SONYA FATAH

Decision to put off poll to Feb. 18 seen as bid by Musharraf to buy time
January 03, 2008
SONYA FATAH

THE TORONTO STAR

KARACHI, Pakistan–Opposition parties denounced a government decision yesterday to postpone elections by six weeks following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto – but they said they will still participate in the vote.

“We condemn the postponement of elections,” said Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto’s husband and the Pakistan Peoples Party’s new co-chair. “But we will still fight elections … the elections will happen and the people will be successful.”

Citing law and order problems and the destruction of key election materials in the aftermath of last week’s slaying of the former prime minister, Pakistan’s election commission announced yesterday it will delay elections set for next Tuesday until Feb. 18.

The visibly frazzled chief election commissioner Qazi Mohammad Farooq made a hasty exit after the announcement set off a barrage of questions at the commission’s press conference.

Although the commission’s decision was not unexpected, opposition parties had clearly expressed a desire to stick to the original date, fearing a delay would work against them.

Bhutto’s party would expect to reap a considerable sympathy vote following her assassination in a gun and bomb attack as she left a rally in Rawalpindi Dec. 27.

“If Iraq can hold elections, if Afghanistan can hold elections, so can Pakistan,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, South Asia Researcher for Human Rights Watch.

The country’s other prominent political party, Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, also denounced the decision to postpone the election, but said it would still participate.

By pushing the election forward, the country’s ruling party, Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam), is looking to buy some time, analysts say.

“The elections have been postponed because there isn’t the will to have elections because of a fear of (President Pervez) Musharraf’s political opponents winning the elections,” said Hasan.

Dozens of people were killed in violence that erupted across Pakistan after Bhutto’s slaying and analysts said a postponement could lead to renewed rioting.

Tension remains high and markets are gripped by fears of capital flight if security worsens.

Farooq said election offices in 11 districts of Sindh, Bhutto’s home province, were burned down in disturbances, destroying transparent ballot boxes, voter screens, voters’ lists and other election materials.

An election official in Sindh said about 11,000 of 97,000 ballot boxes allotted for that province were destroyed.

Musharraf, in a televised address to the nation, said army and paramilitary troops would clamp down on any renewed violence and appealed for national reconciliation.

“The army … will be fully deployed to ensure law and order across the country and for holding elections peacefully,” Musharraf said.

“This is time for national reconciliation and not confrontation.”

Popularity: 3% [?]

Supporters of first female PM in a Muslim nation viewed the slain leader as their ticket for change
January 02, 2008
Sonya Fatah
THE STAR

KARACHI, PAKISTAN–Ghazala Shafiq speaks in urgent tones from her small apartment inside Trinity Church, where her husband is pastor to Karachi’s Protestant community.

In April 2005, Shafiq was sexually assaulted when a gang of men barged into her office across the road from the church’s grounds. Shafiq recognized her attackers – officials in the church community in cahoots with local police officials.

Yet, two years later, despite appealing to Pakistan’s then prime minister Shaukat Aziz and after numerous police and intelligence investigations, justice has evaded her.

“You don’t know what it’s like to be violated like that,” said Shafiq, her eyes filling with tears. “It’s so humiliating. I hardly feel alive anymore, but I still want justice from my country.”

Countless women like Shafiq suffer the humiliation of sexual assault, rape and domestic violence in a patriarchal society where there are few legal protections for women. Few victims report their crimes and those who do are hounded.

For them, Benazir Bhutto, the first female prime minister of a Muslim country, had always been a symbol of hope and courage.

“Benazir was such a strong woman,” said Shafiq, grieving last Thursday’s slaying of the the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party. “I had hoped to ask her to help me.”

But Bhutto, who was 35 years old when she first came to power in 1988, struggled to deliver lasting change after 11 years under military dictator Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, who used and abused Islamic law to make Pakistan a terrifying place for women and minorities.

Zia brought in the Hudood Ordinance in 1979, a draconian law that saw innocent victims of rape hauled into jail for conceiving children out of wedlock and required four male witnesses to authenticate a rape. It was also during Zia’s time that the influence of radical Islamists grew across Pakistan’s many seminaries while performing arts, especially music and dance, were prohibited.

Bhutto was expected to reverse that trend by repealing laws that discriminated against women, minorities and other disadvantaged groups.

In small part, she did.

“She set up Pakistan’s first (and last) separate human rights ministry,” said Iqbal Haider, who heads the Karachi branch of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

“I worked with her over the years and she was genuinely sensitive to the issues of women and minorities,” Haider said.

During Bhutto’s time in power in the late ’80s and mid-1990s, the first women’s bank was set up, giving loans to encourage women to become independent earners. She also signed and ratified the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.

In addition, Bhutto established a special unit to document violence against women, and instituted a women’s police force.

Still, such changes did little to overturn the legal and social biases against women.

“Some of us were disappointed that she didn’t do all the things we expected her to do when she came to power the first time,” said Uzma Noorani, chair of Women’s Action Forum, a non-governmental organization that has championed the rights of women.

“I think we found that where we had expected her to be open on women, she was defensive because she did not want to appear weak before a very male system, and she did not want to jeopardize her power in government,” said Noorani.

Still, women in Pakistan saw Bhutto as an inspiration.

Although the Musharraf government touted women’s rights as one the highlights of its eight-year rule that began in 1999, many saw its efforts as cosmetic.

While it reserved seats for women in the provincial and national legislatures, “women’s direct participation in politics increased only nominally,” according to the International Crisis Group, an international think-tank.

With few options remaining, an apparently reformed Bhutto appeared to be a godsend. In her eight-year absence, she had not only observed rising militancy in Pakistan, she seemed to have absorbed lessons from her less than perfect periods in office.

“For a country like Pakistan where we are entrenched in patriarchy and religious forces, to have a moderate force and a woman was huge,” said Noorani. “We have lost that and it’s a vacuum I don’t think anyone else can fill.”

As a politician who was able to draw massive crowds to her rallies even in male-dominated frontier areas, people saw Bhutto as the only one who could bring liberalism and democracy to the region.

Countless women and men depended on that hope as suicide bombings, Islamic pressures and militancy were on the rise.

At an informal prayer service outside her Karachi home two days ago, Mussarat Khan sobbed loudly, grieving for her fallen “sister.”

“She gave women like me a reason to come out of my home. As a leader, she could have saved Pakistan. She could have rescued us women.”

The loss today is both political and personal.

“The future of Pakistan could have been affected, completely changed under her,” said Shafiq, fearful that justice is once again out of her grasp.

“She could have taken us out of our plight, but now we fear it is dark again.”

Popularity: 3% [?]

As pall begins to lift across Karachi, ex-governors join candlelight vigil held outside Bhutto’s home
January 01, 2008
Sonya Fatah
THE TORONTO STAR

KARACHI, Pakistan–For more than two months after Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan, crowds thronged her Karachi residence. Several layers of security prevented access into the high-walled fortress-like home.

But three days after her assassination, a pall of gloom hung over Bilawal House, named after Bhutto’s 19-year-old son and recently announced political heir of her party, the Pakistan Peoples Party.

As nightfall descended on the city, a small crowd gathered outside Bilawal House for a candlelight vigil. Flickering flames from candles set on a white cloth-covered table surrounded a framed photograph of Bhutto, a symbol of hope in a country that has faced serious internal turmoil all year.

“No one is in a mood to celebrate the new year,” said Iqbal Haider, of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan as people around him chanted slogans of support for the slain former prime minister.

“But we wanted to use the occasion to pay tribute to Benazir Bhutto and to hope that the next year will be a better one,” Haider said.

For many people, both in Pakistan and overseas, the return of Bhutto signalled hope for a more liberal and open-minded Pakistan. Losing her at the close of a tumultuous year seemed to the many gathered at Bilawal House to be a particularly bad omen for the country.

Their speeches, laced with despair, reflected a new low in the country’s internal political and security situation.

“We had rested a great deal of our hopes on Benazir Bhutto especially with the rise of extreme elements in the country,” said Rev. Shafiq Kanwar of Karachi’s Trinity Church.

“As a Christian, it is my faith to pray for our leaders and hope that peace may come to Pakistan but I don’t feel good. It’s been a really bad year.”

The elite gathering of mourners, comprising former governors, human rights workers, and civil society representatives placed their hopes for a brighter future in a few candles that lit up the fading image of Bhutto.

Not all Pakistanis were as affected by the opposition leader’s sudden death. Many, particularly those from posh neighbourhoods such as Clifton, waxed eloquent about the corruption charges against her and refused to accept her death as a national tragedy.

“They are making a martyr out of a woman who robbed the country blind,” said a 26-year old Karachiite who did not want to be named. “Frankly, I am indifferent to her death.”

As police set up roadblocks across the city’s main roads in preparation for violence on New Year’s Eve, a few dogged partygoers were still working out their evening plans, oblivious of the impact of the past few days on most of the city’s residents.

Prices of basic necessities such as eggs, wheat flour and vegetables skyrocketed as mob violence hindered the supply of produce.

But by yesterday a semblance of order had returned to Karachi as shops, banks and gas stations reopened.

“We have this feeling that we are immune to how the common man suffers and what happens to him,” said Rafique Malik, who works in Toronto and was in Karachi visiting family and friends.

“We just want to preserve that system,” Malik said.

For most Pakistanis, however, Bhutto’s death came as a shock.

“She was the voice of the people and she was the voice of the elite,” said a member of the Women’s Action Forum, the non-profit group that organized the candlelight vigil.

“She was against militancy and extremism and she wanted to bring back light to Pakistan.”

Popularity: 2% [?]

Food stores open briefly during lull in rioting
December 30, 2007
Sonya Fatah
The Toronto Star

KARACHI, Pakistan–Vigilante groups kept watch over Karachi’s troubled neighbourhoods yesterday, one day after rioting left the normally bustling southern port city in a state of paralysis.

Bands of young men culled from the ranks of the Pakistan People’s Party kept a 24-hour vigil in select areas as paramilitary Pakistan Rangers, deployed on the city’s streets under shoot-to-kill orders, appeared on the scene.

Slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto’s fortress-like home named Bilawal House, after her eldest child, which was brimming with activity and the centre of the party’s election campaign until Thursday evening, was shrouded in darkness.

Ismail Gabol and Shehzad Baloch, both 18, joined about 30 other youth members of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in the city’s Lower Gizri neighbourhood in keeping peace in an area where passions were quickly ignited by news of Bhutto’s assassination.

“We’ve been here since last night,” said Gabol. “We’re working with the Rangers here to avoid any unnecessary shootings and prevent looting.”

For the first time in two days, provision stores were granted curfew-style operating hours so the city’s residents could stock up on food and other necessities.

Friday’s widespread looting and rioting substantially decreased across Karachi yesterday as communities collected in area mosques to offer funeral prayers for Bhutto.

Still, some areas remained tense.

Three people were killed and more than 20 others injured in Lyari district, a PPP stronghold, and an area that is still recovering from the aftermath of the Oct. 18 attacks on Bhutto’s homecoming parade. More than 40 of those who died were from the Lyari area.

Scores of young men armed with weapons prevented traffic from penetrating the area’s inner streets.

“We don’t want to give PPP a bad name,” said Nasir Khan, 35, a party worker flagging down stray cars with his right hand and wielding a weapon in his left. “We’re making sure there is no trouble. There has been a lot of unnecessary looting so we are maintaining the peace.”

Incidents of vandalism were also recorded yesterday in Karachi’s port and northern districts.

Popularity: 2% [?]

The twice-elected, twice-deposed Pakistani leader knew very well the risks she was taking
The Toronto Star, December 28, 2007
Sonya Fatah

When Benazir Bhutto left Rawalpindi’s Liaquat Bagh park after addressing a rally yesterday, she appeared buoyant, almost victorious as she waved to the crowd that had gathered to hear her champion the cause of democracy less than two weeks before Pakistan was expected to elect its new leader.

Seconds later she lay in a pool of her own blood, her dream of leading the country again brought to a premature end as an unidentified gunman shot her in the head and chest before blowing himself up.

When I met Bhutto five months ago in her three-bedroom central London apartment, she appeared relaxed and confident, counting off the days before her return from an eight-year long self-imposed exile.

It was an exciting time for Bhutto, 54, twice-elected and twice-deposed prime minister of Pakistan, who found herself rediscovered and courted by international governments and the media. As President Pervez Musharraf’s power and popularity began to wane, Bhutto had crept into the vacuum, convincing foreign delegations and governments that if the war on terror had to be won in Pakistan, it had to include the people of the country.

“I don’t think the military can tackle extremism,” she told me over a cup of tea in her living room. “(Musharraf) and I speak from different vantage points. He needs the extremist issue to legitimize his rule. I don’t. I need the people’s support so I need to wipe out extremism … to regain the trust and love of the people.”

As Bhutto wove a romantic story about the people of Pakistan, it was difficult not to believe her sincerity.

Her home was modestly decorated and without an elaborate security system. Her media adviser, a former Pakistani ambassador to Britain, answered the door and led me into the living room where there was little, if any, opulence on display. Bhutto, I was told, was just getting ready. She was due to address an influential group of policy advisers after our meeting. Tea was served by the only other person in the house, a maid who had been with the family for decades.

Ten minutes later, Bhutto strode into the room, apologetically. “I’m so sorry I’m late,” she laughed. “I was putting on all this television makeup because I thought I was going to be on camera.”

It was a reprimand aimed at her aide, but gently executed. She was meant to sit on a chair across from me, but she quickly disbanded with formalities and came to share the sofa with me “so we can be more relaxed.”

She spoke in soft, measured, yet urgent tones, bending forward to come closer when she wanted to make an important point.

If anything, her attitude reflected the change in her own circumstances. A year earlier, Bhutto had been relegated to Pakistan’s history books. But after Musharraf committed a series of national and international blunders, Bhutto quickly became a mainstream player, a potential queen on Pakistan’s erratic chess board of key figures.

“I’m willing to take the risk (of being arrested),” Bhutto had told me, when asked about the possibility of being handcuffed upon her return to Pakistan in October if talks between Musharraf and her party failed, and a long list of corruption cases against her remained in place. “I’m willing to take that risk for the people of Pakistan because I’ve spent my whole life serving the people of Pakistan.”

When she finally returned to Pakistan, she sobbed as she descended from the plane and raised her arms to the heavens in thanks. She survived a massive suicide blast during her homecoming parade that killed scores of supporters from her Pakistan People’s Party. She had not been arrested but her life was clearly in danger.

Afterwards, addressing a small group of journalists in her Karachi home, Bhutto said she was willing to pay with her life if that was the cost of restoring democracy. She would happily join the ranks of those who had died on Karachi’s main thoroughfare while supporting the cause of democracy.

Bhutto’s life journey, which ended at Liaquat park, had hardly been a straightforward one.

Her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, became Pakistan’s first popularly elected prime minister but was toppled by the military in 1977 and later hanged for the murder of a political opponent.

Bhutto’s political career began in earnest in 1988, when Gen. Zia ul Haq, who hanged her father and ruled with an iron fist over Pakistan for 11 years, died in a mysterious plane crash.

Bhutto, who had spent several years in prison and in exile under Zia, returned to Pakistan in 1986. When Zia died two years later, she was elected prime minister by a large majority. Bhutto was 35 and the first Muslim woman to rule the country. On the streets of Pakistan, the euphoria was palpable.

To mark the end of 11 years of military rule, people danced in the streets blaring a PPP song, “Long live, Long live, Long live Bhutto and Benazir,” a tribute to her father and to her future career.

But the promises of a new Pakistan were quickly defeated after charges of corruption were filed against Bhutto and her husband, Asif Zardari. By 1990 her government had been dismissed.

She returned to power in 1993, only to be ousted again three years later on similar charges of corruption.

Until the end, Bhutto claimed the charges were false, part of a political vendetta to weaken her.

After Musharraf toppled her successor Nawaz Sharif in a coup in 1999, Bhutto quietly left the country. Over a period of eight years she moved between Dubai and London, tirelessly working to regain her foothold in the international community. It was only after serious tensions arose in Pakistan in March over Musharraf’s sacking of the country’s top judge that eyes turned to Bhutto.

She negotiated a difficult amnesty with Musharraf that quashed corruption charges against her and permitted her return in October.

It was never going to be easy. Bhutto’s triumphant return was short-lived when a suicide bomber struck her homecoming parade killing 140 people. It was a wake-up call for Bhutto who appeared shaken but even more determined to continue on her journey.

She seemed to have thought matters through in her London apartment as she talked about a need to change Pakistan’s foreign policy and move with the times, about combating terrorism without military force, and about addressing, even, corruption.

“The last time I could not contain the military or the intelligence because the power was not with me,” she said.

“I’ve lived physically outside the country but … mentally and emotionally within the country,” she said, insisting that although her feet had not been on the ground, the distance had not alienated her from Pakistan or its people.

“You know, politics began as a duty for me,” she told me. “My father used to say that politics was a romance for him, a romance with the people of Pakistan. For me, politics was a duty but now it’s become a passion … because so many people I know have been brutally murdered – like my father and my brothers.”

Indeed, the Oct. 18 suicide attack only fuelled that passion. “Having lost so many people, people who were close to me, people whom I ate with, people whose little children I saw, it’s really become a passion for me, that we have to succeed. So, I don’t think of the risks. I think of all those people who are with the people, who are with me. It’s their love, their strength and their sacrifices that drive me on.”

Popularity: 3% [?]

The Toronto Star, November 20, 2007
Sonya Fatah

LAHORE, Pakistan–A counter-coup from within the military puts President Gen. Pervez Musharraf under house arrest.

The country’s vice army chief has resigned.

Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan has been murdered by the country’s intelligence agencies.

With Pakistan’s rumour mill working in overdrive under emergency rule, it’s becoming harder than ever to separate fact from fiction. Draconian regulations imposed by the country’s military rulers have muzzled the media, forcing Pakistanis to rely on the word of mouth – and its modern equivalent, the cellphone text message – as a source of news.

The rumour mill has long been a font of information for Pakistan’s 160 million people, as it is in many developing countries where censorship restrains the media. But the latest strictures on Pakistan’s previously vigorous media have created an information vacuum that is perfect for wild rumour.

Musharraf was its first target. As police went about making mass arrests, a rumour swept through Pakistan’s urban centres that the general had been put under house arrest. “Musharraf has been toppled in a counter-coup,” read one mass mailing as word spread.

With no television media to confirm or deny the rumour and government officials keeping mum, the news quickly gained credibility.

The tall tale forced Musharraf to demonstrate he was in control and he called the rumour “a joke of the highest order.”

“It’s very confusing to glean what is true and what is not,” said Anam Anjum, 17, a student of graphic design at the University of Punjab.

And so, the rumour mill churns on.

“Musharraf flees country in an American plane,” was one message that made its rounds in the early days of emergency rule. Then, Gen. Kayani, the vice army chief, was said to have resigned.

When former cricket star Imran Khan escaped house arrest a week ago, news quickly spread that he hadn’t gotten free. Rather, he’d been murdered by the country’s ruthless intelligence agencies.

When, days later, he emerged, unscathed, at a student protest rally on the University of Punjab’s campus, that story was put to bed.

Rumour-mongering isn’t unusual in developing societies, says Dr. Gulzar Shah, an associate professor of sociology at Lahore University of Management Sciences.

It’s not just political news and conjecture that is passed on from person to person in developing societies, says Shah.

“People are reliant on informal institutions for everything. They borrow money from friends and family, not banks. Their parents and relatives babysit their children, not babysitters. Even news is preferred by word of mouth.”

Still, rumours aren’t always innocent by-products of a complicated political situation. Often, they are planted by the government itself or by opposition parties to create exactly that result.

Last September when Musharraf was on an overseas trip, a massive power outage set off rumours of a coup. Many Pakistanis saw him as masquerading a book tour in the United States and Canada as an official trip paid for by Pakistan’s not-so-healthy coffers. It was not difficult to believe that unhappy generals in the military’s top brass had unseated him.

“Rumours do very well when people have no reason to believe formal sources of information,” says Shah. “A rumour can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Its consequence can be very real and it can be used to shift the balance in someone else’s favour.”

Now that Pakistan’s most-watched news channel, GEO TV, has been shut down and the government’s most articulate critics are in police or intelligence custody, the rumour mill is likely to churn up plenty more good yarns.

“The name Musharraf makes my blood boil,” said a storeowner in Lahore’s busy Anarkali bazaar. “But anyway, it doesn’t matter any more. I have it from a top source that he is on his way out. The military had had it with him.”

Popularity: 2% [?]

Many have little faith in leaders they suspect are fighting for their own vested interests
The Toronto Star, November 17, 2007
Sonya Fatah

LAHORE, Pakistan–While Pakistan’s politicians are jockeying for power and preening for the press, many of the country’s 160 million people are coming to see the fracas as a farce. The result is increasing disillusionment, frustration and apathy on the streets of major cities.

“I’m so confused about what is going on in the country right now,” said a law student at the University of Punjab in Lahore who did not want to be named.

“One day, (opposition leader Benazir) Bhutto says something; the next day she says the complete opposite. (President Pervez) Musharraf says he is going to stay as Pakistan’s leader. Then he says he might leave.”

Many Pakistanis believe that the events of the last few weeks are an elaborate drama scripted in the United States and staged under its direction. Whatever the results, many say they feel alienated from the political process, and have little faith in leaders they believe are fighting for their own vested interests.

“Our elite class is entirely in charge,” said Agha Mohammad Ayaz, 54, a Lahore-based businessman. “The rest of us have no ability to influence the law or anything. If that system doesn’t change, and the issues aren’t addressed, we’re heading for disaster.”

A history of misleading, unaccountable leaders has hobbled the political system.

“We’ve got no leaders,” said Karachi-based columnist Ardeshir Cowasjee, 81, rattling off the names of politicians and their transgressions.

“We have Benazir Bhutto – she’s robbed the nation. Then we have Altaf Hussein – he’s an extortionist. Nawaz Sharif? He thinks that he is God’s son. We have Imran Khan, who can play good cricket and otherwise nothing.”

Not surprisingly, the absence of effective, sustained leadership has also alienated youth across the country.

“I don’t really care what happens when this whole drama is over,” said Azqa Rehamn, 18, a second-year art student at Punjab University.

“There are a lot of people here who don’t even know who the prime minister is right now. And frankly we don’t care.”

As the political crisis worsens, an elaborate spin campaign is fostering widespread cynicism.

The government of Punjab, Pakistan’s richest and most populous state, for instance, is on a mission to flaunt its accomplishments.

The faces of Musharraf and the chief minister of Punjab, Pervaiz Elahi, peer out from massive hoardings and cloth banners fluttering in Lahore’s wintry breeze.

“Golden Age of Prosperity” boasts one advertisement. In another one, Punjabi farmers look relaxed and happy as they watch a farmer dance in joy. In the background are endless fields of lush green crops.

“They think we’re dumb,” said Salahuddin, 46, a driver with a cab company at Lahore’s Farooq Hotel.

“They think we can be slapped around like sheep but it’s no longer true. The public has become much wiser to the ways of our politicians.”

Fact is, the Pakistani public no longer has to digest censored news or propaganda from the state-run news channel. Ever since the 2003 media revolution, ushered in by Musharraf himself, many have tuned in to private local channels that give unvarnished news accounts.

Many feel cut off in other ways. As Musharraf quashes student and political activity by erecting roadblocks, he prevents ordinary people from reaching their workplaces or homes.

“I just want to get to my village,” an elderly woman pleaded at a police barricade on an interstate motorway that was two kilometres from her home, on the day that Bhutto was supposed to lead a march from Lahore to Islamabad.

Along with her elderly mother, she and countless others waited seven hours by the side of the road before the barricade was removed.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Key differences in ideology, leadership may explain why Indians succeed where Pakistanis often fail
The Toronto Star, November 15, 2007
Sonya Fatah

LAHORE, Pakistan–Why has India thrived as a democracy for nearly six decades, while neighbouring Pakistan has been plagued by chronic military coups since British India was partitioned in 1947?

Sharp differences in political leadership, ideology and social institutions help explain why India has largely succeeded where Pakistan has perennially failed.

The intensely secular and staunchly democratic Jawaharlal Nehru led India for the first 17 years of its existence, arguably the most difficult period in the country’s history. There were others too – men like Sardar Vallabhai Patel who cut across caste and class lines and formed the core of India’s leadership.

By contrast, Pakistan lost its founding father, the secular-minded Mohammad Ali Jinnah, within a mere 13 months of its existence. Its first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated in October 1951.

“Pakistan died with Jinnah,” says Ardeshir Cowasjee, 81, a newspaper columnist who has spent much of his life pressing for the rule of law in Pakistan.

Into the breach stepped a succession of military men.

Gen. Mohammad Ayub Khan took the country’s reins in 1958 and stayed in charge for 11 years. After a turbulent decade following Jinnah’s death, people welcomed Khan, who gave the country much-needed stability.

Close on Khan’s heels came Gen. Yahya Khan, whose four-year stint oversaw the country’s disastrous 1971 war that ended with the loss of East Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh.

After a rare few years of democratic rule, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq staged a coup and began a U.S.-backed 11-year reign marked by the Islamization of the country that haunts Pakistan till today.

In his recent hefty book on India’s contemporary history, India After Gandhi, historian Ramachandra Guha wonders “what would (Jinnah and Liaquat Ali) have done if they had enjoyed power as long as Nehru, and if they had had the kind of supporting cast that he did?”

India’s leaders propelled the country forward through radical land reform, particularly in the states of Punjab and Haryana. Those reforms broke the traditional grip of landlords who had massive holdings and ran political fiefdoms, exploiting low-caste groups.

It wasn’t a success everywhere. In India’s Bihar state, for instance, the government’s failure to implement reforms gave steam to the often-violent Naxalite rebel movement. Despite that, India’s diversity has thrown up leaders from outside the elites, even in Bihar state, demonstrating that in India politicians can represent the disenfranchised.

Pakistan’s story is very different.

Although reforms were attempted during two different governments, they were never implemented. Most of Pakistan’s political class, including Oxford-educated Benazir Bhutto, represents its feudal aristocracy – large families in possession of thousands of hectares of land, who run their estates as absentee landlords.

In this nation of 160 million, it is hard to think of an influential leader who has risen from Pakistan’s largely poor masses.

Instead, there remains a brittle alliance between the military, industrialists, Islamists and feudals.

India’s other advantage was the former colonial administrative machine that bound the nation through a unified civil structure.

“The Indian Administrative Service had all the paraphernalia that goes with government – administration, tax collection, law and order,” says retired Brig. Rao Abid Hamid, who now works at the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

“It allowed for a healthy transition.”

Across the border, Pakistan didn’t have enough qualified officers to outfit its civil service. It had lost its Hindu and Sikh elite, who had previously staffed the bureaucracy.

“The only functioning, healthy institution in Pakistan was the army and that was misused.”

That tradition of misuse continues in Pakistan today.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is flexing his military muscle to prevent popular political parties from campaigning, demonstrating or organizing themselves.

In India, the independent election commission has pushed hard to ensure elections are free and fair.

When India’s Uttar Pradesh held its election recently, the commission sent in 72,000 paramilitary troops to prevent political gangs from disrupting the polling process for the state’s 190 million people.

Not surprisingly, Indians cherish their ability to vote their leaders into or out of power.

“India has got into the habit of democracy,” said Khushwant Singh, 92, one of India’s best-known authors and political analysts.

“We were lucky to have prime ministers who were committed to democracy … Today, we have politicians who are second-rate people but they are at least honest by the constitution.”

Popularity: 2% [?]

The Toronto Star, November 14, 2007
Sonya Fatah

LAHORE, Pakistan–Despite Benazir Bhutto’s declaration yesterday that she won’t work with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, skeptics doubt the opposition leader has finished talking with him.

After months of failed backdoor negotiations, Bhutto said she’s finally cut the cord with Musharraf, after the country’s military ruler declared her Lahore base a “sub-jail” and put her under house arrest for the second time in five days.

“Negotiations between us have broken down over the massive use of police force … There’s no question now of getting this back on track because anyone who is associated with Gen. Musharraf gets contaminated,” Bhutto said after confirming that any deal between Musharraf and her party was now a non-starter.

Instead, Bhutto is working to forge a partnership with Nawaz Sharif, whom Musharraf overthrew as prime minister in a 1999 coup. She hopes to create a coalition of opposition to lead a civil disobedience movement and to boycott the country’s upcoming elections, which Musharraf has said will be held by Jan. 9.

But a Musharraf ally says Bhutto “talks one thing but walks in a different way.

“She knows the election result will be different from what she thought,” said Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed. “That is why she is trying to create a disturbance.”

Britain stepped up international pressure on Musharraf, who imposed emergency rule on Nov. 3 in a move seen aimed at clinging on to power, backing a 10-day Commonwealth ultimatum for him to end the emergency and quit as army chief, something he said he would do once the new hand-picked Supreme Court affirms his recent re-election as president.

Bhutto also yesterday demanded Musharraf’s resignation as president. Musharraf countered that Bhutto “has no right” to ask him to resign, and said she has an exaggerated view of her popular support.

Whatever her motive, Bhutto’s declaration seems to dash hopes that the two moderate leaders would form an alliance to confront strengthening Islamic extremists.

Musharraf has defended emergency rule as necessary to curb political unrest he says is hampering the government’s fight against Taliban- and Al Qaeda-linked militants, who have been gaining the upper hand in the country’s northwest along the border with Afghanistan.

The deepening political crisis set off alarm bells in Washington, where support for a Musharraf-Bhutto deal is said to be strong. The White House has criticized Musharraf’s crackdown on dissent but sees him as a dependable partner in the fight against Al Qaeda.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte is expected to be in Pakistan soon to pressure Musharraf into lifting the emergency.

“The United States is urging your government not to throw away in weeks what it has taken years to achieve,” said Anne Patterson, U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, while addressing the National Defence University in Islamabad.

The White House said it still hoped Pakistan’s “moderate elements” could unite, despite Bhutto saying she would not try to work with Musharraf.

“The international community needs to decide whether it will go with one man or the people of Pakistan,” said Bhutto, a two-time prime minister.

As she conducted telephone interviews, thousands of riot police stood guard outside, barricading the residence where she is staying and a one-kilometre stretch alongside it, with a long row of metal barricades and barbed wire.

The house arrest took place Monday night, hours before Bhutto was to lead a people’s march from Lahore to Islamabad. Scores of Pakistan People’s Party activists were rounded up as a 20,000 strong police force tried to prevent the PPP’s public show of strength.

Insiders suggested that Musharraf’s latest spate of autocratic actions, seen by many as a last ditch effort to preserve his rule, might have sealed his fate.

“He is in a state of denial and defiance,” said Sardar Assef Ahmed Ali, who served as foreign minister under Bhutto. “Benazir tried her best and I think she’s landed well. She co-operated with the army at great political cost but his response has been so unreasonable that she now has to take Musharraf head on.”

Indeed, Bhutto worked on building alliances with the country’s opposition leaders to form a democracy movement. She is reaching out to Sharif, who is in exile in Saudi Arabia; Asfundyar Wali Khan of the Awami National League; former cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan; and Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leader of the largest Islamist party in Pakistan.

Sharif welcomed Bhutto’s comments and urged opposition parties to unite against Musharraf.

“That is the need of the hour because single-handedly to fight dictatorship is going to be a difficult task,” he said.

The proposed coalition plans to lead a civil disobedience movement and to boycott the country’s upcoming elections.

“An elections boycott will illustrate Musharraf’s sham government and make a mockery of the political process,” said Tariq Rahim, a former governor of Lahore state.

More than 200 cars set off on the 280-kilometre journey between Lahore and Islamabad, despite Bhutto’s arrest, in a symbolic show of party strength.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s state television kept Pakistani viewers as much out of the loop as possible. State news highlighted the country’s economic success and investment opportunities.

Popularity: 3% [?]