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Rebels and riots haunt Musharraf
THE uprising in the southwest of Pakistan could be the beginning of the end for Pervez Musharraf, the President.Not that he has had a smooth ride in the seven years since he seized power in a military coup. But many forces have suddenly come together to try to dislodge him. His attempt at using the Army to crack down may make matters worse and, for the first time, he may not have army support. At the moment, from a British perspective, all roads lead to Pakistan: Molly Campbell, the missing Western Isles schoolgirl, believed to have been taken by her father to Lahore; the row over Test match ball-tampering; the hunt for the perpetrators of the plot to blow up transatlantic airliners. Beyond those, in the rarefied air of United Nations diplomacy, is the threat of Irans ambitions to develop the nuclear skills that it bought from a Pakistani scientist. There is every sign that today it will defy the UN deadline to stop. These stories are unrelated but the simultaneous prominence is not entirely a coincidence. Pakistan has long combined an intimacy with Britain and America with an immutable separateness of its own intricate culture and politics. That has been particularly true of Musharrafs regime; he has tried to weave together his role as a US ally with courtship of religious parties at home. But his plan is unravelling. The crisis this week has come from Baluchistan, the wild southwestern province that contains valuable gas reserves. The highways linking Quetta, the provincial capital, to Karachi and to Iran have been paralysed since Saturday by riots, after the Army killed Nawab Akbar Bugti, the tribal chief. The blockades forced many businesses to close. The Baluchis, fiercely independent, have had a grievance for years that they are being Red Indianised their land and resources usurped by incomers while they watch and withdraw. That has sharpened as gas prices have soared and land along the spectacular coast is developed. Musharrafs chosen tactic of sending in the Army to crush revolt has appeared to inflame sentiment, particularly as army officials take land for their needs. Critics say that he would have done far better to accept their moderate demands for a better share of gas revenues. The Baluchi revolt is dangerous to him because it is bigger and better organised than before, and because its leaders are finding common cause with other opponents of Musharraf. The Army is badly demoralised by the long, wearing campaign against the Taleban in the tribal lands of Waziristan, on the Afghan border. The action came after demands by America for Pakistan to help more on the border, but it has strained Musharrafs command of the Army as nothing before. The demand that Britain would most like to make of Musharraf is for him to curb religious militants in Quetta, but it is far from clear that he could. This summer, retired generals and former supreme court justices wrote to him openly calling on him to stand down as head of the Army. Meanwhile, although financiers are impressed with Pakistans recent growth of 6 per cent a year, poorer Pakistanis are aggrieved at inflation of about 9 per cent. The religious parties, whom Musharraf has found helpful, have now joined the main parties in trying to stop him glueing himself to the presidency beyond next year, when the constitution says that he must step down. This week Shaukat Aziz, his Prime Minister, survived a no-confidence vote. But the joint action by Musharrafs formerly divided critics is a far more serious threat than he has yet faced. Posted by: john 2006-08-31 |
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