Pakistan After Musharraf: Same As It Ever Was, Only A Bit More So; Kinda Like What We Have Here, But Different

Celebrations were widespread and general in the wake of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's resignation -- but they were cut short by a bomb and a bombshell.

The joy which made the Pakistanis dance -- the thrill of finally seeing the back of a former military dictator -- was not confined, as the AP would slyly have us believe, to Islamist militants, or even Islamic fundamentalists.

As you can see in these photos (courtesy of Reuters), opposition to Musharraf ran much deeper and broader than that.

Crucially, the pro-democracy (read: anti-Musharraf) movement in Pakistan has been led by the country's lawyers (the men in black suits in these photos), strongly supported by the Pakistani journalists. (Those looking to "compare and contrast" Pakistan and the USA could find worse places to start.)

Compare And Contrast

Curiously, according to Ray McGovern, much of the big American media managed to report Musharraf's resignation without mentioning that he was under severe threat of impeachment.

McGovern provides excellent and relevant context pertaining to the threat of impeachment leveled against Richard Nixon in 1974, the collapse and rapid resignation which followed, and the surge of support enjoyed by the Democratic party in the wake of that resignation -- all this in an article which fairly begs the Democrats in Congress to get some impeachment proceedings happening here and now.

But he's shouting into a black hole, I fear. Congress has no illusions about what would happen in America if impeachment proceedings were initiated against the most despicable human being ever to defile the Oval Office, and that's exactly why Nancy Pelosi and John Conyers and all the others are sitting on their hands.

They've enabled this long torturous march to bankruptcy and tyranny. Do we now expect them to turn against the success they've labored so long and hard to achieve? We might expect it, but it's not going to happen. So why do we have these expectations?

It's like watching a schoolyard bully beat up one little kid after another, then turning to the guy holding the bully's coat and saying, "Hey, aren't you gonna do something about this?"

No one but a fool would be astonished if the guy holding the coat replied, "I'm doin' it right now, sucka!"

It leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I see that, and I see it a lot.

You can't appeal to their conscience because they have none.

You can't appeal to their better judgment because it's not a mistake; it's a deliberate policy. We've seen it over and over and over; the only difference is that they're getting a little bit more subtle about it.

And you can never hope to deal with the problem until and unless you see it clearly and spell it out in short words, so:

The Democrats aren't just holding the coat; they're planning to wear it next.

The Bomb

Meanwhile, back in Pakistan:

The celebration was short-lived for some; more than 20 people were killed and at least another 30 were injured in an alleged suicide bombing of a hospital.

The bombing was reported in the big American media in the same context-free style that was so prominently displayed in the "coverage" of Musharraf's resignation.

Jane Perlez of the New York Times reported it this way:

In an attack claimed by the Taliban within the tribal region on Tuesday, a suicide bomber ripped into the emergency room of the district hospital in Dera Ismail Khan, a town near Waziristan, killing 25 people and injuring 30, said the inspector general of the police in the North-West Frontier Province, Malik Naveed Khan. He said there was some evidence that the suicide bomber was linked to Waziristan, the base of the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud.

Pay close attention to this report, if you please. Your eyes will want to glance over it quickly, and understandably so. You've seen this report before, many times. It's the standard, boilerplate, terrorist attack report, in which only the names and dates are changed.

The common features are always common: in particular, there's always a suspect; but there's never a motive.

If you care to dig a bit, you can find evidence of a motive behind this particular attack; but you won't find such evidence in the formerly so-called paper of record (because according to the official story told to Americans, terrorists don't have motives).

So you'll have to go to a more reliable source, such as the Pakistani daily, Dawn, which first reported (courtesy of Reuters):

A bomb went off in the compound of a hospital in northwest Pakistan’s Dera Ismail Khan town Tuesday killing 20 people, a senior government official said.

“We don't know whether it was a suicide attack but the bomb went off in the compound. I have initial reports of 20 dead,” said Syed Mohsin Shah, a senior city government official.

Supporters of a Shi'ite Muslim leader were protesting outside the hospital when the bomb went off.

The leader was shot dead earlier Tuesday and his body taken to the hospital.

... and later (courtesy of AFP) added a few more details:

A suicide bomber blew himself up Tuesday at a hospital in the northwestern Dera Ismail Khan town, killing at least 23 people, police said.

The explosion happened as people gathered to protest over the death of a man in a suspected sectarian attack in the town, said provincial police chief Malik Naveed Khan.

“There are 23 confirmed dead and up to 20 wounded. We have found the legs of the suspected suicide bomber,” Khan told a private television channel.

Provincial police spokesman Riaz Ahmed said the dead included civilians from the crowd of protesters and policemen who went to the hospital to provide security.

Is the New York Times unable to find out such details? I didn't have any trouble doing it, and the NYT has a large professional staff. So it can't be any harder for them than it was for me. But they don't want these details, because these details don't fit into the story the NYT is telling. And changing the story would be a lot more difficult than omitting a few details.

But if there's a story they want to tell, no stretch is too big.

So Jane Perlez can tell us that a policeman said

... there was some evidence that the suicide bomber was linked to Waziristan, the base of the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud ...

In this case, as usual, the connection to the preferred suspect is tenuous at best. It's not as if Waziristan were a hotel, and Baitullah Mehsud owned it. Waziristan is a huge area; how "some evidence" could link a crime to such a large region, and therefore to a single man, is puzzling at best.

But not for long. The seemingly gratuitous mention of Baitullah Mehsud is both telling and opportune, since it gives me the chance to remind you that Baitullah Mehsud is almost certainly a CIA asset.

If I also remind you that analysts predict increased American pressure against Pakistan now that their main ally in the region is gone, you might put two and two together and wonder whether the pressure has already been stepped up. KA-BOOM! HaHaHA!

The Bombshell

The post-resignation joy was short-lived in another, very different way: the governing coalition has suddenly run aground on the rocky coast of irreconcilable differences.

The show-stopping rift between the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), led by Asif Ali Zardari, and the PML-N, Nawaz Sharif's faction of the Pakistan Muslim League, concerns the status of the Supreme Court in the wake of Musharraf's November declaration of emergency.

The reason for Musharraf's declaration -- and the reason for all the other unconstitutional and anti-democratic moves which followed it -- was obvious: the country had been gripped by a popular pro-democracy movement, and the Supreme Court, led by the indomitable Chief Justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, was about to rule Musharraf's October "re-election" illegal.

So Musharraf declared a national emergency, clamped down on the media, arrested hundreds of political opposition leaders, and sacked all the federal justices -- including those on the Supreme Court -- who didn't support him in this transparently illicit attempt to retain power.

Musharraf eventually lifted the state of emergency but he didn't reinstate the court. The chief justice remained under house arrest. And elections were scheduled under these conditions.

So the PML-N campaigned -- and did quite well -- on a pledge to reinstate the judges who were sacked by Musharraf.

But the PPP -- which ran on deception and public sympathy and promised nothing, but gained even more seats in the parliament -- won't support them on this point.

It's a no-brainer -- or at least it would be if the PPP wanted to establish anything resembling legitimate democracy. But that's not what the PPP is about -- not anymore!

Down Memory Lane, Quickly

Readers with functional long-term memories may recall that former PPP leader Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan last fall after spending nearly a decade in ritzy foreign hotels as a fugitive from justice (which the Western media complicitly called "self-imposed exile").

Her return was made possible by an American-brokered "reconciliation" deal which removed any possibility that she might be held accountable for two terms of epic corruption as Prime Minister. In return for this immunity, she promised to support Musharraf's continued illegal tenure as president.

Shortly after Benzair Bhutto returned to Pakistan, she was assassinated, as most of us remember. But most of us don't know that high-level American officials didn't expect her to live long there, as John F. Burns reported in the New York Times:

[B]efore the Western world passes judgment, many Pakistanis would say, it might well look at its own manipulations, including the role the United States played in placing Ms. Bhutto on the path that led to that last rally in Rawalpindi.

For months, Washington had brokered contacts between General Musharraf and Ms. Bhutto that aimed at having her return, win an election, and lend a democratic facade to a government that would remain, in important ways, under military control. The plan matched American imperatives in the struggle against Al Qaeda, and American officials who pushed for it saw little problem in encouraging General Musharraf to grant an amnesty for Ms. Bhutto against corruption charges stemming from her time as prime minister.

But the Americans knew that she went home at enormous risk. When she spoke in Aspen at a lunch of prominent American political, business and media leaders only weeks before her death, talk at one table turned to the chances of an assassination. “I’d say she’s a dead woman walking,” this reporter, long an acquaintance of Ms. Bhutto, said after talking to her about the hazards of going home. “Yes,” a powerful Washington insider with close links to the administration replied. “We think so, too.”

But that was the plan ... and this was the result: Shortly after her death there was a long and fractious meeting of the PPP leadership. At that meeting, Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, produced what's been called a "surprise will" -- a document supposedly written by [or on behalf of] Benazir Bhutto, recommending turning leadership of the party over to a teenager -- Bhutto's and Zardari's son, Bilawal Zardari.

Nobody else had ever seen this "will", and its directions were mystifying in more than one respect. Most importantly, PPP leadership had always been in the Bhutto family.

Indeed, much of the history of Pakistan since partition can be seen as a struggle between democracy and militarism, waged between the Bhutto family and their followers on one side, and the Pakistani Army and its supporters (later joined by the notorious Inter-Service Intelligence Agency, or ISI) on the other.

But through the joint miracles of political assassination and gluttonous corruption, the PPP had been transformed from a pro-democratic, anti-militaristic political force (led by Benazir's predecessors) to a pro-militaristic, anti-democratic parasite (led by Benazir herself).

Thanks to propaganda, poor communications, political tribalism and actual tribalism, the PPP has retained popular support despite the fact that it's been under corrupt "new management" for most of the past 20 years. How slowly we learn!

At 19 years of age, Bilawal Zardari was hardly fit to lead any political party, let alone the PPP. But one after another, the obstacles were lifted: POOF! He got a new name, and now he's Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. Then POOF! His father offered to "lead" the party while Bilawal continued his education. And now Asif Ali Zardari is the American sock-puppet in Islamabad. But nobody knows it, unless they read between the lines.

The lines have been clear for a long time, though. Nawaz Sharif and the PML-N have been pushing for reinstatement of the judiciary, especially Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, while the usurper Zardari and the PPP have been pretending that they might move in that direction at some future time under some future conditions, when there's no danger of a backlash from Musharraf ... but not now ... never now ... always later, always maybe, but never now.

No Excuses Remain For The Criminal Zardari

With Musharraf gone, there's no chance of a backlash, and Zardari has no plausible reason to resist a return of the pre-emergency judiciary ... but he still won't do it.

And Nawaz Sharif has had enough.

Therefore, Jane Perlez reports:

Nawaz Sharif, the leader of [...] the Pakistan Muslim League-N, walked out of a meeting [in Islamabad] and headed back to his home in Lahore, a four-hour drive away.

Party members said Mr. Sharif had delivered an ultimatum to the senior coalition party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, led by Asif Ali Zardari, to consent to the return of the chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, within 72 hours, or [...] Mr. Sharif’s party would leave the government. Mr. Chaudhry was among some 60 judges suspended by Mr. Musharraf last year.

Even by the standards of Pakistan’s hard-boiled and volatile political scene, the public discord between the political leaders was surprising, politicians said, a sign that opposition to Mr. Musharraf may have been the strongest thread tying them together.

Notice the spin technique. Far from being the glue that held PPP and PML-N together, Musharraf had been providing an excuse for Zardari. But now the excuse is exposed as hollow, and Sharif isn't waiting around to see any more of that movie.

Why won't Zardari support the restoration of an independent judiciary?

Jane Perlez reports that Musharraf made a second "reconciliation" agreement to let Zardari into the country after his wife was slain:

The basis of Mr. Zardari’s opposition to Mr. Chaudhry rests with a fear that he might undo an amnesty agreement that absolved Mr. Zardari of corruption charges, lawyers said. The amnesty, which applies to bureaucrats and politicians who faced corruption charges, was part of a package arranged by Mr. Musharraf when Mr. Zardari returned to Pakistan after his wife, the former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated late last year.

So Zardari is thoroughly compromised -- just like the Democrats!

Same As It Ever Was

Which leaves us where? More or less where we were last week -- or last month -- or last year -- but a bit poorer and a bit dirtier, lacking sleep and food and vision, as always, but a bit more so now than ever. In other words, it could be worse and it probably will be, soon. But not in the way you think.

Musharraf is gone but the vaunted threat of Pakistani nuclear weapons getting into the hands of Pakistani terrorists is still as slim as it ever was ... for at least two reasons.

One of those reasons is public knowledge: Musharraf wasn't in control of the weapons in the first place. According to the AP (via Dawn), Pakistan's nuclear weapons are guarded by a committee, and Musharraf wasn't on the committee.

“Pakistan's nuclear assets are not one man's property,” said Maria Sultan, a defense analyst and director at the London-based South Asian Strategic Stability Institute.

“Any (political) transition in Pakistan will have no effect on Pakistan's nuclear assets because it has a very strong custodial control.”

The committee, known as the National Command and Control Authority [NCCA], is served by a military-dominated organization with thousands of security forces and intelligence agents whose personnel are closely screened.

The nuclear facilities are tightly guarded.
...

“Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is in the hands of the army and the army is not changing hands, so whatever the situation was before is largely what it will continue to be,” said Teresita Schaffer, director of the South Asia Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Left out of this report but sometimes mentioned elsewhere is the fact that the NCCA is very pro-western (which means, pro-USA). We don't worry too much about them, in other words, because they're "our guys".

The second reason is not publicly acknowledged, but it's becoming increasingly clear: the terrorists are "our guys", too.

Overdue Conclusion

It's time to draw another long post to an overdue conclusion. So let's review some of the things I would have mentioned, had I thought of them earlier.

The struggle in Pakistan has typically been falsely portrayed as a battle of moderates against extremists. In this scenario, the moderates are Musharraf and Bush and their friends in the so-called "Global War On Terror". And the extremists are al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Islamic fundamentalism in general, plus anyone who wanted to get rid of Musharraf.

In fact the struggle is between moderates and extremists, but the extremists are Musharraf and Bush and their allegedly "former" friends in al Qaeda and the Taliban, plus a very tiny (and shrinking) minority which supports radical Islamic extremism.

Meanwhile, the moderates include those who support the PML-N, plus those who support the PPP for historical reasons, plus many other Pakistanis who support other moderate parties, plus a great many other Pakistanis who don't support any political party. And that's just Pakistan. There are millions of moderates and a handful of extremists in every country, of course.

The bottom line: the PPP are still in control in Pakistan -- though perhaps not by much. The PPP are pro-American, which means (among other things) that they don't support the rule of law, but they do support the military. This was Musharraf's position, this was Benazir Bhutto's position, and it comes as no surprise that it's also Asif Ali Zardari's position.

As for American policy towards Pakistan, it's quite simple, and it's very similar to American policy towards Iraq.

All the Bush administration wants to see in Pakistan is a legitimate, democratically elected government that's fully supportive of American interests.

It's impossible, of course. There's no way any government fully supportive of "American interests" could be legitimately elected in Pakistan, or anywhere else in Asia, or anywhere else in Europe ... or anywhere at all, actually.

So let's consider the alternatives, from a policy-maker's point of view. The options are stark! And the choice is a no-brainer.

The American policy elite has always preferred governments "supportive of American interests" rather than "legitimate, democratically elected" governments ... but at the same time we're talking about two deliberate lies here.

First, the considerations collectively referred to as "American interests" are, for the most part, arrangements established and maintained by stealth or coercion or overt mass murder; arrangements which grant multi-national corporations virtually unimpeded "rights" to exploit the natural and human resources of the "host" countries ... as many "host" countries as possible. It has nothing whatsoever to do with "American interests", but if they call it what it really is, will we go to war on their behalf?

Second, the American policy elite has no interest in fostering "legitimate, democratically elected" governments anywhere in the world; they just say that because they know we like to hear it -- and some of us like to hear it so much that we go marching off to war whenever they say it. But it's only a slogan.

In fact, there's nothing the American policy elite fears more than "legitimate, democratically elected" governments.

That's why all their "attempts" to "export democracy" to other parts of the world have "failed".

That's why democratically elected governments all over the world find themselves looking down the barrel of an American gun as soon as they take office.

And that's why we don't have a democracy here, either.

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Panic And Jubilation In The Wake Of Musharraf's Resignation

Now that Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has resigned, we can expect a tidal wave of propaganda -- some of it deliberately false, some well-meaning but still false -- about how nervous we should be for our future.

After all, Pakistan has terrorists and nuclear weapons. And only Pervez Musharraf could keep them apart. Or so the story goes.

We've been hearing variations on this story for years; but it's still only a story. We get it from the right and from the left:

Let's attack Pakistan; We were attacked on 9/11 by terrorists from Pakistan; Pakistan is going ballistic and we don't even have anyone left in our government who knows anything about Pakistan, let alone somebody in a position to do something...

I don't always agree with Larisa Alexandrovna but I always pay attention. Just yesterday she wrote:

[A] civil war is bad, but a civil war in the same country housing both Al Qaeda and nukes, is really bad....

[A] civil war or any serious power structure threat in another country - especially Pakistan - is a threat of epic proportions.

Forget the Russian-Georgian conflict for a moment. Forget Iraq for a moment. Forget everything for one moment and understand, that if Pakistan explodes into a power struggle, that struggle/conflict will be the match that lights a world war [...] that we are not equipped to deal with anymore....

Were we ever equipped to deal with something like that? Not within my memory. But the "if" in Larisa's analysis is a big one, in my opinion.

So while our entire nation is drunk on election scandal after scandal, and while our entire nation is being bled dry of finances and human treasure, no one - NO ONE - is watching this crisis as it unfolds. They are all too busy playing at politics to care [...]

Not true. I've been up all night watching it unfold. I've been watching it unfold for the best part of the past two years. I've written dozens of posts about it. And I've just about given up on American politics ...

But Larisa's not talking about me. At least I hope she's not talking about me. (I don't mind being called a nobody, but does it have to be in capital letters?)

No, I think Larisa is talking about the federal government. And I think this because she continues:

They are all too busy playing at politics to care and they have already long ago removed any qualified intelligence expert on Pakistan from their post. We know very well that this administration replaced qualified people with political sock-puppets who are now in positions to fuck things up even more, but certainly not to understand the brewing world crisis.

I [loathe] Musharraf and want him removed from office. But right now, any change, big or small in the region is going to be a catastrophe. A change of ISI-backed Musharraf is going to be an epic catastrophe.

I hate to pass up a chance to be an alarmist, but I don't buy the story.

My understanding of Musharraf and his role in the events of the world runs much closer to the analysis published a few weeks ago by Samad Khurram, called: "Musharraf more dangerous than Osama in the War on Terror". It starts with a shocking revelation:

The former head of the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence’s (ISI) political cell recently confessed that he was responsible for political manipulation in Pakistan’s 2002 elections that led to Islamists coming to power in two provinces and gaining 59 seats in the National Assembly. This fraud was the work of the America’s supposedly unfaltering ally in the War on Terror, General (ret.) Pervez Musharraf and his desire to paint an image of Pakistan as an extremely dangerous, unstable country ready to fall into the hands of extremists the moment he leaves.

Musharraf pretends that he is the only hope for the US in Pakistan. Closer analysis, however, suggests that his claims are far from true. In the 2008 elections—which were much freer and fairer than those of 2002—only 6 seats went to the Islamists. In addition, a secular party won the majority of seats from the North-West Frontier Province where the War on Terror is actually taking place. These results prove that the people of Pakistan are against religious fundamentalism, something the US has largely ignored. In 1999, Pakistan was a stable country with a moderate political party in power. There were no suicide bombings, no abductions by extremists, and people were free to move about without security personnel. By 2007, Pakistan was among the world’s most dangerous places. This transformation is the result of Musharraf’s long, incompetent rule.

Of primary importance, in Musharraf's long, incompetent rule, and another detail missing from almost all Western news reports: His alliance with George Bush in the clearly bogus war against clearly bogus terror has been an utter disaster -- seen as treason by many Pakistanis and rightly so, in my opinion.

Samad Khurram won't go into the dark places where I tend to dig: he's not about to remind his readers how phony 9/11 looked at the time, or how much phonier it appears in hindsight.

He's headed in the right direction:

There are many other pieces of evidence to support that Musharraf is not committed to fighting terrorism now, or if he ever was. Musharraf’s own speeches and words, such as, “[I am] not going around trying to locate Osama bin Laden and Zawahri, frankly” are the biggest confirmation of his indifference. In addition, Washington has been shocked by news reports that the majority of the funds given to Pakistan are not used for the War on Terror. This news is corroborated by widely available pictures of troops in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas moving around in traditional ‘chappals’ (open foot shoes) and poor equipment. If even a small portion of the U.S. aid were spent on weapons upgrades, bullet proof jackets, reconnaissance devices and training, the results would have been much better. The Pakistan Army would have performed better: more terrorists caught, fewer casualties and more leads to Osama bin Laden.

Over the past eight years, Pakistan has received $11 billion from the U.S. in direct aid for fighting terrorism, billions from other countries for curbing extremism and development projects, and access to secret intelligence. In response to this, Musharraf has been repeatedly diverting funds in efforts to retain his support within the army, upgrade weapons to be used against India, or pay his supporters and crackdown on political opponents. His long, highly extravagant foreign tours to publicize his book or beg for more aid are hardly helpful in fighting terrorism. [...]

Last November, on the pretext of fighting terrorism a “state of emergency” was declared in Pakistan, and resulted in a country-wide crackdown on the judiciary, media, human rights activists, and anyone who could possibly oppose Musharraf. This was followed by the release of 25 high profile terrorists including former Taliban Defence Minister Mullah Obaidullah, who has close ties to Osama bin Laden and is the highest-ranking Taliban official ever captured.

But, even having laid out all this detail, Samad Khurram doesn't realize (or won't say) just as Larisa Alexandrovna doesn't realize (or won't say) that the Global War on Terror is completely bogus: the terror is bogus and the war is bogus too.

And Musharraf's role in the bogus war on bogus terror is to be a bogus ally. In other words, he's a liability on purpose, because this is exactly what the United States needs.

Without such powerful liabilities, the bogus war on bogus terror would be over by now, and the multi-billion dollar per year "homeland security" trough would be closed as well.

Instead, Samad Khurram spins the same line we usually see:

Musharraf is a major liability in the War on Terror, yet the Bush Administration fails to see this and continues to provide him unfaltering support.

In any case, as I was saying, the bulk of the panic is confined to people far away from Pakistan.

People on the ground there don't seem too concerned.

Bloomberg says Pakistani investors like the news:

Pakistan's Karachi Stock Exchange 100 Index jumped 4.5 percent after President Pervez Musharraf resigned...

The BBC reported people dancing in the streets of Rawalpindi, and lawyers giving thanks in the streets of Islamabad. [Dawn has published ample confirmation.]

And Bilawal Bhutto Zardari says Musharraf's resignation avenges the assassination of his mother!!

But let's not get too carried away.

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Mass Resignations: Pakistani Cabinet Split Over Rule Of Law

In Pakistan, the opposition party PML-N, led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif [photo], has resigned its seats in the cabinet. This dramatic move shows enormous strain in the "coalition" government elected in February of this year.

The "coalition" is led by the PPP, which was led by Benazir Bhutto until her assassination last December, and which is now effectively in the hands of her widow, Asif Ali Zardari, although it is nominally led by their teenaged son, Bilawal "Bhutto" Zardari, who is currently in England seeking an undergrad degree.

At issue is the status of the Pakistani judiciary; Sharif and the PML-N have consistently stated that their top priority is the reinstatement of all the judges sacked by President Pervez Musharraf when he declared a state of emergency in November.

Asif Zardari and the PPP have talked about re-establishing an independent judiciary but they have thrown one roadblock after another in the way of their proclaimed goal, and in this respect their actions have spoken much louder than their words. In my view, it was only a matter of time before Nawaz Sharif -- who has seemed to see through this charade ever since it began -- obtained enough political support to make this break with the so-called "coalition".

The PML-N have not resigned their seats in parliament, so the government remains in power, although with nine of 24 cabinet positions vacant (including Finance), it doesn't seem as though the government will be able to function much, or at all. In short, the situation is very unstable at the moment.

The problem, from Zardari's point of view, is that a reinstatement of the sacked judges would put the Supreme Court back the way it was prior to the declaration of emergency: in particular, Iftikhar Muhammed Chaudhry would once again be Chief Justice. And Chaudhry, as Jane Perlez of the New York Times puts it, is a "maverick".

Perlez describes Chaudhry as a "country judge from Baluchistan" whose independence threatens the policies of George W. Bush and terror war "ally", Pervez Musharraf. The problem -- although Perlez does not and never will say so -- is that Bush and Musharraf are committed to the destruction of the rule of law, and Chaudhry, the maverick country lawyer from Baluchistan, is committed to upholding it.

Thus, any reinstatement of the Pakistani judiciary would put at risk not only the continuing tenure in office of President Musharraf, but also Pakistan's status as an ally of the United States in the so-called "Global War on Terror".

As long-time readers of this space may recall, President Musharraf was "re-elected" last October in a comic farce that clearly violated at least two (and maybe three) different laws.

Musharraf should not even have been eligible, since he was a General -- and Army Chief of Staff -- at the time. According to Pakistani law, one may only hold one office at a time; you cannot be both a soldier and an elected official at the same time, let alone Chief of Staff and President. For that matter, Musharraf's tenure in office has been illegal ever since he siezed power in a military coup in 1999. And the fact that he resigned his commission after his October "re-election" does nothing to satisfy the law he broke by running for office.

Furthermore, in Pakistan the President is elected by the members of the national Parliament and the provincial Legislative Assemblies. This is supposed to happen just after each new Parliament is elected; they then elect the President who will serve with them during their term in office. But for this cycle, Musharraf revised the timetable, scheduling the Presidential election for October 2007 and the Parliamentary election for January 2008, so that he could be "re-elected" by the same Parliament which had "elected" him in the first place. (The Parliamentary election scheduled for January was postponed to February following the assassination of PPP leader Benazir Bhutto.)

There's also a question of term limits. In Pakistan, as in the US, no President may serve more than two consecutive terms. Musharraf and his supporters claimed that his first term -- from when he siezed power in 1999 to when he arranged to be "elected" in 2003 -- was not a term at all, since he wasn't elected then. But those who oppose Musharraf have a different view.

The previous Parliamentary election was widely seen as rigged. And the notion that the same group of falsely elected Parliamentarians should be able to "re-elect" a military dictator to his third term as President seems exceptionally offensive to those who favor the rule of law. As I've been saying, the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is one of those people. Just before he was sacked, the Supreme Court announced that it was preparing to rule on petitions challenging Musharraf's "re-election". And the ruling was not likely to be favorable to the President -- this is why he declared the state of emergency and sacked the judges. So it seems quite likely that if Chaudhry were reinstated, Musharraf's presidency -- and the changes he made when declaring the emergency -- would soon be declared illegitimate.

This is not the first time Iftikhar Chaudhry has been a thorn in the sides of Bush, Musharraf and the GWOT. He was dismissed from his position amid a flurry of unsubstantiated allegations in March of 2007, after he supported the families of hundreds of people who have been "disappeared" by the Pakistani law-enforcement and intelligence agencies.

He was later reinstated after a large public show of support, but he didn't stay in office very long. "He's a threat to the GWOT," they said. And he still is.

Meanwhile, the PPP continue to play the role of faux-opposition, with Zardari apparently taking instuctions from the Americans who come to visit him every time he comes too close to supporting the rule of law or the much-ballyhooed "transition to democracy" which was supposedly represented by Musharraf's "doffing the uniform" and by Benazir Bhutto's return to the country to lead the "opposition".

In fact Buhtto's return was predicated on the proclamation of a "reconciliation order", which granted her amnsety from the corruption charges which had kept her out of Pakistan for most of the previous decade. Not wishing to show undue favoritism, the presidential order granted unconditional amnesty to many present and former government officials, effectively ending any hope of any Pakistani government official ever being held accountable for anything. Iftikhar Chaudhry might have a maverick opinion about this, as well. But we don't know much about what he thinks, because he's been under house arrest and incommunicado most of the time since November.

Meanwhile, in return for the amnesty -- and for the chance for another turn in power -- Bhutto agreed to keep the PPP in their seats last October for Musharraf's farcical "re-election". So the PPP abstained rather than resigning in protest, like the other opposition parties did.

If everyone had resigned except Musharraf's party, the PML-Q, the "re-election" would have been much more difficult to portray as "democratic". But with the most powerful opposition party on board, it was easy for the media to portray the dissenters as crackpots who just don't appreciate the wisdom of sacrificing the entire legal basis of our civilization so that a few corrupt criminal politicians can wage a bogus war without borders, killing millions of people, destroying one country after another, and making a fortune for themselves and their backers.

Democracy In Action: Slain Leader's Crown Passes To Her Son

The PPP, Pakistan's largest opposition party, has democratically chosen to honor Benazir Bhutto's lifelong commitment to democracy by democratically treating the leadership of the party as an heirloom and handing it to her 19-year-old son, Bilawal Zardari, a handsome young man who lacks any political experience, but whose political future has been well-planned for a long time.

Bilawal will democratically assume the responsibilities of his position once he has finished his degree at Oxford. His education will include private tutelage in the labyrinths of Pakistani politics. Lucky Bilawal.

While he's being groomed, the party leadership will remain in the Bhutto family, democratically resting in the hands of his father, Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto's widowed husband.

And to mark the democratic occasion, the new democratic leader-in-waiting has changed his name, adding his mother's (maiden) name, as Somini Sengupta reported in the New York Times:

The elder Mr. Zardari said his son would henceforth be known as Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.

Now, at least, nobody will ever forget who Bilawal's mother was.

According to Somini Sengupta, the elder Mr. Zardari

instructed reporters not to ask his son any further questions, saying he was “of a tender age.”

Asif Ali Zardari is not a candidate for the upcoming Parliamentary elections, so he will not be eligible to become Prime Minister.

That honor would most likely fall to PPP vice president Makhdoom Amin Fahim, although "the elder Mr. Zardari" added that this decision "would have to be made by party leaders," according to Somini Sengupta.

All this is speculative of course, and assumes that the PPP will win the upcoming election. The poll, scheduled for January 8, may be delayed by several weeks because of the assassination and the violence that followed it, most of which now seems to have subsided.

PPP leadership have already declared their intention to run; this ruins any possibility of a boycott, such as the All Parties Democratic Movement was trying to organize. As Somini Sengupta puts it:

The other main opposition party, led by Nawaz Sharif, another former prime minister, also decided Sunday to call off his previously announced boycott of the vote.

So much for the APDM. Without a united opposition -- and with no boycott of what will certainly be a rigged election -- whatever happens next cannot be much more than crude street theater, to be performed with many of the provisions of Musharraf's November 3 declaration of emergency still in place, although officially the state of emergency is over.

In effect, by choosing to participate in such a shady game, the current PPP leadership continues Benazir Bhutto's path of legitimizing the military dictatorship which only last month declared a state of emergency in order to better fight the terrorists, then arrested hundreds of lawyers and judges and human rights activists, sacked the Supreme Court, shut down independent media, and so on ...

And no matter when the next election is held, it's only for Parliament, not President. Under normal circumstances the next President would be elected by the incoming Parliament, but Musharraf has already rigged the matter so that his next term in office is assured.

And unless I am very wrong, Bilawal can go back to his studies, and his father can go back to managing his Swiss bank accounts, and Musharraf can go back to making new laws declaring his abuses legal and permanent and beyond the reach of any court, because democracy in Pakistan is not to be restored.

It could never be restored because it never existed in the first place. At best it was a dream and a hope, and perhaps also a slightly possible outcome. But the potential is long gone, because the corporate- military- terrorist establishment has already taken over in Pakistan, where the PPP has just been decapitated.

~~~

Meanwhile, the country continues to mourn the slain two-time Prime Minister, while more details continue to emerge indicating that Thursday's assassination was a state-sponsored hit, carefully planned and carefully covered up.

Athar Minallah, a board member of the hospital where Ms. Bhutto was treated, released her medical report along with an open letter showing that her doctors wanted to distance themselves from the government theory that Ms. Bhutto had died by hitting her head on a lever of her car’s sunroof during the attack.

In his letter, Mr. Minallah, who is also a prominent lawyer, said the doctors believed that an autopsy was needed to provide the answers to how she actually died. Their request for one last Thursday was denied by the local police chief.

This is from Jane Perlez in Lahore:

Pakistani and Western security experts said the government’s insistence that Ms. Bhutto, a former prime minister, was not killed by a bullet was intended to deflect attention from the lack of government security around her. On Sunday, Pakistani newspapers covered their front pages with photographs showing a man apparently pointing a gun at her from just yards away.

Her vehicle came under attack by a gunman and suicide bomber as she left a political rally in Rawalpindi, where the Pakistani Army keeps its headquarters, and where the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency has a strong presence.

The government’s explanation, that Ms. Bhutto died after hitting her head as she ducked from the gunfire or was tossed by the force of the suicide blast, has been greeted with disbelief by her supporters, ordinary Pakistanis and medical experts.

Jane Perlez writes for the New York Times.

Apparently it's OK to write reports like this for the NYT if the crime was committed in Pakistan.

Mr. Minallah distributed the medical report with his open letter to the Pakistani news media and The New York Times. He said the doctor who wrote the report, Mohammad Mussadiq Khan, the principal professor of surgery at the Rawalpindi General Hospital, told him on the night of Ms. Bhutto’s death that she had died of a bullet wound.

Dr. Khan declined through Mr. Minallah to speak with a reporter on the grounds that he was an employee of a government hospital and was fearful of government reprisals if he did not support its version of events.

Coincidence theorists like to ask "How could they keep a conspiracy quiet?"

There's the answer.

The medical report, prepared with six other doctors, does not specifically mention a bullet because the actual cause of the head wound was to be left to an autopsy, Mr. Minallah said. The doctors had stressed to him that “without an autopsy it is not at all possible to determine as to what had caused the injury,” he wrote.

But the chief of police in Rawalpindi, Saud Aziz, “did not agree” to the autopsy request by the doctors, Mr. Minallah said in his letter.

A former senior Pakistani police official, Wajahat Latif, who headed the Federal Investigative Agency in the early 1990s, said that in “any case of a suspected murder an autopsy is mandatory.” To waive an autopsy, Mr. Latif said, relatives were required to apply for permission.

In this case apparently they didn't do that; it was the chief of police who canceled the autopsy.

But then again the family didn't ask for the scene of the crime to be obliterated an hour later.

They didn't even ask for security to be pulled away from Benazir just as she left the rally in Rawalpindi.

Do you think these things just happen on their own?

Pakistan: Dangerous And Violent Nonsense In Wake Of Bhutto Assassination

The dangerous nonsense coming out of Pakistan has reached seemingly impossible new levels of absurdity in the wake of Benazir Bhutto's assassination in Rawalpindi on Thursday.

[Seemingly impossible? Maybe. But the bar has been raised yet again, and this piece has been updated (twice) with even more absurdity than the absurd original.]

The government's story of how she died changed twice in the first 36 hours after her death, and now they don't want to talk about it anymore. Their story of who did it has only changed once, and that's all they want to talk about.

In short, Bhutto's party -- the Pakistan People's Party -- blames the government, and the government blames the terrorists. Which terrorists? Who cares! But if they could be connected to al Qaeda, so much the better...

... unless they also happened to be connected to the ISI, and therefore to Musharraf, and therefore (willingly and wittingly, or otherwise) to the Bush Administration.

We'll have more on these connections -- tenuous though they may be -- below. More on the future of the PPP below as well.

The government's shifting tales of the details of the former Prime Minister's death haven't helped quell the inevitable conspiracy theories; on the contrary, they tend to implicate the government in the murder -- or at least in the coverup.

Not incidentally, three days of violent protests have left at least 40 people dead, and tens of millions of dollars of damage to thousands of buildings and other facilities, including elections offices where voters lists have been "reduced to ashes".

AFP reports:

The interior ministry insists she had no gunshot or shrapnel wounds ...

"This is ridiculous, dangerous nonsense because it is a cover-up of what actually happened," Bhutto's spokeswoman Sherry Rehman, who was involved in washing her body for burial, retorted....

"There was a bullet wound I saw that went in from the back of her head and came out the other side," Rehman told AFP.

In any case it is clear that certain factions within the government are playing fast and loose with reality.

According to Javed Iqbal Cheema, spokesman for the Interior Ministry,

“It is not important now how she died because the fact is that we have lost her and the important thing is that who killed her and how can we catch them.”

The Bangkok Post had a slightly different quote, yet quite the same sentiment:

"It is immaterial how she died," he told journalists. "What is more important is, who are the people who killed her? I think we have to uncover those people."

Saeed Shah details the ever-changing story that has now been declared immaterial in Toronto's Globe and Mail:

Babar Awan, a senior People's Party official. He said he saw her body after the attack and there were at least two bullet wounds, one in the neck and one on the top of the head.

"It was a targeted, planned killing," he said. "The firing was from more than one side."

But

Instead of pronouncing her assassinated, the latest official account gives her a much more prosaic end. Cynics suggested it was an attempt to rein in the legend that has already sprung up of Ms. Bhutto as a martyr for democracy. Others say it's an effort to blunt criticism she wasn't adequately protected.

This is the second time the story has been changed.

Just 24 hours earlier, the government had been putting forward a different account that also contradicted the People's Party version of events. It had said Ms. Bhutto was not killed by gunfire, but by flying shrapnel from the blast.

And that story didn't agree with what the eyewitnesses saw, either.

Nearly all eyewitnesses and accounts by people travelling in her vehicle agree she was first shot and had slumped back into the jeep when the blast occurred.

Amateur video released yesterday shows a gunman firing at least three shots at Ms. Bhutto followed by a huge blast, but the government says the gunman missed.

The doctors at the hospital told journalists and People's Party leaders that she had died as a result of a bullet wound to the neck. Some of the doctors apparently later changed their stories.

So the question remains: How can you catch the people who did it if you don't care to find out what they did? It's a very strange way to solve a crime, so to speak. Some people will probably say it's a good way to keep a crime unsolved.

And it's not the only sign of a coverup:

Ms. Bhutto was sent to her grave yesterday without autopsy. Her body was flown immediately from the hospital, in a sealed coffin, to the burial. So the truth of government assertion that she died in an extraordinary accident will probably never be known.

Mohammadmian Soomro, the caretaker prime minister of Pakistan, told the cabinet that Ms. Bhutto's husband, Asif Zardari, had insisted on no autopsy.

But in a case of this nature, an autopsy is mandatory under the criminal law of Pakistan, according to leading lawyer Athar Minallah - and it is the state's responsibility.

"It is absurd, because without autopsy it is not possible to investigate," he said.

Firefighters also cleaned the scene of the attack in Rawalpindi with high-pressure hoses within an hour, washing evidence away.

Meanwhile the government has released a transcript of what it claims is a conversation between Baitullah Mehsud and an unidentified tribal leader, which is says proves that Baitullah Mehsud was behind the assassination.

"We have intelligence intercepts indicating that al-Qaeda leader Baitullah Mehsud is behind her assassination," said Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema.

Mr. Mehsud is a tribal chief in the Waziristan region, on the border with Afghanistan, and the leader of Pakistan's homegrown version of the Taliban. He is said to be close to Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, who is an ally of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

According to a transcript released of a conversation between Mr. Mehsud and an unidentified religious cleric, the tribal chief conveyed his congratulations for the attack.

"It was a spectacular job. They were very brave boys who killed her," Mr. Mehsud said, according to the transcript, on being told by the cleric that three of his men were behind the assassination.

The article reprints the transcript. The empahsis is mine:

The following is a transcript released by the Pakistani government yesterday of a purported conversation between militant leader Baitullah Mehsud, who is referred to as Emir Sahib, and another man identified as a Maulvi Sahib, or Mr. Cleric. The government alleges the intercepted conversation proves al-Qaeda was behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto:

Maulvi Sahib: Peace be on you.
Mehsud: Peace be on you, too.
...
Maulvi Sahib: They were our men there.
Mehsud: Who were they?
Maulvi Sahib : There were Saeed, the second was Badarwala Bilal and Ikramullah was also there.
Mehsud: The three did it?
Maulvi Sahib: Ikramullah and Bilal did it.
Mehsud: Then congratulations to you again.
...
Mehsud: It was a spectacular job. They were very brave boys who killed her.
Maulvi Sahib: Praise be to God. I will give you more details when I come.
Mehsud: I will wait for you. Congratulations once again.
Maulvi Sahib: Congratulations to you as well.
...
Mehsud: Peace be on you.
Maulvi: Same to you.

Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether this transcript is legitimate, the flow of the conversation seems to show Maulvi Sahib telling Baitullah Mehsud who executed the attack.

Does this show that Baitullah Mehsud was behind it? One might think that if Baitullah Mehsud were responsible for the assassination, he would be the one giving the details.

And one might think the shooter shown in the photo would at least have a beard! But this is Pakistani politics after all, where nothing makes any sense at face value.

Even the alleged connection between Baitullah Mehsud and al Qaeda is in dispute.

And there's been more nonsense elsewhere, including this bit in the US, courtesy of TIME magazine:

An FBI and Department of Homeland Security bulletin sent out Thursday cited unsubstantiated reports that Lashkar-i-Jhangvi had claimed responsibility for Bhutto's assassination. An FBI official said that the bulletin was based on press reports and would not comment on whether the claim had been independently confirmed.

The same TIME article makes even less sense in spots.

"It is probable there are links between Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and al-Qaeda," says [Frederic Grare, a former French diplomat in Pakistan and a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace], "but it is certain they do have links to the government." He adds, "If the government itself says Lashkar-i-Jhangvi is involved, it is suicidal because it opens the door to speculation about their own role."

Indeed, while Pakistani authorities have had a hand in encouraging groups like Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and Lashkar-i-Tayyba, Islamabad has done little to systematically dismantle these jihadist "armies" now that their original purposes — fighting the Soviets and supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan or fighting the Indians in Kashmir — are over.

"They have nothing else to do," says [Stephen Cohen, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution], "and they are causing mischief."

The fighting with India over Kashmir is by no means over, and the idea that terrorist groups send out suicide bombers to take out major political figures because they have nothing else to do is most fanciful. Only in America will readers take this sort of dangerous nonsense seriously.

Elsewhere in the article Cohen is quoted as saying:

"Bhutto was the only Pakistani politician willing to stand up and say, 'I don't like violent terrorists,'"

which is clearly false, as anyone who has been following the story of terrorism in Pakistan (here or elsewhere) can attest. It's the same old story: Nobody likes violent terrorists. But some people do like freedom-fighters.

And if the difference between the two is sometimes a bit blurry, well, then, that's quite handy in the propaganda sense, because the more confusing and frightening a subject, the fewer people will take it skeptically. As inhabitants of a nation terminally confused by violent terrorists, many Americans will believe almost anything.

And that makes it more and more inevitable that more and more disconnected terrorist groups will soon be described as affiliated with al Qaeda and/or Osama bin Laden, since such an affiliation is obviously the sine qua non of attracting serious American media attention ... and becoming a target in the GWOT.

~~~

As for the violence, an Interior Ministry spokesman enumerated the results of the violence in the first two days after the assassination, according to Dawn:

38 people were killed and 53 injured, 174 banks were gutted, 26 ransacked, 158 offices were burnt, 23 ransacked, 34 petrol stations were set ablaze and two damaged, 370 vehicles were set on fire and 61 damaged, 18 railway stations were torched and four ransacked, 72 train bogies were burnt, 765 shops, offices gutted and 19 offices ransacked.

According to a more detailed report from the Times of India:

Demonstrators have clashed with police and torched hundreds of buildings, trains and vehicles in the wake of the gun and suicide attack that claimed Bhutto's life on Thursday.

"In two days 38 innocent people have lost their lives and 53 have been injured," ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema told a news conference.

"At a time when the nation is mourning the death of Benazir Bhutto in a terrorist attack, some elements of criminal mentality have taken undue advantage of the situation," Cheema said.

More than 100 criminals had escaped when rioters broke open jails, he said.

But by Saturday, despite continued unrest, the spokesman was looking at the bright side:

Cheema said the overall situation was "satisfactory" on Saturday, partly due to the army's presence in several hotspots.

"The situation is getting back to normal rapidly and we hope that in a day or so life will return to normal in the country," he added.

President Pervez Musharraf earlier ordered security chiefs to take firm action to restore order to the country. Paramilitary troops have already been ordered to shoot rioters on sight in the southern city of Karachi.

Cheema also pledged that Pakistani authorities would bring to justice all the "miscreants" behind the unrest.

"I want to say that those who are involved will not be spared... they will face tough punishment," he added.

Do you want some more nonsense? CTV reports a fine bit of lingo-jingo from Cheema:

"This is not an ordinary criminal matter in which we require assistance of the international community. I think we are capable of handling it."

... in which the Interior Ministry spokesman suggests that Pakistani police are incapable of solving the small crimes on their own ... but they can handle the big ones without assistance? Yeah, sure!!

The Parliamentary election scheduled for January 8th is now in doubt. Nawaz Sharif has announced his party will boycott. Musharraf's party will run, of course. And the late Benazir Buhtto's PPP will meet on Sunday to decide whether to stand in the election or join the opposition boycott.

According to AFP, the wishes of the former PPP leader will be made known at Sunday's meeting and will be very difficult to disregard.

The PPP was to meet around 3:00pm (1000 GMT) in her home town of Naudero in the south to decide what to do next, with her husband Asif Zardari expected to read out instructions she left about the party's future.

"It will be almost impossible for the party to go against her wishes," said political analyst and columnist Shafqat Mahmood. Party officials said her son Bilawal Bhutto was favourite to take over what has become a political dynasty, with an advisory council running affairs until he finishes his studies at Britain's Oxford University.

The election commission will meet on Monday to decide whether to postpone the January 8 election, but according to the same political analyst, Shafqat Mahmood, their decision depends on the result of the PPP meeting. If PPP decide to boycott, it won't matter much whether the election commission wants to have an election on January 8th or not.

So here we are, on the edge of a great precipice, with emerging opportunities for the forces good and evil to shape the decades to come -- and our collective future now hinges on such weighty matters as whether a dead woman has left instructions to turn over the leadership of her party -- the largest opposition political party in the sixth most-populous nation on earth -- to a 19-year-old university student.

And this is democracy?? Nonsense indeed!

There are dangerous and violent times to come, for certain. But our future may have to wait, because the new prince of the democratic Pakistani opposition is still being trained -- at Oxford!

~~~

[update 1]
from Reuters India: Bhutto's son, husband to be co-leaders of party

NAUDERO, Pakistan (Reuters) - The 19-year-old son of assassinated Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, Bilawal, was on Sunday appointed chairman of her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) along with his father, party officials said.

"It has been decided that Bilawal will be the chairman and Mr (Asif Ali) Zardari will be co-chairman," one of the party officials said in the southern town of Naudero, where top officials of Bhutto's party were meeting.

Asif Ali Zardari was Bhutto's husband.

[update 2]
from Dawn: Bhutto party will take part in election: husband

NAUDERO, Pakistan, Dec 30 (AFP) - Slain Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party will take part in national elections set for January 8, her husband Asif Ali Zardari said at a Press conference Sunday.

He also called on former premier Nawaz Sharif to reverse his decision to boycott the polls, which Sharif had announced in the wake of Bhutto's death on Thursday. “We will go to elections,” Zardari said.

[the photos]
The photos accompanying this piece depict (from top) troops patrolling in Larkana, Benazir Bhutto's hometown, amid the wreckage of burnt-out cars; (2) shops in Larkana utterly destroyed, (3) a soldier on duty in Larkana, (4) a very military-looking person shooting at Benazir Bhutto, (5) soldiers arriving in Hyperabad, and (6) police in Karachi guarding a burning trailer.

[additional reading]
Robert Fisk in the Independent : They don't blame al-Qa'ida. They blame Musharraf
Tariq Ali at London Review of Books: Daughter of the West
Tariq Ali at the Guardian: A tragedy born of military despotism and anarchy
Melanie Colburn at Mother Jones: America's Devil's Game with Extremist Islam