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Pakistan: Martial law provokes popular resistance

The hated military leader of Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, tried to bolster his faltering dictatorship by declaring martial law on Nov. 3. He suspended the constitution and ousted the head of the Supreme Court.

But Musharraf’s attack has boomeranged. Instead of being intimidated, the popular movement that has been growing over the last year has gone into the streets and is urging opposition politicians to fight back.

Musharraf has antagonized the Pakistani people in many ways. The military coup that first brought him to power in 1999 also enormously enriched the high-ranking brass, while leaving most of the people in this nuclear-armed nation having to endure continued poverty and underdevelopment.

The ruling military caste are beholden to the support of U.S. imperialism, which since 9/11 has poured, at last count, at least $9.6 billion in aid to Pakistan, most of it to build up the army. (AP, Nov. 7)

The aid came with a price. Musharraf had to join Washington’s “war on terror” and allow Pakistani territory to become a battleground in the U.S. war against Islamic fundamentalism—which is an adjunct to the war of U.S. capital to control the oil-rich Middle East and Iran.

So in July Musharraf, at the urging of the U.S. ambassador, sent troops and tanks to destroy the Lal Masjid mosque in central Islamabad—an act that led to scores of deaths of students and teachers in the mosque’s madrassa, or Islamic school, and antagonized a great part of the Pakistani population, both religious and secular.

That was followed last month by an offensive in the northwest territories bordering Afghanistan, where both U.S. and Pakistani armed forces rained down bombs and shells on what they suspected were the headquarters of local leaders sympathetic to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Many civilians were killed, but the army suffered significant losses, too.

While all this was happening, the democratic opposition to Musharraf was growing. When he tried in March to dismiss the head of Pakistan’s Supreme Court, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the justice decided to go by car to the capital for a meeting with Musharraf. The result was hundreds of miles of popular demonstrations as the masses turned out along his route to cheer the judge.

Today, lawyers who oppose Musharraf’s effort to muzzle the judiciary are being arrested by the hundreds as they demonstrate against the general’s declaration of a state of emergency. At issue is the Supreme Court’s refusal to validate the phony “re-election” of Musharraf, who ran virtually unopposed in October when the opposition parties decided to boycott the election. The Pakistan Constitution says that the head of state cannot also be head of the military.

In all of this, Washington is frantically trying to come up with a winning horse to ride.

For years, the U.S. government has depended on Musharraf and earlier Pakistani dictators to keep the country in its orbit and hostile to national liberation movements in the region.

But today, the resistance in Iraq and the refusal of Iran to knuckle under to U.S. threats are shaking the confidence of regimes that once saw no option but to bow down to imperialist pressure, especially from the U.S. and Britain. Musharraf is himself at risk of being overthrown by elements within the military, and has narrowly escaped assassination several times.

After repeatedly trying to frame the issue as one of “freedom” and “democracy” versus authoritarianism, Washington is hard-pressed to find any justification for its support of Musharraf, especially as the mass movement against him goes into the streets.

The latest ploy of the Bush gang, before Musharraf declared a state of emergency, was to try to force the general to accept a power-sharing deal with Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister of Pakistan who was ousted for corruption but whose party, the Pakistani Peoples Party, still remains popular—largely because its founder, Bhutto’s father, was hung by an earlier U.S.-backed military dictator, Gen. Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq.

The return of Bhutto, a billionaire, to Pakistan from exile was engineered by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, National Intelligence Director John Negroponte and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Zalmay Khalilzad. It was thought that having her in the government would pacify the popular opposition while ensuring U.S. interests.

But when Bhutto returned to Pakistan, having been given a guarantee by Musharraf that the corruption charges would be dropped, she was nearly assassinated in massive explosions that killed more than 150 of her supporters. She and her supporters pointed to elements in the government as responsible, while the Western media tried to blame it on Al Qaeda.

Bhutto, pressed by her supporters, has now called for protests against martial law and a 150-mile march to Islamabad. Meanwhile, other opponents of Musharraf who have been in Pakistan all along, and whose credentials as democratic opponents are not compromised, are throwing themselves into the struggle against the dictatorship.

Washington is desperately trying to figure out how to shore up Musharraf while giving the image of supporting democracy. It’s not easy. Intelligence director Negroponte, who has been leaning on the general for almost a year to be more aggressive against the Islamic movement, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 7 that Musharraf was an “indispensable” ally in the U.S. “war on terror.”

But the politicians weren’t convinced.

“We have the worst of all possible worlds,” admitted Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., who chairs the panel’s subcommittee on Middle East and South Asia. “Our ally is an isolated and deeply resented leader who is less popular with his own people than Osama bin Laden.” (AP, Nov. 7)

The more the Pakistani masses intervene and assert themselves, the more the myths created by both Musharraf and his U.S. backers to justify their repressive rule will be demolished.