Western press & emergency
THERE have been conflicting accounts in the western press about President Musharraf’s press conference.
The Washington Post highlighted his ‘grim expression’ throughout the press conference and mentioned his ‘evident irritation’ when he expressed the hope that his election announcement and his explanation for the continuance of emergency rule would end “the aspersions, distortions, rumours and doubts about my intentions”.
The New York times deemed it “a tense, combative news conference where General Musharraf sweated visibly”. The Times of London however felt that he appeared “much more confident than the floundering image he had presented when announcing the emergency measures last Saturday”.
The one message that came across loud and clear in the reaction however was that while the announcement of the election date was a positive step, the lifting of the emergency was essential if these elections were to be fair and free. Condoleezza Rice speaking hours after the president’s press conference in an interview with the ABC television channel spoke of the imposition of the emergency as being a ‘bad decision’ and called for “ the lifting of the emergency, the taking off of his (Musharraf’s) uniform which signals a return to civilian rule, and then the holding of free and fair elections”.
Unlike many in Pakistan I had not expected that the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) would decide to suspend Pakistan’s membership of the Commonwealth. It was my view that the meeting would be used to back up the international demand that President Musharraf lifts the emergency long before the scheduled elections. In the event the CMAG went a little further than I had expected and gave the Pakistan president up to Nov 22 when the CMAG would meet again to lift the emergency. It is however likely that if by that date there is movement towards the other demands made by the CMAG namely the restoration of “the constitutional rights of the people and the political parties and the independence of the judiciary” there will be no suspension at the Nov 22 meeting.
From the perspective of the lawyers who have been calling, with a great measure of public support, for the restoration of the pre Nov 3 Supreme Court however there was little comfort to be derived from the international reaction. While calling for the independence of the judiciary the CMAG made no demand for the restoration of the dismissed judges while the question of the dismissed judiciary and its future position in the Pakistan power structure found no mention in Rice’s initial reaction.
This was expected. A Supreme Court decision holding that Musharraf was ineligible would have upset the game plan on which the Americans and their allies had been working on ever since the suspension of the Chief Justice revealed the depth of Pakistani middle class disillusionment with military rule under Musharraf.
The protesters could however view as positive the fact that the Americans were no longer referring to Musharraf as an ‘indispensable ally’. Instead Rice in an interview on Nov 9 after the president had said that elections would be held by Feb 15 emphasised that the USA wants to ‘remain engaged with Pakistan’. She recalled that after the Afghan war against the Soviets the USA had “disengaged from Afghanistan and Pakistan” and paid the price of “a failed state in Afghanistan” and “a greater extremist presence in Pakistan” and went on to say that “this is not about Musharraf or the Pakistani government, even, its engagement with the Pakistani people…”
She said virtually the same thing in her ABC interview when she said, “This is not a personal matter about President Musharraf. This is about the Pakistani people, and the United States has been dedicated to helping the Pakistani people come to a more democratic path.” The change of tone and tenor had in fact come a little earlier in the week when the State Department spokesman had said, “We encourage moderate political forces in Pakistan to work together. Now if that means President Musharraf and former Prime Minister [Benazir] Bhutto or others, then that is a decision for those people to make. It’s a decision for the Pakistani people to make.”
I do not however believe that the expression of these views or the distancing from Musharraf that they ostensibly reflect will have a decisive bearing on the thrust of American policy in coming days unless the domestic situation in Pakistan takes a dramatic turn for the worse (from the governments point of view) and unless it is seen that despite having his own protégés in key positions in the army the president has lost the support of that institution. The administration has been under pressure for some time from Congress and other sources to have more than one “telephone number to call in Pakistan”.
They have responded with these statements and by publicising the fact that their embassy is in touch with various groups and officials. Particularly noteworthy was the report that western military attaches have been meeting with Pakistani generals presumably to assess how firm a base of support Musharraf has.
The hard reality in Bush’s Washington is that virtually every one of the officials contributing to the decision making process remains unsure about “what after Musharraf”. Some argue pushing Musharraf towards democracy was tantamount to inviting the same sort of disaster as befell US interests in Iran. On a more practical plane they argue that while an advance towards democracy was the surest medium and long term safeguard against the further ‘Talibanisation’ of Pakistan they needed, in the short term the unstinting or even reluctant cooperation of a Musharraf controlled army — the only still stable institution in Pakistan — to persecute the war in Afghanistan.
The Hamas analogy is also evoked. Analysts have not forgotten that one reason many Pakistanis had welcomed and the Americans had tolerated the 1999 coup was the announced decision of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to become Amir-ul-Momineen as soon as he had the requisite majority in the Senate. They note the view that the PML-Q, largely made up of former Nawaz supporters, is the “B” team of the MMA. Certainly they would not have found reassuring the insistence of the PML-Q to include the religion clause in the passport or indeed the very lukewarm and in many ways distorting support the PML-Q leadership offered to the women’s rights bill.
Lastly, on Sunday The Washington Post and The New York Times carried long and relatively authoritative articles on the dangers to the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal that could be posed by instability in Pakistan and the breakdown of the present order. The thrust of the articles was that clandestine exports of nuclear technology occurred in times of political instability and rogue scientists may in future find it personally lucrative to sell nuclear material to terrorists even if the command and control system did not break down.
While the focus on the nuclear issue needs to be analysed further it is clear to me that the Americans will continue to press for transitional rather than transformational politics in Pakistan and if this means pressing only for the lifting of the emergency sometimes before the elections but no restoration of pre Nov 3 Supreme Court than this is what it will be.
Source: Dawn
Date:11/14/2007
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