Crisis grows in Pakistan

The political crisis in Pakistan shows no signs of abating. Gen. Pervez Musharraf continues to arrest a broad spectrum of opposition leaders, who join the thousands already jailed for daring to demonstrate their defiance of his martial law.

Protest in Pakistan, Nov. 14.

Around the world, Pakistanis and others are taking to the streets to protest both the Musharraf dictatorship and the support he gets from Washington and London.

The Bush administration is playing a dual and deceptive game. At the same time that it continues its military aid to the Musharraf regime, it is talking about the need for democracy and has tried to broker a deal between Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister ousted for corruption. Clearly, it was hoping that the inclusion of Bhutto in the government would paste a democratic fig leaf on the general’s military regime and pacify the growing mass opposition.

Bhutto, who was given immunity from corruption charges by Musharraf on her return to Pakistan, nevertheless has been held under a mild form of house arrest by the regime. But even if a deal were to take place—now unlikely, since Bhutto has changed her rhetoric and is calling for Musharraf to go—it is unlikely to satisfy the Pakistani masses, who keep growing bolder in demanding a total end to military rule.

New York protest against martial law in Pakistan Nov. 8. Demonstrators chanted, ‘Go, Musharraf go!’ and ‘End martial law!’ WW photo: Greg Butterfield

As of Nov. 14, the constitution is still suspended under Musharraf’s state of emergency. There is no freedom of speech or of the press. Only government-generated news is allowed on television. Demonstrations are illegal. All the top justices have been dismissed and thousands of lawyers and some judges, who have been protesting the general’s assaults on the judiciary for months, are in jail.

One current and two former presidents of the Supreme Court Bar Association, as well as a former vice chair of the Pakistan Bar Council, have been arrested and interrogated by military intelligence. No one is allowed to see them and there are allegations they have been tortured.

Precipitating Musharraf’s state of emergency and crackdown on the judiciary, the Supreme Court had refused to certify an election in October that the dictator claimed gave him the right to continue in the presidency. Under Pakistan’s constitution, the head of the army cannot simultaneously be president of the country.

When Imran Khan, a legendary Pakistani cricket player turned politician, emerged from hiding to address students at a university in Lahore, a city southeast of the capital, he was first greeted by supporters but was then seized by Islamic students, who accused him of being pro-U.S. and pro-British. They released Khan, who left in a van but was then arrested by police. Khan was charged under Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Act, which includes penalties that can carry the death sentence or life imprisonment.

Akhtar Hussain, general secretary of the National Workers Party of Pakistan, also a deputy secretary of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and former president of the Sindh High Court Bar Association, was arrested in the wee hours of the morning on Nov. 13.

The day before, Hussain had presided over a large meeting of lawyers in Karachi that passed a resolution calling for the launching of a nationwide people’s movement to end martial law and pressure Musharraf to step down, paving the way for “real democracy and an independent judiciary.”

When, on Nov. 12, a group of students in the capital, Islamabad, held a silent protest against martial law and the gag order, carrying signs and wearing tape across their mouths as they walked outside a public park, they were suddenly surrounded by 500 police and commandos from the regime’s Anti-Terrorist Force.

According to a posting on the web site of the Communist Workers and Peasants Party of Pakistan, “Forty-eight boys were physically assaulted and detained, amongst them a 12-year-old boy. Even after they had turned themselves in with docility, many of them were beaten with sticks and severely bruised. They were detained in the Margalla Police Station for hours, and were prevented from meeting visitors or making calls. They were eventually released after they had signed written assurances not to attend protests in the future.”

The Bush administration is sending John Negroponte, now number two person in the State Department, back to Pakistan for talks with Musharraf that supposedly will tell him to end martial law and restore the constitution. But what the government of U.S. imperialist big business really wants is a Pakistan—with or without Musharraf—stable enough so the Pentagon can continue to pursue its plans for the area. These include widening the war in Afghanistan and putting even more pressure on Iran—both countries that border on Pakistan.

According to Musharraf himself in his memoirs, the U.S. threatened Pakistan after 9/11 that it could be “bombed back into the Stone Age” if it didn’t join the U.S. “war on terror.” But U.S. wars and occupations in the region have since alienated the whole Muslim world, and Musharraf has been walking a tightrope in his own country between the secular opposition calling for democracy and Islamic forces that don’t want Pakistan dragged into more wars against neighboring forces in conflict with Washington’s drive to recolonize the area.

While the present crisis in Pakistan appears to encompass elements of all social classes in opposition to Musharraf, the underlying social conditions are felt most keenly by the workers and peasants.

Pakistan is the sixth most populous country in the world, with 165 million people. Until 1947, it was part of India and spent almost a century under British colonial rule. For most of the 60 years since independence, it has been under the thumb of U.S.-supported military dictators.

In this period, feudo-bourgeois elements like Bhutto, who comes from a wealthy land-owning family, as well as the military caste that has controlled the government under Musharraf and earlier dictators, have become extremely rich—even billionaires. But for the Pakistani people, this period has been one of great misery.

According to United Nations figures, one third of the people live below the official poverty line. But 65 million—almost 40 percent—live on less than $1 a day, showing how inadequate the poverty figures are. Infant mortality is 73 per 1,000 live births.

By contrast, in neighboring Iran, infant mortality has gone down to 28.6 since its revolution in 1979 swept away the hated Shah Reza Pahlevi, a U.S. puppet whose brutal rule had given a free rein to U.S. and British oil companies.

Washington cannot but be deeply worried that mass upheavals in Pakistan, if they bring down Musharraf, may not be satisfied with another regime that carries out U.S. dictates, even if it comes wearing civilian clothes.

As the Cuban newspaper Granma explained on Nov. 12, the U.S. has had a dual relationship with Musharraf, “whom they call a close ally in the ‘war on terrorism’ while on the other hand they say ‘he isn’t doing enough.’ One of the problems facing the strategists at the White House is the absence of a strong substitute for Musharraf, who is keenly aware of the structural weakness of the corrupt and divided opposition. ...

“At least on three occasions the U.S. government threatened to invade Pakistani territory and went so far as to threaten to ‘send it back to the Stone Age’ under the pretext that border zones were being used as Al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuaries. That statement received a rebuff from Musharraf.

“It should be noted that shortly before her return to Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto said she favored a U.S. military presence in the region and the turning over of the leader of the Pakistani nuclear program to the U.S. for trial.”

Meanwhile, even as maneuvering continues on the top, demonstrations are continuing in the streets of Pakistan’s major cities, despite martial law.

And around the world, Pakistani expatriates are being joined by progressives and anti-imperialists in protests demanding “Go, Musharraf go!” and “End martial law!”

In the United States, protests have been reported in New York, Washington, Boston and Austin, Tex. The Pakistan-USA Freedom Forum organized a demonstration at the United Nations. Progressive U.S. lawyers and civil libertarians rallied in a number of cities on Nov. 13 against the brutal treatment of attorneys and judges in Pakistan. Students walked out of several universities in New York to protest Musharraf’s declaration of martial law.

In Canada, at least two protests were held in Toronto.

In Europe, major demonstrations were held in London, near the prime minister’s residence, and in Manchester, as well as in Berlin.