Peace and Justice Post

Salon.com

Democracy for Pakistan was never the deal — and as Musharraf’s latest power grab throws his nation into turmoil, Bush will gladly go along.

By Juan Cole

Photo: AP/Gerald Herbert

President Bush shakes hands with Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf Sept. 22, 2006, after a White House press conference.

Nov. 6, 2007 | In the fall of 1999, as he campaigned for the presidency, George W. Bush was asked by a reporter to name the leader of Pakistan. Bush could not. He famously replied: “The new Pakistani general, he’s just been elected — not elected, this guy took over office. It appears this guy is going to bring stability to the country, and I think that’s good news for the subcontinent.” Although Bush didn’t know Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s name and was confused as to how he got into office, the soon-to-be American president was sanguine about the anti-democratic developments in Pakistan.

More than seven years later, Bush’s illusions about Musharraf — and any illusion of democracy in Pakistan — have been shattered by the dictator’s declaration of a state of emergency. Tantamount to a coup, Musharraf’s actions on Saturday have not only thrown Pakistan into turmoil but have also revealed the hypocrisy of Bush’s foreign policy, including the proclaimed goal of fostering freedom and the rule of law in the Muslim world.

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Yahoo News, November 5, 2007By Munir Ahmad, Associated Press Writer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Police fired tear gas and clubbed thousands of lawyers protesting President Gen. Pervez Musharraf ‘s decision to impose emergency rule, as Western allies threatened to review aid to the troubled Muslim nation. More than 1,500 people have been arrested in 48 hours, and authorities put a stranglehold on independent media.

Musharraf, who took power in a 1999 coup and is also head of Pakistan‘s army, suspended the constitution on Saturday ahead of a Supreme Court ruling on whether his recent re-election as president was legal. He ousted independent-minded judges and granted sweeping powers to authorities to crush dissent.

Though public anger was mounting in the nation of 160 million people, which has been under military rule for much of its 60-year history, demonstrations so far have been limited largely to activists, rights workers and lawyers. All have been quickly and sometimes brutally
stamped out.

Continued . . .

The Sydney Morning Herald

November 5, 2007 – 3:41PM

Pakistan police have baton-charged lawyers protesting against President Pervez Musharraf’s emergency rule, as police continue to detain his opponents.

Also on Monday, deposed chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry declared Musharraf’s post-emergency set up “illegal and unconstitutional”.

In one of his actions after declaring emergency rule in the country on Saturday, Musharraf removed Chaudhry and appointed Hameed Dogar as chief justice to head the country’s Supreme Court.

The general suspended the country’s constitution and issued a Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) but several judges, including Chaudhry, refused to take the oath under the new order.

“Everything that is happening today is illegal, unconstitutional and against the orders of the Supreme Court,” Chaudhry told local daily The News, in his first reported comments since the crisis engulfed Pakistan.

He told the paper by telephone that all recent appointments made in the superior judiciary had “no legal validity.”

Musharraf, who took power in a 1999 coup, suspended Chaudhry on March 9 following allegations that the judge had abused his position and obtained a top police job for his son and other privileges for himself.

He was reinstated on July 20 when a 13-judge bench declared Musharraf’s March 9 action illegal, in a major blow to the embattled president.

Chaudhry said he was confident he would stage another comeback.

On declaring the emergency, Musharraf cited spiralling militancy and hostile judges to justify his action.

He imposed reporting curbs on the media in a bid to stop outrage spilling onto the streets.

Police baton-charged dozens of lawyers protesting outside the High Court in the economic capital Karachi on Monday, lawyers said.

“Police beat lawyers with batons as they came to High Court in the morning. Many of them have been arrested,” Akhtar Hussain, a former president of Sindh High Court Bar Association, told Reuters.

A main Islamist opposition party said authorities had also detained 600-700 of its supporters overnight in southern and central provinces. The detention of Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami supporters followed the arrests of hundreds of opposition figures the government said were a “preventive” measure.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed disappointment with Musharraf in terms seldom heard before from US officials more accustomed to praising the Pakistani leader’s support in the battle against al-Qaeda.

“The United States has never put all of its chips on Musharraf,” Rice said, urging Pakistan to get back on the road to democracy, and warning US aid to its ally was under review.

Washington has given Islamabad around $US10 billion ($A10.87 billion) over the last five years.

Despite the detentions, a lawyers’ movement that led the fight against Musharraf when he tried to sack Chaudhry earlier this year, was planning protests in front of courts in most major cities.

Lawyers, journalists, opposition politicians, and ordinary Pakistanis said they believed Musharraf’s main motive in declaring emergency rule was to pre-empt the Supreme Court invalidating his re-election as president last month.

War In Context

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Helene Cooper, New York Times, November 4, 2007

For more than five months the United States has been trying to orchestrate a political transition in Pakistan that would manage to somehow keep Gen. Pervez Musharraf in power without making a mockery of President Bush’s promotion of democracy in the Muslim world.

On Saturday, those carefully laid plans fell apart spectacularly. Now the White House is stuck in wait-and-see mode, with limited options and a lack of clarity about the way forward.

General Musharraf’s move to seize emergency powers and abandon the Constitution left Bush administration officials close to their nightmare: an American-backed military dictator who is risking civil instability in a country with nuclear weapons and an increasingly alienated public. [complete article]

uruknet.info

Rami Almeghari – IMEMC

Sunday November 04, 2007 Four Palestinians including a father and a child have been killed after Israeli warplanes struck a factory in northern Gaza. In less then half an hour, the Israeli army attacked different positions in northern Gaza, including the factory in which three people have been killed, media sources reported. Palestinian medics declared the death of at least one resident and the injury of a number others, when a brick factory has been hit. The medics identified the dead as Hesham Khadoura,25, who is believed to be a member of the Saraya aL-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad. Earlier in the day, the Israeli warplanes hit the entrance of another factory in northern Gaza, killing three workers, including a father and his son. The medics identified them as Zaher Al’er,40, his son Yousef,18 and a third called Mohammad Abu Harbeed, 23. Witnesses said that an Israeli drone fired a missile on the factory, which is located in the She’sha’a agricultural area in northern Gaza Strip. The Palestinian interior ministry of the deposed Hamas government in Gaza condemned the Israeli attacks, branding them a part of unabated Israeli offensive on the Palestinian people. A ministry’s statement called on all Arab countries to convene immediately in a bid to stop the Israeli attacks.

:: Article nr. 37857 sent on 04-nov-2007 16:51 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=37857

Dissident Voice

by Ramzy Baroud / November 3rd, 2007

The ongoing socio-economic and political ills that mar potential progress in Middle Eastern countries can largely be attributed to the ill-defined foreign policy of the United States. Utterly desperate situations have arisen whereby US clients rule with an iron fist, making prospects for a meaningful democracy sit at an all-time low. However it would be nothing less than self-deception to elucidate Arab social, economic and political ailments exclusively on US-Israeli military and political belligerency; there needs to be an element of self-reflection and responsibility to make viable any pragmatic steps towards improvement and justice.

The Arab Human Development Reports list political and economic regressions, rampant corruption, utter inequality, oppression of women, and indeed men, lack of cohesion, planning, and forward thinking as significant problems in Arab countries. The 2005 report laboured to put a positive spin on negative situations, choosing to focus on the empowerment of Arab women, who, in some Arab societies are denied access to schools, economic independence and political representation.

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From Adbusters #74, Nov-Dec 2007

During the Vietnam War, from 1964 to 1973, the United States dropped over two million tons of explosives on Laos, in an attempt to immobilize the supply routes to Northern Vietnam. That works out to approximately one planeload of bombs dropped every eight minutes, for nine full years. This is astonishing when you consider that Laos is only one quarter the size of Ontario. However, the most shocking part of all is that it is estimated that up to one third of those bombs did not explode, turning this beautiful country into a lush mine field.

On a recent visit to this magical place, I learned that over 30 years later, people are still dying from the unexploded ordnance, or “UXO.” The victims are often children who aren’t aware of the dangers associated with these shiny pieces of scrap metal, or those who see them as just that, an opportunity to make some money in the scrap trade. Laos is one of the poorest countries in the world and the bombs mean the land cannot be used effectively and productively, and in turn, cannot develop an efficient economy and infrastructure. Farmers often fall victim when they plough their fields and harvest more than they anticipated. Building new roads is an expensive and time-consuming task due to the clearing processes involved with such developments.

Continued . . .

LewRockwell.com,
by Karen Kwiatkowski

With one leg firmly planted at the American Enterprise Institute and the other even more firmly planted in the jelly-like mass we know as the United States Congress, neocons in Washington are in serious need of something constructive to do.

Like so many mortals, the neocons have confused what they think they need with what they really need. They firmly believe they need war, war, and more war. To get the right kind of Muslim carnage in the Middle East, neocons hope to instigate an act of war against Iran that will – in one fell swoop – merge four other conflicts into one burning pulsating endless bloodfest.

Which four conflicts? Palestinian versus Israeli, Kurd versus Turks and mullahs, Iraqis versus Americans, Iraqis, Kurds, Saudis, Kuwaitis and Iranians, and lastly, Afghans versus Americans, Paks, and Iranians. To merge the fires set by Washington’s neocon cultists and fanned by the President’s lisping and grunting Rasputins, the obedient Pentagon has established thousands of Iranian targets, and requested funding to fit the Stealth B2 bomber with bunker buster bomb rails.

Condi, the American Delilah, sensuously fans the flames of war, her Samson not the President but our constitutional republic, with its admonitions to avoid foreign entanglements, and to honor the rule that only Congress can declare war. Our Christian Dictator-in-Chief can scarcely control the quivering of his frothing jowls, his small eyes gleaming with what he imagines to be holy vengeance for Iran’s imagined crimes.

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Source: Axis of Logic

By Ghali Hassan
Oct 30, 2007, 09:33

While in Moscow in October 2007, U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice still had the time to preach U.S. “democracy” and “human rights”. Meanwhile in Iraq, daily indiscriminate bombing raids by U.S. forces on Iraqi civilians are continuing in flagrant violation of international human rights law. The aim of this deliberate hypocrisy is to manufacture delusions and induce moral bankruptcy among the population, and to justify the use of violence to further U.S.-Western imperialist agenda.

As the U.S. Secretary met with Russian “activists”, U.S. occupying forces in Iraq killed at least 34 innocent Iraqi civilians, including six women and nine children, and injured many more near Lake Tharthar, north of Baghdad. While these crimes are daily occurrence, the war against the Iraqi people has increased significantly. In addition to the rise in troop’s number – 170, 000 U.S. troops supplemented by 180,000 private mercenaries –, the number of bombs dropped on Iraq during the first six months of 2007 over the same period in 2006 has increased by five-fold. More than 30 tons of those have been cluster weapons, which targeted civilians and always resulted in a massacre of innocent civilians each time they are dropped.

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Dawn, November 3, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Nov 3: President General Pervez Musharraf, in his capacity as the chief of army staff, on Saturday declared emergency rule in the country, suspended the country’s constitution, and issued a new Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO).Text of emergency proclamation

The official announcement on the state-run Pakistan Television (PTV) came within minutes of a high-level meeting at the President House (Aiwan-i-Sadr) which was chaired by the President and attended by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, senior security and intelligence officials.

Shortly before the official announcement all the private and independent news channels in the country were pulled off the cable network, leading to intense speculations of a possible emergency rule or martial law.

This is the second time in General Musharraf’s tenure that an emergency rule has been imposed, and PCO issued. First it was at the time when the military seized power on October 12, 1999. This time it was when President Musharraf had already ruled the country for eight long years, and was faced with a situation where there was a strong possibility that the Supreme Court may rule against his move to get himself elected for the second time as the head of the state.

According to some details of the new PCO made available to the media, the National Assembly, Senate, provincial assemblies, the prime minister, provincial chief ministers, federal and provincial ministers, governors and all those in the “government services” will continue to function normally.

However, it was not clear how this will be possible, or be legitimate, with President Musharraf resorting to the extra-constitutional action of suspending the constitution and issuing his own provisional constitutional order or PCO.

Soon after the proclamation of emergency by Gen Musharraf, an eight-member bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, reportedly set aside the decision. Setting aside General Musharraf’s proclamation of emergency, the panel asked all members of the superior judiciary against taking oath under the new PCO.

Keep reading . . .