http://www.juancole.com/2009/03/pakistan-political-crisis-deepens.html
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Pakistan Political Crisis Deepens
The Pakistani Taliban are not going to take over the Pakistani
government. That worry doesn't keep me up at night. They are small, and
operate in a rugged, remote area of the country. They can set off bombs
and be a destabilizing force. But a few thousand tribesmen can't take
over a country of 165 million with a large urban middle class that has
a highly organized and professional army.
In contrast, the increasingly rancorous conflict between the left of
center, largely secular Pakistan People's Party and the right of
center, big-landlord Muslim League, has the potential to tear the
country apart.
So here is some important background. Pakistan is made up of four
ethnically and linguistically based provinces, Sindh, Baluchistan, the
North-West Frontier, and Punjab. Punjab is Pakistan's most populous
province, with 55 percent of the population and much of the country's
wealth.
The PPP, led by the Bhutto family of Sindh, has a national organization
and won seats from all over the country in the parliamentary election
of Feb. 2008. But its firmest base is Sindh, which is a province
divided into a very poor rural Sindhi population and the big urban port
of Karachi, which is mainly populated by Urdu-speakers whose families
came from India at Partition in 1947. Karachi's politics is now
dominated by the MQM, an Urdu-speakers' secular nationalist party,
which has developed an alliance with the Pakistan People's Party.
Baluchistan only has 5 percent of the country's population, and is
vast, rugged and arid. It may have a lot of natural gas but who knows?
Right now it is not a big player. The North-West Frontier is populated
by Pushtuns, organized as somewhat egalitarian clans. They have been
most deeply affected by the wars in Afghanistan, and a movement of
Pakistani Taliban is active there, though most Pushtuns are not
fundamentalists or militants.
So Punjab is the real prize for a politician, sort of the California of
Pakistani politics, being rich agriculturally but also having a dynamic
urban sector.
In last year's elections, the PPP took Sindh and was able to find
political allies in Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier. But the
Muslim League took Punjab. Shahbaz Sharif, the brother of the Muslim
League's leader, Nawaz Sharif, was the Chief Minister of Punjab.
PPP leader Asaf Ali Zardari initially sought an alliance with the
Muslim League against then dictator Pervez Musharraf, and pledged that
Shahbaz would remain Chief Minister of Punjab even though the PPP
became the dominant party in the federal parliament.
A conflict developed between Nawaz Sharif and PPP leader Asaf Ali
Zardari over the deposed chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhury. Dictator
Musharraf had dismissed Chaudhury in spring of 2007 for opposing some
of his policies. Pakistan's massive legal establishment began holding
rallies and demanding that the chief justice be reinstated, which he
was in summer 2007. Musharraf was under pressure from Washington to
become a civilian president. But he found out that fall that the
supreme court would not allow this transition because the constitution
requires that a military man have been out of the service for 2 years
before becoming president. So Musharraf just dismissed the whole
supreme court, including the recently reinstated Chaudhury, and
appointed a new court, which sycophantically recognized him as
president.
When he was allowed to come back to Pakistan from exile in Saudi
Arabia, Nawaz Sharif, who had been overthrown as prime minister in 1999
by Musharraf, began demanding that Iftikhar Chaudhury and the old,
dismissed, supreme court be reinstated.
After the PPP won the parliamentary elections, its leader, Zardari,
declined to reinstate Chaudhury. Zardari was afraid that the chief
justice might reinstate the corruption charges against him, which had
been amnestied by Musharraf.
Zardari was elected president last September. The conflict between him
and the Muslim League, simmered along.
But just last week, the supreme court dismissed Shahbaz Sharif as chief
minister of Punjab, and barred him and Nawaz Sharif from running for
office. Some suspect the court of acting at President Zardari's behest.
The Sharif brothers say that this court is anyway illegitimate and
refuse to recognize its rulings, since it is the fruit of a poisoned
tree, i.e. the arbitrary creature of a desperate military dictator 18
months ago.
The attorneys are also still angry over the failure of Zardari to
reinstate Chaudhury and the others.
So on March 15, the Muslim League (which is more conservative landlord
than religious fundamentalist, despite the name) is organizing a "long
march" on parliament to protest the current supreme court and the
recent decisions it issued against the Sharifs.
On the hustings, Nawaz Sharif said that the only thing that could save
Pakistan now was a revolution, and announced that he had "raised the
standard of rebellion."
An adviser to the Interior Ministry (equivalent to our Homeland
Security) then came out yesterday and warned that the Sharifs could be
charged with sedition if they talk like that.
So now you have people talking about the danger of a repeat of the
partition of Pakistan into Bangladesh and West Pakistan in 1971. I
presume the Muslim League would get Punjab and the PPP would get the
other three provinces.
For Pakistan's two major civilian parties, who only 7 months ago rid
the country of a military dictator, to go mano a mano at each other
like this is potentially tragic. If they destabilize the country, they
could tempt the military to come back out of the barracks and make yet
another coup. Short of that, there could be faction-fighting in
villages and cities.
Pakistan is a nuclear state, so this degree of instability is
especially worrying. The danger is not a take-over by the Taliban, but
rather a coup (led by whom of what views?) or blood in the streets.
Meanwhile, dictator-in-retirement Musharraf blames the Pakistan Muslim
League (N)-- the "N" stands for Nawaz-- for the crisis.
The Taliban are small potatoes compared to this clash of titans.
posted by Juan Cole @ 3/10/2009 12:58:00 AM