[NYTr] Crisis Grows in Pakistan; A Tale of Two Visitors to Columbia University

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Workers World - Nov 22, 2007 issue
http://www.workers.org/2007/world/pakistan-1122

Protests continue despite martial law

Crisis Grows in Pakistan

By Deirdre Griswold

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.

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.

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.

Prominent figures arrested

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.”

Bush sends Negroponte

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.

Underlying social crisis

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.

SideBar: 

A Tale of Two Visitors to Columbia University: Musharraf, Ahmadinejad

Workers World - Nov 22, 2007 issue
http://www.workers.org/2007/us/box-1122

Columbia University president caught in lie

When the president of Iran went to Columbia University this September
for a scheduled speech, he was insulted and castigated by the school’s
president. It was different when Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf
visited Columbia in 2005, writes a student in the school’s Spectator
newspaper on Nov. 9:

“Even University President Lee Bollinger, who apparently prides himself
on his tough-talking, no-nonsense treatment of visiting ‘dictators,’
was found wanting when Musharraf came to Columbia in September 2005.
‘President Musharraf is a leader of global importance, and his
contribution to Pakistan’s economic turnaround and the international
fight against terror remain remarkable. It is rare that we have a
leader of his stature at campus,’ Bollinger opined. Musharraf’s
democratic credentials are far inferior to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s, but
Bollinger and the U.S. government he worships have never given much
play to the ideal of consistency.”


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