Pakistan's Elections

Well, my brain is dry. And when I say dry, I mean, its resources are being diverted to non-blogging areas. So the posts may be sparse for a little while, but they'll pick up again soon.

Soooo....Pakistani elections anyone? Yeah, in the office, some people were "betting their life savings" that Musharraf would win. Good thing that person later declared their life savings were nothing. I think that the only reason the PPP won so many seats is due to increased international supervision. If the Americans weren't looking over his shoulder, we'd have seen much different results. I am not hopeful that this is indicative of a better and more democratic order. Actually, I'm more afraid that the international community is just going to groom themselves another puppet who will serve the international community's wants and needs before Pakistan's. That means not labelling everyone who disagrees with you an extremist *cough every government over in that general region cough*.

Whaddya think?

Taliban or Al-Qaeda, Who Would You Choose?

So I was reading about how Musharraf is more concerned with security on the Afghan border and rooting out the Taliban rather than hunting down Osama bin Laden on the Newsweeks, and I was reminded of a class reading.

What if you were in Musharraf's position, would you make the same decision?

If I had limited resources and had to choose between put more effort into fighting the Taliban on my borders or hunting bin Laden within my country, I'd go for the former. The Taliban is a greater threat than Al-Qaeda, in my view. The Taliban has something Al-Qaeda does not, a political objective which gains a lot more supporters on the ground than an anarchist organization could ever hope to have, or at least the potential to have more.

Oh, look, I've used a new word from my reading. Anarchism. No, not the smelly drain pipe jeaned punk rock commies that run around middle class areas. The other kind.

"Unlike Hamas or Hizbullah, al-Qaeda has not organized a mass-based political machine, nor has it built a network of social welfare organizations. As a matter of fact, besides its single-minded focus on jihad, al-Qaeda has no program. While Hamas and Hizbullah wage campaigns of national liberation, al-Qaeda identifies with no particular struggle."

and

"Like other anarchist movements, al-Qaeda is reactive. It focuses solely on resisting what it considers to be an intrusive alien order and preserving a culture and lifestyle and the homeland of that culture and lifestyle its members believe to be under attack. Unlike other movements whose discourse it shares, al-Qaeda does not operate as a cog within the international state and economic systems. Rather it wars on those systems."

The Modern Middle East: A History
James L. Gelvin

My radical new idea is to abandon the term "jihadis" when referring to the AQ. I'm going to say anarchists, and maybe add a nice little modifier like "international" or "third world". We'll see.

B T dubbs, RIP Heath Ledger. I loved Brokeback Mountain.

I also feel compelled to say bin Laden is very very bad. It should be obvious, but I think we've all been made to feel a little paranoid about what we say, and I'm not taking any chances. I made the graphic too.

The Danger Continues

The latest edition of The Economist has explored the question of Pakistan as the most dangerous nation in the same way Newsweek did a few months ago. The opinion piece, The World's Most Dangerous Place, does good to recognize that the threat of Islamic extremism in Pakistan is a relatively new crisis. One need only look at the ideas of Mr. Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan, to see the kind of progressive movements and ideas that have come forth in the country.

In contrast to the Newsweek article, the focus of this piece seems to point to Pakistan as a dangerous nation to its people instead of as a danger to American interests. Like Lamis Andoni's blog response on Post Global, the article also points to how external forces have also contributed to Pakistan's instability.

So, ironically, America's support for Mr Musharraf, justified as necessary to combat extremism next door, has fostered extremism at home. Similarly, in the 1980s America backed General Zia ul Haq, a dictator and Islamic fundamentalist, as his intelligence services sponsored the mujahideen who eventually toppled the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan. In the process, they helped create what Miss Bhutto called a “Frankenstein's monster”—of jihadist groups with sympathisers in the army and intelligence services. The clubbable, whisky-quaffing, poodle-cuddling Mr Musharraf is no fundamentalist. But the monster still stalks his security forces.

Happily, the author does offer a bright spot, seeing a solution to all the crises.

Yet Pakistan's plight is not yet hopeless. Two things could still help arrest its slide into anarchy, improbable though both now seem. The first is a credible investigation into Miss Bhutto's murder and the security-service lapses (or connivance) that allowed it to happen. Mr Musharraf's willingness to let a couple of British policemen help the inquiry is unlikely to produce this. Every time a bomb goes off in Pakistan, people believe that one of the country's own spooks lit the fuse. Until there has been a convincing purge of the military-intelligence apparatus, Pakistan will never know true stability.

Second, there could be a fair election. This would expose the weakness of the Islamist parties. In the last general election in 2002, they won just one-tenth of the votes, despite outrageous rigging that favoured them. Even if they fared somewhat better this time, they would still, in the most populous provinces, Sindh and Punjab, be trounced by the mainstream parties. An elected government with popular support would be better placed to work with the moderate, secular, professional tendency in the army to tackle extremism and bring Pakistan's poor the economic development they need.

And the final awesome conclusion.

Sadly, there seems little hope that the security forces will abandon the habit of a lifetime and allow truly fair elections. The delay in the voting—opposed by both main opposition parties—has been seen as part of its plan to rig the results. The violence that has scarred the country since Miss Bhutto's assassination may intensify. The army may be tempted to impose another state of emergency; or it may cling on to ensure that the election produces the result it wants—a weak and pliable coalition of the PPP and Mr Musharraf's loyalists.

For too long, Mr Musharraf has been allowed to pay lip-service to democratic forms, while the United States has winked at his blatant disdain for the substance. The justification has been the pre-eminent importance of “stability” in the world's most dangerous place. It is time to impress upon him and the generals still propping him up that democracy is not the alternative to stability. It is Pakistan's only hope.

Soapy Soapy Time

Recently, someone sent me this message about Ms. Bhutto, and I got his permission to respond to it via this blog.

"Lets not forget that Bhutto is perhaps the only person more corrupt then Musharaff. Thats why onlt like 6% of the population supported her."

I will concede that Bhutto more than likely had an element of corruption, but I honestly cannot say how much. However, I think I can safely say that she was NOT on the same level as Musharraf. Remember, Musharraf is the one who came to power via a military coup in 1999. He was a military leader from the git-go who got lucky when the US was looking for allies in the war on terror.

Although, the argument could be made that Musharraf has had more opportunities to be corrupt because he's been in office much longer than Bhutto ever was and has enjoyed much more power.

As far as her supporters, I can't find any information on the percentage of the population, but from all the sources I've read, it is accepted that she enjoys significant grass roots support. If we all agree that elections in Pakistan are a sham, then its no use looking at the percentage of the population that has voted for her party, the Pakistan People's Party, in the last elections.

I don't think Bhutto was the most effective leader, or would have been the most effective, anyway. But she was dynamic in her ability to gain populist support, and bring important issues of democracy to the forefront of Pakistani politics. There is no question in my mind that she believed she was doing what was right and good, and she was going to do it no matter who opposed her. I may not have agreed with what she did or would have done in office, but I have to respect and admire her determination and courage. It is very sad that she was not the most competent of politicians to begin with, but its even more tragic that this is how she has come to an end.

And that is my soap box moment. Thank you all for coming.