With
Washington’s Complicity, Musharraf Imposes Martial Law
In Pakistan
By Vilani Peiris
& Keith Jones
05 November,2007
WSWS.org
Pakistani military strongman
General Pervez Musharraf, a key ally of the Bush administration in its
purported “war on terror,” has again bared his fangs. On
Saturday evening—as security forces fanned out across Islamabad
to occupy the parliament and supreme court buildings, force private
television stations off the air, and take oppositionists into “preventive
detention”—Musharraf, who seized power in a military coup
in October 1999, declared a state of emergency.
In what is tantamount to
a second coup, Musharraf has indefinitely suspended the constitution
and the rights to free speech, free assembly, free association, and
free movement; abrogated the courts’ constitutional authority
to issue orders against himself as president, against the prime minister,
or against anyone acting in their name; imposed rigorous press censorship;
and introduced harsh penalties for the “crime” of “ridiculing”
the president, the armed forces or any other executive, legislative
or judicial organ.
Security forces have arrested
and are holding indefinitely and without charge hundreds, possibly thousands,
of opposition politicians and lawyers who helped spearhead the recent
popular agitation against military rule. Those detained include Javed
Hashmi, the acting head of Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), and Aitzaz
Ahsan, the head of Pakistan’s Supreme Court Bar Association and
a prominent Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) supporter.
All non-state television
stations and some international radio services, including BBC World,
remained off the air Sunday. Police and paramilitary forces are manning
checkpoints in the capital and, according to press reports, have moved
quickly to break up any protests
Musharraf has stripped the
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, of his
post. Chaudhry and six other Supreme Court justices who refused to endorse
the General’s emergency order—the so-called Provisional
Constitutional Order (PCO)—are said to have been placed under
house arrest. A Musharraf toady, Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar, has been
sworn in as Chaudhry’s replacement. The provincial high courts
have also been purged, with many justices either refusing, or not even
being asked, to pledge to uphold Musharraf’s PCO.
All these measures carry
with them the threat that the military will resort to mass violence
should the Pakistani people resist. But the breadth of Musharraf’s
power grab and his readiness to militarize the country is exemplified
by his decision to proclaim a Provisional Constitutional Order and do
so in his capacity as Chief of Pakistan’s Armed Services, rather
than use his authority as president to invoke the emergency powers in
the country’s 1973 constitution.
“This is the imposition
of real military rule,” observed Hasan Askari Rizvi, an expert
on Pakistani military affairs. “Because there is no Constitution
and Pakistan is being run under a provisional constitutional order issued
by Musharraf as the army chief, not as the president of Pakistan.”
US complicity
The Bush administration,
Britain’s Labour government and the other western powers have
responded to Musharraf’s coup with the mildest, perfunctory criticism.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice, who like her boss, George W. Bush, has repeatedly lauded Musharraf
and his supposed commitment to democracy, described the declaration
of a state of emergency as “highly regrettable,” while reaffirming
that Washington will continue to cooperate closely with Pakistan’s
military regime. Rice called on “all parties to act with restraint
in what is obviously a very difficult situation.”
Speaking from a plane while
en route to Israel, Rice said that the US had been counseling Musharraf
not to take this step and wanted “a prompt return to the constitutional
course”. But she quickly qualified even this guarded criticism
by adding that Musharraf had done “a lot” previously to
put Pakistan on the “path to democratic rule.”
On Sunday, Rice said that
Washington will review its aid to Pakistan. Since September 2001 Washington
has given Islamabad at least $10 billion, mostly in military aid. Rice’s
statement, however, was not a threat, but an acknowledgement that certain
US statutes may compel the Bush administration to cut back its financial
support for Pakistan’s military regime.
The Pentagon has been, if
anything, even less critical of Musharraf’s coup. Pentagon press
secretary Geoff Morrell said, “The declaration [of emergency]
does not impact on our military support for Pakistan’s efforts
in the war on terror.”
British Foreign Secretary
David Miliband echoed Rice’s comments. “We are working closely
with friends of Pakistan across the international community to encourage
all parties to show restraint and to work together for a peaceful and
democratic resolution.” Claiming to be “gravely concerned,”
Miliband said he would voice Britain’s opposition to Musharraf’s
suspension of the constitution by speaking personally with the Pakistani
Foreign Secretary, Khurshid Kasuri.
The placid reaction to Musharraf’s
coup and its implicit threat of a bloodbath is in stark contrast to
the vigorous denunciations that emanated from Washington, London, and
other western capitals last month after Burma’s military junta
violently suppressed demonstrations against oil price rises and the
lack of democracy in that country.
The difference is that the
Pakistani regime is a pivotal ally of Washington in the pursuit of its
predatory interests in the oil-rich regions of Central Asia and the
Middle East. Musharraf has given vital logistical support for the US
invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and has provided US
intelligence agencies with offshore torture facilities. He has also
reportedly allowed the US military to use Pakistan to prepare for a
war with Iran, by conducting training exercises in Pakistan and staging
exploratory cross-border incursions into its western neighbor.
That said, Musharraf’s
resort to emergency rule constitutes a major debacle for the Bush administration.
Recognizing that the Musharraf
regime was unraveling in the face of mounting popular opposition, Washington
had long been trying to broker a rapprochement between Musharraf’s
military-dominated regime and Benazir Bhutto and her Pakistan People’s
Party.
As the New York Times noted
Sunday, in an article titled “Straying Partner Leaves White House
in the Lurch,” “For more than five months the United States
has been trying to orchestrate a political transition in Pakistan that
would manage to somehow keep Gen. Pervez Musharraf in power without
making a mockery of President Bush’s promotion of democracy in
the Muslim world.
“On Saturday, those
carefully laid plans fell apart spectacularly.”
And it is not only that Musharraf’s
imposition of martial has once again put the lie to the democratic verbiage
that the Bush administration and the US political and financial elite
have used in justifying their criminal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Washington and London recognize
that Musharraf’s coup is a desperate gamble, which could well
backfire, precipitating a popular explosion that would redound against
the interests of the Pakistani generals, the Pakistani bourgeoisie as
a whole, and US imperialism.
To forestall precisely such
a development the Bush administration and the British government have
been seeking to broker a deal between Musharraf and the populist PPP,
which, on two previous occasions when US-backed military dictatorships
collapsed, rescued the military from the wrath of the people and thereby
preserved the principal bulwark of bourgeois rule.
Just before the October 6
sham presidential election, the US engineered a shaky understanding
between the PPP and Musharraf, under which the PPP broke ranks with
the rest of the opposition thereby lending legitimacy to the general’s
latest perversion of the constitution. Twelve days later Bhutto returned
from exile, but within hours of her arriving in Karachi, she was the
target of an assassination attempt in which 139 people died. Bhutto
has charged elements in the military-dominated regime, but not Musharraf
himself, of being the authors of the assassination attempt.
Mimicking her sponsors in
London and Washington Bhutto’s response to Musharraf’s coup
has been muted to say the least. While the military parades its contempt
for the democratic rights of the Pakistani people, Bhutto has said that
she does not want confrontation. Speaking on CNN Sunday, she refused
to rule out holding further power-sharing negotiations with the General-President.
Mounting popular opposition
Musharraf and his cronies
have for months been threatening to impose emergency rule, in the face
of mounting opposition amongst all layers of society—opposition
that has been fueled by the lack of democracy, spiraling food prices
and increasing social inequality, rampant corruption and the crony capitalism
practiced by the military regime and, last but not least, Musharraf’s
support for Washington’s wars.
The trigger for last Saturday’s
coup was Musharraf’s apparent failure to bully the Supreme Court
into giving a judicial-constitutional imprimatur to last month’s
sham presidential election.
Pakistan’s judiciary
has a long and notorious record of sanctioning the illegal acts of military
dictators. But, reflecting elite fears that military rule is fuelling
mass popular discontent and elite complaints that the military has monopolized
the benefits of capitalist growth, the Supreme Court under Justice Chaudhry
issued a number of judgments that cut across the agenda of the military
and its political cronies. Last March when Musharraf fired Chaudhry,
because he feared the chief justice couldn’t be relied on to do
his bidding in fixing the forthcoming elections, it became the occasion
for mass protests and ultimately a humiliating defeat for Musharraf,
when an emboldened Supreme Court ordered Chaudhry restored to his seat
on the court.
For weeks this fall, a panel
of the Supreme Court had been hearing petitions challenging the legality
of the presidential election and Musharraf’s candidacy. From a
legal standpoint, it was an open and shut case: the Pakistani constitution
bars a member of the military, let alone the Chief of Armed Services
from running for elected office. It also clearly forbids Musharraf’s
ploy of having a national parliament and provincial assemblies that
were elected in 2002, in a poll manipulated the military, choose a president
for a five year term beginning in November 2007.
But Musharraf still hoped
that by combining threats of a resort to emergency rule if his presidential
election was deemed unconstitutional with participation in the US-sponsored
rapprochement with Benazir Bhutto, he could coerce the court into endorsing
his election.
Ultimately, however, Musharraf
came to the conclusion that the court was about to rule against him.
In the middle of last week, the court announced that it was suspending
its deliberations on the case until November 13, that is just two days
before Musharraf’s current presidential term is to expire; then
it reversed itself and indicated it could issue a ruling as early as
yesterday. Hence Musharraf’s sudden decision to impose martial
rule.
Musharraf began his proclamation
of emergency rule by referring to the growth of terrorist attacks and
other challenges to state authority from armed Islamic groups—groups
that historically have been nurtured by the military and intelligence
services as a bulwark against the working class and as a tool of Pakistan’s
geo-political maneuvers against India.
But the bulk of the proclamation
and Musharraf’s justification for martial law is the claim that
“some members of the judiciary are working at cross purposes with
the executive and legislature.” The proclamation charges that
the judiciary has undermined the fight against terrorism by ordering
the release of persons detained without charge and is destabilizing
the Pakistani state by effecting some modest checks on the government
and military.
It complains of “constant”
judicial “interference in executive function, including but not
limited to the control of terrorist activity, economic policy, price
controls, downsizing of corporations and urban planning [that] has weakened
the writ of the government” and that as a result of the judiciary’s
abuse of its constitutional authority “the police force has become
completely demoralized and is fast losing its efficacy to fight terrorism
and Intelligence Agencies have been thwarted in their activities and
prevented from pursuing terrorists.”
These complaints are not
just a rationale for dictatorial measures. They constitute a warning
that the Musharraf regime intends to use its authoritarian powers to
intensify its implementation of neo-liberal economic policies and to
use state repression to stamp out the growing opposition to the lack
of democratic right and social inequality.
The Bush administration and
the US political elite have for years sustained the Musharraf dictatorship.
They no less than the general himself are responsible for the systematic
rape of the democratic rights of the Pakistani people and the threat
of state terror that now hangs over Pakistan.
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