[Reader-list] The new great game

[radhikarajen at vsnl.net]

very simplistic view is that life is simple and we make it complicated, for a common man in India or Pakistan, it is the same old politicians doling out slogans, herding them for slogan shouting on daily wages , food packet and ofcourse in India booze packets.The common man slowly but steadily has understood that all the bogus opinion makers parading as journalists in electronic visual media get quick rich, by the spins they give in opinion polls,become celebrities and common man has to work till his bacjbone gets tired who ever comes to power, more over the divided society on the caste communes, faith communes and regional communes as vote banks is now hijacked by the fuedal lords, of the different castes, regions and faiths, again it is the same kicdi that is not going to deliver any good of governance and hence the voter is cynical and the common refrain of common man is whoever rules, we have to work in our jobs come rain or sunshine, for our meals.

  Unless each of us realise the power of one, get motivated another one to be united, setting aside all our castes, faiths and regions, we will not get good governance,here the values imbibed Modi is exemplary when he says he is the Chief minister for five crore Gujratis, irrespective of their caste, faith or region where they come from to Gujarath for their livelihhod. 

 Compare this to the slogans of Sonia Ki Jai, Rahul ki Jai and no Jai for the party to Bharat matha Ki Jai. Not a single slogan for Modi, that is the difference of indians voting and vote banks voting.

 In the present trend, you have a railway minister for Bihar, by Bihar and not for Bharath. You have a lame duck back entry home minister who has no guts to arrest a person for his goon acts as Home minister. A lame duck Prime minister who is keeping the kursi warm for the prince to occupy it, all in "true democratic process, what a tryst with destiny?
Regards.

----- Original Message -----
From: Wali Arifi <waliarifi3 at gmail.com>
Date: Monday, March 31, 2008 2:27 pm
Subject: [Reader-list] The new great game
To: reader-list <reader-list at sarai.net>

> An Indian View: How Pakistani Liberals Thrashed Their Homeland
> 
> Almost all Pakistani liberals, including member of women's and 
> human rights
> organizations, journalists, writers, and lawyers, are celebrating 
> a divine
> "national mandate". They have dodged the obvious question: Why did the
> majority of Pakistani voters ignore, perhaps even boycott, the 
> elections?And don't give me the self-serving claims that fear of 
> violence and suicide
> bombings discouraged a large number of people. A Majority of 
> Pakistanisdidn't vote because elections here simply give a 
> democratic veneer to rule
> by feudal and tribal coteries whose nepotism and corruption is 
> legendary.
> 
> By S. SATHANANTHAN
> 
> Wednesday, 19 March 2008.
> 
> WWW.AHMEDQURAISHI.COM
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> NEW DELHI, India—A few days after the February 2008 general 
> elections, I met
> an acquaintance - an investment banker - in Karachi who looked 
> ecstatic.
> 
> He bubbled, "these elections have been so cathartic for the entire 
> nation".
> 
> 
> With a pathetically low 30% turnout of voters, I puzzled how he 
> concludedthe "entire" nation had participated in the experience.
> 
> He is not alone in slurring over the damaging implications of the 
> low voter
> turnout.
> 
> 
> 
> Almost all liberals - who include member of women's and human rights
> organizations, journalists, writers, lawyers and assorted 
> professionals -
> are thrashing about to divine a "national mandate" in the election 
> results.They have dodged the obvious question: Why did the 
> majority of Pakistani
> voters ignore, perhaps even boycott, the elections? Instead the 
> liberalstrotted out self-serving claims that fear of violence and 
> suicide bombings
> discouraged a large number of people.
> 
> About an hour after my encounter with the investment banker, my 
> wife and I
> were on our way back home in a metro cab. As the car cruised down 
> the new
> flyover that meets with Shahrah-i-Faisal we saw a couple of trucks
> over-flowing with agitated men, shouting slogans and waving flags.
> 
> We casually asked the driver what that was about; and words 
> cascaded out of
> his mouth as if he had been waiting for the flimsiest excuse to 
> unburden his
> misery. "Just wait and see all the politicos will come out of the 
> woodworkto make our lives hell. We don't need any elections for 20 
> years, just a
> disciplined ruler. We are not made for elections, we
> need the stick to keep us in line. And if after 20 years we still 
> haven'tlearnt then I would say we hand the country over to 
> America. What else can
> we do? But at least let's give it a try for 20 years."
> 
> He wanted to continue: "I am not a pro-Musharraf man but I have to 
> say if he
> put ten per cent in his pocket he put ninety per cent into this 
> country. We
> can see it all around. Never in my life had I seen the highways so 
> safe -
> women drive on them at night".
> 
> I think the 70% of the country that didn't vote is like Attaullah, 
> our taxi
> driver. They don't believe elections serve any useful purpose for good
> reasons. Elections have entrenched the status quo; they bestowed a
> democratic veneer to rule by feudal and tribal coteries whose 
> nepotism and
> corruption is legendary, whilst the 70% remained mired in poverty.
> 
> For weeks and months liberals cried themselves hoarse demanding 
> "free and
> fair" elections. They made dire predictions that pre-poll rigging had
> already begun and alleged darkly in private that President Pervez 
> Musharrafhas received expert advise on the subject from U.S. 
> President George W.
> Bush's campaign staff, who deftly executed pre-poll rigging in Florida
> during the 2000 U.S. presidential election.
> 
> 
> Their own exalted duty, asserted some liberals, is to minimize 
> manipulationsso that the 2008 general elections accurately reflect 
> the will of the
> Pakistani people; but in fact they hoped the voters, muddled by 
> the sympathy
> factor following the PPP leader Benazir Bhutto's assassination, 
> would usher
> in a PPP government. But liberals also feared that, despite their 
> strenuousefforts, President Musharraf and Pakistan Muslim League 
> (PMLQ) would
> nevertheless rig the elections in their favor, as they were 
> alleged to have
> done in 2002. Some liberals gleefully looked forward to again 
> wielding the
> democracy stick against the President and the anticipated new PML(Q)
> government.
> 
> But Gen. Musharraf, in the capacity of Chief Executive, had 
> delineated the
> next two stages in his road map to build the foundations of 
> democracy. In
> the second stage he intended to hold the offices of both Chief of 
> Army and
> President, which he did. In the final stage, he said he would doff the
> uniform and ensure free and fair general elections. He kept his 
> word. And to
> the consternation of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Muslim
> League-Nawaz (PMLN), he blocked their rigging ploys.
> 
> 
> 
> By all accounts, the 2008 general elections were more free and 
> fair than
> those held by the two parties when they alternated in power during the
> 1990s.
> 
> Born-Again Democrats?
> 
> 
> Having screamed for genuine elections, the liberals have to live 
> with the
> results: namely, the return of PPP's Asif Zardari and PML(N)'s 
> Nawaz Sharif,
> both of whom have controversial antecedents in Pakistani politics.
> 
> Almost seven years ago,
> columnist-turned-politician-turned-columnist-turned-politician 
> again, Ayaz
> Amir, had posed the following rhetorical questions: "Does any
> newspaper-reading man in Pakistan doubt Benazir's and Asif's 
> guilt? Does
> anyone think they got no commission from the Swiss firm, SGS-
> Cotecna? Does
> anyone doubt the financial acumen of the then ruling couple who turned
> Islamabad into an open auction mart where every deal, no matter how
> outrageous, was on offer provided the right palms were greased?"
> 
> 
> 
> Amir recalled, "the longstanding love affair between GHQ and the 
> Sharifs(the Sharifs having been discovered and groomed for great 
> things by General
> Zia himself, Lt-Gen Jillani, Lt-Gen Hamid Gul and a whole line of 
> minorgeniuses in ISI)...The Sharifs' notions of government were 
> intenselyprivate: which is to say, have your own man at every key 
> post. They began
> with commissioners and police DIGs, the dregs of both services 
> pandering to
> their whims and enriching themselves in the process ... In the 
> person of
> Justice Qayyum at the Lahore High Court they had the closest thing 
> theycould get to a personal judge. Division of family assets, 
> balancing of huge
> bank loans against dummy collateral, tightening the noose around Asif
> Zardari and Benazir: the
> only judge who could handle these sensitive matters was Justice 
> Qayyum".
> And Amir concluded: "The common factor between both parties is 
> gangster-ism
> and corruption. Shahbaz Sharif resembled nothing so much as a 
> Mafioso don.
> What does Asif Zardari look like? In any Godfather sequel he can 
> easily get
> a part. As for moneymaking it is hard to figure out who beat whom: 
> the PPP
> leadership or the Muslim League? My own guess is the Sharifs were
> professionals: subtle about their money. Zardari left a
> trail, which goes all the way to Rockwood, French submarines, Amer 
> Lodhi,and my favorite grand admiral, Mansur-ul-Haq." (Dawn, April 
> 20, 2001).
> 
> Liberals have been baying for President Musharraf's resignation partly
> because he, as an army general, overthrew the democratically 
> elected Prime
> Minister Nawaz Sharif in October 1999.
> 
> 
> 
> But Rifaat Hamid Ghani documented the near universal welcome 
> people had
> extended to Gen. Musharraf at that time:
> 
> 
> 
> "There is no doubt the ouster of Mr. Nawaz Sharif ... was 
> welcomed, and the
> primary reason was the constitutional amendment Mr. Sharif was 
> seeking (and
> which politicos like Mr. Kasuri and Syeda Abida Hussain had 
> endorsed) that
> united civil and moral legislative and executive inquisitorial 
> powers in the
> prime minister's office, in what was touted as the paradigm of a 
> true Emir.
> The common Pakistani, as distinct from those gracing the treasury 
> benches,had no truck with twisting religion into justifying 
> totalitarianism. They
> could see the way elected parliament was leaning and the military 
> takeoverwas a happy release from Mian Nawaz Sharif's emerging 
> fascistic theocracy."
> (Dawn, Oct. 25, 2004).
> 
> Benazir had not been far behind. She donned the headscarf to placate
> Islamists; and her government provided funds and granted diplomatic
> recognition to the Afghan Taliban regime in 1995. During the run-
> up to the
> 2008 elections liberals wanted the Pakistani
> people to believe that the same Zardari and Sharif are in effect the
> 'farishtas' who would lead the country to the promised democracy-
> land; that
> they could resurrect the pre-Emergency judiciary, set its 
> independence in
> stone and force President Musharraf out of office.
> 
> But the PPP had politicized the judiciary in 1996 when Benazir 
> appointed her
> favorite as Chief Justice ignoring more senior judges. Sharif's 
> subsequentrun-ins with judges do not instill confidence either.
> 
> 
> "During his second stint in power with his a 'massive mandate'," 
> reminiscedArdesher Cowasjee, "Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif wished 
> to rid himself of an
> awkward Chief Justice of Pakistan, Sajjad Ali Shah. So he 
> consulted his
> confidantes. On November 5, 1997, as recounts Gohar Ayub Khan in his
> recently published book, Glimpses into the Corridors of Power, 
> Nawaz "asked
> me to accompany him to the PM's House. In the car, the PM put his 
> hand on my
> knee and said, "Gohar Sahib, show me the way to arrest the Chief 
> Justice and
> keep him in jail for a night".
> 
> 
> 
> Naturally, Gohar was "shocked" and advised him against even 
> thinking about
> it. But deep-thinking Nawaz thought further, and on November 27, 
> 1997, he
> had his goons
> physically storm the building of the Supreme Court of Pakistan 
> while Sajjad
> Ali Shah
> was hearing a contempt case brought against him (Nawaz) and then 
> proceededto engineer, with the help of Sajjad's brother judges, 
> the successful
> removal of their Chief Justice." (Dawn, Aug. 5, 1997).
> 
> As Masud Mufti noted, "The parties do not have an effective or 
> long term
> commitment to democracy, an independent judiciary, merit and 
> public welfare
> ... [they offered] lukewarm support to the lawyers' movement for the
> restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and other 
> judges."(Dawn, Mar. 10, 2008).
> 
> 
> 
> The track record of PPP and PML(N) are grotesquely undemocratic; 
> and they
> have blocked and will continue to block an independent judiciary 
> that could
> challenge their authoritarian excesses.
> 
> To cover up their ill-advised opposition to President Musharraf, 
> after the
> elections liberals are desperately wriggling to reinvent Zardari 
> and Sharif
> as 'democrats'.
> 
> 
> 
> Ayesha Siddiqa enthusiastically dubbed the politya "democracy in
> transition." (Dawn, Feb. 28, 2008), presumably under the elected 
> leadersZardari and Sharif, together with Awami National Party 
> (ANP)'s Asfandyar
> Wali Khan and lesser figures, if at all they form a coalition 
> government.
> 
> 
> Self-aggrandized, another analyst and former foreign secretary, 
> Tanvir Ahmad
> Khan: "Let there be no mistake. We are resurrecting a state that 
> all but
> perished" (Dawn, Mar. 1, 2008).
> 
> 
> 
> "The importance of Mr. Zardari," gushed S.A. Qureshi, "will be 
> determined by
> his success in spelling out a charismatic vision for each 
> geographical area
> [of the country] and how he intends to deliver it." (Dawn, Feb. 
> 27, 2008).
> 
> 
> 
> Worse still, in their haste to lay claim to the curative effects of
> democracy, Pakistani liberals distorted the victory of the ANP in 
> the North
> West Frontier Province (NWFP); they made the outlandish contention 
> that the
> defeat of the alliance of religious parties, the Muttahida Majlis-
> i-Amal
> (MMA), proved once again that the vast majority of voters reject 
> Islamists.
> 
> 
> But extremists are not exclusive to religious parties. In fact 
> they are very
> much in control of mainstream PPP and PML(N) and, as we saw above, 
> are far
> more skilled in promoting Islamisation than the flatfooted 
> Islamists in
> religious parties.
> 
> 
> 
> What the NWFP election results in fact show is that local Pukhtun
> nationalism over-rode general Islamic identity, a development with 
> importantparallels to the primacy of
> Bengali nationalism in the former East Pakistan. The hapless 
> liberals have
> yet to discover this.
> 
> The fact of the matter is that liberals may reinvent till they are 
> blue in
> the face but neither Zardari nor Sharif would ever become the 
> stuff of
> democracy. When confronted with this reality, they fall back on 
> what is now
> the post-election 'wisdom': holding regular elections, claim 
> liberals, is
> the indispensable learning process leading to a democratic polity. 
> Thisassertion raises a host of questions.
> 
> On Ballot-Box Democracy
> 
> Are elections society-neutral? That is, do they have the same or 
> similaroutcomes irrespective of the history, culture and class 
> structure of diverse
> societies?
> 
> 
> 
> Even a cursory survey of countries would show this is untrue. What 
> is true
> is that elections - ballot-box democracy - legitimize and entrench the
> status quo, which is particularly problematical in pre-modern (feudal,
> semi-feudal and tribal) and authoritarian societies.
> 
> Many Pakistani liberals routinely point to India as evidence of 
> how people
> by participating in regular elections, uninterrupted by military rule,
> schooled themselves in democracy.
> 
> 
> 
> This utterly absurd parallel ignores the dominance of the modern
> entrepreneurial class, which is buttressed by a burgeoning middle 
> class that
> inherited the crucial lesson of the anti-colonial freedom 
> struggle: namely,
> that rights are never given; they are always taken.
> 
> 
> 
> The third condition is that no single ethnic group dominates the 
> state and
> armed forces.
> 
> 
> 
> The single largest group, the Hindi-speaking people, is not more 
> than 35 per
> cent of the population in the most optimistic assessment; in 
> effect every
> ethnic group and nationality is a minority. So the Hindi belt 
> learned the
> hard way it cannot ride roughshod over other peoples and 
> ethnicities (after
> early bruising attempts at Hindi hegemony, spearheaded by using 
> Hindi as
> official language, failed in the 1950s); in the process the major 
> non-Hindi
> peoples and nationalities carved out the political space to reform the
> post-colonial state; and the process continues today. The modern class
> structure, historical experience of struggle, weak ethnic hegemony 
> and a
> reformed post-colonial state constitute the foundation of the 
> culture of
> democracy that has taken root in India; these conditions have no 
> parallel in
> Pakistan.
> 
> The appropriate comparison is with Sri Lanka, which is a living 
> proof that
> ballot-box democracy, in the absence of modernist pre-conditions, 
> would in
> all likelihood deliver the opposite of genuine democracy.
> 
> 
> Regular, largely free and fair elections have been held in that 
> country for
> more than a century (beginning in 1933) and incumbent parties have 
> beenregularly put out of office. The military never took power. 
> The population
> has a very high literacy level (92%). But the dominant class almost
> exclusively from the Sinhala ethnic group is a semi-feudal 
> oligarchy steeped
> in pre-modern pageantry.
> 
> 
> 
> The historical experience of 'peaceful' transfer of power from the 
> Britishto Sri Lankans in 1948 was devoid of the lessons of 
> struggles for political
> rights. And the Sinhala ethnic
> group is a dominant 70 per cent of the population and controls the 
> state and
> armed forces. So it confidently rejects reforms of the 
> centralized, unitary
> post-colonial state that are essential to accommodate the democratic
> aspirations of other peoples in the island. All four factors 
> combined to
> smother prospects, if any, for the development of a culture of 
> democracy,the absence of which is the main reason for the growth 
> of armed resistance
> by Sinhalese working classes (1971). Tamils (1976) and, more 
> recently, by
> Muslims (1989).
> 
> 
> 
> Not surprisingly the unreformed post-colonial state has, under 
> guise of
> fighting "terrorism", transmuted into a military-bureaucratic 
> authoritarianstate. Sri Lanka's
> pre-modern class structure, the paucity of anti-colonial 
> struggles, ethnic
> hegemony and the unreformed post-colonial state have strong 
> parallels in
> Pakistan.
> 
> From its birth, Pakistan has been under either bureaucratic-
> authoritarian or
> military-authoritarian regimes. The elected assemblies serve as the
> institutional interface between the regimes and the people and are 
> dominatedby feudal and tribal leaders and notables, who indulged 
> in the charade of
> ballot-box democracy while collaborating with successive
> regimes to legitimize their exercise of political power and to 
> feather their
> own nests.
> 
> 
> 
> For historical and cultural reasons the Pakistani people did not 
> inherit the
> lessons of anti-colonial struggles in British India. The 65 per 
> cent strong
> Punjabi ethnic group controls the state and the armed forces to the
> detriment of the democratic rights of other ethnic groups. To 
> consolidateits power, the Punjabi ethnic group retained the 
> centralized post-colonial
> state virtually unchanged and further concentrated power in Islamabad.
> 
> 
> 
> As in Sri Lanka, in Pakistan too the culture of democracy is non-
> existentnot despite ballot-box democracy but in many ways because 
> of it.
> 
> Perhaps the Pakistani liberals' most glaring duplicity is their 
> willingnessto mislead the people of Pakistan into believing that 
> the country has a
> political party system on which foundation a free and fair 
> election-based
> democracy could be built. The cruel reality is that so-called 
> politicalparties are feudal outfits that autocratic feudal/tribal 
> rulerscontrol with an iron fist and, therefore, cannot deliver the 
> democracydividend.
> 
> 
> 
> In a refreshing break from the liberals' shibboleth, Kunwar Idris made
> forthright observations after the 2008 elections about the acutely
> undemocratic rule of succession by inheritance in the major parties:
> 
> 
> 
> "The mantle of the PPP's leadership has fallen on Benazir's 
> widower Asif
> Zardari till their son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari...comes of age. Sibling
> Shahbaz Sharif will head the Muslim League's parliamentary group 
> until Nawaz
> Sharif is constitutionally eligible to become prime minister for a 
> thirdterm. Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi is succeeding his aging cousin and
> brother-in-law, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, as the president of his 
> faction of
> the Muslim League while their sons Wajahat Hussain and Munis Elahi 
> wait in
> the wings. The leadership of Wali Khan's ANP and Samad Achakzai's 
> MAP has
> also been inherited by their sons. Amir Haider Hoti, who has been 
> nominatedto become the chief minister of NWFP, is also a youth of 
> Wali Khan's family.
> 
> 
> 
> Religious parties, with the rare exception of the Jamaat-i-Islami, are
> similarly mired in feudal inheritance practices. Members of the 
> councils or
> caucuses of parties who ought to
> promote inner-party democracy "have hardly ever shown any 
> inclination to
> elect their leaders for they themselves are nominated by the party 
> bossesand not elected by the general body of members."
> 
> In short, "the difference between a prime minister and a military 
> ruler is
> one of origin and not of values or accountability."
> 
> 
> 
> Idris concludes: "The parties which are not democratically 
> organized, quite
> obviously, are neither qualified nor inclined to establish 
> democracy in the
> country. They cannot safeguard the fundamental rights of the 
> citizens ...
> when their own members do not have them." (Dawn, Mar. 9, 2008).
> 
> 
> Adds Masud Mufti: "More than a 100 political parties still follow 
> the same
> dictatorial patterns that revolve around a single person, or 
> family. Their
> epicenter is active in dubious deals with the establishment to the 
> completeexclusion of other members." (Dawn, Mar. 10, 2008).
> 
> But liberals and particularly human rights and civil liberties 
> activistseffectively whitewashed the feudal monoliths as 
> democratic political
> institutions. None of the liberals, either individually or through 
> theirorganizations, has campaigned to expose the anti-democratic 
> dinosaurs that
> the political parties actually are.
> 
> 
> 
> Indeed there was not a whimper of protest from liberals, including the
> much-touted legal
> fraternity, against the autocratic rule and succession by 
> inheritance within
> the parties. Instead they have championed the parties as hallowed 
> vehiclesof democracy and betrayed the people's fundamental rights, 
> largely because
> liberals themselves are rooted in the same feudal/tribal social 
> milieu.President Musharraf's political modernization project 
> threatens their
> archaic world. Not surprisingly they exploited his unwise 
> confrontation with
> the judiciary to undermine his authority and thereby discredit his 
> visionfor a far-reaching structural change.
> 
> Towards Structural Change
> 
> The core issue of democracy in Pakistan is structural change, 
> which, in the
> context of politics, are always both cause and consequence of power
> struggles, both internal and external power struggles. Power 
> struggles throw
> up losers and winners; and losers often grow into implacable 
> enemies; and
> President Musharraf earned many of them.
> 
> Islamists were quick to label Gen. Musharraf an American puppet 
> dancing to
> orders from the Bush administration. The immediate reason was that he
> torpedoed the alliance between Sharif and the minority Islamist 
> faction in
> the armed forces. Further reasons are that he banned extremist 
> organizationsbetween 1999 and 2001 and launched the war against 
> Jihadis.
> 
> 
> The liberals, pathetically oblivious to this decisive power 
> struggle in the
> country's history, joined the Islamists' chorus to pillory Gen. 
> Musharraf as
> an unelected leader. It reached a crescendo post-9/11; they 
> bereted him as
> an American stooge when he withdrew Pakistan's support for the Afghan
> Taliban regime.
> 
> 
> Almost simultaneously Gen. Musharraf, backed by the modernist majority
> faction, moved against Islamists within civil society who 
> challenged the
> army. These are armed, battle-hardened Pakistani Jihadis who 
> returned from
> Afghanistan flushed with victory over the Red Army and obsessed with
> repeating the success against the Pakistani army and ushering in 
> an Islamic
> revolution in the country. A few benchmarks of that power
> struggle are the assassination attempts against President Musharraf,
> Waziristan Operation and siege of the Red Mosque; and suicide 
> bombers; and
> the power struggle is continuing it to this day. Liberals, not 
> known for a
> grasp of the dynamics of power, faulted President Musharraf for 
> not dealing
> with Jihadis early on and, when he did take action, spun around to 
> blame him
> for human rights violations!
> 
> President Musharraf also attempted several other structural 
> changes between
> 2000 and 2007. He proposed an amendment to blasphemy laws but without
> success. His attempt to remove the undemocratic religion column in 
> passportssimilarly fell foul of the religious establishment. He 
> succeeded to push
> through legislation to protect women's rights. He
> also eviscerated the dreaded district-level nexus between the police,
> bureaucracy and feudals in the inherited colonial administrative 
> structure -
> which democratically elected previous leaders had left untouched – by
> introducing for the first time representative, elected local 
> governmentinstitutions (Unions and Nazims) that transferred a 
> modicum of political
> power to the poor and may well evolve into competing centers of 
> people'spower.
> 
> 
> 
> This earned him the undying hatred of the feudal and religious 
> forces, which
> intensified further when he abolished the moribund religious 
> apartheid by
> ending the system of separate electorates for religious 
> minorities. As part
> of educational reforms, he ordered school history textbooks be 
> rewritten to
> remove mindless extremist and anti-Indian propaganda inserted 
> during Gen.
> Zia-ul-Haq's rule. Indeed, by all accounts President Musharraf's
> path-breaking initiatives have improved bilateral relations with 
> India.
> Over the years, President Musharraf's reforms have thrown up numerous
> enemies from the feudal, patriarchal and religious vested 
> interests and
> anti-Indian lobbies. They can be found in the PPP and PML(N), in 
> religiousparties and civil society institutions – especially 
> professionals'associations - and in the most conservative of 
> occupations, the legal
> profession.
> 
> The New Great Game
> 
> President Musharraf made enemies outside Pakistan too. He faced a 
> majorchallenge in 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq. Washington 
> intensely pressured
> Islamabad to join the laughable "Coalition of the Willing".
> 
> 
> The U.S. bribed (loan write-offs) or coerced (aid cut-offs) most 
> countriesin that decrepit "Coalition" It is to the eternal credit 
> of President
> Musharraf that he nimbly sidestepped American demands. For 
> instance, at one
> stage he agreed to send troops under the umbrella of the OIC.
> 
> 
> Politically naïve liberals promptly moaned that President 
> Musharraf was
> caving into U.S. pressure. But he calculated that diverse ideological
> stances of Muslim counties would not allow them to initiate such joint
> action and therefore Pakistan's participation cannot arise, which 
> provedcorrect.
> 
> Meanwhile Benazir, living in self-imposed exile, was busy convincing
> Washington and London that if she had been the Prime Minister, 
> Pakistanwould have naturally joined the "Coalition". Inevitably 
> Washington took a
> jaundiced view of President Musharraf's determination to strike an
> independent furrow while, of course, making positive public
> pronouncements about his role as "ally" in the War Against Terror.
> 
> In contrast, President Musharraf prioritized Pakistan's national 
> interestswhen steering the ship of state through the choppy waters 
> of the emerging
> New Great Game. His foreign policy decisions over time convinced 
> Washingtonthat under his leadership, Pakistan would not side with 
> the U.S. and Britain
> in the unfolding New Great Game to contain Russian and Chinese 
> influence in
> Central and West Asia.
> 
> 
> 
> First, he refused to isolate Iran. Second, he pursued the
> Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline
> in the face of stiff American opposition. President Musharraf further
> angered Americans be deepening Pakistan-China bilateral relations, 
> offeringBeijing naval facilities at Gwadar and extending nuclear 
> cooperation.
> 
> Perhaps the last straw was his success in gaining Observer Status for
> Pakistan in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Russia 
> and China
> are spearheading the SCO, which includes four other countries: 
> Kazakhstan,Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan; Iran and India 
> are also Observers. The
> SCO is widely perceived as a rising eastern
> counterweight to western security and economic groupings.
> 
> To rub salt into the wounds, President Musharraf refused 
> permission for
> western intelligence agencies to interrogate Dr AQ Khan and firmly 
> rejectedWashington's repeated demands that U.S. troops should be 
> allowed into
> Pakistan to hunt down Osama bin Laden and his Taliban associates.
> 
> But Anglo-Americans were not in a position to overthrow President 
> Musharraf.Instead of a "regime change", they sought a "regime 
> adjustment" in which he
> continues as President but is weakened sufficiently to serve their 
> interestsin the region. That is the logic underlying the two major 
> demands of their
> sustained pro-democracy campaign. The first demand was that President
> Musharraf must doff his uniform; that would remove
> his power base in the army. The second, that he should hold free 
> and fair
> elections expected to sweep away his political power base, the PML(Q).
> 
> Washington and London couched their neo-imperialist demands in 
> tear-jerking
> rhetoric about the welfare of the people of Pakistan. Anyone who 
> believesthat shibboleth should have his or her head thoroughly 
> examined. For them,
> Pakistan is nothing more than a pawn in the New Great Game and 
> Americans are
> looking for nothing less than a pliable regime in Islamabad with great
> urgency, given the debacles they face in Iraq and
> Afghanistan.
> 
> 
> 
> As Harish Khare perceptively observed, "The Americans would want 
> to enlarge
> their military presence in Pakistan. After all, it does not 
> require any
> great diplomatic expertise to understand that the American carping 
> over the
> 'free and fair' election in Pakistan is part
> of Washington's strategic design: the Musharraf regime must be 
> kept on its
> toes, it should be continuously badgered into feeling that its 
> legitimacyultimately depends on American certificates of good 
> conduct, and, having
> been rendered so vulnerable, it should be pressured into letting the
> American/NATO forces have the run of the Pakistan-Afghan border in 
> pursuitof the Taliban militants." (The Hindu, Feb. 14, 2008).
> 
> Pakistan's deracinated liberals - a ghastly hangover from the 
> colonial past
> - willingly weighed in on the side of Anglo-Americans and operated 
> primarilythrough human rights and civil liberties organizations 
> and the
> English-language media. Nudged by U.S. and British diplomats, and not
> forgetful of western sources of funds and frills, before the 2008
> elections liberals obediently harassed President Musharraf about his
> legitimacy and mindlessly cheered Benazir as the dyed-in-the-wool 
> patriotand democrat. Blissfully ignorant of the unfolding 
> realpolitik, journalists
> wrote reams on everything that's wrong in the country under the 
> President. A
> human rights activist, Asma Jahangir, emailed "friends of Pakistan"
> worldwide ostensibly to pressure U.S. not to support President
> Musharraf but in fact to rally them against the President. 
> Lawyers, led by
> Aitzaz Ahsan, repeatedly implored America to help re-establish the 
> rule of
> law. Another activist, Hina Jilani, materialized opposite the 
> doorstep - 10
> Downing Street - of the erstwhile colonial ruler begging for 
> "justice". Not
> to be outdone, Imran Khan and his former British
> wife Jemima joined the neo-colonial flotsam and jetsam in London.
> 
> The celebrated liberal Benazir, ever willing to serve Anglo-American
> interests, obligingly let it be known that if she were Prime 
> Minister she
> would allow U.S. intelligence agencies access to Dr A.Q. Khan 
> (Dawn, Sept.
> 26, 2007) and invite U.S. troops into Pakistan to hunt Osama bin 
> Laden.
> 
> In short, she willingly prostrated herself as America's doormat; 
> and U.S.
> Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared that she couldn't see 
> democracyin Pakistan without Benazir. So the Bush administration 
> arm-twisted
> President Musharraf to grant her an amnesty against all charges 
> and allow
> her to re-enter Pakistani politics.
> 
> Washington's intentions were quite transparent. President Musharraf,
> weakened with the help from liberals, should remain at his post to 
> prosecutethe War on Terror and to keep the unruly politicians in 
> line, with a little
> help from the army. Benazir was to take over as Prime Minister 
> with control
> over foreign policy and prostitute Pakistan as the Anglo-American 
> camp's'cat's paw' in the New Great Game.
> 
> By assassinating Benazir, the Al Qaeda threw into disarray the Bush
> administration's designs to bring Pakistan to heel. Zardari has 
> reiteratedPPP's support for the U.S. After the 2008 elections, 
> Anglo-American
> diplomats in Islamabad are feverishly working to cobble together a 
> puppetcoalition government led by PPP and PML(N) as a counter 
> weight to President
> Musharraf.
> 
> What Next?
> 
> My wife and filmmaker Sabiha Sumar ran into activists who had 
> virulentlydemanded President Musharraf must reinstate the pre-
> Emergency judges.
> 
> 
> Sabiha: So willPPP reinstate the judges?
> 
> Woman: That's just the point. Now they are saying that they won't.
> 
> Sabiha: Sounds a bit like the Hudood Ordinances.
> 
> Woman: Well that was different. Because they didn't have a two-third
> majority in Parliament.
> 
> Sabiha: And they still have that excuse.
> 
> Woman: But you see Nawaz Sharif is saying that he will reinstate 
> the judges.
> So they [PPP] should agree with that.
> 
> Sabiha: So why don't they?
> 
> Woman: That's the thing!
> 
> Sabiha: So I would rather go with the one who has done something 
> like bring
> women into Parliament, make the Hudood Ordinance ineffective....
> 
> Woman 1 and 2 in chorus: Then why didn't he do more?!
> 
> Woman: He could have done everything but he didn't. You know political
> parties don't have so much power. They have to be careful. But 
> this man had
> all the powers then why didn't he just kill the jihadis.
> 
> Woman's husband: And the thing is that they actually like him in 
> India.[Editor's note: Visit the campuses of Chinese universities. 
> Pakistan'sMusharraf is hero to young Chinese women and men.]
> 
> 
> In Pakistan today liberals should be relieved that President 
> Musharraf held
> free and fair elections. But they are not. The election results 
> have forced
> liberals to confront their monumental folly of helping to elect 
> despotic and
> corrupt rulers. So they are turning around and biting the 
> President's leg,
> blaming him for not being a full-blooded dictator. President 
> Musharraf is
> damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.
> 
> 
> Also, the warriors of democracy are faltering. Liberals are losing
> enthusiasm for re-instating that pillar of democracy - the 
> judiciary - since
> the Bush administration has signaled its opposition. The PPP too 
> is waffling
> on the issue. Speaking to the press, "Zardari parried several 
> questions on
> issues like reinstatement of deposed judges ... the PPP leader 
> said that the
> matters would be decided by parliament." (Dawn,
> Feb. 20, 2008).
> 
> 
> 
> For the same reason, liberals' hysterical cries for the President's
> resignation have subsided.
> 
> 
> 
> Thus lamented Ahmad Faruqui: "Sadly, many Pakistani political 
> leaders and
> even some analysts have begun to argue that judicial restoration 
> is not in
> the country's interest." (Dawn, Mar. 10, 2008).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And Zardari is backing the U.S. position and Sharif has also 
> fallen in line.
> So, in their Mar. 9 Murree Summit Declaration they skillfully 
> passed the
> buck on reinstating the judiciary to the National Assembly: "The 
> restorationof deposed judges as on November 2, 2007, shall be 
> brought about through a
> parliamentary resolution to be passed in the
> National Assembly within 30 days of the formation of the federal
> government." (Dawn, Mr. 10, 2008).
> 
> 
> 
> Even a cursory knowledge of fratricidal Pakistani politics will 
> show that
> the resolution will not see the light of day. In other words, 
> reinstatementhas been shelved as per instructions from the U.S. 
> embassy. (Flat-footed
> analysts predictably missed the obvious sleight of hand and 
> gloated the
> Declaration is a serious set back to President Musharraf.).
> 
> The backsliding continues. While addressing the Sindh High Court Bar
> Association, Aitzaz Ahsan glibly abandoned the demand for justice for
> victims of the Karachi bloodbath: "I have forgotten the May 12 
> mayhem," he
> advised the lawyers, "and would like to request that it is better 
> for all of
> us to forget that tragic incident." (Dawn, Mar. 6, 2008).
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