Pakistanis. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of Pakistanis on-line. I spoke to a Pakistani attorney online, who was a bit cautious about revealing what was going on. The man, however, admitted that he had access to the New York Times, the Guardian, and the New York State Bar Association website online. A Livejournal search of Pakistanis revealed a character known as Punkistani, AKA Basim Usmani who provided a link for a report that he had written for the Guardian, which reads as follows:
“The house arrest order for Asma Jehangir reads thus:
"Whereas, the Government of the Punjab is satisfied that the activities of Asma Jehangir Advocate are prejudicial to public safety and maintenance of public order, therefore it is necessary to prevent him [sic] from acting in such a manner."
Her arrest was a Joseph Heller moment for our government; what does it hope to accomplish by jailing a human rights advocate with no political affiliation? First her home was declared as a sub-jail where she would be put under house arrest. Then, some 55 activists were jailed during a raid of the Human Rights Commission offices. For some reason or the other, these activists were detained until today.
Meanwhile, many protesting lawyers and journalists were beaten with batons during demonstrations across the country, where the standard seems to be to punish rather than detain. It's as if the jails cannot contain the flow of protesters, so I spoke with the Superintendant of Jails, Javed Latif, about the preparations taken to cope with the State of Emergency.
"We had no idea about the State of Emergency before it was declared," he told me. "And we were unprepared to cope with the flow of detainees."
At least 2,000 Pakistanis have been arrested since the declaration, many of whom the country's prisons can't contain. Communication must be hard when official orders are written in broken English with gender confusion.
I called the Capital City Police Officer of Lahore to ask him why his men are arresting so many without checking with Javed Latif to coordinate. Our conversation went like this:
"Hello, is this Maliq Iqbal saab?"
"Jee, speaking"
"I'm a journalist and I wanted to know ..."
"Sorry wrong number." Click.
I was given the run-around with the rest of the people who had been CC'ed on the arrest order, but I got to talk with Tariq Azim, the information minister for the ruling party, PML-Q.
"Those who make arrests do so on the spot," he confirmed for me. We are living under a dictatorship that flies by the seat of its pants.
On November 2, I got together with a group of journalists from separate newspapers to discuss the possibility of Musharraf declaring a State of Emergency. Driving down Zahoor Elahi Road, the road where the Chief Minister of Punjab's mansion sits, we noticed an abject lack of police, white checkpoints, and armoured cars. We were intrigued. We asked a policeman deputed near a corner of the minister's house why there were only four police on the entire strip when usually there were upwards of 20. "They are all on holiday," he lied to us. So we drove down main boulevard, en route to Defence, the borough of Lahore owned by the military, where police are usually stationed at every traffic light. On the way there, we found no white barriers or police.
"It's like it's 1947 again and Pakistan has just been freed," one of my associates joked. In Defence, it was the same scene. We spotted slouching guards outside of the closed shops, asleep at their posts, but no government police. We decided to park our car in the centre of a major intersection, right by Mc Donalds, and wait. No one came.
The next day, the government declared a state of emergency. I spoke with Asma Jehangir to make sense of everything. We talked over a bugged phone line running between her home and the office of Child Rights advocate Uzair Sultan.
"This is an old story," she began, describing how the charges levelled against her were drawn according to Ayub Khan's Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, which was drafted in 1960. Public detention back then would last 15 days, at which point the charges would be tested in a tribunal. "Now, under the State of Emergency, I could be detained anywhere from 90 days to 90 years," she said.
All the court justices have been placed under house arrest. Well, all besides those brigadier and general court justices already affiliated with the army. "We are boycotting the courts as they operate presently. The only circumstances in which I'd go to court is to expose them as co-opted by the current dictatorship," she continued.
It was all too heavy to sink in, so I asked her what advice she has for the student protesters, the young journalists, the activists that are just finding our footing. The line went dead.
Uzair Sultan exhaled a puff of smoke with a sigh, and put his cigarette out. "The agencies that have bugged her phone have been cutting it at whim all day", he explained. I set down the receiver. My partner shot me a look, and I began reading through my notes with him. The phone began ringing again, and it was Asma on the line.
"Basim, as a young activist you have to take to the streets. Those who can't have to write for the press. Those who can't do that need to express solidarity. Wear a black armband," she suggested before I could ask the question again.
I asked her if she wanted to say anything to the people bugging her phone. She laughed: "Nothing I haven't been hammering in all day." And so concluded our conversation.
I spoke with Hina Jilani in the UK next. "The response from western media has been good. There's worldwide concern for the military crackdown on the judiciary and civil liberties." She had just got off the phone with a PML - Nawaz worker, so I asked her about the support of existing political parties.
"Their press statements are inadequate, and they need to play a larger role. They cannot let the Pakistani public shift back into cynicism, parties should be a source of confidence." I spoke with her about the pictures being circulated of lawyers and journalists getting beaten by riot police and plain clothes cops at protests with sticks. "I understand the apprehensions to protesting, and extend salutations to journalists and lawyers in Pakistan. But Musharraf has left no option [but] to come out on to the streets."
We were getting ready to pack up when Uzair piped in, "You know, throughout the 70s students played a key role in bussing out to protests and actually instigating change in the political sphere. In 71, they played a big part in Zulfikar Ali Bhutto getting elected, and in 77 when he was effectively captured by Zia, they managed to bring cities to a standstill, clogging up roads protesting."
He said that in the coming years, when Zia was overseeing the war in Afghanistan, an influx of heroine and hash subdued the youth. Now all local news channels have been blocked out, and all we have access to are PTV dramas, and Indian films. "The culture of activism has taken a hit in the years since Zia," he told me. Culture of activism?
For a few moments, I was reminded of a Mother's Day in Boston, 2005. That day, American white power groups were holding a demonstration outside a Holocaust memorial service in Faneiul Hall, and many of the city's student population, which I was a part of, had come out to hold a counter-protest. We got too rowdy for the riot police, and state police on horseback were called in to beat us back. I got a good club in the head, a wallop that knocked me back a few steps but some kids caught me and youths in studded leather jackets formed a circle around me for protection. I don't know what came over me, but I broke into song.
We all woefully sang Cock Sparrer's Riot Squad together, charging the barricades. An anarchist from the crowd yelled "A las barricadas!" through the black scarf covering her face, and our morale shot through the roof. We were punks. And it was that culture, those songs that got me contemplating workers' rights, unions, and eventually moving back to Pakistan in the first place.”
When I regained awareness of where I was, Uzair was shuffling through his drawers to retrieve a CD. "These are the protest songs we used to listen to in the 70s. You're a musician, do something with it."
God (or Allah) bless you and your friends, Punkistani. Because of you, I know what REALLY is going on. You are more courageous than words.