Bush
Administration Rushes
To Pakistani Dictator’s Aid
By Keith Jones &
Vilani Peiris
23 June, 2007
World
Socialist Web
Top
Bush administration and Pentagon officials have held intensive consultations
with Pakistan’s embattled military regime during the past two
weeks with the aim of bolstering the autocratic rule of General Pervez
Musharraf and securing increased Pakistani military support in staunching
the insurgency against Afghanistan’s US-installed government.
US Deputy Secretary of State
John Negroponte, US assistant secretary of state for South and Central
Asia, Richard Boucher, and Admiral William Fallon, head of the Pentagon’s
Central Command, all visited Pakistan last week. On Monday, Pakistan’s
Foreign Affairs Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri began a five-day US
visit.
Speaking to reporters shortly
before a meeting Monday with Kasuri, US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice reiterated the Bush administration’s strong support for Musharraf.
“I think,” said Rice, “you have to look at the last
five years and say that President Musharraf has been a good ally in
the war on terror. He has undertaken some important reforms in Pakistan.”
Two days earlier, Negroponte
had made clear that Musharraf is under no pressure from the US to give
up his post as head of Pakistan’s armed forces—a post he
has clung to despite the Pakistani constitution’s specific prohibition
on a military officer serving as president. Said Negroponte, “It’s
up to him (General Musharraf) to decide when to take off his uniform.”
When pressed as to whether
the US will endorse Musharraf’s scheme to have himself “re
elected” president
this fall by national and provincial legislatures chosen five years
ago in elections stage-managed by the military, Bush administration
officials say that it is up to the Pakistani people to decide “when
those elections are held, how they are held and all that goes on around
them.”
In other words, if Musharraf,
who seized power in a military coup eight years ago, can manipulate
his “reelection” without provoking mass unrest, he has Washington’s
blessing.
Important sections of the
US political and geo-political establishment have, in recent weeks,
taken to counseling the Bush administration to step back from its unqualified
support for Musharraf and this for two reasons.
First, they don’t think
that the Musharraf regime has been sufficiently aggressive in preventing
Afghan insurgents from finding refuge in Pakistan and in otherwise stamping
out support for the Taliban and Al Qaeda in tribal regions bordering
Afghanistan. A Pakistani government that has received at least $10 billion
in aid and payments from the US since September 2001 should, they contend,
be more pliant to US wishes.
Second, they fear that Musharraf
is losing his grip on power, that the autocratic character of his regime
and its corruption have stripped it of any popular legitimacy. These
fears have grown substantially since Musharraf’s attempt to sack
the chief justice of the Supreme Court, whom he feared might not rubber
stamp his phony reelection, backfired, precipitating an escalating campaign
of anti-government rallies and demonstrations.
The New York Times, Washington
Post and various think tanks are urging the Bush administration to begin
actively planning for a “post-Musharraf” Pakistan and to
reach out to the traditional political elite that has been sidelined
by Musharraf and the military, especially Benazir Bhutto and her Pakistan
People’s Party (PPP). Support for the PPP, which postures as a
progressive, even socialist party, has declined precipitously since
two spells in office during the 1980s and 1990s when it imposed the
neo-liberal policy prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund.
But, according to most observers, the PPP alone among the various parties
has a significant nationwide base of support.
The Bush administration is
not averse to Musharraf striking a deal with the PPP under which the
general remains president and Bhutto or her nominee becomes prime minister
and would be prepared to help broker such an arrangement. But it has
signaled that any deal should be on the general’s terms and those
of the military brass on whose support he depends.
Musharraf is loath to cede
to Bhutto’s demand that he respect the constitution and give up
his post as commander of Pakistan armed services for he recognizes he
has no popular constituency. An added complication is the pro-military
Pakistan Muslim League (Q)’s bitter opposition to any deal with
Bhutto. The PML (Q) leaders, who currently hold most of the key cabinet
posts and political appointments, would invariably lose most if not
all their perks and privileges in the event of a PPP-Musharraf partnership.
Both Boucher and Negroponte
met with opposition leaders while in Pakistan. Boucher also met with
the head of the Pakistani election commission. The opposition has complained
that tens of millions of names have been left off the recently published
electoral list. The opposition parties have also denounced the commission
for refusing to publish the list on the Internet, which would greatly
facilitate its verification during the relatively brief period voters
have to ask that their names be added to the electoral rolls.
Negroponte was evasive when
asked if he had discussed with Musharraf or other government officials
the possibility of the military forging an alliance with the PPP. “Only
in general was this issue discussed during my meetings with various
people,” said Negroponte.
The Musharraf regime has
been groping for a strategy to contain the opposition protests that
erupted following Musharraf’s March 9 suspension of Chief Justice
Iftikhar Muhmmad Chaudhry.
As the protest grew in strength
in April, there were suggestions from persons in and around the government
that Musharraf might try to cut his losses and allow the chief justice
to be reinstated by his Supreme Court colleagues, while making the former
Citibank vice-president who serves as his prime minister take the fall
for Chaudhry’s botched removal.
But on May 12-13, the Musharraf
regime unleashed bloody violence in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest
city. With the connivance of the security forces, thugs organized by
the pro-Musharraf MQM mounted attacks on opposition supporters that
left more than 40 people dead. Musharraf subsequently defended the MQM
violence, saying that the opposition was responsible for the violence
because it had failed to cede to government pressure it cancel a rally
in support of Chief Justice Chaudhry.
Earlier this month, the government
announced draconian new restrictions on the broadcasting of live events
and talk shows, only to back down the following week in the face of
an outcry from the press and public.
Rifts, meanwhile, have opened
up within the government camp. The PML (Q) has tried to disassociate
itself from the Karachi violence. The MQM—whose base of support
is among the mohajirs, Urdu-speakers who fled to Pakistan from north
India between 1947 and the 1950s and who are concentrated in the Sindhi
cities of Karachi and Hyderabad—is pressing for a devolution of
powers to the provinces. As for the general-president, he has denounced
the PML (Q) leadership for leaving him in the lurch.
The government is claiming
that its pro-investor policies have led to increased economic growth
and a reduction in poverty, but not even the World Bank considers the
government’s poverty claims credible and inflation of close to
8 percent and more than 10 percent for food is causing increasing popular
hardship. In recent weeks riots have erupted repeatedly in Karachi due
to power cuts carried out by the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation,
one of many companies privatized under the Musharraf regime.
While Karachis unquestionably
are outraged over the power cuts, that sometime last as long as 12 to
16 hours, the protests are also being fueled by anger over the events
of last month and by the perception that the government is in crisis.
Musharraf and his officials
have repeatedly had to deny that they are planning to impose martial
law. But even without it, opposition activists are routinely arrested
in the hundreds and journalists have increasingly become the targets
of threats and violence.
Last month’s bloody
events in Karachi underscore that the Musharraf regime stands ready
to try to drown the opposition in blood. It certainly has not passed
unnoticed in Karachi that the Bush administration has never breathed
a single word of criticism of the Pakistani authorities for the Karachi
violence and that the most recent US envoy to Islamabad, John Negroponte,
is a man with a foul and bloody record as a point man for US imperialism,
including stints as US ambassador to Honduras under Ronald Reagan and
US ambassador to Iraq in 2004-2005.
Apart from the support of
the Bush administration, the chief reason the Musharraf regime remains
in power is the cowardice and complicity of the bourgeois opposition.
All its various strands are tied to the military and ultimately see
it as the chief bulwark of their class privileges and of the Pakistani
state.
The mass protests against
Justice Chaudhry’s dismissal and the violent attacks perpetrated
by the MQM in Karachi have disrupted the backroom negotiations Bhutto
and the PPP leadership were conducting with Musharraf. But the PPP’s
chairperson for life has continued to make clear her willingness to
work with Musharraf if he sheds his presidential uniform and the PPP’s
readiness to help validate Musharraf’s phony reelection as president.
Bhutto has indicated that should Musharraf try to have himself declared
reelected president by the current legislatures the PPP will not join
the other opposition parties in resigning from the legislatures en masse.
In keeping with this orientation,
the PPP is pursuing close ties with the US political establishment,
including the Republican right. PPP leaders have held several meetings
with representatives of the International Republican Institute and the
PPP web site currently features an article written by one Lisa Curtis.
Currently a Heritage Foundation senior research fellow, Curtis has previously
worked for Republican Senator Richard Lugar and the US State Department
and is a decorated former CIA analyst.
Nawaz Sharif, the head of
the PML (Nawaz) and a wealthy industrialist, leads a party that was
founded with military support and for many years himself benefited in
his business and political careers from the military’s patronage.
The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal,
the six-party alliance of Islamic fundamentalist parties, benefited
from the military’s support in the 2002 elections and returned
the favor by providing the votes needed to pass a series of constitutional
amendments that gave post facto legality to Musharraf’s 1999 coup,
expanded his power as president, and gave the military a dominant constitutional
role in shaping key areas of government policy. To this day, the MMA
rules the North-West Frontier Province under Musharraf and governs Baluchistan
in a coalition with the pro-military PML (Q).
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