Imran Khan Released; Musharraf Election Upheld; Commonwealth Suspends Pakistan

UPDATED in several places, with more updates to come. Here are the headlines:

* Pakistan has been suspended from the Commonwealth in the wake of the state of emergency imposed by President General Pervez Musharraf.

* The hand-picked Supreme Court has dismissed the last of the six petitions against Musharraf's clearly illegal "re-election".

* Imran Khan, former cricket hero, now opposition politician, has been released from detention, along with thousands of other political leaders and activists, many of whom were promptly re-arrested. Thousands of political opponents have been newly arrested as well according to some reports.

* President General Musharraf has issued an order saying his declaration of emergency cannot be challenged in any court.

* Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is apparently preparing to return to Pakistan. He was arrested and deported when he tried to do so in September.

KAMPALA: A Commonwealth ministerial committee Thursday decided to suspend Pakistan from the 53-nation bloc pending the return of the rule of law following the imposition of emergency rule earlier this month.

"CMAG (Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group) has suspended Pakistan forthwith from the council pending the return of the rule of law and democracy," Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon [photo] told reporters.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency on November 3, placing the chief justice under house arrest, detaining lawyers, rights activists and opposition members and curbing press freedoms.

This report comes to us from GEO TV, which has been forced off the air in Pakistan (and even elsewhere[!]), but whose website is still online.

Graham Usher, writing in Cairo's Al-Ahram Weekly, skips past some of the most vital historical context, and certainly takes the public diplomacy a bit too seriously, but he still manages an insightful analysis:

Prior to Negroponte's coming, the Pakistani leader had given two reasons for martial law. One was to curb a surge of Islamic militancy sweeping from Pakistan's borderlands with Afghanistan to the settled North West Frontier Province. And the second was to purge an "overactive" judiciary that was making governance impossible.

The first reason is spurious. Senior army officers admit martial law grants them no more powers to combat the Taliban and Al-Qaeda than they had previously. And the second has been accomplished. The US has quietly agreed to gloss over the sacking of Supreme Court judges -- including Pakistan Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohamed Chaudhry -- so long as Musharraf lifts martial law, steps down as army chief and holds free elections.

But Musharraf is not interested in free elections. He wants to rig them so an absolute majority can indemnify him against actions -- like the imposition of martial law -- he now concedes were "constitutionally illegal". On 16 November, he swore in a caretaker government stuffed with cronies to ensure that end. And on 19 November a new sanitised Supreme Court dismissed five out of six petitions challenging Musharraf's presidential "election" in October.

The sixth petition has been dismissed now too, according to AFP:

Pakistan's purged Supreme Court demolished the last hurdle to President Pervez Musharraf's re-election Thursday, clearing the way for him to become a civilian leader after eight years of army rule.

Loaded with compliant judges since Musharraf imposed a state of emergency nearly three weeks ago, the court took less than an hour to dismiss the final legal challenge to his victory in last month's presidential election.

Officials said he would now honour his repeated vow to quit as army chief and be sworn into office for another five years once his re-election is ratified -- although he would likely wait until early next week to do so.

"The petition is dismissed," Supreme Court chief justice Abdul Hameed Dogar ruled.

More from Graham Usher:

[Benazir] Bhutto has filed for political divorce. Asked whether she could resume a dialogue with Musharraf, she answered: "I can't see how I can team up with somebody who talked to me about a roadmap to democracy and [then] imposed martial law".

Instead she is appealing to other opposition leaders -- including her old nemesis ex-prime minister Nawaz Sharif -- to forge a "unified front" to foil Musharraf's attempts to hold "fake" elections. But given the enormous distrust sown by her botched tryst with the regime, it's not clear whether the leaders will bite or whether the Americans any longer see her as useful.

The functional understatement in the above passage is, of course, the "not clear".

Nothing is clear in Pakistan at the moment, except the public's feelings for President General Musharraf and his declaration of emergency.

Usher's conclusion seems bang-on:

US officials talk darkly of terminating all aid if their turbulent ward refuses to play ball. But it's more bluster than bang, says Zaffar Abbas, another analyst. "Musharraf's gamble is that Washington needs him more than he needs them."

He may be right. Seventy-five per cent of all supplies to US forces in Afghanistan go through Pakistan. And the more America ratchets up tensions with Iran, Russia and Central Asia the more vital Islamabad becomes as a regional ally. There is only one case where Washington could exert leverage, says Rizvi. "If the opposition could mount street protests against the regime on a sustained basis, this would rattle the army. The Americans could then tell Musharraf to back off or else".

But so far protests have been muted and the army has shown absolute loyalty to their commander. As long as that's so, "Musharraf can hang on," says Rizvi. And America will hang on to him, even though it knows "deeply flawed" elections will do nothing to redress the crisis of legitimacy that assails the Pakistani state and which remains the principle political cause behind the growth of the Taliban. There is of course an irony here.

For six years, Washington placed all its bets on one man, one institution and one military solution to combat Islamic militancy in Pakistan. On 3 November that institution empowered that man to impose that solution -- not against the Taliban but against its own people.

People of goodwill and good cricket all over the world are happy to see Imran Khan free.

As captain of Pakistan's World Cup winning side, then as a philanthropist, and now as a truly independent politician he has inspired hope and goodwill far beyond the bounds of his own country. (He's even chancellor of the UK's Bradford University!)

Imran Khan's release may have been an empty gesture, and he may not be free for long, but I would be remiss not to report this teeny bit of very good news. AFP says:

In a bid to show the emergency is easing, Pakistani authorities freed cricket hero Imran Khan late Wednesday, and said more than 5,000 lawyers, opposition party workers and human rights activists had also been released.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the releases were a "good step" but that more action was required.

Yes indeed, more action is required. Some reports have indicated that the release of thousands of political prisoners was not only timed to generate sympathy for the regime but also to coincide with the fresh arrest of thousands of other political activists, and the prompt re-arrests of some of those who had supposedly been freed.

Arab News has the story about the newly minted ordinance barring any court from challenging Musharraf's declaration of emergency:

Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf issued an ordinance saying the emergency rule cannot be challenged in any court. The order was a fresh move to bolster his position ...

Yesterday’s ordinance amends the constitution to specify that the imposition of emergency rule was “validly made,” and “shall not be called in question in any court or forum on any ground whatsoever.”

Dr. Moeed Pirzada writing for India's Khaleej Times from Karachi:

We are all standing, pushing and shoving, outside the offices of Jang, Pakistan's largest paper. This private compound, off the famous II Chundrigarh Road, was packed to the last inch. We are here to protest the continuing ban on country's largest TV network.

Most of us work for either the Jang, The News or the GEO, but I spot faces from the Dawn and the CNBC and other TV channels. Like everyone around me, I had two candles, one in each hand. Flames tremble in Karachi's evening breeze and we struggle to keep them alive; for they are: Flames of Freedom.

Surrounded by cameras and large plasma screens that capture and display our gyrating bodies, we all are singing: “jeenay do, jeenay do, logo ko zinda rahnain do (...let us live, let us live...let people live their lives)". These are the only screens on which we can see ourselves; all the GEO channels — even the sports and entertainment — have been banned. On three sides, the walls of the compound surround us, and towards the only exit: policemen look on, amused. Like the media in Pakistan, we are also under siege.

It's a good column. Hint, hint.

There's a lot going on. Expect more updates soon.

Serious Spin: Secrecy, National Security And The Liberal Media

The New York Times brings its readers bad news from Pakistan on the diplomatic front.

Envoy Elicits No New Promises From Musharraf

Continuing to defy the United States, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan declined to say when he would lift a two-week-old state of emergency during a meeting with a senior American envoy today, Pakistani and Western officials said.

In a two-hour, face-to-face meeting with Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte, the United States’ second highest ranking diplomat, General Musharraf said he would end the state of emergency when security improves in the country.
...

General Musharraf’s defiance continues to be a major embarrassment for the Bush administration, which has provided more than $10 billion in aid to the military leader’s government since 2001 and declared him a valued ally. Ten days ago, President Bush personally telephoned General Musharraf and asked him to end the state of emergency, with no result.

No result. Again. So it's time for some serious spin, and therefore the NYT brings some of that as well:

Bush Failed to See Musharraf’s Faults, Critics Contend

In the six years since Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, joined President Bush in the fight against Al Qaeda, it has been an unlikely partnership: a president intent on promoting democracy and a military commander who seized power in a bloodless coup.

Mr. Bush has repeatedly called Gen. Musharraf “a friend.” In 2003, the president invited the general to Camp David, a presidential perk reserved for the closest of allies. Last year, at the general’s insistence, Mr. Bush risked a trip to Pakistan, jangling the nerves of the Secret Service by spending the night in the country presumed to be home to Osama bin Laden.

But now that the general has defied the White House, suspending Pakistan’s Constitution and imposing martial law, old tensions are flaring anew. Mr. Bush is backing away from the leader he once called a man of “courage and vision,” and critics are asking whether the president misread his Pakistani counterpart.

They said Mr. Bush — an ardent believer in personal diplomacy, who once remarked that he had looked into the eyes of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and had gotten “a sense of his soul” — was taken in by the general, with his fluent English and his promises to hold elections and relinquish military power. They said Mr. Bush looked at General Musharraf and saw a democratic reformer when he should have seen a dictator instead.

No serious analyst anywhere believes that George Bush is "intent on promoting democracy". Bush's serious critics don't fall for this "personal diplomacy" nonsense either. But you won't see any of them in the NYT.

It takes a heavy-handed dictator to know one, and Bush knew Musharraf right from the start. So the Times does its best to provide cover. But the cover might not have been enough, and therefore it was time to release the following nugget of previously secret information.

U.S. Secretly Aids Pakistan in Guarding Nuclear Arms

Over the past six years, the Bush administration has spent almost $100 million so far on a highly classified program to help Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, secure his country’s nuclear weapons, according to current and former senior administration officials.
...

The aid, buried in secret portions of the federal budget, paid for the training of Pakistani personnel in the United States and the construction of a nuclear security training center in Pakistan, a facility that American officials say is nowhere near completion, even though it was supposed to be in operation this year.

Is it even true? Who knows? But why are we finding out about this now?

The New York Times has known details of the secret program for more than three years, based on interviews with a range of American officials and nuclear experts, some of whom were concerned that Pakistan’s arsenal remained vulnerable. The newspaper agreed to delay publication of the article after considering a request from the Bush administration, which argued that premature disclosure could hurt the effort to secure the weapons.

Since then, some elements of the program have been discussed in the Pakistani news media and in a presentation late last year by the leader of Pakistan’s nuclear safety effort, Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai, who acknowledged receiving “international” help as he sought to assure Washington that all of the holes in Pakistan’s nuclear security infrastructure had been sealed.

The Times told the administration last week that it was reopening its examination of the program in light of those disclosures and the current instability in Pakistan. Early this week, the White House withdrew its request that publication be withheld, though it was unwilling to discuss details of the program.

Nice. With Pakistan in full crisis, the White House withdraws its request that publication be withheld. They say it doesn't matter anymore because the secret is out.

But at the other end of the secrecy spectrum:

Ruling Blocks Challenge to Wiretapping

A federal appeals court said today that secrecy laws forced it to exclude critical evidence about the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program from being used by an Islamic charity in a lawsuit even though the mere existence of the program could no longer be considered a “state secret.”

The complex ruling was a victory for the Bush administration and signaled trouble for civil rights groups that are trying to show that the eavesdropping program was unconstitutional and to hold telecommunications companies liable for carrying it out.

And this despite the fact that

the appeals court spent most of its 27-page ruling explaining why the eavesdropping program should not be considered a state secret. It listed numerous public statements, including those by President Bush, former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael V. Hayden, about details of the program. And it said: “In light of extensive government disclosures” about the Terrorist Surveillance Program, “the government is hard-pressed to sustain its claim that the very subject matter of the litigation is a state secret.”

The moral of today's story: Secrecy and National Security go hand in hand for this administration. It will reveal state secrets at the most opportune times, and pretend publicly available information is still a state secret; it will whatever it takes, no matter how absurd, to protect the continued tenure in office of this cruel and unusual administration, which (of course) they call by the least appropriate name available: "National Security".

And the New York Times will never admit any of this -- they won't even discuss it -- because that's what the "liberal media" do in post-democratic America.

Dance The Dance: Negroponte In Pakistan, Benazir Released, War In Swat, Censorship And Lies...

According to AFP (via Dawn), Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte is now in Pakistan:

Top US envoy arrives for tough Pakistan visit

ISLAMABAD, Nov 16 (AFP) - Top US diplomat John Negroponte flew into Pakistan Friday to press for an end to President Pervez Musharraf's emergency rule and to establish contact with former premier Benazir Bhutto.

Negroponte, number two to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, is the highest ranking US official to come here since President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency on November 3.

“I can confirm he has arrived,” US embassy spokeswoman Elizabeth Colton said.
...

US officials speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed there were plans for Negroponte to speak to Benazir Bhutto but would not give further details or say whether he would meet the two-time prime minister in person.

The AFP writer would have no way of knowing whether Negroponte will actually press Musharraf about anything, much less an end to emergency rule. Negroponte might ask for a few concessions. But can he really press the General? Is he ready to support a coup against the Army chief of staff? I wouldn't think so.

Negroponte wants to set up a power-sharing arrangement with a strategy of tension extension, so to speak: Benazir Bhutto as the pseudo-opposition, Maulana Fazlulla providing the tension, and Musharraf at the helm. And they want to call it democracy.

"Restoring democracy," they say. How quaint!

Psst! It'll never work! However ...

You want tough?

Forty of Imran Khan's supporters, including three of his sisters, were beaten up on Thursday when they demonstrated against his detention at a market in Lahore

after a brutal baton-charge and thrashing by plainclothes security personnel

according to The News.

Even tougher: the on-again, off-again war in the Swat Valley is on-again and Pakistani troops are claiming 40 Taliban casualties. I'm never sure what to make of reports such as this one. Sometimes when similar reports come from Afghanistan or Iraq, we find out later that what actually happened was somebody dropped a bomb on a sleeping family.

However, the AP says:

Army kills up to 40 militants in Swat

ISLAMABAD, Nov 17 (AP): Pakistani troops backed by helicopter gunships and artillery attacked pro-Taliban militants in troubled northern Pakistan, killing up to 40 followers of a rebel cleric, the military and officials said Saturday.

The men were killed Thursday in Kuza Banda, Basham and Shangla, three of the militants' strongholds in Swat district, the army said in a statement.

The latest deaths bring militant casualties in the past several days to 100 in Swat, where troops are battling supporters from Maulana Fazlullah, a cleric who has asked his men to wage holy war against the army.

Meanwhile, Dawn also says another petition against the emergency declaration is now before the newly reconstituted Supreme Court. The new court is made up of judges who approved of the emergency and signed their loyalty oaths two weeks ago -- all the others were sacked. But one of the judges wants to recuse himself! And the hearing is slated to resume Monday.

One of my Google Alerts went off today and it said:

Postscript | Full marks to General Musharraf
The Post - Lahore,Punjab,Pakistan
The octogenarian Dr Mubashir Hasan was also amongst some 71 terrorists, including some two dozen female terrorists when they were preparing bombs and hand ...

but when you go to the page, there's nothing there!

And there it vas, ze good satire! Gone!!

I can't help thinking The Post crossed a clearly drawn line by printing satire with the General's name in it (let alone in the headline) and I also can't help wondering whether somebody is in prison for it, or soon will be.

Former Prime Minister and alleged opposition leader Benazir Bhutto has been released from house arrest. Salman Masood and David Rhode note that

The gesture appeared timed to ease tensions before the arrival later in the day of the U.S. deputy secretary of state John Negroponte, who was likely to urge Musharraf to lift emergency rule.

"Appeared timed to ease tensions"? Yes! "Likely to urge Musharraf to lift emergency rule"? We'll see about that.

The American line all along has been, "You have to get yourself re-elected." The President General has been doing exactly that.

Now they come along and say, "It has to be free and fair." It's no wonder the President General is upset.

As he sees it,

"The emergency is to ensure elections go in an undisturbed manner."

The emergency is to ensure nothing of the sort, unless "go in an undisturbed manner" means "produce results I find acceptable". But apparently the elections will be mostly undisturbed unless he wants them disturbed. As Ayesha Siddiqa told Sen Lam of Radio Australia:

Generally the emergency has backfired because this is something which was not going to contribute in, in the war on terror. In fact, the judiciary which has been sacked precisely for the reason that was it was you know putting hurdles in, in the war on terror - the judges who actually helped the militants and the extremists are the ones some of them, have they've just been given a, a fresh oath. So you know, there is hypocrisy, there is contradiction in, in government's action and in fact the secular segments of the society and the judiciary have been sacked.

Musharraf has kept the judges who have been helping the militants. How quaint!

Salman Masood and David Rhode quote Benazir Bhutto telling a tale tale:

"Do we want to deny this nation its true legitimate leadership?" she asked. "The West's interests lie in a democratic Pakistan."

A truly democratic Pakistan would be a disaster for the West, of course -- if by "the West" you mean George Bush and his criminal enterprise known as the War On Terror. So her statement sounds wrong all over the world! (Benazir is supposed to be protecting the East's interests, remember?)

The Washington Post caught President General Pervez Musharraf telling an even bigger one:

Musharraf refuses to set date for ending emergency rule

WASHINGTON, Nov 17 (AFP): President General Pervez Musharraf, in an interview published Saturday, reaffirmed his commitment to democracy, but declined to give a timeframe for lifting emergency rule.

“If I am a dictator, I don't know what kind of dictator I am,” Musharraf told The Washington Post.

“I am the strongest believer in democracy. I brought democracy to Pakistan and I still believe in it.”

He said he was “thinking about” a timeframe for lifting a state of emergency it, but when asked when that could happen, he answered: “I don't know.”

I don't know, either. I am not especially hopeful at this point. But not all the news is bad.

The BBC reports that Asma Jahangir, head of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, has been released from detention.

Score one for the good guys.

Theater Of The Absurd: Condi Sends Negroponte To Poke Musharraf

[For more about Fatima Bhutto, click here!]

In the old days, when I cared about baseball, I used to read a lot of books about it.

Oh, unseeing youth!
How can it be so shallow and short-sighted?

from "Experience" by Gentle Giant
(watch them play it here!!)

One of those books, by former American League umpire Ron Luciano, described an "argument" between then-Orioles manager Earl Weaver and another umpire. A call had gone against the Orioles, and suddenly the umpire who had made that call found Weaver in his face, jumping and shouting and poking him in the chest.

All the jumping and shouting and poking was standard procedure for Weaver; it never surprised the umpires. But in this case the call hadn't even been close! And instead of berating the umpire who'd made it, Weaver was saying "I just want YOU [poke] to know that if I was ever in a FIGHT [poke] I would want YOU [poke] on my SIDE [poke], because you're like a BROTHER [poke] to me!"

So the umpire says, "What's the problem, Earl?" and Weaver [still poking] says, "We haven't played well in a week. My guys are lethargic. The crowd is just sitting there. And I need to get thrown out of a ballgame!"

So the ump throws him out, the crowd goes wild, the Orioles wake up and go on a winning streak; mission accomplished.

I couldn't help thinking of that when I read this:

LAHORE: The American pressure on General Pervez Musharraf to scrap the state of emergency will reach its climax on Saturday when Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte reaches Islamabad to warn the General either to get in line or face the consequences...

Perhaps it's not a very good analogy. But when it comes to analogies, the bar's been set quite low around here lately, since we've been discussing Professor Keith Seffen and his explanation of the destruction of the World Trade Center in terms of blowing up a party balloon.

My point is not that Negroponte needs to be thrown out of a ballgame, but that there's more theater here than meets the eye. And less democracy.

If you listen to Benazir Bhutto, or George Bush, or Condi Rice, you'll hear all kinds of talk about "restoring democracy". As if Pakistan were a democracy two weeks ago. In the theater of the absurd these people get top billing.

As Amir Mir wrote for India's DNA [same link]:

The official said the Americans wanted Musharraf to give Bhutto a level-playing field in which she could win the next polls.

Apparently the theater works, according to Pakistani journalist (and crown princess?) Fatima Bhutto, who explains:

Pakistanis follow American elections very closely, because they affect us so much. But, if you ask most Pakistanis, they believe earnestly that Republicans are the best...

Why, you ask?

... because they'll give us a lot of money, aid and weapons. The average person forgets that, in return, we have to do the American's dirty work for them. I think what a lot of people are most upset about is right now is that Americans are threatening to cut aid. The average Pakistani doesn't think about what we have to do to get that money.

This is from an interview with Celeste Fremon at Huffington Post, in which Fatima Bhutto makes an important observation regarding political theater and her aunt Benazir, "daughter of the East (read: West)":

Q: Now that your aunt's again under house arrest, and has ratcheted up her calls for General Musharraf to step down, the media is reporting that the Bush-brokered power sharing deal between her and the general is now off.

A: A lot of this is theater. Actually, it seems very much still on. Her corruption cases remain withdrawn -- as per the arrangements of the deal. all her supporters and her party members are allowed into the compound with her. She addresses her supporters outside through a megaphone. And she is granted amazing access to the media here, while other political parties have been given a blanket ban. If they want to hold a press conference they're not allowed. Only the Islamic party is given similar freedoms. And it isn't Benazir's supporters getting arrested by the thousands. It's the lawyers who have been charged with treason, and the journalists.

I think you should read the whole piece. I got there from Jenkin's Ear, which also mentioned Fatima Bhutto's "Iraq Redux?", and quoted some of it, and linked to my coverage of it, but doesn't "particularly recommend" my blog. As Jenkin's Ear explains:

I also read and recommend the Huffington Post, which follows a generally Hollywood liberal line; but do not usually link to its blog posts because they are widely read. I do not particularly recommend the Winter Patriot blog, which contains extensive discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories, etc.

9/11 conspiracy theories? Oh, right. That's what it looks like to Jenkin's Ear.

But what we've been discussing here lately has been a very clear instance of major media telling obvious lies to propagate the conclusions of an "academic paper" (though not the paper itself) which hasn't even been published!

I would expect "a blog focusing mainly on press reports relevant to the US international position, from foreign sources" to be attracted by such a story, not repelled by it. Oh well. Maybe interested, but not in such a critical way.

Someday, somewhere, I am going to find somebody who can tell me how it's possible to understand what's happening in Pakistan, and the obvious media tendency to paint an entirely different picture of it, without understanding what happened on 9/11, and the obvious media tendency to paint an entirely different picture of that. And when I do, I will tell you all about it.

And somewhere else I will meet someone else who will help me to understand how all these tendencies miraculously work together, all pulling in the same direction at every possible opportunity, without any conspiracy. That'll be a good one, and I'll be sure to tell you about that, too.

But then again, perhaps it's not so much the "conspiracy theories" but the "etc" that makes Jenkin's Ear so comfortable with Huffington Post and so nervous about the Winter Patriot blog. The old "etc" will do you in every time, won't it, Jenk?

Of course in this case the "etc" refers to such things as how false-flag terror can be used to create an enemy against whom war can be waged; or how the war can then be made to last forever, or how it can be used to "justify" all manner of abuses.

It's so easy a bunch of idiots could do it.

It's just like blowing up a balloon.

As Fatima Bhutto told Celeste Fremon:

[Benazir Bhutto] addresses her supporters outside through a megaphone. And she is granted amazing access to the media here, while other political parties have been given a blanket ban. If they want to hold a press conference they're not allowed. Only the Islamic party is given similar freedoms.

A tip of the cold cap to Jenkin, and best of luck with that ear.

~~~

For more about Fatima Bhutto, click here!