Tighe Barry writes

( This is Tighe Barry's response to a mail from a student, Umer Gilani from Lahore, in which Barry's efforts were appreciated and dismay conveyed regarding his maltreatment and arrest in Pakistan and the US. The following are his words of encouragement)

Thank You for your kind words and support. I was moved by the
sacrafice of the great people of Pakistan in thier brave stance
against the Dictator, and felt that it requires a lot from me and my
friends to support you.I hope that we can stay in touch. We have a
protest on monday the 10th at the Pakistan Embassy in Washington D.C.
at 5p, please tell everyone.

Tighe

Daughter of the West

By Tariq Ali

Arranged marriages can be a messy business. Designed principally as a means of accumulating wealth, circumventing undesirable flirtations or transcending clandestine love affairs, they often don't work. Where both parties are known to loathe each other, only a rash parent, desensitised by the thought of short-term gain, will continue with the process knowing full well that it will end in misery and possibly violence. That this is equally true in political life became clear in the recent attempt by Washington to tie Benazir Bhutto to Pervez Musharraf.

The single, strong parent in this case was a desperate State Department – with John Negroponte as the ghoulish go-between and Gordon Brown as the blushing bridesmaid – fearful that if it did not push this through both parties might soon be too old for recycling. The bride was certainly in a hurry, the groom less so. Brokers from both sides engaged in lengthy negotiations on the size of the dowry. Her broker was and remains Rehman Malik, a former boss of Pakistan's FIA, who has been investigated for corruption by the National Accountability Bureau and who served nearly a year in prison after Benazir's fall, then became one of her business partners and is currently under investigation (with her) by a Spanish court looking into a company called Petroline FZC, which made questionable payments to Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Documents, if genuine, show that she chaired the company. She may have been in a hurry but she did not wish to be seen taking the arm of a uniformed president. He was not prepared to forgive her past. The couple's distaste for each other yielded to a mutual dependence on the United States. Neither party could say 'no', though Musharraf hoped the union could be effected inconspicuously. Fat chance.

Both parties made concessions. She agreed that he could take off his uniform after his 're-election' by Parliament, but it had to be before the next general election. (He has now done this, leaving himself dependent on the goodwill of his successor as army chief of staff.) He pushed through a legal ruling – yet another sordid first in the country's history – known as the National Reconciliation Ordinance, which withdrew all cases of corruption pending against politicians accused of looting the national treasury. The ruling was crucial for her since she hoped that the money-laundering and corruption cases pending in three European courts – in Valencia, Geneva and London – would now be dismissed. This doesn't seem to have happened.

Many Pakistanis – not just the mutinous and mischievous types who have to be locked up at regular intervals – were repelled, and coverage of 'the deal' in the Pakistan media was universally hostile, except on state television. The 'breakthrough' was loudly trumpeted in the West, however, and a whitewashed Benazir Bhutto was presented on US networks and BBC TV news as the champion of Pakistani democracy – reporters loyally referred to her as 'the former prime minister' rather than the fugitive politician facing corruption charges in several countries.

She had returned the favour in advance by expressing sympathy for the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, lunching with the Israeli ambassador to the UN (a litmus test) and pledging to 'wipe out terrorism' in her own country. In 1979 a previous military dictator had bumped off her father with Washington's approval, and perhaps she thought it would be safer to seek permanent shelter underneath the imperial umbrella. HarperCollins had paid her half a million dollars to write a new book. The working title she chose was 'Reconciliation'.

As for the general, he had begun his period in office in 1999 by bowing to the spirit of the age and titling himself 'chief executive' rather than 'chief martial law administrator', which had been the norm. Like his predecessors, he promised he would stay in power only for a limited period, pledging in 2003 to resign as army chief of staff in 2004. Like his predecessors, he ignored his pledge. Martial law always begins with the promise of a new order that will sweep away the filth and corruption that marked the old one: in this case it toppled the civilian administrations of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. But 'new orders' are not forward movements, more military detours that further weaken the shaky foundations of a country and its institutions. Within a decade the uniformed ruler will be overtaken by a new upheaval.

Dreaming of her glory days in the last century, Benazir wanted a large reception on her return. The general was unhappy. The intelligence agencies (as well as her own security advisers) warned her of the dangers. She had declared war on the terrorists and they had threatened to kill her. But she was adamant. She wanted to demonstrate her popularity to the world and to her political rivals, including those inside her own fiefdom, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP). For a whole month before she boarded the Dubai-Karachi flight, the PPP were busy recruiting volunteers from all over the country to welcome her. Up to 200,000 people lined the streets, but it was a far cry from the millions who turned up in Lahore in 1986 when a very different Benazir returned to challenge General Zia ul-Haq. The plan had been to move slowly in the Bhuttomobile from Karachi airport to the tomb of the country's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, where she would make a speech. It was not to be. As darkness fell, the bombers struck. Who they were and who sent them remains a mystery. She was unhurt, but 130 people died, including some of the policemen guarding her. The wedding reception had led to mayhem.

The general, while promising to collaborate with Benazir, was coolly making arrangements to prolong his own stay at President's House. Even before her arrival he had considered taking drastic action to dodge the obstacles that stood in his way, but his generals (and the US Embassy) seemed unconvinced. The bombing of Benazir's cavalcade reopened the debate. Pakistan, if not exactly the erupting volcano portrayed in the Western media, was being shaken by all sorts of explosions. The legal profession, up in arms at Musharraf's recent dismissal of the chief justice, had won a temporary victory, resulting in a fiercely independent Supreme Court. The independent TV networks continued to broadcast reports that challenged official propaganda. Investigative journalism is never popular with governments and the general often contrasted the deference with which he was treated by the US networks and BBC television with the 'unruly' questioning inflicted on him by local journalists: it 'misled the people'. He had become obsessed with the media coverage of the lawyers' revolt. A decline in his popularity increased the paranoia. His advisers were people he had promoted. Generals who had expressed divergent opinions in 'frank and informal get-togethers' had been retired. His political allies were worried that their opportunities to enrich themselves even further would be curtailed if they had to share power with Benazir.

What if the Supreme Court were now to declare his re-election by a dying and unrepresentative assembly illegal? To ward off disaster, the ISI had been preparing blackmail flicks: agents secretly filmed some of the Supreme Court judges in flagrante. But so unpopular had Musharraf become that even the sight of judicial venerables in bed might not have done the trick. It might even have increased their support. (In 1968, when a right-wing, pro-military rag in Lahore published an attack on me, it revealed that I 'had attended sex orgies in a French country house organised by [my] friend, the Jew Cohn-Bendit. All the fifty women in the swimming-pool were Jewish.' Alas, this was totally false, but my parents were amazed at the number of people who congratulated them on my virility.) Musharraf decided that blackmail wasn't worth the risk. Only firm action could 'restore order' – i.e. save his skin. The usual treatment in these cases is a declaration of martial law. But what if the country is already being governed by the army chief of staff? The solution is simple. Treble the dose. Organise a coup within a coup. That is what Musharraf decided to do. Washington was informed a few weeks in advance, Downing Street somewhat later. Benazir's patrons in the West told her what was about to happen and she, foolishly for a political leader who has just returned to her country, evacuated to Dubai.

On 3 November Musharraf, as chief of the army, suspended the 1973 constitution and imposed a state of emergency: all non-government TV channels were taken off the air, the mobile phone networks were jammed, paramilitary units surrounded the Supreme Court. The chief justice convened an emergency bench of judges, who – heroically – declared the new dispensation 'illegal and unconstitutional'. They were unceremoniously removed and put under house arrest. Pakistan's judges have usually been acquiescent. Those who in the past resisted military leaders were soon bullied out of it, so the decision of this chief justice took the country by surprise and won him great admiration. Global media coverage of Pakistan suggests a country of generals, corrupt politicians and bearded lunatics: the struggle to reinstate the chief justice had presented a different picture.

Aitzaz Ahsan, a prominent member of the PPP, minister of the interior in Benazir's first government and currently president of the Bar Association, was arrested and placed in solitary confinement. Several thousand political and civil rights activists were picked up. Imran Khan, a fierce and incorruptible opponent of the regime, was arrested, charged with 'state terrorism' – for which the penalty is death or life imprisonment – and taken in handcuffs to a remote high-security prison. Musharraf, Khan argued, had begun yet another shabby chapter in Pakistan's history.

Lawyers were arrested all over the country; many were physically attacked by policemen. Humiliate them was the order, and the police obliged. A lawyer, 'Omar', circulated an account of what happened:

While I was standing talking to my colleagues, we saw the police go wild on the orders of a superior officer. In riot gear . . . brandishing weapons and sticks, about a hundred policemen attacked us . . . and seemed intensely happy at doing so. We all ran.

Some of us who were not as nimble on their feet as others were caught by the police and beaten mercilessly. We were then locked in police vans used to transport convicted prisoners. Everyone was stunned at this show of brute force but it did not end. The police went on mayhem inside the court premises and court buildings . . . Those of us who were arrested were taken to various police stations and put in lockups. At midnight, we were told that we were being shifted to jail. We could not get bail as our fundamental rights were suspended. Sixty lawyers were put into a police van ten feet by four feet wide and five feet in height. We were squashed like sardines. When the van reached the jail, we were told that we could not get [out] until orders of our detention were received by the jail authorities. Our older colleagues started to suffocate, some fainted, others started to panic because of claustrophobia. The police ignored our screams and refused to open the van doors. Finally, after three hours . . . we were let out and taken to mosquito-infected barracks where the food given to us smelled like sewage water.

Geo, the largest TV network, had long since located its broadcasting facilities in Dubai. It was a strange sensation watching the network in London when the screens were blank in Pakistan. On the very first day of the emergency I saw Hamid Mir, a journalist loathed by the general, reporting from Islamabad and asserting that the US Embassy had given the green light to the coup because it regarded the chief justice as a nuisance and wrongly believed him to be 'a Taliban sympathiser'. Certainly no US spokesperson or State Department adjunct in the Foreign Office criticised the dismissal of the eight Supreme Court judges or their arrest: that was the quid pro quo for Washington's insistence that Musharraf take off his uniform. If he was going to turn civilian he wanted all the other rules twisted in his favour. A newly appointed stooge Supreme Court would soon help him with the rule-bending. As would the authorities in Dubai, who suspended Geo's facilities.

In the evening of that first day, and after several delays, a flustered General Musharraf, his hair badly dyed, appeared on TV, trying to look like the sort of leader who wants it understood that the political crisis is to be discussed with gravity and sangfroid. Instead, he came across as a dumbed down dictator fearful for his own political future. His performance as he broadcast to the nation, first in Urdu and then in English, was incoherent. The gist was simple: he had to act because the Supreme Court had 'so demoralised our state agencies that we can't fight the "war on terror"' and the TV networks had become 'totally irresponsible'. 'I have imposed emergency,' he said halfway through his diatribe, adding, with a contemptuous gesture: 'You must have seen it on TV.' Was he being sarcastic, given that most channels had been shut down? Who knows? Mohammed Hanif, the sharp-witted head of the BBC's Urdu Service, which monitored the broadcast, confessed himself flummoxed when he wrote up what he heard. He had no doubt that the Urdu version of the speech was the general's own work. Hanif's deconstruction – he quoted the general in Urdu and in English – deserved a broadcast all of its own:

Here are some random things he said. And trust me, these things were said quite randomly. Yes, he did say: 'Extremism bahut extreme ho gaya hai [extremism has become too extreme] . . . Nobody is scared of us anymore . . . Islamabad is full of extremists . . . There is a government within government . . . Officials are being asked to the courts . . . Officials are being insulted by the judiciary.'

At one point he appeared wistful when reminiscing about his first three years in power: 'I had total control.' You were almost tempted to ask: 'What happened then, uncle?' But obviously, uncle didn't need any prompting. He launched into his routine about three stages of democracy. He claimed he was about to launch the third and final phase of democracy (the way he said it, he managed to make it sound like the Final Solution). And just when you thought he was about to make his point, he took an abrupt turn and plunged into a deep pool of self-pity. This involved a long-winded anecdote about how the Supreme Court judges would rather attend a colleague's daughter's wedding than just get it over with and decide that he is a constitutional president . . . I have heard some dictators' speeches in my life, but nobody has gone so far as to mention someone's daughter's wedding as a reason for imposing martial law on the country.

When for the last few minutes of his speech he addressed his audience in the West in English, I suddenly felt a deep sense of humiliation. This part of his speech was scripted. Sentences began and ended. I felt humiliated that my president not only thinks that we are not evolved enough for things like democracy and human rights, but that we can't even handle proper syntax and grammar.

The English-language version put the emphasis on the 'war on terror': Napoleon and Abraham Lincoln, he said, would have done what he did to preserve the 'integrity of their country' – the mention of Lincoln was obviously intended for the US market. In Pakistan's military academies the usual soldier-heroes are Napoleon, De Gaulle and Atatürk.

What did Benazir, now outmanoeuvred, make of the speech as she watched it on TV in her Dubai sanctuary? Her first response was to say she was shocked, which was slightly disingenuous. Even if she had not been told in advance that an emergency would be declared, it was hardly a secret – for one thing, Condoleezza Rice had made a token public appeal to Musharraf not to take this course. Yet for more than 24 hours she was unable to give a clear response. At one point she even criticised the chief justice for being too provocative.

Agitated phone calls from Pakistan persuaded her to return to Karachi. To put her in her place, the authorities kept her plane waiting on the tarmac. When she finally reached the VIP lounge, her PPP colleagues told her that unless she denounced the emergency there would be a split in the party. Outsmarted and abandoned by Musharraf, she couldn't take the risk of losing key figures in her party. She denounced the emergency and its perpetrator, established contact with the beleaguered opposition, and, as if putting on a new lipstick, declared that she would lead the struggle to get rid of the dictator. She now tried to call on the chief justice to express her sympathy but wasn't allowed near his residence.

She could have followed the example of her imprisoned colleague Aitzaz Ahsan, but she was envious of him: he had become far too popular in Pakistan. He'd even had the nerve to go to Washington, where he was politely received by society and inspected as a possible substitute should things go badly wrong. Not a single message had flowed from her Blackberry to congratulate him on his victories in the struggle to reinstate the chief justice. Ahsan had advised her against any deal with Musharraf. When generals are against the wall, he is reported to have told her, they resort to desperate and irrational measures. Others who offered similar advice in gentler language were also batted away. She was the PPP's 'chairperson-for-life' and brooked no dissent. The fact that Ahsan was proved right irritated her even more. Any notion of political morality had long ago been dumped. The very idea of a party with a consistent set of beliefs was regarded as ridiculous and outdated. Ahsan was now safe in prison, far from the madding hordes of Western journalists whom she received in style during the few days she spent under house arrest and afterwards. She made a few polite noises about his imprisonment, but nothing more.

The go-between from Washington arrived at very short notice. Negroponte spent some time with Musharraf and spoke to Benazir, still insisting that they make up and go through with the deal. She immediately toned down her criticisms, but the general was scathing and said in public that there was no way she could win the elections scheduled for January. No doubt the ISI are going to rig them in style. Had she remained loyal to him she might have lost public support, but he would have made sure she had a substantial presence in the new parliament. Now everything is up for grabs again. The opinion polls show that her old rival, Nawaz Sharif, is well ahead of her. Musharraf's hasty pilgrimage to Mecca was probably an attempt to secure Saudi mediation in case he has to cut a deal with the Sharif brothers – who have been living in exile in Saudi Arabia – and sideline her completely. Both sides deny that a deal was done, but Sharif returned to Pakistan with Saudi blessings and an armour-plated Cadillac as a special gift from the king. Little doubt that Riyadh would rather him than Benazir.

With the country still under a state of emergency and the largest media network refusing to sign the oath of allegiance that would allow them back on air, the polls scheduled for January can only be a general's election. It's hardly a secret that the ISI and the civilian bureaucracy will decide who wins and where, and some of the opposition parties are, wisely, considering a boycott. Nawaz Sharif told the press that in the course of a long telephone call he had failed to persuade Benazir to join it and thereby render the process null and void from the start. But now that he is back in the country it's unclear whether he will still go ahead with the boycott or try and negotiate a certain number of seats with the Chaudhrys of Gujrat, who had betrayed him by setting up a faction of the Pakistan Muslim League, the PML-Q, to support Musharraf. Perhaps a shared bout of amnesia will bring them together again.

What will Benazir do now? Washington's leverage in Islamabad is limited, which is why they wanted her to be involved in the first place. 'It's always better,' the US ambassador half-joked at a reception, 'to have two phone numbers in a capital.' That may be so, but they cannot guarantee her the prime ministership or even a fair election. In his death-cell, her father mulled over similar problems and came to slightly different conclusions. If I Am Assassinated, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's last will and testament, was written in semi-Gramsci mode, but the meaning wasn't lost on his colleagues:

I entirely agree that the people of Pakistan will not tolerate foreign hegemony. On the basis of the self-same logic, the people of Pakistan would never agree to an internal hegemony. The two hegemonies complement each other. If our people meekly submit to internal hegemony, a priori, they will have to submit to external hegemony. This is so because the strength and power of external hegemony is far greater than that of internal hegemony. If the people are too terrified to resist the weaker force, it is not possible for them to resist the stronger force. The acceptance of or acquiescence in internal hegemony means submission to external hegemony.

After he was hanged in April 1979, the text acquired a semi-sacred status among his supporters. But, when in power, Bhutto père had failed to develop any counter-hegemonic strategy or institutions, other than the 1973 constitution drafted by the veteran civil rights lawyer Mahmud Ali Kasuri (whose son Khurshid was until recently the foreign minister). A personality-driven, autocratic style of governance had neutered the spirit of the party, encouraged careerists and finally paved the way for his enemies. He was the victim of a grave injustice; his death removed all the warts and transformed him into a martyr. More than half the country, mainly the poor, mourned his passing.

The tragedy led to the PPP being treated as a family heirloom, which was unhealthy for both party and country. It provided the Bhuttos with a vote-bank and large reserves. But the experience of her father's trial and death radicalised and politicised his daughter. She would have preferred, she told me at the time, to be a diplomat. Her two brothers, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, were in London, having been forbidden to return home by their imprisoned father. The burden of trying to save her father's life fell on Benazir and her mother, Nusrat, and the courage they exhibited won them the silent respect of a frightened majority. They refused to cave in to General Zia's military dictatorship, which apart from anything else was invoking Islam to claw back rights won by women in previous decades. Benazir and Nusrat Bhutto were arrested and released several times. Their health began to suffer. Nusrat was allowed to leave the country to seek medical advice in 1982. Benazir was released a little more than a year later thanks, in part, to US pressure orchestrated by her old Harvard friend Peter Galbraith. She later described the period in her memoir, Daughter of the East (1988); it included photo-captions such as: 'Shortly after President Reagan praised the regime for making "great strides towards democracy", Zia's henchmen gunned down peaceful demonstrators marking Pakistan Independence Day. The police were just as brutal to those protesting at the attack on my jeep in January 1987.'

Her tiny Barbican flat in London became the centre of opposition to the dictatorship, and it was here that we often discussed a campaign to take on the generals. Benazir had built up her position by steadfastly and peacefully resisting the military and replying to every slander with a cutting retort. Her brothers had been operating on a different level. They set up an armed group, al-Zulfiqar, whose declared aim was to harass and weaken the regime by targeting 'traitors who had collaborated with Zia'. The principal volunteers were recruited inside Pakistan and in 1980 they were provided with a base in Afghanistan, where the pro-Moscow Communists had taken power three years before. It is a sad story with a fair share of factionalism, show-trials, petty rivalries, fantasies of every sort and death for the group's less fortunate members.

In March 1981 Murtaza and Shahnawaz Bhutto were placed on the FIA's most wanted list. They had hijacked a Pakistan International airliner soon after it left Karachi (a power cut had paralysed the X-ray machines, enabling the hijackers to take their weapons on board); it was diverted to Kabul. Here Murtaza took over and demanded the release of political prisoners. A young military officer on board the flight was murdered. The plane refuelled and went on to Damascus, where the Syrian spymaster General Kholi took charge and ensured there were no more deaths. The fact that there were American passengers on the plane was a major consideration for the generals and, for that reason alone, the prisoners in Pakistan were released and flown to Tripoli.

This was seen as a victory and welcomed as such by the PPP in Pakistan. For the first time the group began to be taken seriously. A key target inside the country was Maulvi Mushtaq Hussain, the chief justice of the High Court in Lahore, who, in 1978, had sentenced Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to death, and whose behaviour in court had shocked even those who were hostile to the PPP. (Among other charges, he had accused Bhutto of 'pretending to be a Muslim' – his mother was a Hindu convert.) Mushtaq was in a friend's car being driven to his home in Lahore's Model Town area when al-Zulfiqar gunmen opened fire. The judge survived, but his friend and the driver died. The friend was one of the Chaudhrys of Gujrat: Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi, a dodgy businessman who had ostentatiously asked General Zia to make him a present of the 'sacred pen' with which he had signed Bhutto's death warrant. The pen became a family heirloom. Zahoor Elahi may not have been the target but al-Zulfiqar, embarrassed at missing the judge, claimed he was also on their list, which may have been true.

It is the next generation of Chaudhrys that currently provides Musharraf with civilian ballast: Zahoor Elahi's son Shujaat organised the split with Nawaz Sharif and created the splinter PML-Q to ease the growing pains of the new regime. He still fixes deals and wanted an emergency imposed much earlier to circumvent the deal with Benazir. He will now mastermind the general's election campaign. His cousin Pervez Elahi is chief minister of the Punjab; his son, in turn, is busy continuing the family tradition by evicting tenants and buying up all the available land on the edge of Lahore. It has not been divulged which member of the family guards the sacred pen.

The hijacking meanwhile had annoyed Moscow, and the regime in Afghanistan asked the Bhutto brothers to find another refuge. While in Kabul, they had married two Afghan sisters, Fauzia and Rehana Fasihudin, daughters of a senior official at the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Together with their wives they now left the country and after a sojourn in Syria and possibly Libya ended up in Europe. The reunion with their sister took place on the French Riviera in 1985, a setting better suited to the lifestyles of all three siblings.

The young men feared General Zia's agents. Each had a young daughter. Shahnawaz lived in an apartment in Cannes. He had been in charge of the 'military apparatus' and life in Kabul had exacted a heavier toll on him. He was edgy and nervous. Relations with his wife were stormy and he told his sister that he was preparing to divorce her. 'There's never been a divorce in the family. Your marriage wasn't even an arranged one . . . You chose to marry Rehana. You must live with it,' was Benazir's revealing reply, according to her memoir. And then Shahnawaz was found dead in his apartment. His wife claimed he had taken poison, but according to Benazir nobody in the family believed her story; there had been violence in the room and his papers had been searched. Rehana looked immaculate, which disturbed the family. She was imprisoned for three months under the 'Good Samaritan' law for not having gone to the assistance of a dying person. After her release she settled in the United States. 'Had the CIA killed him as a friendly gesture towards their favourite dictator?' Benazir speculated. She raised other questions too: had the sisters become ISI agents? The truth remains hidden. Not long afterwards Murtaza divorced Fauzia, but kept custody of their three-year-old daughter, Fatima, and moved to Damascus. Here he had plenty of time for reflection and told friends that too many mistakes had been made. In 1986 he met Ghinwa Itaoui, a young teacher who had fled Lebanon after the Israeli invasion of 1982. She calmed him down and took charge of Fatima's education. They were married in 1989 and a son, Zulfiqar, was born the following year.

Benazir returned to Pakistan in 1986 and was greeted by large crowds who came out to show their affection for her and to demonstrate their anger with the regime. She campaigned all over the country, but felt increasingly that for some of the more religious-minded a young unmarried woman was not acceptable as a leader. How could she visit Saudi Arabia without a husband? An offer of marriage from the Zardari family was accepted and she married Asif in 1987. She had worried that any husband would find it difficult to deal with the periods of separation her nomadic political life would entail, but Zardari was perfectly capable of occupying himself.

A year later General Zia's plane blew up in midair. In the elections that followed the PPP won the largest number of seats. Benazir became prime minister, but was hemmed in by the army on one side and the president, the army's favourite bureaucrat, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, on the other. She told me at the time that she felt powerless. They wouldn't let her do anything. 'Tell the people,' was my advice. Tell them why you can't deliver on your promises to provide free education, proper sanitation, clean water and health services to improve the high infant mortality rate. She didn't tell them; in fact she did nothing at all apart from provide employment to some of her supporters. Being in power, it seemed, was satisfaction enough. She went on state visits: met and liked Mrs Thatcher and later, with her new husband in tow, was received politely by the Saudi king. In the meantime there were other plots afoot – the opposition was literally buying off some of her MPs – and in August 1990 her government was removed by presidential decree and Zia's protégés, the Sharif brothers, were back in power.

By the time she was re-elected in 1993, she had abandoned all idea of reform, but that she was in a hurry to do something became clear when she appointed her husband minister for investment, making him responsible for all investment offers from home and abroad. It is widely alleged that the couple accumulated $1.5 billion. The high command of the Pakistan People's Party now became a machine for making money, but without any trickle-down mechanism. This period marked the complete degeneration of the party. All that shame-faced party members could say, when I asked, was that 'everybody does it all over the world,' thus accepting that the cash nexus was now all that mattered. In foreign policy her legacy was mixed. She refused to sanction an anti-Indian military adventure in Kargil on the Himalayan slopes, but to make up for it, as I wrote in the LRB (15 April 1999), her government backed the Taliban takeover in Kabul – which makes it doubly ironic that Washington and London should be promoting her as a champion of democracy.

Murtaza Bhutto had contested the elections from abroad and won a seat in the Sind provincial legislature. He returned home and expressed his unhappiness with his sister's agenda. Family gatherings became tense. Murtaza had his weaknesses, but he wasn't corrupt and he argued in favour of the old party's radical manifesto. He made no secret of the fact that he regarded Zardari as an interloper whose only interest was money. Nusrat Bhutto suggested that Murtaza be made the chief minister of Sind: Benazir's response was to remove her mother as chairperson of the PPP. Any sympathy Murtaza may have felt for his sister turned to loathing. He no longer felt obliged to control his tongue and at every possible opportunity lambasted Zardari and the corrupt regime over which his sister presided. It was difficult to fault him on the facts. The incumbent chief minister of Sind was Abdullah Shah, one of Zardari's creatures. He began to harass Murtaza's supporters. Murtaza decided to confront the organ-grinder himself. He rang Zardari and invited him round for an informal chat sans bodyguards to try and settle the problems within the family. Zardari agreed. As the two men were pacing the garden, Murtaza's retainers appeared and grabbed Zardari. Someone brought out a cut-throat razor and some warm water and Murtaza shaved off half of Zardari's moustache to the delight of the retainers, then told him to get lost. A fuming Zardari, who had probably feared much worse, was compelled to shave off the other half at home. The media, bemused, were informed that the new clean-shaven consort had accepted intelligence advice that the moustache made him too recognisable a target. In which case why did he allow it to sprout again immediately afterwards?

Some months later, in September 1996, as Murtaza and his entourage were returning home from a political meeting, they were ambushed, just outside their house, by some seventy armed policemen accompanied by four senior officers. A number of snipers were positioned in surrounding trees. The street lights had been switched off. Murtaza clearly understood what was happening and got out of his car with his hands raised; his bodyguards were instructed not to open fire. The police opened fire instead and seven men were killed, Murtaza among them. The fatal bullet had been fired at close range. The trap had been carefully laid, but as is the way in Pakistan, the crudeness of the operation – false entries in police logbooks, lost evidence, witnesses arrested and intimidated, the provincial PPP governor (regarded as untrustworthy) dispatched to a non-event in Egypt, a policeman killed who they feared might talk – made it obvious that the decision to execute the prime minister's brother had been taken at a very high level.

While the ambush was being prepared, the police had sealed off Murtaza's house (from which his father had been lifted by Zia's commandos in 1978). The family inside felt something was wrong. At this point, a remarkably composed Fatima Bhutto, aged 14, decided to ring her aunt at Prime Minister's House. The conversation that followed remains imprinted on her memory and a few years ago she gave me an account of it. It was Zardari who took her call:

Fatima: I wish to speak to my aunt, please.

Zardari: It's not possible.

Fatima: Why? [At this point, Fatima says she heard loud wails and what sounded like fake crying.]

Zardari: She's hysterical, can't you hear?

Fatima: Why?

Zardari: Don't you know? Your father's been shot.

Fatima and Ghinwa found out where Murtaza had been taken and rushed out of the house. There was no sign on the street outside that anything had happened: the scene of the killing had been wiped clean of all evidence. There were no traces of blood and no signs of any disturbance. They drove straight to the hospital but it was too late; Murtaza was already dead. Later they learned that he had been left bleeding on the ground for almost an hour before being taken to a hospital where there were no emergency facilities of any kind.

When Benazir arrived to attend her brother's funeral in Larkana, angry crowds stoned her limo. She had to retreat. In another unusual display of emotion, local people encouraged Murtaza's widow to attend the actual burial ceremony in defiance of Islamic tradition. According to Fatima, one of Benazir's hangers-on instigated legal proceedings against Ghinwa in a religious court for breaching Islamic law. Nothing was sacred.

Anyone who witnessed Murtaza's murder was arrested; one witness died in prison. When Fatima rang Benazir to ask why witnesses were being arrested and not the killers she was told: 'Look, you're very young. You don't understand things.' Perhaps it was for this reason that the kind aunt decided to encourage Fatima's blood-mother, Fauzia, whom she had previously denounced as a murderer in the pay of General Zia, to come to Pakistan and claim custody of Fatima. No mystery as to who paid her fare from California. Fatima and Ghinwa Bhutto resisted and the attempt failed. Benazir then tried a softer approach and insisted that Fatima accompany her to New York, where she was going to address the UN Assembly. Ghinwa Bhutto approached friends in Damascus and had her two children flown out of the country. Fatima later discovered that Fauzia had been seen hobnobbing with Benazir in New York.

In November 1996 Benazir was once again removed from power, this time by her own president, Farooq Leghari, a PPP stalwart. He cited corruption, but what had also angered him was the ISI's crude attempt at blackmail – the intelligence agencies had photographed Leghari's daughter meeting a boyfriend and threatened to go public. The week Benazir fell, the chief minister of Sind, Abdullah Shah, hopped on a motorboat and fled Karachi for the Gulf and thence the US.

A judicial tribunal had been appointed by Benazir's government to inquire into the circumstances leading to Murtaza's death. Headed by a Supreme Court judge, it took detailed evidence from all parties. Murtaza's lawyers accused Zardari, Abdullah Shah and two senior police officials of conspiracy to murder. Benazir (now out of power) accepted that there had been a conspiracy, but suggested that 'the hidden hand responsible for this was President Farooq Ahmad Leghari': the intention, she said, was to 'kill a Bhutto to get rid of a Bhutto'. Nobody took this seriously. Given all that had happened, it was an incredible suggestion.

The tribunal said there was no legally acceptable evidence to link Zardari to the incident, but accepted that 'this was a case of extra-judicial killings by the police' and concluded that such an incident could not have taken place without approval from the highest quarters. Nothing happened. Eleven years later, Fatima Bhutto publicly accused Zardari; she also claimed that many of those involved that day appear to have been rewarded for their actions. In an interview on an independent TV station just before the emergency was imposed, Benazir was asked to explain how it happened that her brother had bled to death outside his home while she was prime minister. She walked out of the studio. A sharp op-ed piece by Fatima in the LA Times on 14 November elicited the following response: 'My niece is angry with me.' Well, yes.

Musharraf may have withdrawn the corruption charges, but three other cases are proceeding in Switzerland, Spain and Britain. In July 2003, after an investigation lasting several years, Daniel Devaud, a Geneva magistrate, convicted Mr and Mrs Asif Ali Zardari, in absentia, of money laundering. They had accepted $15 million in bribes from two Swiss companies, SGS and Cotecna. The couple were sentenced to six months in prison and ordered to return $11.9 million to the government of Pakistan. 'I certainly don't have any doubts about the judgments I handed down,' Devaud told the BBC. Benazir appealed, thus forcing a new investigation. On 19 September 2005 she appeared in a Geneva court and tried to detach herself from the rest of the family: she hadn't been involved, she said: it was a matter for her husband and her mother (afflicted with Alzheimer's disease). She knew nothing of the accounts. And what of the agreement her agent Jens Schlegelmilch had signed according to which, in case of her and Zardari's death, the assets of Bomer Finance Company would be divvied out equally between the Zardari and Bhutto families? She knew nothing of that either. And the £120,000 diamond necklace in the bank vault paid for by Zardari? It was intended for her, but she had rejected the gift as 'inappropriate'. The case continues. Last month Musharraf told Owen Bennett-Jones of the BBC World Service that his government would not interfere with the proceedings: 'That's up to the Swiss government. Depends on them. It's a case in their courts.'

In Britain the legal shenanigans concern the $3.4 million Rockwood estate in Surrey, bought by offshore companies on behalf of Zardari in 1995 and refurbished to his exacting tastes. Zardari denied owning the estate. Then when the court was about to instruct the liquidators to sell it and return the proceeds to the Pakistan government, Zardari came forward and accepted ownership. Last year, Lord Justice Collins ruled that, while he was not making any 'findings of fact', there was a 'reasonable prospect' that the Pakistan government might be able to establish that Rockwood had been bought and furnished with 'the fruits of corruption'. A close friend of Benazir told me that she was genuinely not involved in this one, since Zardari wasn't thinking of spending much time there with her.

Daniel Markey, formerly of the State Department and currently senior fellow for India, Pakistan and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, explained why Washington had pushed the marriage of convenience: 'A progressive, reform-minded, more cosmopolitan party in government would help the US.' As their finances reveal, the Zardaris are certainly cosmopolitan.

What then is at stake in Pakistan as far as Washington is concerned? 'The concern I have,' Robert Gates, the US secretary for defense, recently said, 'is that the longer the internal problems continue, the more distracted the Pakistani army and security services will be in terms of the internal situation rather than focusing on the terrorist threat in the frontier area.' But one reason for the internal crisis is Washington's over-reliance on Musharraf and the Pakistani military. It is Washington's support and funding that have given him the confidence to operate as he pleases. But the thoughtless Western military occupation of Afghanistan is obviously crucial, since the instability in Kabul seeps into Peshawar and the tribal areas between the two countries. The state of emergency targeted the judiciary, opposition politicians and the independent media. All three groups were, in different ways, challenging the official line on Afghanistan and the 'war on terror', the disappearance of political prisoners and the widespread use of torture in Pakistani prisons. The issues were being debated on television in a much more open fashion than happens anywhere in the West, where a blanket consensus on Afghanistan drowns all dissent. Musharraf argued that civil society was hampering the 'war on terror'. Hence the emergency. It's nonsense, of course. It's the war in the frontier regions that is creating dissent inside the army. Many do not want to fight. Hence the surrender of dozens of soldiers to Taliban guerrillas. This is the reason many junior officers are taking early retirement.

Western pundits blather on about the jihadi finger on the nuclear trigger. This is pure fantasy, reminiscent of a similar campaign almost three decades ago, when the threat wasn't the jihadis who were fighting alongside the West in Afghanistan, but nationalist military radicals. The cover story of Time magazine for 15 June 1979 dealt with Pakistan; a senior Western diplomat was quoted as saying that the big danger was 'that there is another Gaddafi down there, some radical major or colonel in the Pakistani army. We could wake up and find him in Zia's place one morning and, believe me, Pakistan wouldn't be the only place that would be destabilised.'

The Pakistan army is half a million strong. Its tentacles are everywhere: land, industry, public utilities and so on. It would require a cataclysmic upheaval (a US invasion and occupation, for example) for this army to feel threatened by a jihadi uprising. Two considerations unite senior officers: the unity of the organisation and keeping politicians at bay. One reason is the fear that they might lose the comforts and privileges they have acquired after decades of rule; but they also have the deep aversion to democracy that is the hallmark of most armies. Unused to accountability within their own ranks, it's difficult for them to accept it in society at large.

As southern Afghanistan collapses into chaos, and as corruption and massive inflation takes hold, the Taliban is gaining more and more recruits. The generals who convinced Benazir that control of Kabul via the Taliban would give them 'strategic depth' may have retired, but their successors know that the Afghans will not tolerate a long-term Western occupation. They hope for the return of a whitewashed Taliban. Instead of encouraging a regional solution that includes India, Iran and Russia, the US would prefer to see the Pakistan army as its permanent cop in Kabul. It won't work. In Pakistan itself the long night continues as the cycle restarts: military leadership promising reforms degenerates into tyranny, politicians promising social support to the people degenerate into oligarchs. Given that a better functioning neighbour is unlikely to intervene, Pakistan will oscillate between these two forms of rule for the foreseeable future. The people who feel they have tried everything and failed will return to a state of semi-sleep, unless something unpredictable rouses them again. This is always possible.

30 November

Vigil for media freedom against PEMRA ordinances

KARACHI, Dec 8:

For the third consecutive Saturday, the People's Resistance held a vigil at the Karachi Press Club as part of the ongoing protest against restrictions on media through the Pemra Ordinance 2007, the forced ban on shows, presenters, channels and radio programmes. While some media companies have been forced to conform to restrictions and demands, others continue to resist government pressure at great cost.

FM 103 was recently restored after a month but all channels of Geo TV continue to be blocked in Pakistan and the Sindh High Court dismissed as 'non-maintanable under the PCO' Geo's petition to allow at least its non-news channels back on air. Royal TV, closed along with the other channels on Nov 3 is also yet to be restored.

The People's Resistance stands with the journalists in their ongoing struggle for media freedom against all irritants, including recent amendments in PEMRA ordinance and RPPO, and restrictions on private TV channels and on their editorial content.

Citizens were invited to express their peaceful defiance and join journalists to individually light candles symbolic of the human freedom of thought and expression in the darkness imposed by the martial law-emergency. Participants of the vigil, including children, stamped their hand-prints on a white banner, symbolic of their support and salute to the organizations, journalists, writers, and staff who are standing for freedom of expression.

List of people arrested from GOR

Saima Khwaja
Erum Hassan
Ahmed Basheer
Ikhlas Ahmed
Amanullah Kariapper
Mohammed Afaq
Raza Mohammad
Mohammad Pervaiz
Jawaid Amin

However, this list is not entirely confirmed.

--

Update on Hunger Strike

Press Release:

The Student Action Committee held a hunger strike outside the Lahore Press Club Today to demand the immediate release of the students and other protestors who were arrested on Friday and put in Camp Jail for holding a vigil outside Justice Siddiqui's house. Around 30-40 students, holding cards and banners, took part in the hunger strike, which started at 11am in the morning and will continue till the protestors are released.

The ASP of the area requested the students to disperse, and promised the protestors' release on Monday. Weary of unfullfilled promises by officials in the past, the students demanded a written promise of the their release by the Governor, which was denied. The ASP admitted that procedural errors had been committed by the police in putting the protestors in jail without letting them appear before the Magistrate, but said that the error could only be rectified on Monday. The SAC dismissed this explanation, and said that the students will continue their hunger strike through the night if the protestors are not released immediately.

The SAC will be joining civil society groups, lawyers, and journalists in observing a black day for human rights on Monday, and if the protestors are not released by then, in show of their solidarity with the students, the Campaign for Democracyand Rule of Law also join the hunger strike.

Miscalculations Galore

Investigative research article by Pejamistri, posted as a comment on pkpolitics.com.

As per the original planning:

-Martial law and the mad dictator in uniform was supposed to last for one year (till 2008).]
-Establishment also expected that they will be able to get more than 70% of the supreme court judges to take oath under PCO.
-They also planned to get the Chief justice of Supreme Court removed by the new supreme judicial council to show the world that it was a constitutional removal.
-One of the important aspect of the planning was that "all" of the high court judges will take oath under PCO except a few. They also wanted to move to Supreme Judicial council against Chief Justice Sind , and Chief justice Peshawar .

However things turned out totally different:

-First of all apart of Balochistan High court a lot of the judges in provincial high courts did not take oath. This is a unique situation in Pakistan as in all the previous PCO's 99% of the high court judges have taken oath under PCO.
-Due to extreme pressure from within the army (generals who were not part of the planning), and US, mad dictator reluctantly decided to remove the uniform.
-Despite all the efforts from ISI and mad dictator's cronies they have not been able to blackmail any more judges to take oath under PCO.
-The legal clown (Malik Qayyum) of mad dictator tries to declare in his every statement the reinstatement of judges as "past and closed" transaction , the reality is that it is a "current and open" transaction in legal circles. Even the existing PCO judges recognize this privately which means that it requires a permanent settlement.
-Another issue at the moment is "how to lift the martial law", the date of 16th December is looming large and if mad dictator does restore the constitution on that date, it is going to open a new Pandora box for him. This will be a new and unknown path which has never been tried before.
-The most important part in this struggle is that the lawyers are not appearing before the PCO judges which means the business is at standstill even in high courts. Let me give an example that only 241 cases were decided in November in Supreme Court as apposed to 3000+ in month of October. So one can imagine the enormity of the situation. Same thing is happening in all the high courts.
-Since the current situation has no parallels in the history and there is no known solution to this situation, establishment (read army) does not have any solution which they feel can get them out of this situation.
-So at the moment establishment (army) is exploring all possible solutions. And complete restoration of judiciary along with mad dictator's relocation to Turkey is also on the cards.

Protests likely to gain momentum

(Courtesy The Dawn)
ISLAMABAD, Dec 7:

Over 100 protest demonstrations have been held inthe federal capital territory since emergency rule was proclaimed on November 3 and the trend is likely to intensify, Dawn learnt on Friday. Security sources said the local administration and police haveinformed the federal government that the 108 demonstrations remainedpeaceful and police had to intervene on two occasions only.However they feared the lawyers’ community, journalists, students and representatives of the civil society would mount more protestsin the coming days. Meanwhile the local police have announced that it was innegotiations with these elements on keeping peace and that extra police contingents have been called from Punjab to maintain law and order in the city.Journalists were found to be most active on the anti-government front.

Of the 108 protests recorded so far, 32 were staged by them,followed by the lawyers (28) and the students (19). The civilsociety and the political parties trailed behind them with 15 and 14 protests to their credit. A little over 1,300 protesters were arrested for violating a ban on public gatherings or were taken into preventive detention, like leading lawyers Aitzaz Ahsan and Munir A. Malik and former ISI chiefGen (retired) Hameed Gul.About 130 people, including two women and a child, were hurt inprotest melees. Police recorded all the protests but registered only37 FIRs.

Rally against detention of judges and lawyers

(Coutesy The Dawn)
ISLAMABAD, Dec 7:

Hundreds of students, lawyers, civil society members, political workers and ordinary citizens held a protest rally against the detention of superior country judges and the leaders of the lawyers’ movement and sought their release.The rally started from Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan’s residence here and culminated close to the Judges Colony. Protesters were carrying candles as a symbol of hope for the success of their struggle to bring dictatorship to an end.The protesters raised slogans against military rule and the hypocrisy of political parties.The rally then marched slowly towards the Judges Colony, blocking the main road, where they were stopped by the police from heading towards the deposed chief justice’s residence. Speaking on the occasion, lawyers’ leaders Sardar Asmatullah, Haroon Rashid and others said struggle for restoration of pre-November 3 judiciary would continue unabated regardless of whether the political parties boycott the elections or not.They said their movement that started on March 9 was not just centring around the removal of Musharraf or the person of Iftikhar Chaudhry but was about changing the state itself and ensuring the supremacy of the legislate and judiciary over administrative institutions. In particular this movement was about permanently ending the role ofthe military in politics. Speaking on the occasion, Salman Haider of the Students Action Committee said the society could only be considered alive if its youth which constitute 50 per cent of the population, were involved in politics. He said students of this country were slowly and surely recovering from long slumber. They would now continue their struggle until the establishment of genuine democracy, he added.

Upcoming Events

MONDAY 10th - International Human Rights Day declared a black day - Lahore High Court ( protest and procession) 12:00pm

SAC sit in and hunger strike today

DEAR ALL,

THE STUDENTS ACTION COMMITTEE (SAC) IS HOLDING A SIT-IN AND HUNGER STRIKE FOR RELEASE OF THE 10 STUDENTS AND CIVIL SOCIETY MEMBERS ('THE GOR 10') ARRESTED OUTSIDE JUSTICE SHAHID SIDDIQUI'S HOUSE IN GOR LAHORE -
THE PROTEST IS OUTSIDE THE LAHORE PRESS CLUB 11 AM ONWARDS TODAY (SATURDAY 8 DECEMBER).

PLEASE ADD YOUR STRENGTH TO THIS SIT-IN. THE MOVEMENT WILL GET TOUGHER, AND OUR ONLY WAY TO SUCCESS IS THROUGH COORDINATION, UNITY AND COMPLETE SOLIDARITY.

In Complete Solidarity,
CCP Team

CODEPink Activist Barry arrested in United States

On December 6, Tighe Barry, a CODEPINK activist who along with Medea Benjamin was deported from Pakistan at gunpoint for supporting pro-democracy forces, was arrested at the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on US Assistance to Pakistan. Barry and Benjamin, deported on December 5, flew directly to Washington DC to attend this hearing. They had asked for the opportunity to testify about their firsthand experience with the heroism of Pakistan’s civil society and the brutality of the government, but were told that the witnesses had already been selected.

The first to testify was Richard Boucher, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs. His testimony was infuriating to Barry, Benjamin and the 10 other CODEPINK activists who were in attendance and holding up signs saying “No Money To Musharraf”. Mr. Boucher gave the impression that Pakistan was on the path to democracy and that our billions of dollars in assistance was being well used. He called the state of emergency a mere “bump in the road.” The travesty of sacking the independent Supreme Court judges and replacing them with Musharraf allies was called a “Supreme Court reshuffling.” While admitting that the elections would not be “perfect,” he asserted that the State Department was working closely with Pakistani officials to ensure that the elections are free, fair, transparent and credible.

He went on to say that democracy also requires accountable government institutions, including an independent judiciary, protection of individual human rights, a free and dynamic press, an atmosphere promoting open debate, and a vibrant civil society. “Pakistan is making progress toward those goals,” he claimed.

Having just witnessed firsthand the thuggery of Musharraf’s regime, Barry could not believe his ears. He stood up in protest, saying that the Assistant Secretary’s testimony was full of lies. “Musharraf has beaten lawyers and students, destroyed the judiciary, and censored the press,” said Barry. “The U.S. must freeze all funding to this military government until emergency rule is lifted, the independent judiciary is reinstated, the censorship of the media is lifted, and all judges, lawyers, students and human rights defenders are released.” Barry was pulled out of the room, handcuffed, and put in a paddywagon. “I felt compelled to do this for the sake of my friends in Pakistan,” he said, as they took him away. “Pakistanis risk their lives standing up to their government; I have to stand up to mine.” Barry was cited and released, and must appear in Court on December 27 to face charges of Disorderly Conduct.

For interviews contact: Tighe Barry, 310-920-8248 or tighebarry@juno.com.

Student Action Committee, civil society protest arrest of students

Around 100 students from the Student Action Committee Lahore gathered outside the Camp Jail on Ferozepur Road on Friday afternoon, to protest the arrest of their colleagues from outside Justice Shahid Siddiqui's house on Thursday night. The students were joined by several people from the academic and legal community and civil society groups, including Syed Muhammad Shah, Lahore Bar Association president Firdaus Butt, Lahore High Court Bar Association Vice President and Justice (r) Nasira Javaid Iqbal, who were present in support of their cause. The protestors chanted slogans demanding the release of their fellow students who had committed no known crime, as well as slogans chastising the brutality of the Musharraf regime and his puppet judges, on whose orders the arrests had taken place. They also distributed flyers, posters and stickers amongst the ongoing traffic, from within which many people stopped to join the procession.
The protestors vowed not to discontinue their vigil until the students and other activists were released.
After dispersing, the students chalked up plans to continue their protest in the form of a hunger strike at the Press Club on Saturday.

'Germany against emergency rule, judges' ouster and media curbs'

* German counsel general in Karachi says Germany has asked for restoration of democracy from day one

Courtesy, Daily Times
Staff Report
QUETTA:

German Counsel General in Karachi Hans-Joachim Kiderlen said on Thursday that Germany did not endorse either the emergency rule in Pakistan or other controversial measures, such as the ouster of Supreme Court judges, the curbs imposed on the media and mass arrests of political leaders and activists.

Speaking at a Quetta Press Club 'meet the press' programme, he said the German government was as critical of the imposition of emergency in the country as any other country in the world. However, due to insufficient communication and the language barrier, some segments of society believed the German government's reaction had been soft and not too critical of the present regime. Restore democracy: "We have not maintained double standards with regards to the situation in Pakistan. We have asked for the restoration of democracy from day one," Kiderlen said.
The German diplomat appreciated Pakistan's role in the war against terrorism and extremism. For this reason particularly, he said a strong, stable and democratic Pakistan was in the greater interest of the region and the international community. We are confident that the emergency will be lifted soon and Pakistan will return to normalcy," he said.
Kiderlen told Daily Times after the event that the government of Pakistan had invited international observers to monitor the elections in the country. But, there were signs, he said, that observers would not come to the country under the present circumstances. "Some NGOs might send their observers to Pakistan but the European Union's official observers are yet to decide if they will monitor the January polls. CHances are very rare that they will.
The envoy adopted a very diplomatic tone when asked to comment on the prevailing situation in Balochistan. Though the government of Germany is constantly following development in the province, including the issue of forced disappearances, it would not like to take up the matter directly at a government-to government level, he said. "We can't interfere into the domestic issues of Pakistan.

"Germany is interested in undertaking more welfare projects in the health and education sectors in Balochistan, said Kiderlen. Three schools and one hospital are already receiving funds from Germany, he added.

Congressmen show support for lawyers and the movement

By Khalid Hasan
WASHINGTON:

Compared to just two congressman who turned up on Wednesday to listen to the image repair team led by Dr Nasim Ashraf on Capitol Hill, a parallel meeting organised by a coalition of Pakistani-American organisations attracted seven congressmen and a senator who delivered fiery speeches calling for the supremacy of the rule of law in Pakistan.The 'Pakistan Day on the Hill' was organised by the Coalition of Concerned Citizens led by the Asian American Network against Abuse of Human Rights (ANAA) and made up of seven like-minded organisations. They were addressed by a bipartisan group of legislators namely Representatives Harry E Mitchell, Zoe Lofgren, Bill Delahunt, Steve J Israel, Nita Lowey, Trent Franks, Nick Joe Rahall, and Senator Claire McCaskell.

Malik praised: Lofgren called for the restoration of the deposed judges and expressed praise for former Supreme Court Bar Association president Munir Malik, who was his classmate at a US law school. He recalled that Malik had left a lucrative career in this country to return to Pakistan. He said the way lawyers had been treated in Pakistan was an outrage. He reminded Pakistanis that the voice of Bush is not the voice of all America. He called for free and fair elections in Pakistan and the restoration of the rule of law.
Lofgren said, "How can a nation fight terrorism unless it respects the due process of law. She said what the lawyers of Pakistan have done has become a role model for everyone, and not necessarily in Pakistan, but everywhere else. She said the United States should not base its policy on the basis of short-term gain and temporary alliances. She observed that the US has failed the people of Pakistan as it has fallen short of upholding its own standards. The people of Pakistan, she added, are not extremists and they deserve support in their democratic struggle.

'Epic' democratic struggle: Delahhunt, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said the people of Pakistan are engaged in an epic democratic struggle. He said he was a lawyer by profession himself, adding, "and I am so proud of Pakistani lawyers for speaking up. It bespoke well of this noble profession because they showed courage and honoured the very spirit of law." He declared, "Let me assure Pakistan's lawyers that we will stand by them and we will continue to monitor the situation. The real Unite States will stand up for human rights.
Rep Lowey, who chairs the powerful appropriations committee, recalled her visit to Pakistan this summer but confessed that she was taken aback by the events of November 3 when a state of emergency was declared by Gen (r) Musharraf. She said she "passionately" feels about the issue of democracy in Pakistan and supports those waging the present struggle.
Rep Israel said voices of dissent in Pakistan are being "squelched". In his view, the reinstatement of the judiciary is "very important." He compared the new oath taken by some Pakistani judges to an oath taken in October 1936 by German judges, in which they expressed their allegiance not to the German constitution but to Adolf Hitler. "If you lose your judges, you lose your freedom. For society to progress, an independent judiciary is a must." He said he had visited Pakistan with a congressional delegation and met Musharraf, who had asked Congress to "support me". That, he added, made it clear "that Musharraf was placing himself over his people."
Rep Franks called Pakistan a vital and crucial US partner in the fight against terrorism. The people of Pakistan are committed to the rule of law and constitutional government. Musharraf, he added, had done some good things but he had made a "terrible error" by destabilising the constitution and the very foundations of Pakistan. It is not a good situation, he added, in a\ncountry with a nuclear arsenal that can be seized by the wrong people, although Pakistan's nuclear weapons are well protected for the present. He called for "government by law not by whim."
Rep Rahall called Pakistan a friend and ally in the war on terror. "What should be important to America is the country, not the individual," he stressed –a reference to Bush's support for President Musharraf. He regretted the firing of Pakistani judges and said that no American president, regardless of how much he disliked some judges, could fire them. The American people would not allow that. Senator McCaskell told the meeting that there could be no freedom without the rule of law. She said America wants a strong relationship with Pakistan, but with a Pakistan that respects the rule of law. She assured those struggling for democracy that "we stand with you shoulder to shoulder".

Organization of the Mauritius petition

This is a small account of how signature campaign was organized atMauritius

The outcome of any fight depends most of all, only on ORGANIZATION.For the benefit of students active in this heroic campaign, I will give here briefly, the manner in which the message was prepared here in Mauritius. Hopefully, students and campaigners everywhere will be able to benefit from our short and limited experience.
Since I came here [Mauritius, Africa] I have given three or so talks to the politicalstudies society at the University of Mauritius concerning the situation inPakistan. I kept keeping regular contact with leftist and pan-African-ist student groups here. The "campaign" was preceded bythree or so days of meetings with the memberships of these groups,and kept a few meetings at my flat, at which the points of themessage were hammered out and gained approval of these points.Following that we organized four volunteer groups of two or three students each, which would spend three days collecting signaturesfrom the two largest universities here.\
We worked through the student's unions of these universities. At the campuses, (two at each campus) one group would set up atable, and a music system playing bob Marley nonstop and onewould grab the megaphone after an interval of every half hour or so(throat still hasn't recovered) the other would be roaming around collecting signatures.
After that it was all legwork. After collecting these signatures, we mailed a copy to the PM'soffice, and a "guerrilla group" went to the Pakistani highcommission to hand in the message in person. Before hand, we printedtwo or three huge posters containing the main resolutions andslogans and pasted it on the walls.Just eight or nine of us, but ORGANIZED. (and very expensive on my phone bill).
Without organization, the people have nothing.

In Solidarity,
Ahmed Khan

Picture of Police baton charge on students protest in Islamabad

Police baton-charge students rally- (Islamabad Thursday)

(Courtesy The News)

Hundreds of people including students, lawyers, political activistsand members of the civil society staged a protest demonstrationagainst the government policies and demanded restoration of deposedjudges and lifting of ban on Geo TV.The activists of Joint Students Movement and people belonging todifferent walks of life gathered at Aabpara Chowk and startedchanting slogans against the government.Police resorted to baton charge to disperse the mob when theyreached near Aabpara Police Station causing injuries to manyprotesters. Angry people hurled stones at police and damaged twopolice vehicles while two police officials including the driver of apolice vehicle were injured.Meanwhile, crackdown against lawyers, students and key politicalleaders of opposition has been launched to counter increasing trendof protest demonstrations for independence of media and judiciary.“People involved in breaching peace would be held,” SSP IslamabadKaleem Imam said when contacted for his comments, adding thatmiscreants would be arrested to maintain order in the metropolis.The SSP said, “I do not want to spoil the peaceful atmosphere ofIslamabad but those found creating law and order situation will notbe spared.” He added that miscreants pelted stones and injured twopolice officials and damaged police vehicles in Tuesday rally.“Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who is scheduled to meet thedeposed Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad ChaudhryThursday (today), will be intercepted at borderline of ‘Red Zone’and will not be allowed to cross the line,” an officer responsiblefor maintaining law and order, told when contacted.A list of over 100 lawyers, student leaders, political activists andmembers of civil society have been handed over to the raiding parties, sources told 'The News'.

Police parties kept raiding the house of lawyers including President Islamabad Bar, Haroon-ur-Rasheed and former President Bar Tariq Jahangiri. However, no arrest was made till the filing of this report.Security at barriers set on the way to Judicial Colony has been beefed up to intercept leader of PML-N Mian Nawaz Sharif and hundreds of personnel of law enforcing agencies have been deployed in and around the Colony.
Online adds: Hundreds of students observed protest day on Wednesday against the imposition of emergency and curbs on media and judiciary and clashed with police while marching towards the house of sackedSC chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry to present flowers to him. The students wanted to present flowers to the deposed SC chief justice but were stopped by the federal and the Punjab police in front of GPO. The police baton-charged the rally to disburse the protestors. The students in reply also pelted stones at the police. Earlier, the students belonging to Joint Student Movement, Islami Jamiat Talba and different colleges and universities of the capital protested in front of Rawalpindi-Islamabad Press Club camp office. Addressing the protestors, President RIUJ Afzal Butt said that after the journalists and lawyers, the students are also joining the movement for the restoration of the judiciary and in the favour of free media and the movement would be continued until the restoration of pre-November 3 situation. The rally was participated by Islami Jamiat Talba, Islamic University, Quaid-e-Azam University, Joint Student Movement, Gordon College, Punjab College, NUML and Asghar Mall College.

Pakistan PCOed

By Naeem Sadiq
Dawn, December 03, 2007

As the president took an oxymoronic oath on the "nowhere to be seen" 1973 Constitution, administered by an ever too keen Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) Chief Justice, a $60m Lear jet landed at Islamabad airport to become the fourteenth aircraft of the VVIP fleet that caters to the travelling comforts of the leadership of Pakistan.
Besides a convoluted order of priority, is there a direct relationship between the number of expensive VVIP aeroplanes and respect for the Constitution in a country?
How come a country conspicuous by the absence of a decent education, health or public transport system for its ordinary citizens, be so disproportionately sympathetic to the well being and luxuries of its leaders? Perhaps these aeroplanes support tasks of supreme national importance, such as the Frontier governor's weekend partridge hunting visits to Nawabshah. After all we don't expect him to be travelling by Khyber Mail or Chenab Express.
No wonder there is a long queue of people, ever so ready to rattle out oaths for such cushy jobs. The contents and the legality of such oaths is a matter that should interest only the finicky lawyers, the chattering journalists or the emailing civil society.
Pakistan has been badly PCOed and trapped in a tortuous cobweb of illegalities. The 'emergency' itself is illegal. It was promulgated by a person not authorised to do so. The Constitution cannot be suspended. Anyone doing so, must be given a fair trial under Article 6, instead of being upgraded to the post of the president. Can we have a president and a prime minister who take oath under a 'non-existent' constitution?
Having done so, they could at best be referred to as 'non-existent' president and prime minister. It is on record that within the first few hours of its promulgation, the seven member Supreme Court bench had declared the PCO as illegal and extra-constitutional. Thus the judges who took oath on the PCO and subsequently administered it to many other individuals can also be suitable candidates for a fair application of Article 6 of the Constitution.

Pakistan and its people find themselves torn and ravaged by the man-made disaster inflicted upon them on the afternoon of Nov 3. Do we continue to retain our citizenship, after the country itself has renounced its own Constitution? Do we even continue to remain a country which gives up on the core document that defines its nationhood -- almost like denying its own existence?For how long will the people of Pakistan continue to be PCOed? Why must Pakistan and its people suffer such humiliating global indignity and such demeaning personal assaults? They must put an end to the PCOing of their lives, once and for all. They must refuse to vote for political parties that find it politically expedient to support such unconstitutional arrangements. For sixty years the judiciary and the political parties have extracted their pound of flesh from each PCO. They have regularised, validated, supported and even appreciated each arriving PCO. It is only now, and for the first time that a sizeable number of judges have taken a clear and firm stand of saying 'No to PCO'. If the citizens of Pakistan do not rally behind their call, we must be ready to live with a fresh five yearly PCO for the rest of our lives. Pakistan is suffering from an acute disease of compulsive constitutionlessness. The citizens of Pakistan must intervene to save this country. The politicians will not do so. They are only awaiting the next oath taking ceremony that would clear the way for their endless global junkets and Umrahs at the tax payers' expense, aboard the 14 luxury aeroplanes parked in the VVIP section of Islamabad airport.Pakistan and its people find themselves torn and ravaged by the man-made disaster inflicted upon them on the afternoon of Nov 3. Do we continue to retain our citizenship, after the country itself has renounced its own Constitution? Do we even continue to remain a country which gives up on the core document that defines its nationhood -- almost like denying its own existence?
For how long will the people of Pakistan continue to be PCOed? Why must Pakistan and its people suffer such humiliating global indignity and such demeaning personal assaults? They must put an end to the PCOing of their lives, once and for all. They must refuse to vote for political parties that find it politically expedient to support such unconstitutional arrangements. For sixty years the judiciary and the political parties have extracted their pound of flesh from each PCO. They have regularised, validated, supported and even appreciated each arriving PCO. It is only now, and for the first time that a sizeable number of judges have taken a clear and firm stand of saying 'No to PCO'. If the citizens of Pakistan do not rally behind their call, we must be ready to live with a fresh five yearly PCO for the rest of our lives.
Pakistan is suffering from an acute disease of compulsive constitutionlessness. The citizens of Pakistan must intervene to save this country. The politicians will not do so. They are only awaiting the next oath taking ceremony that would clear the way for their endless global junkets and Umrahs at the tax payers' expense, aboard the 14 luxury aeroplanes parked in the VVIP section of Islamabad airport.

Victims of conscience - The News _ Editorial Dec 6

Thursday, December 06, 2007

The serving of notices to the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) by police in Lahore on Tuesday, informing the administration that at least four faculty members and two students were wanted for questioning regarding charges against them under regulations against assembly and for disturbing public order, indicates that the authorities are unwilling to abandon their ruthless crushing of dissent. The police tactics are part of an obvious effort to intimidate the staff and students at LUMS who have been engaged in civil society's protests against emergency rule and the measures taken under it, since November 3.Barricades were erected on Tuesday outside the university gates to prevent students joining the daily protest for civil liberties held outside the Lahore Press Club. Till now, different groups of students had been taking part in the hunger strike camp set up by journalists and the rallies organized there. A senior police official is also reported to have visited the LUMS campus, and warned people present not to take part in any further protest action, as there were already FIRs against them. The police action created considerable panic on campus – as indeed, it was intended to do. Rumours, which later proved unfounded, of arrests from the campus, added to this. It is obvious that the charges, which include that of wall-chalking, levelled against senior faculty members and students are absurd. It has also been apparent that the involvement of students, not only from LUMS but also other educational institutions, against the curtailment of basic liberties, have taken police by surprise, and fears that the movement could quickly widen have led to the latest acts of harassment.

The fact is that the students, and indeed the professors at LUMS, deserve applause for standing up in favour of civil society and against dictatorship and imposition of emergency rule in the country. That they are now being punished for their stance reflects the true face of authority today in Pakistan. But the fact also is that the protests that have been flickering across civil society, with vigils outside the homes of judges, at the offices of banned television channels and at other places will not easily die away. The 'renaming' of a busy city square along Lahore's Mall Road after deposed chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry by students and lawyers on Dec 4 is just one example of the innovative, and colourful, dimensions assumed by this unusual protest movement. Cowardly actions, such as those taken by police at LUMS, will not be able to easily crush the ongoing campaign. Indeed, the police presence outside the university best depicts the situation of this tussle between state and a peaceful civil society, which has so far refused to be cowed down by the tactics used against it. And, the involvement of students in this effort highlights the fact that Pakistan is fortunate to have young citizens who care deeply enough about their country to stand up for the rights and freedoms of its citizens, even in the face of heavy-handed state repression.

Other Pakistan and Project USA

Other Pakistan has been busy fighting Musharraf’s martial law by moving the US Senate and Congress to put pressure on Musharraf. Its founder Wasim Arif has contacted every Senator in the US Senate and selected members of the US Congress with the following email:

Dear Senator

This is an appeal from Other Pakistan to ask for the support of the great American people as well as our American friends in the US Senate and Congress in saving Pakistan from the brink of disaster. I urge you to follow the lead given by the American Bar Association (ABA) who have announced a solidarity march to the US Supreme Court this week. The ABA has chosen to stand tall with the lawyers and judiciary of Pakistan, its President William Neukom reminding us all that ‘when a nation’s constitution is suspended, and its Supreme Court is shut down, that is a blow to the rule of law everywhere’. American leaders should not and cannot and remain oblivious to this fact.

Another great American Reverend Martin Luther King spoke in a similar vein when he said that ‘injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’. America has a long tradition of freedom, it lives and breathes freedom; it is her staple diet and the basis of her constitution. Today Pakistan ’s freedom is under attack and all freedom loving Americans will expect the US to stand up against the tyranny of General Musharraf and condemn his actions in muzzling the media, the sacking and house arrest of senior judges, the suspension of fundamental human rights and liberties and his suspending of the constitution. These are tantamount to war crimes against Pakistan and her people and the rubicon has been crossed, the Pakistani people have chosen to free themselves from the evil of military rule so today America must decide whether it stands with Pakistan or its khaki kings, it cannot be a friend with both.

So we appeal to the respected members of the US Senate and Congress to champion liberty and justice in Pakistan by moving the Senate and Congress against General Musharraf’s vile and illegal act of imposing an emergency in Pakistan. We urge you to pressure the Bush Administration to force the General to concede all of the following:

The end of the emergency and the restoration of the constitution.
The reinstatement of the Chief Justice and all other judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts.
The freeing of all human rights activists, lawyers, judges and political workers in jail or under house arrest at once.
The announcement of a neutral caretaker government to conduct free and fair elections conducted under the supervision of a newly constituted Election Commission by January 2008.
The suspension of military aid until General Musharraf retires from the army with it being the first step in a new US Pakistan policy that is people-centric with a ‘ Pakistan policy’ replacing a failed ‘Musharraf policy’.

The recent proposals of Senator Joe Biden in this regard are useful food for thought and a move in the right direction and such moves from the US will be received positively by the Pakistani people. Yet US officials have indicated that the Bush administration has no plans to cut American financial support to Pakistan so it seems the US is once again hell-bent on repeating past US foreign policy mistakes in Pakistan. General Musharraf is a spent force after his latest power grab, he has been reduced to a poor shadow of his past glories, and he cannot deliver success in the war on terror. Thus it is make or break time for all Republicans and Democrats in the Congress and Senate, for the Pakistani nation wants them to support Pakistan and not her khaki-men. The policy shift advocated by Senator Joe Biden of developing an US foreign policy based on Pakistan as a whole and not a ‘Musharraf policy’ is a positive sign that opinion leaders in the US are re-examining their past decisions.

Senator Biden’s four central points are worth repeating here, they are:

Tripling non-security aid to $1.5 billion annually for at least a decade with the aid to be unconditional and would be the US ’s pledge to the Pakistani people. Instead of funding military hardware, it would build schools, clinics, and roads.
The US must condition security aid on performance. US should base security aid on clear results. Washington is now spending well over $1 billion annually, and “it’s not clear we’re getting our money’s worth”.
The US must help Pakistan enjoy a “democracy dividend.” The first year of democratic rule should bring an additional $1 billion - above the $1.5 billion non-security aid baseline. Biden said he supports tying future non-security aid - above the guaranteed baseline - to Pakistan ’s progress in developing democratic institutions and meeting good-governance norms.
The US must engage the Pakistani people, not just their rulers, which will involve everything from improved public diplomacy and educational exchanges to high impact projects that actually change people’s lives.

Intransigence and apathy in the corridors of power disguised as quiet diplomacy from the US will be criminal at this juncture. This is a time to stand tall or stay silent forever, a new Pakistan is taking shape and its allies like the US must help shape it according to the ideals of liberty and justice. The words of the great President Abraham Lincoln must be heeded when he said ‘stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong’. Pakistan has chose to do or die, there is no middle way for dictatorships and military-led governments in Pakistan, they are a dying species soon to become extinct, the hands of history are upon us and this is one battle General Musharraf is sure to lose.

The response from US senators has been very positive none more so than Senator Joseph Lieberman a former US Vice-President Candidate and his email to Wasim Arif is reproduced below:

Dear Mr. Arif:

Thank you for contacting me regarding the situation in Pakistan.

As you know, on November 3, 2007, General Pervez Musharraf suspended Pakistan's constitution and assumed emergency powers in his role both as president and army chief. Since then, his security forces have arrested more than 1,500 lawyers and judges, human rights activists, and political leaders. Almost all independent television stations remain off the air, and large rallies have been banned.

General Musharraf's extra-constitutional actions represent a disappointing and dangerous setback to democracy in Pakistan, as well as United States-Pakistani relations. Although General Musharraf has sought to justify the imposition of martial law to protect Pakistan from Islamist extremism, his security forces have, in fact, targeted the moderate forces of civil society and constitutional government - the very people who provide the best bulwark against al Qaeda and its affiliates.

Pakistan remains a pivotal state in the war on terror. Since September 11, 2001, the government of Pakistan has provided critical assistance that has led to the capture of over 500 al Qaeda operatives and thwarted several terrorist attacks that were planned against the United States and its allies. At the same time, the Pakistani government has failed to dislodge al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country's northern provinces, where these Islamist extremist groups today enjoy safe haven. Rather than uniting moderate Pakistanis against these terrorists, General Musharraf's actions instead threaten to make it even more difficult to end this unacceptable threat to our security.

I am pleased that General Musharraf has announced that Pakistan will hold parliamentary elections before January 9, 2008. He must be held to this pledge. In addition, for the good of his country, General Musharraf must also promise to remove himself as head of the Pakistani Army and stipulate a specific date for the end of martial law. In the event that diplomatic pressure alone fails to convince General Musharraf to do these things, the United States may be forced to consider cutting some of the aid we provide to the Pakistani government.

I will continue to monitor the situation in Pakistan closely. I deeply hope that General Musharraf will act responsibly and peaceably to resolve the crisis that his actions have created. It is of paramount importance to the national security of the United States that Pakistan is led by an effective, democratically-elected leader who is willing to work with us in the struggle against Islamist extremism.

In recent weeks, I have written twice to President Musharraf, to express my concerns about the political situation in Pakistan. In October 2007, following the suicide bombing in Karachi that killed 140 innocent people, I wrote - together with Senators Joseph Biden (D-DE), Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, and Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Foreign Appropriations - to urge General Musharraf to conduct a full investigation of the attack and not to use security concerns as a pretext for a political crackdown.

In early November 2007, I again wrote to President Musharraf along with several of my colleagues, urging him to release Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan, a highly distinguished attorney and political leader in Pakistan who was arrested after the imposition of emergency rule. Mr. Ahsan has represented a variety of high profile political figures in Pakistan, including former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister Naas Sharif, and Chief Justice Chaudhry of the Pakistani Supreme Court.

Wasim concludes by pointing out the spelling of Nawaz Sharif as Naas by Senator Lieberman. For Wasim the fight continues ….. until as he says the pursuit of principles defeats the pursuit of profit. Success will come comrades for we can only but prevail.