The New York Times Editorial: Bangladesh in the Generals’ Grip
Published: April 15, 2007
Promoting democracy, especially in Islamic countries, is supposed to be a major goal of President Bush’s foreign policy. But his administration has raised little protest as Bangladesh — until January the world’s fifth most populous democracy — has been transformed into its second most populous military dictatorship.
Washington is being dangerously shortsighted. Democracy can be messy, and in Bangladesh it was extraordinarily so. But military rule offers no answers to the grievances that fuel Islamic radicalism, as can be seen from nearby Pakistan (the world’s most populous military dictatorship). By stifling authentically popular mainstream parties and their leaders, military regimes often magnify the political influence of religious extremists.
This year’s democratic eclipse in Bangladesh did not follow the classic script for a military coup. A civilian caretaker has been nominally in charge since January, after troubled national elections were indefinitely postponed. Meanwhile, the generals consolidated power behind the scenes and began harassing and jailing many of the country’s top civilian political leaders.
Last week, Sheik Hasina Wazed — who served as prime minister from 1996 through 2001 — and top leaders of her 14-party alliance were charged with murder in connection with violent pre-election protests. Her longtime rival, Khaleda Zia, who both preceded and followed her in office, is now under virtual house arrest. More than 150 other senior politicians have been detained on corruption charges and the timetable for new elections keeps receding.
This concept of a militarily guided democracy without democrats is familiar in South Asia. Gen. Pervez Musharraf has followed the same script in Pakistan and his countrymen are still waiting, with increasing impatience, for the real democracy he promised them nearly eight years ago.
Both former Bangladeshi prime ministers have much to answer for, including tolerance for corruption and a bitter personal rivalry that kept the country in permanent turmoil. But the answering should be done to Bangladesh’s voters and, if called for, to an independent civilian judiciary — not to an unaccountable military dictatorship. And President Bush, if he truly cares about democracy in the Islamic world, needs to say so.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Mohsin Hameed's Interview with the New York Times
Courtsey the New York Times
Questions for Mohsin Hamid
The Stranger Interview By DEBORAH SOLOMON Published: April 15, 2007
Q: Your new novel, “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” ascended to No. 1 on the Barnes & Noble best-seller list virtually the moment it was published in this country. What do you make of that? Now perhaps I can quit my job. Three days a week, I do some consulting for a little branding firm in London.
Is it fair to describe your second novel as a Muslim’s critique of American values? That’s oversimplifying. The novel is a love song to America as much as it is a critique.
I didn’t find it so loving. It takes place on a single evening at a cafe in Lahore, as a charming, well-educated Pakistani in his 20s recounts his life story to an unnamed American stranger, who seems suspicious of him. The American is acting as if the Pakistani man is a Muslim fundamentalist because of how he looks — he has a beard.
And the Pakistani man also brings certain fears and preconceptions to their conversation. In an act of reverse ethnic profiling, he suspects the American is an undercover agent who might arrest him. Yes. But he could be just as freaked out as the rest of us are in this world when we see an American with that kind of build and imagine he is a C.I.A. agent. The novel is not supposed to have a correct answer. It’s a mirror. It really is just a conversation, and different people will read it in different ways.
Like your novel, this interview is a conversation between an American listener and a Pakistani man with a beard. Are we also doomed to misunderstanding? Do you think I’m a C.I.A. agent? If you had short hair and a bulge in your jacket, I might assume you were.
Do you think I am mistaking you for a fundamentalist? I don’t know. But you are doing me the honor of trying to understand me.
I don’t know if I trust you. Put that into the piece!
It was unsettling to learn that your protagonist felt a rush of genuine pleasure when the World Trade towers were attacked. Some part of him has a desire to see America harmed. In much of the world, there is resentment toward America, and the notion that the superpower could be humiliated or humbled or damaged in this way is something that gives satisfaction.
Is that how you felt when the towers were attacked? No. I was devastated. A wall had suddenly come up between my American and Muslim worlds. The novel is my attempt to reconnect those divided worlds.
Much like the narrator of your book, you grew up in Pakistan and were educated at Princeton. I was one of two or three Pakistanis in the class of ’93, and I didn’t feel homesick for a second. I took two writing workshops with Joyce Carol Oates, and I wrote the first draft of my first novel in a long-fiction workshop with Toni Morrison, both of whom encouraged me.
Nonetheless, you went off to law school. What were you thinking? I went to Harvard Law School and decided I didn’t want to be a lawyer. It bored the pants off of me.
Your novel suggests you have read a lot of Camus, particularly “The Fall,” whose protagonist, not unlike yours, pours out his story to a stranger in one long philosophical rant. Yes, Camus taught me how to have a conversation that implicates the reader.
In your novel, the Pakistani man is the sole speaker. Why did you choose to silence the American? For me, in the world of media, particularly the American media, it’s almost always the other way around.
But no one is silencing you. To the contrary, you’re scheduled to visit Miami and Cambridge and Washington this week to promote a novel of which there are already more than 100,000 copies out there. But there are not many of us from the Muslim world who are getting heard over here. And the ones who are mostly seem to be speaking in grainy videos from caves.
Questions for Mohsin Hamid
The Stranger Interview By DEBORAH SOLOMON Published: April 15, 2007
Q: Your new novel, “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” ascended to No. 1 on the Barnes & Noble best-seller list virtually the moment it was published in this country. What do you make of that? Now perhaps I can quit my job. Three days a week, I do some consulting for a little branding firm in London.
Is it fair to describe your second novel as a Muslim’s critique of American values? That’s oversimplifying. The novel is a love song to America as much as it is a critique.
I didn’t find it so loving. It takes place on a single evening at a cafe in Lahore, as a charming, well-educated Pakistani in his 20s recounts his life story to an unnamed American stranger, who seems suspicious of him. The American is acting as if the Pakistani man is a Muslim fundamentalist because of how he looks — he has a beard.
And the Pakistani man also brings certain fears and preconceptions to their conversation. In an act of reverse ethnic profiling, he suspects the American is an undercover agent who might arrest him. Yes. But he could be just as freaked out as the rest of us are in this world when we see an American with that kind of build and imagine he is a C.I.A. agent. The novel is not supposed to have a correct answer. It’s a mirror. It really is just a conversation, and different people will read it in different ways.
Like your novel, this interview is a conversation between an American listener and a Pakistani man with a beard. Are we also doomed to misunderstanding? Do you think I’m a C.I.A. agent? If you had short hair and a bulge in your jacket, I might assume you were.
Do you think I am mistaking you for a fundamentalist? I don’t know. But you are doing me the honor of trying to understand me.
I don’t know if I trust you. Put that into the piece!
It was unsettling to learn that your protagonist felt a rush of genuine pleasure when the World Trade towers were attacked. Some part of him has a desire to see America harmed. In much of the world, there is resentment toward America, and the notion that the superpower could be humiliated or humbled or damaged in this way is something that gives satisfaction.
Is that how you felt when the towers were attacked? No. I was devastated. A wall had suddenly come up between my American and Muslim worlds. The novel is my attempt to reconnect those divided worlds.
Much like the narrator of your book, you grew up in Pakistan and were educated at Princeton. I was one of two or three Pakistanis in the class of ’93, and I didn’t feel homesick for a second. I took two writing workshops with Joyce Carol Oates, and I wrote the first draft of my first novel in a long-fiction workshop with Toni Morrison, both of whom encouraged me.
Nonetheless, you went off to law school. What were you thinking? I went to Harvard Law School and decided I didn’t want to be a lawyer. It bored the pants off of me.
Your novel suggests you have read a lot of Camus, particularly “The Fall,” whose protagonist, not unlike yours, pours out his story to a stranger in one long philosophical rant. Yes, Camus taught me how to have a conversation that implicates the reader.
In your novel, the Pakistani man is the sole speaker. Why did you choose to silence the American? For me, in the world of media, particularly the American media, it’s almost always the other way around.
But no one is silencing you. To the contrary, you’re scheduled to visit Miami and Cambridge and Washington this week to promote a novel of which there are already more than 100,000 copies out there. But there are not many of us from the Muslim world who are getting heard over here. And the ones who are mostly seem to be speaking in grainy videos from caves.
Musharraf Army Wages War Against Punjabi Tenant Farmers - Again
First it was Okara, now it is Lahore. The problem is the same: army's hunger for choice lands.
The landless tenant farmers, who have been tilling the military farm near Lahore for the last one hundred years, are crying out for help. The disputed land, thirteen thousand acres, was leased by the Government of the Punjab to the British army for 99 years. The lease expired in 2005.
Nevertheless, the Pakistani army wants to keep it occupied. The army has already added hundreds of acres of this land into the cantonment. Jaindrah Pind has already been hemmed in from three sides, West, East and South, by the Defense Housing Authority. From Revenue Board to Supreme Court to the Punjab Government have accepted the farmers' tenant rights but the army is adament to get its way and evict all the tenant farmers from the land they have tilled for generations to give the choice lands to military officers to build or sell.
In a rally held on Sunday at Jaindra Pind the representatives of the Tenant Farmers Association blamed, in their speeches, the military for finding excuses to occupy their land and harassing them and their families. They, however, vowed to fight back saying that they won't let anyone occupy their lands "even if it is the army".
The tenant farmers of Okara went through a similar ordeal when they were evicted by the army from the lands they had tilled for more than a century. They started a four years long movement, in 2001, to resist army's efforts to occupy their lands. Scores of farmers were killed, wounded and tortured by Rangers, a para-military force that is under direct control of the army. Finally in 2005 army stopped atrocities after the tenant farmers refused to cave in. The Rangers were pulled out only five months ago.
Now, the army has its eyes trained on this Lahore Farm.
The president of the farmers association warned the rallying farmers that if they did not stand up for their rights and gave in to the threats or temptations then the army will kill them one by one and they will not have left with them even two yards of land to bury themselves.
One of the speaker in simple Punjabi said that "army's real duty is to defend the borders of our homeland but its eyes are on our choice lands. It was busy in planning housing schemes, building bungalows for its officers, and helping themselves with contracts for laying roads". He said in Punjabi: "jay eh saadey saamney aaey tey assaN ehnaN nooN tunn kay rakhna aey" (if they confronted us we will push them in the ground).
The Lahore Military Farm is on the Burky Road, adjacent to the army cantonment in the south, and consists of seven old villages: Jaindrah Pind, Bhagwan Pur, Chak Burj, Chak Padri, Chak Dhorewala, Chak Rackterha, and Chak Habibullah.
Do the Pakistanis have any rights anymore? Ot is it all military?
The landless tenant farmers, who have been tilling the military farm near Lahore for the last one hundred years, are crying out for help. The disputed land, thirteen thousand acres, was leased by the Government of the Punjab to the British army for 99 years. The lease expired in 2005.
Nevertheless, the Pakistani army wants to keep it occupied. The army has already added hundreds of acres of this land into the cantonment. Jaindrah Pind has already been hemmed in from three sides, West, East and South, by the Defense Housing Authority. From Revenue Board to Supreme Court to the Punjab Government have accepted the farmers' tenant rights but the army is adament to get its way and evict all the tenant farmers from the land they have tilled for generations to give the choice lands to military officers to build or sell.
In a rally held on Sunday at Jaindra Pind the representatives of the Tenant Farmers Association blamed, in their speeches, the military for finding excuses to occupy their land and harassing them and their families. They, however, vowed to fight back saying that they won't let anyone occupy their lands "even if it is the army".
The tenant farmers of Okara went through a similar ordeal when they were evicted by the army from the lands they had tilled for more than a century. They started a four years long movement, in 2001, to resist army's efforts to occupy their lands. Scores of farmers were killed, wounded and tortured by Rangers, a para-military force that is under direct control of the army. Finally in 2005 army stopped atrocities after the tenant farmers refused to cave in. The Rangers were pulled out only five months ago.
Now, the army has its eyes trained on this Lahore Farm.
The president of the farmers association warned the rallying farmers that if they did not stand up for their rights and gave in to the threats or temptations then the army will kill them one by one and they will not have left with them even two yards of land to bury themselves.
One of the speaker in simple Punjabi said that "army's real duty is to defend the borders of our homeland but its eyes are on our choice lands. It was busy in planning housing schemes, building bungalows for its officers, and helping themselves with contracts for laying roads". He said in Punjabi: "jay eh saadey saamney aaey tey assaN ehnaN nooN tunn kay rakhna aey" (if they confronted us we will push them in the ground).
The Lahore Military Farm is on the Burky Road, adjacent to the army cantonment in the south, and consists of seven old villages: Jaindrah Pind, Bhagwan Pur, Chak Burj, Chak Padri, Chak Dhorewala, Chak Rackterha, and Chak Habibullah.
Do the Pakistanis have any rights anymore? Ot is it all military?
Friday, April 13, 2007
Kristof on Wadera Democracy in Pakistan
DUMMERWALA, Pakistan
President Bush has become a bosom buddy of President Pervez Musharraf and sealed that friendship with $10 billion in military aid, but any American official who praises Pakistan’s “democracy” might want to visit this bullet-scarred village in the Punjab.
Dummerwala held free local elections here last year. But many people voted the “wrong” way, causing the candidate of the local feudal lord to lose. So a day after the election, a small army of gunmen arrived and began rampaging through the houses of the clan members who opposed the lord’s choice.
Waheed Rahman, a top student, 14 years old, who dreamed of becoming an engineer, was wounded in the opening minutes of the attack.
“When he was shot, Waheed fell down and begged for water,” said his father, Matiullah. “They were surrounding him. But they just laughed and shot at the water tank and destroyed it. Then they ripped the clothes off the women and dragged them around half-naked.”
For the next two hours, the attackers beat the men and abused the women, destroyed homes, and told their victims that the feudal lord had arranged for the police to stay away so he could teach them a lesson.
Indeed, the police did stay away. Even when two of the villagers escaped and ran to the police station, begging the officers to stop the violence, the police delayed moving for three hours.
By the time it was over, a woman was dying, as was Waheed, and many others were wounded.
The attack here in Dummerwala is a reminder that democracy is about far more than free elections. In Pakistan, many rural areas remain under the thumb of feudal lords who use the government to keep themselves rich and everyone else impoverished.
For real democracy to come to Pakistan, we’ll need to see not only free elections and the retirement of President Musharraf, but also a broad effort to uproot the feudal rulers in areas like this, 300 miles south of Islamabad. That’s not easy to do, but promoting education is the best way to combat both feudalism and fundamentalism.
Instead, we’ve been focusing on selling arms and excusing General Musharraf’s one-man rule.
Husain Haqqani of Boston University calculates that the overt and trackable U.S. aid to General Musharraf’s Pakistan amounted to $9.8 billion — of which 1 percent went for children’s survival and health, and just one-half of 1 percent for democracy promotion (and even that went partly to a commission controlled by General Musharraf).
The big beneficiary of U.S. largesse hasn’t been the Pakistani people, but the Pakistani Army.
General Musharraf has done an excellent job of nurturing Pakistan’s economy, but he is an autocrat. As Asma Jahangir, a prominent lawyer in Lahore, told me: “Until now, Pakistanis have hated the American government but not the American people. But I’m afraid that may change. Unless the U.S. distances itself from Musharraf, the way things are going Pakistanis will come to hate the American people as well.”
Just last week, General Musharraf’s secret police goons roughed up and sexually molested Dr. Amna Buttar, an American doctor of Pakistani origin who heads a human rights organization. Dr. Buttar says that she had been warned by a senior intelligence official not to protest against the government and that she was specifically targeted when she protested anyway.
When our “antiterrorism” funds support General Musharraf’s thugs as they terrorize American citizens, it’s time to rethink our approach. Imagine if we had spent $10 billion not building up General Musharraf, but supporting Pakistani schools.
One place we could support a school is here in Dummerwala. After the attack, the victims in the village were so panicky that they pulled all their children out of school.
“They say, ‘If you don’t cooperate with us, we will kill your sons,’ ” said Tazeel Rahman, one of the victims. “This is not democracy. This is a dictatorship. This is terrorism.”
(When I interviewed the attackers, they insisted that the victims had simply killed themselves. They compensated for this wildly implausible version of events by sending an armed mob to persuade me of its merits.)
We Americans could learn something about democracy from the brave people here. The villagers insist that if they are still alive and allowed to vote, they will again defy their feudal lord in the next election.
We in the West sometimes say that poor countries like Pakistan aren’t ready for democracy. But who takes democracy more seriously: Americans who routinely don’t bother to vote, or peasants in Dummerwala who risk their lives to vote?
Courtesy The New York Times
President Bush has become a bosom buddy of President Pervez Musharraf and sealed that friendship with $10 billion in military aid, but any American official who praises Pakistan’s “democracy” might want to visit this bullet-scarred village in the Punjab.
Dummerwala held free local elections here last year. But many people voted the “wrong” way, causing the candidate of the local feudal lord to lose. So a day after the election, a small army of gunmen arrived and began rampaging through the houses of the clan members who opposed the lord’s choice.
Waheed Rahman, a top student, 14 years old, who dreamed of becoming an engineer, was wounded in the opening minutes of the attack.
“When he was shot, Waheed fell down and begged for water,” said his father, Matiullah. “They were surrounding him. But they just laughed and shot at the water tank and destroyed it. Then they ripped the clothes off the women and dragged them around half-naked.”
For the next two hours, the attackers beat the men and abused the women, destroyed homes, and told their victims that the feudal lord had arranged for the police to stay away so he could teach them a lesson.
Indeed, the police did stay away. Even when two of the villagers escaped and ran to the police station, begging the officers to stop the violence, the police delayed moving for three hours.
By the time it was over, a woman was dying, as was Waheed, and many others were wounded.
The attack here in Dummerwala is a reminder that democracy is about far more than free elections. In Pakistan, many rural areas remain under the thumb of feudal lords who use the government to keep themselves rich and everyone else impoverished.
For real democracy to come to Pakistan, we’ll need to see not only free elections and the retirement of President Musharraf, but also a broad effort to uproot the feudal rulers in areas like this, 300 miles south of Islamabad. That’s not easy to do, but promoting education is the best way to combat both feudalism and fundamentalism.
Instead, we’ve been focusing on selling arms and excusing General Musharraf’s one-man rule.
Husain Haqqani of Boston University calculates that the overt and trackable U.S. aid to General Musharraf’s Pakistan amounted to $9.8 billion — of which 1 percent went for children’s survival and health, and just one-half of 1 percent for democracy promotion (and even that went partly to a commission controlled by General Musharraf).
The big beneficiary of U.S. largesse hasn’t been the Pakistani people, but the Pakistani Army.
General Musharraf has done an excellent job of nurturing Pakistan’s economy, but he is an autocrat. As Asma Jahangir, a prominent lawyer in Lahore, told me: “Until now, Pakistanis have hated the American government but not the American people. But I’m afraid that may change. Unless the U.S. distances itself from Musharraf, the way things are going Pakistanis will come to hate the American people as well.”
Just last week, General Musharraf’s secret police goons roughed up and sexually molested Dr. Amna Buttar, an American doctor of Pakistani origin who heads a human rights organization. Dr. Buttar says that she had been warned by a senior intelligence official not to protest against the government and that she was specifically targeted when she protested anyway.
When our “antiterrorism” funds support General Musharraf’s thugs as they terrorize American citizens, it’s time to rethink our approach. Imagine if we had spent $10 billion not building up General Musharraf, but supporting Pakistani schools.
One place we could support a school is here in Dummerwala. After the attack, the victims in the village were so panicky that they pulled all their children out of school.
“They say, ‘If you don’t cooperate with us, we will kill your sons,’ ” said Tazeel Rahman, one of the victims. “This is not democracy. This is a dictatorship. This is terrorism.”
(When I interviewed the attackers, they insisted that the victims had simply killed themselves. They compensated for this wildly implausible version of events by sending an armed mob to persuade me of its merits.)
We Americans could learn something about democracy from the brave people here. The villagers insist that if they are still alive and allowed to vote, they will again defy their feudal lord in the next election.
We in the West sometimes say that poor countries like Pakistan aren’t ready for democracy. But who takes democracy more seriously: Americans who routinely don’t bother to vote, or peasants in Dummerwala who risk their lives to vote?
Courtesy The New York Times
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Mukhtaran Mai & Musharraf
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The New York Times
April 8, 2007
MEERWALA, Pakistan
You might think that the worst tragedy that could befall a couple would be for their young daughter to be raped and murdered.
But here in rural Pakistan, that was only the beginning for Hasina Bibi and her husband, Rashid Ahmed. Their story underscores how to be poor in the developing world often means having not only no food but also no justice — and how any war against poverty must be devised not only to enrich the world’s poorest people but also to educate and empower them.
On the morning of July 3 last year, Ms. Hasina and Mr. Rashid were cutting grass in the fields along with their daughter, Shamshad, who was 11 years old, and a group of other laborers. Shamshad carried a stack of grass to a pile across the field — and then disappeared.
Villagers found Shamshad’s body a few hours later. She had been raped and tortured: There were many bite marks, and burns from cigarettes.
Everybody guessed who could have done this: the grandchildren of the local feudal lord. These grandchildren, in their teens and 20s, often harassed girls.
The grandchildren, however, said that the culprits were their servants — and so the police arrested the servants (who presumably would be beaten until they confessed). But Ms. Hasina and Mr. Rashid knew that the servants could not be guilty, because they had all been together when Shamshad vanished.
“We went to the police, and after five minutes the police said, ‘Go home,’ ” Ms. Hasina related. The police told the parents to forget about making accusations against anyone in the feudal lord’s family.
So Ms. Hasina traveled to Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, 400 miles to the north, to appeal for assistance from the government — but she received no help and her trip infuriated the feudal lord’s family. The feudal lord’s family members beat up her family members and warned them to be silent.
“They said, ‘We killed the girl, and if you don’t keep quiet we’ll kill all of you as well,’ ” Ms. Hasina explained. She sighed and added: “Everybody says, that is just what happens to poor people.”
Yet there is one place that Ms. Hasina and Mr. Rashid have found a sanctuary: the shelter run by Mukhtar Mai here in the remote village of Meerwala. Mukhtar (who also goes by the name Mukhtaran Bibi) survived a gang rape to become a fervent campaigner for voiceless women in Pakistan.
I’ve written about Mukhtar repeatedly over the last few years, and she now runs several schools, an ambulance service and a women’s aid group. Her home and courtyard are full of women and girls who trickle in each day, shellshocked by injustice or disfigured by beatings or acid attacks. Mukhtar arranges medical or legal help and does what she can to address their needs.
A year ago on a visit to Mukhtar’s village, I wrote about a young woman named Aisha Parveen who was fighting efforts by the police to return her to the brothel from which she had escaped. Mukhtar helped rescue Aisha, and now Aisha is trying to replicate Mukhtar’s work farther south. One of Aisha’s first cases was to help Ms. Hasina after her daughter’s murder.
Mukhtar is a hero of mine. But her work has earned her many enemies, particularly among the feudal lords — and even in the government of President Pervez Musharraf, who fears that Mukhtar displays Pakistan’s dirty laundry before the world. So the Pakistani authorities are harassing Mukhtar, trying to break her organization. (For readers who want to help, I’ve posted some ideas on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground. You can also post your comments about this column there.)
Most of the pressure right now is on Mukhtar’s top aide and soul mate, Naseem Akhtar. Lately Naseem’s brother was in a mysterious vehicle accident, her father was ordered arrested for no apparent reason and her own house was broken into.
Farooq Leghari, a police chief, was transferred away from Meerwala because — he and others say — he tried too hard to protect Mukhtar. He now is police chief in another town and, when I visited him, he told me that “this harassment and pressure on them is from very high up, from Islamabad.”
“Their lives are in danger,” Mr. Leghari said of Mukhtar and Naseem, adding that they could be killed by assassins sent by feudal lords or by the Pakistani government itself (our close allies!).
So I have a message for President Musharraf: Don’t even think about it. Start protecting Mukhtar instead of harassing her. And if any “accident” happens to Mukhtar or Naseem, you will be held responsible before the world. We are watching.
The New York Times
April 8, 2007
MEERWALA, Pakistan
You might think that the worst tragedy that could befall a couple would be for their young daughter to be raped and murdered.
But here in rural Pakistan, that was only the beginning for Hasina Bibi and her husband, Rashid Ahmed. Their story underscores how to be poor in the developing world often means having not only no food but also no justice — and how any war against poverty must be devised not only to enrich the world’s poorest people but also to educate and empower them.
On the morning of July 3 last year, Ms. Hasina and Mr. Rashid were cutting grass in the fields along with their daughter, Shamshad, who was 11 years old, and a group of other laborers. Shamshad carried a stack of grass to a pile across the field — and then disappeared.
Villagers found Shamshad’s body a few hours later. She had been raped and tortured: There were many bite marks, and burns from cigarettes.
Everybody guessed who could have done this: the grandchildren of the local feudal lord. These grandchildren, in their teens and 20s, often harassed girls.
The grandchildren, however, said that the culprits were their servants — and so the police arrested the servants (who presumably would be beaten until they confessed). But Ms. Hasina and Mr. Rashid knew that the servants could not be guilty, because they had all been together when Shamshad vanished.
“We went to the police, and after five minutes the police said, ‘Go home,’ ” Ms. Hasina related. The police told the parents to forget about making accusations against anyone in the feudal lord’s family.
So Ms. Hasina traveled to Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, 400 miles to the north, to appeal for assistance from the government — but she received no help and her trip infuriated the feudal lord’s family. The feudal lord’s family members beat up her family members and warned them to be silent.
“They said, ‘We killed the girl, and if you don’t keep quiet we’ll kill all of you as well,’ ” Ms. Hasina explained. She sighed and added: “Everybody says, that is just what happens to poor people.”
Yet there is one place that Ms. Hasina and Mr. Rashid have found a sanctuary: the shelter run by Mukhtar Mai here in the remote village of Meerwala. Mukhtar (who also goes by the name Mukhtaran Bibi) survived a gang rape to become a fervent campaigner for voiceless women in Pakistan.
I’ve written about Mukhtar repeatedly over the last few years, and she now runs several schools, an ambulance service and a women’s aid group. Her home and courtyard are full of women and girls who trickle in each day, shellshocked by injustice or disfigured by beatings or acid attacks. Mukhtar arranges medical or legal help and does what she can to address their needs.
A year ago on a visit to Mukhtar’s village, I wrote about a young woman named Aisha Parveen who was fighting efforts by the police to return her to the brothel from which she had escaped. Mukhtar helped rescue Aisha, and now Aisha is trying to replicate Mukhtar’s work farther south. One of Aisha’s first cases was to help Ms. Hasina after her daughter’s murder.
Mukhtar is a hero of mine. But her work has earned her many enemies, particularly among the feudal lords — and even in the government of President Pervez Musharraf, who fears that Mukhtar displays Pakistan’s dirty laundry before the world. So the Pakistani authorities are harassing Mukhtar, trying to break her organization. (For readers who want to help, I’ve posted some ideas on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground. You can also post your comments about this column there.)
Most of the pressure right now is on Mukhtar’s top aide and soul mate, Naseem Akhtar. Lately Naseem’s brother was in a mysterious vehicle accident, her father was ordered arrested for no apparent reason and her own house was broken into.
Farooq Leghari, a police chief, was transferred away from Meerwala because — he and others say — he tried too hard to protect Mukhtar. He now is police chief in another town and, when I visited him, he told me that “this harassment and pressure on them is from very high up, from Islamabad.”
“Their lives are in danger,” Mr. Leghari said of Mukhtar and Naseem, adding that they could be killed by assassins sent by feudal lords or by the Pakistani government itself (our close allies!).
So I have a message for President Musharraf: Don’t even think about it. Start protecting Mukhtar instead of harassing her. And if any “accident” happens to Mukhtar or Naseem, you will be held responsible before the world. We are watching.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Musharraf Out; Exiled Leaders In
When a ship is about to sink, the rats are the first to sense it.
Pakistan Muslim League (Q) leaders and the army of cabinet ministers know that Musharraf’s popularity, if he had any to start with, is sinking fast so they have started distancing themselves from him by keeping a low profile and by not coming to his rescue in the media, with same enthusiasm they had done before. He had to dare them, without success, to show their loyalty in the troubled times. Another sign of his vulnerability is that he has also started seeing a conspiracy in the country wide protests in the wake of his bungled Chief Justice firing.
Like his "buddy" Bush, Musharraf has become a lame duck. He could be out of power even before Bush leaves the White House at the end of next year. He has run out almost all of his options. He is fast becoming a liability rather than an asset for all those who have sustained him in power.
Bush could have waited a little longer after Dick Cheney gave Musharraf a “stiff message” in Islamabad a few weeks back and pushed him to do more against Taliban. But then he overreached and summoned Chief Justice in his court and unceremoniously kept him detained there until his replacement had been found and sworn in. He had intended to aggrandize and extend his power by removing the only hurdle left on his way to give himself another five years as president, another extension as Chief of Army staff, and another rigged election to his ruling party. But it all backfired.
He quickly realized his mistake and tried to regain his lost initiative by running to the TV channels and apologizing for botching the whole issue and for police attack on Geo TV station. But it proved to be too little to late. He has been unable, so far, to get out of the hole he had dug for himself.
In the end, he only succeeded in exposing his vulnerability. Corps Commanders held their meeting when he was in Jeddah, to participate in an American initiated anti-Iran Arab League conference, as a special guest of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
Now, his fate will be determined by the success of American efforts to find the best possible way to show him the door. They are already working on it. There are two options open: to give him free rein and impose martial law; or give the exiled leaders a chance.
If you watch ISI that has better antennas and is more powerful than its two counterpart intelligence agencies - Military Intelligence and civilian Intelligence Bureau, America is taking the second apotion. ISI is for opening up the political process to the opposition parties. The other two agencies are for cracking down on them even harder. There is no way ISI will lose. It never has.
The only decision remained to be made is who is going to be the next horse and if that horse is going to make any distinction between Al-Qaida and Taliban, as Musharraf insisted on making.
If the exiled leaders, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, take up the challenge, as there is no doubt they are anxious to, they will be in and Musharraf will be out.
But then again, ISI will still be calling the shots. But everyone will be satisfied to call it a democracy. At least, for a while.
Pakistan Muslim League (Q) leaders and the army of cabinet ministers know that Musharraf’s popularity, if he had any to start with, is sinking fast so they have started distancing themselves from him by keeping a low profile and by not coming to his rescue in the media, with same enthusiasm they had done before. He had to dare them, without success, to show their loyalty in the troubled times. Another sign of his vulnerability is that he has also started seeing a conspiracy in the country wide protests in the wake of his bungled Chief Justice firing.
Like his "buddy" Bush, Musharraf has become a lame duck. He could be out of power even before Bush leaves the White House at the end of next year. He has run out almost all of his options. He is fast becoming a liability rather than an asset for all those who have sustained him in power.
Bush could have waited a little longer after Dick Cheney gave Musharraf a “stiff message” in Islamabad a few weeks back and pushed him to do more against Taliban. But then he overreached and summoned Chief Justice in his court and unceremoniously kept him detained there until his replacement had been found and sworn in. He had intended to aggrandize and extend his power by removing the only hurdle left on his way to give himself another five years as president, another extension as Chief of Army staff, and another rigged election to his ruling party. But it all backfired.
He quickly realized his mistake and tried to regain his lost initiative by running to the TV channels and apologizing for botching the whole issue and for police attack on Geo TV station. But it proved to be too little to late. He has been unable, so far, to get out of the hole he had dug for himself.
In the end, he only succeeded in exposing his vulnerability. Corps Commanders held their meeting when he was in Jeddah, to participate in an American initiated anti-Iran Arab League conference, as a special guest of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
Now, his fate will be determined by the success of American efforts to find the best possible way to show him the door. They are already working on it. There are two options open: to give him free rein and impose martial law; or give the exiled leaders a chance.
If you watch ISI that has better antennas and is more powerful than its two counterpart intelligence agencies - Military Intelligence and civilian Intelligence Bureau, America is taking the second apotion. ISI is for opening up the political process to the opposition parties. The other two agencies are for cracking down on them even harder. There is no way ISI will lose. It never has.
The only decision remained to be made is who is going to be the next horse and if that horse is going to make any distinction between Al-Qaida and Taliban, as Musharraf insisted on making.
If the exiled leaders, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, take up the challenge, as there is no doubt they are anxious to, they will be in and Musharraf will be out.
But then again, ISI will still be calling the shots. But everyone will be satisfied to call it a democracy. At least, for a while.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Somini Sengupta's NYT Inteview after her visit to Islamabad
The New York Times March 31, 2007, World View Podcast
CALVIN SIMS. Welcome to the New York Times World View podcast, a weekly conversation with Times foreign correspondents from across the globe.
I’m Calvin Sims of The Times. I spent 10 years as a foreign correspondent for the paper.
This week I speak with Somini Sengupta, Times South Asia bureau chief, about the quandary of Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who is facing the most serious challenge yet to his military rule.
First, some background from recent New York Times articles.
Ever since he seized power in a military coup in 1999, General Musharraf has pledged to return Pakistan to democratic rule. But critics say he has repeatedly failed to make good on that promise. While Pakistan has held elections in which Musharraf was elected president, those polls were considered not credible and not transparent. While General Musharraf has allowed opposition parties to participate in elections, the leaders of those parties remain in exile.
In recent weeks, however, since Musharraf fired Pakistan’s top judge, whose rulings had begun to challenge his government, outraged Pakistani lawyers and others have poured into the streets demanding that the general resign. The protests have deeply damaged Musharraf’s standing both at home and abroad.
Somini Sengupta, who covers South Asia for The New York Times from New Delhi, recently returned from a trip to Islamabad. We spoke with her at an airport in India.
Somini, just how angry and frustrated are Pakistanis with General Musharraf these days?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. The level of outrage is unprecedented because it comes from very different quarters of Pakistani society, namely judges who are out in the streets in their black coats and their courtroom attire. And this whole sacking of the chief justice has moved from being just an issue of the independence of the judiciary to really being an issue of how much influence does the army exert and how much influence does — do Pakistanis want the army to exert. So the shorthand of all this has become: Should General Musharraf be allowed to keep on his uniform — which basically means, when his five-year term as president expires in October 2007 should he be allowed to be re-elected president and keep his uniform on? And the chief justice was seen as being a potential hurdle in that presumed plan. And there is wide consensus in Pakistan that that’s the reason that he was sacked.
CALVIN SIMS. How did all this get started? In other words, why did Musharraf move against the country’s top judge? Did the judge do anything in particular to anger him?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. The judge has been, in the last couple of years, taking on the government on a number of things. And it included things like the privatization of its steel mill — of a government steel mill — that the judge threw out. It included questioning the government on the hundreds of disappearances of people who had been picked up, ostensibly in the war against terror. The judge had started to become what Pakistanis are calling an activist judge, an independent judge. And then quite suddenly on March 9, the judge was summoned to army headquarters. And it was shown on television: the judge sitting in his courtroom attire, Musharraf in uniform and he was told essentially that he had a choice: he could resign or he could face charges against him, charges of an unspecified nature. And the judge, surprisingly to most people, said he would not resign; he would take on the challenge of these unspecified charges. And that’s when this saga began. From that point onward, lawyers poured into the streets in protest. Several judges, I think at least seven judges and a deputy attorney general, have resigned. And Musharraf has come really under some very strong criticism from people who had once supported him.
CALVIN SIMS. And we’ve called this the country’s top judge. Is this the head of the supreme court? How would we characterize this judge?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. He is the chief justice of the supreme court. And his name is Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. And he faces charges that are yet to be made formal and public. He faces those charges before something called the Supreme Judicial Council on April 3.
CALVIN SIMS. The issue of those abducted by the military regime seems to have risen to the forefront in Pakistan. How many people have been abducted under this military regime? And why is this starting to resonate as an issue?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Somewhere between 400 and 500 people have been picked up and taken away, which is why they’re called disappearances. And their families have been demanding answers of the government for the last several months. And this has really struck a chord with a lot of Pakistanis because this is seen as General Musharraf’s government doing the bidding of the United States. This is in part where his bind comes from.
Now, exactly why these people have been picked up, what charges, why they’re being held — all of this remains a mystery. And that’s precisely why the issue of the disappearances has struck such a chord. Now, it’s worth pointing out, Calvin, that this is really too early to call it something like a referendum on General Musharraf’s rule. Even his backers are saying that, O.K., well, he mishandled this situation. The judge should not have been suspended in this manner. The things that happened to the protesters; the attack on the protesters — the attack on TV stations — those things shouldn’t have happened. But he will come out of this.
Now, whether or not he comes out of it, even his supporters acknowledge he will be weakened. Because even if he finds the Supreme Judicial Council restoring the judge, it would go against his wishes. And if the Supreme Judicial Council actually suspends the judge, finds that there’s some merit to these charges against him, then that really calls into question the credibility of the whole judicial process. So, either way, General Musharraf’s hold on power, his credibility, is weakened and he will have to do something to repair it. What he will do exactly, whether he’ll strike a political deal with one of his opponents, is really the key question right now.
CALVIN SIMS. You talked about his opponents, the opposition there. Is there a viable opposition to Musharraf? In the past, he had banned the opposition parties from functioning. He now has allowed them to function. Yet their leaders are in exile. Is there a significant opposition force there?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Yes, absolutely. There are opposition parties. And even in the 2002 elections, which were considered flawed and less than credible, the Pakistan People’s Party — the P.P.P., led by Benazir Bhutto — captured the largest number of votes. And they are out in force. They are allowed to operate freely. However, the leaders of both parties — Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif — are in exile. And so that again calls into question his commitment to bringing back democracy to the country. When he will allow — if and when he will allow the two of them to return — whether he is going to be in a position to work out some kind of a compromise with either of them, we have yet to see.
CALVIN SIMS. How does General Musharraf justify these actions that he takes, which are clearly unconstitutional in many respects and are not sort of open and transparent like you would like an administration to be in a democracy? How does he justify them?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Look, his critics say that the way he suspended the chief justice was not constitutional; that the chief justice cannot be sacked until there are charges, until he is found guilty of a wrongdoing. General Musharraf, for his part, and his supporters, say that there are substantive charges against him. Some of those have been leaked in the press, by which side is unclear. But those charges are something along the lines of his pressing for favors for his son and various other misdeeds. Now, let’s see whether the judicial council actually finds him guilty of any of these — these things and whether Pakistanis, after that, think that those are serious enough charges on which to suspend the chief justice. General Musharraf has said, has insisted all along, that he has followed the law. He has also apologized for police breaking into a private television station and ransacking the station after they tried to broadcast some news of the protests. So he clearly realized quickly on that that was not proving to be very popular. And he went on the air and he apologized for police misconduct and promptly sacked 14 police officers. Now that hasn’t, of course, satisfied many of his critics because they say the police officers are just the fall guys for orders that came from — from somewhere else.
CALVIN SIMS. Does the average Pakistani like Musharraf? When you’re there on the ground, what do you hear from the average person on the street?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Well it’s awfully difficult to tell in a country where credible elections haven’t happened and public opinion polls are virtually nonexistent. There is a great level of frustration with the military rule of General Musharraf that has continued now for over seven years. And it could be — I mean there is one school of thought that says, You know, these things come in cycles. After a few years everyone gets tired of the same guy, and particularly a guy in uniform. There are questions about very basic things like price rise, the state of the economy, police reforms, corruption — kind of everyday issues of governance — that his regime is having to face. And without the legitimacy of an elected government behind him, those are harder things for General Musharraf to deal with. The U.S., which remains one of his most vital allies, has said that it is — it’s watching how this chief justice saga plays out. And on the issue of the uniform — in other words, whether he will continue to be army chief and president after this fall — the U.S. has repeatedly said that it expects General Musharraf to abide by the Constitution. But it has not gone any further than that. It has not said anything about wanting him to take off the uniform, wanting him to step down from the office of president or the office of army chief.
CALVIN SIMS. Musharraf has been lauded by the Bush administration as a key ally in the war on terror. What has he done to aid the U.S. in its crackdown on terrorism?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. The U.S. continues to — to say that he is a vital ally. His government, it has to be said, sends hundreds of Pakistani troops to the tribal areas on the Afghanistan border. And many of them pay dearly, with their lives, to help the U.S. in the war on terror. And the Bush administration remembers that and cites that repeatedly. Questions, however, are being raised, both in Pakistan as well as in Washington, about the extent to which an unelected military government can continue to do the job and at what point does that government become so unpopular that it becomes harder to do the necessary things to carry out the war on terror.
CALVIN SIMS. And General Musharraf has come under criticism in the U.S. by some circles for not doing enough to stop this resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda on the border with Afghanistan as well. Right?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Absolutely. I mean that question comes up again and again in Washington, that is he really doing enough? Is he able to do enough? And the American ambassador, the outgoing American ambassador in Islamabad said something very interesting a few, few weeks ago in which he said that General Musharraf’s commitment is not to be questioned. There’s no question about his commitment to fighting the U.S.-led war on terror. The question is his capacity to do so.
CALVIN SIMS. Musharraf obviously can’t survive in that capacity forever. He is under death threats. There’ve been several suicide attempts. What comes after Musharraf? And I guess I’m asking: If not Musharraf, is there someone to step in in this unique situation in Pakistan’s history that can still manage all of these different things that are — that are challenging Pakistan: the war on terror, internal squabbles? Who comes after Musharraf, if anyone?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. While there are many people in Washington who are asking the question: Who’s next after Musharraf? Who in Pakistan can do the job better? Particularly the American job: combing out, flushing out the extremist elements. Who can do that job better? The questions may well be asked, though, instead of one man, what kind of a Pakistani state, which includes the army, what kind of a Pakistani state can do the job better, both to deliver a stable Pakistan and a Pakistan that can help the U.S.-led war on terror.
CALVIN SIMS. Are Pakistanis looking to the United States to help play a role in the future of their country and perhaps in the transition of Musharraf to the next stage?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Well naturally. And General Musharraf’s critics in Pakistan think that the U.S. has done too much to prop him up and that with the U.S. support, the military has entrenched itself too much in Pakistani society. Now those are, of course, critics of General Musharraf. And his supporters will tell you that — that he has done, and his government and its army has done, things that were considered unthinkable in the past in order to — to do the right thing on the war against terror, including sending troops to the North-West Frontier Province and the border areas. And they will also repeatedly point out that General Musharraf remains under threat by radical Islamist forces in his country.
CALVIN SIMS. Somini, is it too early to say that this is the demise of General Musharraf? Or what do you think is on the horizon? What comes after this incident?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. It’s way too early to say that this is the end of General Musharraf. But certainly it’s very likely that the political dispensation of power in Pakistan could change. Will that include General Musharraf, probably in uniform? That’s — that’s likely. Will it also include some other players such as some of his political opponents? That’s the question before Pakistanis.
CALVIN SIMS. Somini Sengupta, Times South Asia bureau chief, thank you very much for speaking with us.
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Thanks.
CALVIN SIMS. And thanks for listening. I’m Calvin Sims of The New York Times. We’ll be back next week with another edition of World View.
CALVIN SIMS. Welcome to the New York Times World View podcast, a weekly conversation with Times foreign correspondents from across the globe.
I’m Calvin Sims of The Times. I spent 10 years as a foreign correspondent for the paper.
This week I speak with Somini Sengupta, Times South Asia bureau chief, about the quandary of Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who is facing the most serious challenge yet to his military rule.
First, some background from recent New York Times articles.
Ever since he seized power in a military coup in 1999, General Musharraf has pledged to return Pakistan to democratic rule. But critics say he has repeatedly failed to make good on that promise. While Pakistan has held elections in which Musharraf was elected president, those polls were considered not credible and not transparent. While General Musharraf has allowed opposition parties to participate in elections, the leaders of those parties remain in exile.
In recent weeks, however, since Musharraf fired Pakistan’s top judge, whose rulings had begun to challenge his government, outraged Pakistani lawyers and others have poured into the streets demanding that the general resign. The protests have deeply damaged Musharraf’s standing both at home and abroad.
Somini Sengupta, who covers South Asia for The New York Times from New Delhi, recently returned from a trip to Islamabad. We spoke with her at an airport in India.
Somini, just how angry and frustrated are Pakistanis with General Musharraf these days?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. The level of outrage is unprecedented because it comes from very different quarters of Pakistani society, namely judges who are out in the streets in their black coats and their courtroom attire. And this whole sacking of the chief justice has moved from being just an issue of the independence of the judiciary to really being an issue of how much influence does the army exert and how much influence does — do Pakistanis want the army to exert. So the shorthand of all this has become: Should General Musharraf be allowed to keep on his uniform — which basically means, when his five-year term as president expires in October 2007 should he be allowed to be re-elected president and keep his uniform on? And the chief justice was seen as being a potential hurdle in that presumed plan. And there is wide consensus in Pakistan that that’s the reason that he was sacked.
CALVIN SIMS. How did all this get started? In other words, why did Musharraf move against the country’s top judge? Did the judge do anything in particular to anger him?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. The judge has been, in the last couple of years, taking on the government on a number of things. And it included things like the privatization of its steel mill — of a government steel mill — that the judge threw out. It included questioning the government on the hundreds of disappearances of people who had been picked up, ostensibly in the war against terror. The judge had started to become what Pakistanis are calling an activist judge, an independent judge. And then quite suddenly on March 9, the judge was summoned to army headquarters. And it was shown on television: the judge sitting in his courtroom attire, Musharraf in uniform and he was told essentially that he had a choice: he could resign or he could face charges against him, charges of an unspecified nature. And the judge, surprisingly to most people, said he would not resign; he would take on the challenge of these unspecified charges. And that’s when this saga began. From that point onward, lawyers poured into the streets in protest. Several judges, I think at least seven judges and a deputy attorney general, have resigned. And Musharraf has come really under some very strong criticism from people who had once supported him.
CALVIN SIMS. And we’ve called this the country’s top judge. Is this the head of the supreme court? How would we characterize this judge?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. He is the chief justice of the supreme court. And his name is Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. And he faces charges that are yet to be made formal and public. He faces those charges before something called the Supreme Judicial Council on April 3.
CALVIN SIMS. The issue of those abducted by the military regime seems to have risen to the forefront in Pakistan. How many people have been abducted under this military regime? And why is this starting to resonate as an issue?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Somewhere between 400 and 500 people have been picked up and taken away, which is why they’re called disappearances. And their families have been demanding answers of the government for the last several months. And this has really struck a chord with a lot of Pakistanis because this is seen as General Musharraf’s government doing the bidding of the United States. This is in part where his bind comes from.
Now, exactly why these people have been picked up, what charges, why they’re being held — all of this remains a mystery. And that’s precisely why the issue of the disappearances has struck such a chord. Now, it’s worth pointing out, Calvin, that this is really too early to call it something like a referendum on General Musharraf’s rule. Even his backers are saying that, O.K., well, he mishandled this situation. The judge should not have been suspended in this manner. The things that happened to the protesters; the attack on the protesters — the attack on TV stations — those things shouldn’t have happened. But he will come out of this.
Now, whether or not he comes out of it, even his supporters acknowledge he will be weakened. Because even if he finds the Supreme Judicial Council restoring the judge, it would go against his wishes. And if the Supreme Judicial Council actually suspends the judge, finds that there’s some merit to these charges against him, then that really calls into question the credibility of the whole judicial process. So, either way, General Musharraf’s hold on power, his credibility, is weakened and he will have to do something to repair it. What he will do exactly, whether he’ll strike a political deal with one of his opponents, is really the key question right now.
CALVIN SIMS. You talked about his opponents, the opposition there. Is there a viable opposition to Musharraf? In the past, he had banned the opposition parties from functioning. He now has allowed them to function. Yet their leaders are in exile. Is there a significant opposition force there?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Yes, absolutely. There are opposition parties. And even in the 2002 elections, which were considered flawed and less than credible, the Pakistan People’s Party — the P.P.P., led by Benazir Bhutto — captured the largest number of votes. And they are out in force. They are allowed to operate freely. However, the leaders of both parties — Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif — are in exile. And so that again calls into question his commitment to bringing back democracy to the country. When he will allow — if and when he will allow the two of them to return — whether he is going to be in a position to work out some kind of a compromise with either of them, we have yet to see.
CALVIN SIMS. How does General Musharraf justify these actions that he takes, which are clearly unconstitutional in many respects and are not sort of open and transparent like you would like an administration to be in a democracy? How does he justify them?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Look, his critics say that the way he suspended the chief justice was not constitutional; that the chief justice cannot be sacked until there are charges, until he is found guilty of a wrongdoing. General Musharraf, for his part, and his supporters, say that there are substantive charges against him. Some of those have been leaked in the press, by which side is unclear. But those charges are something along the lines of his pressing for favors for his son and various other misdeeds. Now, let’s see whether the judicial council actually finds him guilty of any of these — these things and whether Pakistanis, after that, think that those are serious enough charges on which to suspend the chief justice. General Musharraf has said, has insisted all along, that he has followed the law. He has also apologized for police breaking into a private television station and ransacking the station after they tried to broadcast some news of the protests. So he clearly realized quickly on that that was not proving to be very popular. And he went on the air and he apologized for police misconduct and promptly sacked 14 police officers. Now that hasn’t, of course, satisfied many of his critics because they say the police officers are just the fall guys for orders that came from — from somewhere else.
CALVIN SIMS. Does the average Pakistani like Musharraf? When you’re there on the ground, what do you hear from the average person on the street?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Well it’s awfully difficult to tell in a country where credible elections haven’t happened and public opinion polls are virtually nonexistent. There is a great level of frustration with the military rule of General Musharraf that has continued now for over seven years. And it could be — I mean there is one school of thought that says, You know, these things come in cycles. After a few years everyone gets tired of the same guy, and particularly a guy in uniform. There are questions about very basic things like price rise, the state of the economy, police reforms, corruption — kind of everyday issues of governance — that his regime is having to face. And without the legitimacy of an elected government behind him, those are harder things for General Musharraf to deal with. The U.S., which remains one of his most vital allies, has said that it is — it’s watching how this chief justice saga plays out. And on the issue of the uniform — in other words, whether he will continue to be army chief and president after this fall — the U.S. has repeatedly said that it expects General Musharraf to abide by the Constitution. But it has not gone any further than that. It has not said anything about wanting him to take off the uniform, wanting him to step down from the office of president or the office of army chief.
CALVIN SIMS. Musharraf has been lauded by the Bush administration as a key ally in the war on terror. What has he done to aid the U.S. in its crackdown on terrorism?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. The U.S. continues to — to say that he is a vital ally. His government, it has to be said, sends hundreds of Pakistani troops to the tribal areas on the Afghanistan border. And many of them pay dearly, with their lives, to help the U.S. in the war on terror. And the Bush administration remembers that and cites that repeatedly. Questions, however, are being raised, both in Pakistan as well as in Washington, about the extent to which an unelected military government can continue to do the job and at what point does that government become so unpopular that it becomes harder to do the necessary things to carry out the war on terror.
CALVIN SIMS. And General Musharraf has come under criticism in the U.S. by some circles for not doing enough to stop this resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda on the border with Afghanistan as well. Right?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Absolutely. I mean that question comes up again and again in Washington, that is he really doing enough? Is he able to do enough? And the American ambassador, the outgoing American ambassador in Islamabad said something very interesting a few, few weeks ago in which he said that General Musharraf’s commitment is not to be questioned. There’s no question about his commitment to fighting the U.S.-led war on terror. The question is his capacity to do so.
CALVIN SIMS. Musharraf obviously can’t survive in that capacity forever. He is under death threats. There’ve been several suicide attempts. What comes after Musharraf? And I guess I’m asking: If not Musharraf, is there someone to step in in this unique situation in Pakistan’s history that can still manage all of these different things that are — that are challenging Pakistan: the war on terror, internal squabbles? Who comes after Musharraf, if anyone?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. While there are many people in Washington who are asking the question: Who’s next after Musharraf? Who in Pakistan can do the job better? Particularly the American job: combing out, flushing out the extremist elements. Who can do that job better? The questions may well be asked, though, instead of one man, what kind of a Pakistani state, which includes the army, what kind of a Pakistani state can do the job better, both to deliver a stable Pakistan and a Pakistan that can help the U.S.-led war on terror.
CALVIN SIMS. Are Pakistanis looking to the United States to help play a role in the future of their country and perhaps in the transition of Musharraf to the next stage?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Well naturally. And General Musharraf’s critics in Pakistan think that the U.S. has done too much to prop him up and that with the U.S. support, the military has entrenched itself too much in Pakistani society. Now those are, of course, critics of General Musharraf. And his supporters will tell you that — that he has done, and his government and its army has done, things that were considered unthinkable in the past in order to — to do the right thing on the war against terror, including sending troops to the North-West Frontier Province and the border areas. And they will also repeatedly point out that General Musharraf remains under threat by radical Islamist forces in his country.
CALVIN SIMS. Somini, is it too early to say that this is the demise of General Musharraf? Or what do you think is on the horizon? What comes after this incident?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. It’s way too early to say that this is the end of General Musharraf. But certainly it’s very likely that the political dispensation of power in Pakistan could change. Will that include General Musharraf, probably in uniform? That’s — that’s likely. Will it also include some other players such as some of his political opponents? That’s the question before Pakistanis.
CALVIN SIMS. Somini Sengupta, Times South Asia bureau chief, thank you very much for speaking with us.
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Thanks.
CALVIN SIMS. And thanks for listening. I’m Calvin Sims of The New York Times. We’ll be back next week with another edition of World View.
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