Haqeeqat.Org Face it…

Vilani Peiris and Keith Jones
May 22, 2007

The Bush administration has reiterated its support for Pakistan’s military strongman, General Pervez Musharraf, in the wake of bloody, government-orchestrated attacks on opposition protesters in Karachi, May 12 and 13, that left more than forty people dead.

The violence, which was perpetrated by armed thugs of the pro-Musharraf Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), was aimed at stamping out a mounting wave of anti-government protests. But on Monday, May 14, most of Pakistan’s major cities, including Lahore, Peshwar, Quetta, and especially Karachi, were paralyzed by a general strike called by the opposition parties to protest the previous weekend’s violence. There is a “complete strike in Karachi,” conceded the police chief Azhar Faruqi to the Guardian. The next day large numbers of teachers demonstrated in Lahore against government plans to privatize the education system.

Musharraf’s attempt to sack the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has served as the trigger for the anti-government protests. But the protests are the product of deep-rooted popular opposition to Musharraf’s authoritarian rule, support for and complicity in the US’s wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq, and his implementation of neo-liberal economic policies, which have increased economic insecurity and social inequality.

At a press briefing last Wednesday, US State Department spokesman Tom Casey pointedly refused to make any criticism of Musharraf or his political allies for unleashing terror on the streets of Pakistan’s largest city, then reaffirmed Washington’s support for the man who doubles as Pakistan’s president and chief of armed services.

In response to a multi-part question that solicited US reaction to the Karachi violence and suggested there might be “concern” within the administration that Musharraf is “losing the handle on the situation,” Casey began by observing that the violence had abated, without breathing a word as to who had fomented it, and concluded by declaring, “I don’t think our assessment has fundamentally changed about him [Musharraf] or his role in Pakistani society.”

The previous day, US special envoy Ronald Neumann had pressed Pakistani officials during meetings in Islamabad to step up efforts to combat the Taliban in Pakistan and to cooperate more closely with Afghanistan’s US-installed government. Neumann told reporters Musharraf had not reached his “full capacity” in fighting “terrorism and extremism.” But he also made clear that Musharraf remains a pivotal ally of the Bush administration in the “war on terror”—that is in the US drive to gain a strategic stranglehold over the oil supplies of Central Asia and the Middle East. “I don’t think Musharraf has reached the end of the line,” declared Neumann.

A former US ambassador to Kabul, Neumann said Washington would provide additional funding to Pakistan to increase military patrols on its border with Afghanistan.

According to a report in Sunday’s New York Times, the Bush administration has rejected calls from the US military for Washington to tie the payments that it makes to the Pakistani military for logistical support for the Afghan occupation and fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan to “Pakistan’s performance” in the so-called war on terror.

These payments, which are dubbed “coalition support funds,” are said to have averaged $80 million per month since October 2001, or equal to about a fifth of all Pakistani military spending, and to have surpassed a total of $5.6 billion.

The Times linked the White House’s refusal to threaten Islamabad with a cut in “coalition support funds” to its fears for the future of the Musharraf regime: “The administration, according to some current and former officials, is fearful of cutting off the cash or linking it to performance for fear of further destabilizing Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who is facing the biggest challenges to his rule since he took power in 1999.”

Musharraf’s March 9 suspension of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry on corruption charges was a transparent attempt to stage-manage his “re-election” as president. Although Chaudhry had given his legal blessing to Musharraf’s 1999 coup and other patently unconstitutional acts, he has authored a number of decisions that cut across the government’s agenda since becoming chief justice. This caused Musharraf to fear he couldn’t count on Justice Chaudhry to provide a judicial fig-leaf for his phony re-election this fall by a presidential college comprised of the legislators elected in military-manipulated elections in 2002.

But the general-president’s attempt to rid himself of the uncooperative judge has backfired, becoming a catalyst for popular protests, while serving to alienate much of the legal-juridical establishment.

Justice Chaudhry has a long, dishonorable record of serving Musharraf and the military and as a judge has upheld the capitalist socio-economic order that has condemned Pakistani’s toilers to abject poverty. If he has emerged as something of a popular figure, it is because his defiance of the general-president and pro-democracy speeches stand in marked contrast with the actions of the various bourgeois opposition parties. While repeatedly promising to launch a “final struggle” against the Musharraf regime the opposition has in fact continued to cooperate with it.

Thus the six-party Islamacist alliance, the MMA, voted in December 2003 for constitutional amendments sanctioning Musharraf’s 1999 coup and his remaining head of the armed forces while president and, to this day, the MMA serves in a coalition government in Baluchistan alongside the principal pro-Musharraf party, the PML (Q).

Meanwhile, Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistani People’s Party (PPP), which poses as a progressive even “socialist” party, has long been involved in negotiations to strike a deal with Musharraf under which the PPP would be given a share of power in return for supporting the general remaining president till 2012.

The Bush administration and the British government have been actively promoting a PPP-Musharraf partnership. Bhutto, for her part, has been courting the Bush administration by promising to be a more effective supporter of the US “war on terror” than the current Pakistani regime.

But there are many obstacles to a deal between Musharraf and Bhutto, including fears within the PPP that support for their party, which already suffered a huge erosion due to its implementation of IMF policies when it led Pakistan’s government in the late 1980s and 1990s, would hemorrhage were it to throw in its lot with Musharraf.

Moreover recent events have caused Bhutto, at least for the moment, to publicly downplay the imminence of a deal with Musharraf. No doubt she calculates that she can extract better terms from a weakened Musharraf, but also that before committing her party to partnering with the general she should first find out whether he will be able to ride out the storm. Speaking with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio service last week, Bhutto said now was not the time to negotiate with Musharraf about “an emerging partnership.” But she could envisage working with him if he “were to make the compromises necessary to respond to the sentiments of the people.”

Bhutto is now urging Musharraf to “call a round-table conference of all political leaders, including the exiled prime ministers, to evolve a consensus for transparent elections.”

Musharraf, meanwhile, has vowed that neither Bhutto, nor Nawaz Sharif, whom he deposed in his 1999 coup, will be allowed back into the country before the elections.

And in what has all the trademarks of a contract-killing, Hammad Raza, a registrar of the Supreme Court was murdered May 14 at his home in the capital of Islamabad. Raza was to be a key witness for suspended Chief Justice Chaudhry. One of Chaudhry’s lawyers, Tariq Mehmood, told Reuters, Raza “was witness to many things, like the chief justice said in his petition that some files were removed from his chamber on the day he was suspended.” Raza’s family is challenging police claims that the murder was the result of a burglary. They report that he was under “much pressure” in the days prior to his murder.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/paki-m22.shtml

By Vilani Peiris
May 14, 2007

Karachi, a city of 10 million and Pakistan’s commercial hub, was convulsed by gun-battles Saturday, as Pakistan’s US-backed military strongman, President Pervez Musharraf, resorted to deadly violence in a bid to quash the growing popular challenge to his rule.

According to press reports, at least 36 people were killed and more than 140 injured when thugs allied with the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), a pro-Musharraf party, attacked crowds gathering to show support for the country’s “suspended” Chief Justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

In March, Musharraf moved to have Chaudhry stripped of his post as head of Pakistan’s Supreme Court on trumped-up corruption charges. Chaudhry, like the rest of Pakistan’s top judges, has a long record of giving a judicial fig-leaf to Musharraf’s anti-democratic and unconstitutional actions, including the 1999 coup in which he seized power. But Chaudhry recently issued a number of rulings, including striking down the privatization of Pakistan Steel Mills, that cut across the government’s agenda and caused Musharraf to conclude he could not rely on Chaudhry to provide a judicial blessing for his stage-managed “re-election” as president later this fall.

On the evening of Friday, May 11, the MQM blockaded the main arteries into Karachi with trucks, buses, and containers. The next morning thousands of MQM activists armed with sticks roamed Karachi’s streets warning lawyers, who had invited Chaudhry to address the Sindh High Court Bar Association, and opposition activists, who were intending to greet the suspended chief justice, to stay in their homes.

But with all the major opposition parties—including the Pakistan People’s Party, the Pakistan Muslim League, the Awami National Party and the six-member alliance of Islamic fundamentalist parties (the MMA)—endorsing the call to greet Chaudhry, thousands took to the streets in defiance of the MQM threats and a massive mobilization of security forces.

An AP reporter says he saw MQM supporters firing at crowds of protesters from buildings in Karachi’s Golden Town district and some among the anti-Musharraf demonstrators firing back. A second major clash, including an exchange of gunfire and the setting ablaze of buses and motor vehicles, occurred at Malir Hal, where Musharraf opponents came face to face with those on the way to an MQM-counter rally.

Although the authorities had mobilized some 16,000 security personnel, they did nothing to stop the MQM attacks. Some newspapers are reporting that the security personnel were specifically ordered not to intervene. A low-ranking policeman told the Daily Times, “There were some orders and our weapons were taken from us. It was as if we were put here just to watch.”

Over the past two months security forces have repeatedly roughed up journalists covering protests against Musharraf’s attempt to oust Chaudhry. On Saturday, MQM thugs assumed this role. The private Aaj television channel showed pictures of its office under fire. Journalist Talat Hussain told BBC, “We are under attack. We have seen no security force. No one has come to help us.”

As intended, the violence forced Chaudhry to abandon his plan to speak before the Sindh High Court Bar Association. After waiting in an airport lounge for nine hours, he returned to Islamabad.

The MQM’s counter-rally, however, went ahead unimpeded.

The MQM, which has a long history of political violence, claims to represent the mohajirs, Urdu-speakers who moved to Pakistan from north India when the subcontinent was divided on communal lines in 1947-48. It controls Karachi’s city government and is part of pro-Musharraf coalition governments nationally and in Sindh, the southern province of which Karachi is the capital.

By contracting out the bloody suppression of Saturday’s protest in Karachi to the MQM, Musharraf hopes to be able to deny responsibility and avoid bringing further public opprobrium on the military.

But this is a transparent ruse.

Speaking from behind a massive bullet-proof enclosure to a government rally in Islamabad Saturday evening, Musharraf laid full blame for the bloody events in Karachi on the opposition, while holding up the MQM’s rally as evidence of the popular support for this regime.

Musharraf claimed to be shocked and grieved by the numbers of dead and wounded, then proclaimed, “But what has happened today in Karachi is because of the chief justice who went there ignoring the advice of the government over the issue.”

The president, who doubles as head of Pakistan’s armed forces, then made a thinly-veiled threat of further violence, saying that the gun-battles in Karachi were the result of the obstinacy of the opposition. “If they think they are powerful, then they should know that the people’s power is with us.”

Musharraf also made an appeal to Pakistan’s lawyers, who have spearheaded the protests over Chaudhry’s suspension. In a reference to the government’s recent reversal of its opposition to the suspended chief justice’s demand that the Supreme Court as a whole hear the corruption allegations against him, Musharraf declared, “Now that the full court will be deciding the issue, the lawyers’ fraternity should stop protesting and stop playing into the hands of some disgruntled and unwise people.”

Musharraf’s speech was also significant in that he confirmed that he intends to have the legislators now sitting in Pakistan’s provincial and national assemblies re-elect him to a five year-term this fall, even though these legislators were chosen in an election in 2002 that was manipulated by the military. Such a procedure is in flagrant violation of the constitution as is Musharraf’s continuing to serve as both president and Chief of Pakistan’s Armed Services.

Musharraf said, “After a few months, I will be contesting for the second term in office and then [i.e. after he has been returned as president] the elections of the national and provincial assemblies will be held.”

Musharraf denied press reports that he will soon declare a state of emergency, claiming that the people are with him. But on Sunday, Interior Secretary Syed Kamal Shah was reported to have said that the government has authorized paramilitary troops to shoot anyone involved in serious violence. The Sindh government, meanwhile, has invoked an old British colonial statute, Section 144, to ban all political gatherings.

Washington has said nothing about last weekend’s violence in Karachi. But in recent weeks, top Bush administration officials have voiced strong support for Musharraf and lauded him as a staunch US ally in the “war on terror” and a democrat.

The strength of the protests against Musharraf’s attempt to sack the chief justice took the opposition by surprise. While the opposition parties have for years been promising to mount a “final struggle” against the Musharraf regime, they all in fact have an ambivalent relationship with Musharraf and Pakistan’s military. The opposition parties are terrified that a confrontation with Musharraf could provide an opening for the entry of Pakistan’s toiling masses into political struggle.

The MMA remains the government of North West Frontier Province and in a coalition government with the pro-Musharraf PML (Q) in Baluchsitan. Benazir Bhutto, the PPP’s leader for life, has recently publicly admitted that she is involved in backroom talks with the government aimed at reaching an accommodation with the Musharraf. As part of these maneuvers, the PPP leadership had been holding meetings with International Republican Institute, an arm of the US Republican Party.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/pakis-m14.shtml