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Islamists are threatening to turn Pakistan into Afghanistan: report
Have Pakistans Talibanised Islamist movements taken on the Pakistani state, casting it in the same pit as the pro-American governments of Iraq, Afghanistan and Mahmoud Abbass Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, is the question an article in the current issue of The Nation raises.Graham Usher writes, Rarely has Pakistan felt so much like Iraq and Afghanistan. Is it heading the same way? If the military-mullah alliance has imploded, there could be no more fitting epitaph than Lal Masjid. Lal Masjid, he notes, enjoyed solid ties with the Taliban. Seventy percent of its 10,000 students were from FATA and NWFP, including fighters schooled in several Afghan wars. The Taliban offered a political strategy that transformed it from an instrument of state policy to an autonomous and armed redoubt ranged against the Musharraf government. Like the Taliban, it changed from ally to rival. According to the writer, What is evident is that Lal Masjid was not the fixed idea of two crazed clerics. In policy, practice and aspiration it is part of a wider Talibanisation campaign radiating from the tribal areas and threatening not just the state but all those forces committed to electoral politics, including Pakistans mainstream Islamist parties. He believes there are three options that General Musharraf now has in his attempt to deal with the Taliban stronghold in FATA. The first is to declare a state of emergency. It is unclear how Washington would react to this, pleased though the Bush Administration is that their ally has apparently abandoned the policy of peace with the Taliban. But most Pakistanis would see martial law as a ruse for Musharraf to evade elections scheduled for later this year. And Musharraf has very little credit left. The second is to proceed with elections and rig them in his favour, as he did in 2002. But that was a long time ago. The third option is for him to forge a coalition with national, secular and other parties based on a shared political consensus. This would need to define Talibanisation as an existential threat to the Pakistani state, whether civilian or military. But it would also have to agree that the way to isolate the Taliban cannot be through force alone but by a programme of social justice throughout Pakistan, with free, comprehensive and adequate public education being the priority. Otherwise, the Taliban will continue to recruit, indoctrinate and arm the poor and the powerless through mosques and madrassas, precisely as happened at Lal Masjid. Usher writes, Yet it is clear that consensus will not be achieved unless Musharraf and the army at least begin a transition from military rule to democratic governance. A good place to start would be free and fair elections later this year and the unfettered return of authentic leaders like former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, head of the Pakistan Peoples Party, according to polls the most popular party in the country. Posted by: Fred 2007-07-21 |
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