#General Pervez Musharraf

[mariacallous]

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s former president, died at age 79 in Dubai on Sunday after a long illness, according to a statement by the Pakistani military.

Musharraf’s military colleagues in Pakistan often praised him as daring, forthright, and brave—yet the primary legacy he leaves behind will feature none of those adjectives. Pakistan’s 10th president since independence will be remembered instead as a divisive, constitution-shredding military dictator who set Pakistan back decades.

When Musharraf took charge after a military coup in October 1999, Pakistan was not dissimilar from its neighbors China and India—countries with large populations but little economic vitality at the time. China and India, however, soon enjoyed massive growth as their economies opened up to the world and investments poured in and exports flowed out. Pakistan grew too—but not because of any changes in how Musharraf managed the economy. Instead, infusions of cash from the United States to help finance the so-called global war on terrorism bolstered solid (though unspectacular) macroeconomic numbers.

By the end of Musharraf’s tenure in 2008, Pakistan was a regional economic laggard. The country took yet another massive loan from the International Monetary Fund just weeks after he resigned. More importantly, however, insurgencies and violent political crises had engulfed three of Pakistan’s four provinces.

Democratic-minded Pakistanis often blame the United States for bolstering the country’s military dictators, and for good reason. Throughout the three extended periods when generals have run Pakistan—the 1960s, the 1980s, and the 2000s—they did so with vital political and economic support from Washington. That is what helped shore up every military dictator Pakistan has ever had to endure.

But Musharraf’s assistance to U.S. President George W. Bush’s war efforts reached a whole new level and made him something of a celebrity in the United States. In 2006, he became the first foreign head of state to appear on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. It was a somewhat awkward appearance. Asked how he balanced the wishes of the United States and Pakistan, Musharraf said, “I’ve had to learn the art of tightrope-walking many times, and I think I’ve become quite an expert of that.”

He got a few laughs. But there was nothing funny about the mess he was trying to hide back home as he sought to further secure his grip on power by marketing himself as the sole Pakistani counterterrorism partner whom Americans could count on.

Born in 1943 to a middle-class household that migrated to Pakistan from India just four years later, Musharraf benefited from being in a well-educated and socially prominent family. His father worked for the government and eventually became a diplomat posted to Ankara, Turkey, where Musharraf spent seven years learning Turkish and growing fond of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founding father of a sovereign and secular Turkey. At age 18, Musharraf joined the Pakistan Military Academy, from which he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1964.

He saw his first combat in Pakistan’s 1965 war with India, and he was also involved in combat operations in the 1971 war that led to the breakup of Pakistan (and the founding of Bangladesh). Musharraf came to be seen as a star officer and became a member of the elite Special Services Group of commandos in the Pakistan Army. He later taught at the Command and Staff College in Quetta and in the War Wing of the National Defence College.

In 1998, Musharraf was appointed head of the armed forces, only to be fired in October 1999 when he was traveling abroad. The armed forces, never keen to obey even the most benign orders of elected civilian leaders, refused to carry out the decision. In scenes more fitting for a cheap thriller one might buy at an airport bookshop, the Army took control of Karachi’s airport, helped land Musharraf’s plane as he returned from his foreign trip, and conducted a coup. Musharraf then appointed himself the head of yet another military government.

As president, his straight-talking, unvarnished style was welcomed by Pakistanis unaccustomed to that kind of candor from a public official. For Pakistan’s rising urban middle class, he became a patron of music, television, film, and fashion. But for the rest of the country—the vast majority—Musharraf’s rule was a time of violence, diminished control over their own lives, and the absence of democratic representation.

Musharraf’s most memorable reform effort was Local Government Ordinance 2001, which aimed to transfer many local services from higher tiers of government to more local authorities. The idea was to empower ordinary citizens and make the authorities overseeing municipal water, sanitation, and education services more responsive to the people using those services. For the first few years after it was enacted, the ordinance and the new systems it created seemed to be improving those services across the country.

As with so many of Musharraf’s promises, though, there was no follow-through. Musharraf never delivered the necessary fiscal and political freedoms that would have ensured his reforms would last. He deliberately kept the four provincial governments weak and fiscally dependent on the largesse of the federal government. This ended up embittering ethnic minorities and deepening the suspicions of democrats already wary of Musharraf’s intentions. Both at the provincial and the national levels, Pakistan’s democratic institutions remained weak. And in 2006, Musharraf helped dismantle some of his own reforms to prolong his time as president—conceding changes to Local Government Ordinance 2001 as part of a deal with “elected” civilians who were actually installed to do his bidding. Despite Musharraf’s many protestations to the contrary, he never really favored democracy.

Nor did he respect the rights and multiple identities of his diverse citizenry. In Balochistan—the sparsely populated, poor, yet mineral-rich province that is now the site of some of China’s key investments in Pakistan’s infrastructure—Musharraf laid the foundation for a raging separatist insurgency. He responded to long-standing Baloch demands for greater access to the natural resources extracted from the province with contemptuous rejections. Key political leaders who articulated those demands were branded as traitors.

The tipping point probably came in 2006 when Nawab Akbar Bugti, a onetime government minister in Islamabad and former chief minister of the province, was killed in a standoff with the military. Bugti’s family accused Musharraf of having him assassinated. A 2016 court judgment cleared Musharraf of the charge, but many continue to believe that he was responsible. Even those with a tendency to align themselves with Musharraf blamed him for plunging the entire province into violence.

Meanwhile, the cost of fighting al Qaeda was not borne by Musharraf but by the thousands of Pakistani citizens, police officers, spies, and soldiers who were killed in reprisal attacks that metastasized into a full-blown terrorist insurgency in the north and northwest of the country. Bush understandably praised Musharraf for helping to fight his war, calling Musharraf “a leader with great courage and vision.” But for Pakistan, the fruits of that relationship were ruinous. From the home district of Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan’s northwest to the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, full-scale military operations displaced and dislocated millions of Pakistani citizens throughout the decade that followed the Musharraf era—operations that were a response to restive and violent conditions that Musharraf, in trying to please Washington, had fostered or created.

Musharraf and his many supporters often cite the absence of better options—suggesting it would have been impossible to support U.S. counterterrorism campaigns in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks without fueling a terrorist insurgency. And, yes, the challenge of being squeezed between U.S. pressure to conduct a war on terrorism and the domestic complexities of managing that war without igniting internal conflicts and tensions would have been difficult for any leader. Still, Pakistan never had a chance to debate or contemplate how to find a proper balance—Musharraf decided for the whole country.

In the nearly decade and a half between his resignation in 2008 and his death, Musharraf showed little capacity for reflection or remorse. When he did show glimpses of regret, they were transparently self-serving. At the launch of his own political party in October 2010, when questioned about what he did to counter corruption during his time in power, he apologized for having made a 2007 deal to enable former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to return to Pakistan. (She was assassinated on his watch as president.) Later that year, during an interview with Indian television, when confronted about how he left Pakistan in political and financial ruin, he expressed regret at having given up the position of chief of army staff too soon. In an interview in December 2013, as momentum was building for a Pakistani Supreme Court case in which he would have been tried for treason, Musharraf said, “Whatever I did, I did it for the country. It could be wrong, but there was no bad intention in it. Even then, if someone thinks that I have committed a mistake, I seek forgiveness for it.”

Those who wonder about the sincerity of his halting contrition need look no further than his actions toward the end of 2007. Growing increasingly weary of the upsurge in political, legal, and social challenges to his rule that had arisen throughout 2006, he tried to fire the country’s chief justice in March 2007. That decision backfired in July of that year when a 13-judge panel from the Supreme Court reinstated the justice. In response, Musharraf arranged to be elected as president by parliament in October. When that gambit backfired—with almost all opposition members either abstaining or resigning from parliament to protest the behavior of the Musharraf regime—he suspended the constitution altogether, declaring a state of emergency. In keeping with the global post-9/11 tradition of using terrorism as a basis for violating laws, he justified the emergency declaration on the basis of the “visible ascendancy in the activities of extremists and incidents of terrorist attacks.”

It’s not only his actions as the leader of the country after 1999 that will leave his legacy in tatters. Perhaps the most egregious violation of his oath as a soldier was not the coup he conducted in 1999, or the sham election he held in 2002, or the judges he tried to fire in 2007, or the emergency he declared in 2007. Rather, it was the Kargil War of 1999—a military entanglement that his supporters laud for its tactical robustness, yet whose strategic cost Pakistan continues to bear to this day.

Contingency plans for taking vulnerable parts of Indian-occupied Kashmir had been part of Pakistani military thinking for decades. In the late 1990s, several senior officers had sought to implement those plans, yet calmer heads had always prevailed, including the army chief who preceded Musharraf, a thoughtful and widely respected general named Jehangir Karamat. But in 1998, then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif fell out with Karamat and fast-tracked Musharraf’s appointment as chief of army staff. Among Musharraf’s first acts as military boss was to greenlight the covert infiltration that sparked the Kargil War.

The war was supposed to liberate Kashmir from Indian occupation. Instead, hundreds of Pakistani soldiers were killed, and after an initial shock, India was able to push back and regain the territory it had held. Back home, Pakistan’s elected civilian leadership claimed to have been kept in the dark about the Kargil misadventure—and the resulting bitterness is what eventually led to Musharraf’s coup. At one point, U.S. President Bill Clinton was pulled into the crossfire, both between Musharraf and Sharif and between India and Pakistan. Bitterness and disappointment from Kargil in both Washington (for the dangerous escalation the intervention represented) and Pakistan (for the United States having refused to support Pakistan) led to a strategic falling-out between the United States and Pakistan. Those tensions never fully disappeared.

Recent political upheaval in Pakistan is essentially part of the toxicity that began with the disastrous Kargil misadventure. When disagreements between Pakistani politicians and generals boil over, the United States is the baton they use to beat each other up with. Unpredictability in Pakistani governance now seems like a given—but it wasn’t always this way. Gen. Pervez Musharraf was the gardener who planted and harvested those seeds.

To his credit perhaps, despite all his failings, Musharraf remained to the end a relatable figure for the vast middle class of Pakistan. Unlike so many other Pakistani leaders, including military dictators, his family seemed immune to the voracious appetite for money and power such people tend to have. Neither of his two children is a public figure, and neither stands accused of having benefited from the long period when their father enjoyed unlimited power in Pakistan. Previous dictators have left behind multiple generations of very wealthy, politically active offspring.

Musharraf, who had been living in self-imposed exile in Dubai since 2016, leaves behind an empty home in Islamabad and a few apartments in the Middle East and London. All empty. Just like his contrition, and his promises of uniting and reforming the nation.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 1.1 (after 2000)

2001 – Greece adopts the Euro, becoming the 12th Eurozone country. 2004 – In a vote of confidence, General Pervez Musharraf wins 658 out of 1,170 votes in the Electoral College of Pakistan, and according to Article 41(8) of the Constitution of Pakistan, is "deemed to be elected" to the office of President until October 2007. 2007 – Bulgaria and Romania join the EU. 2007 – Adam Air Flight 574 breaks apart in mid-air and crashes near the Makassar Strait, Indonesia, killing all 102 people on board. 2009 – Sixty-six people die in a nightclub fire in Bangkok, Thailand. 2010 – A suicide car bomber detonates at a volleyball tournament in Lakki Marwat, Pakistan, killing 105 and injuring 100 more. 2011 – A bomb explodes as Coptic Christians in Alexandria, Egypt, leave a new year service, killing 23 people. 2011 – Estonia officially adopts the Euro currency and becomes the 17th Eurozone country. 2013 – At least 60 people are killed and 200 injured in a stampede after celebrations at Félix Houphouët-Boigny Stadium in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. 2015 – The Eurasian Economic Union comes into effect, creating a political and economic union between Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. 2017 – An attack on a nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey, during New Year's celebrations, kills 39 people and injures 79 others. 2023 – Croatia officially adopts the Euro, becoming the 20th Eurozone country, and becomes the 27th member of the Schengen Area. 2024 - A 7.5 Mww  earthquake strikes the western coast of Japan, killing more than 300 people and injuring over 1,000 others. 2024 - Disney's copyright protection on Steamboat Willie and the original Mickey Mouse expires as they enter the public domain. 2024 - Artsakh ceases to exist.

[qualitylightthing]

25 December: Birthday of  Pakistan prominent Leader Nawaz Sharif

Nawaz Sharif, born on December 25, 1949, in Lahore, Pakistan, is a famous Pakistani politician and businessman who has been the country's Prime Minister three times: from 1990 to 1993, 1997 to 1999, and 2013 to 2017.

Sharif belongs to the prominent Sharif family, whose business empire is the Ittefaq Group, interested in sugar, steel, and textiles. He got an LL.B. from the University of the Punjab at Lahore before entering his family's business.

Political Career

Sharif started his political career in the early 1980s as he was appointed the Finance Minister of Punjab province. Later he took the position of Chief Minister of Punjab in 1985 and continued until 1990.

He won his first term as the Prime Minister of Pakistan through the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) [PML-N] as the leader in October of 1990. It was after the dismissal of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan when using his rights under a constitutional clause granting him the right to dissolve the elected government if they were deemed corrupt or ineffectual. During his first term, Sharif pursued economic liberalization and infrastructural development.

Second Terms

However, his tenure was cut short in 1993 after conflicts with the President resulted in his resignation. In 1997, he regained power with a handsome majority in parliament, thus allowing him to implement constitutional amendments that curtailed presidential powers and enhanced the role of the Prime Minister.

 His second term witnessed Pakistan's first nuclear tests in 1998, a response to India's tests, which led to international sanctions. In 1999, his government was overthrown in a military coup led by General Pervez Musharraf, resulting in Sharif's exile to Saudi Arabia.

 After years in exile, Sharif returned to Pakistan and re-entered politics. He remained as Prime Minister in 2013 for a third time, concentrating on the matters of economic reforms, energy projects, and infrastructure, which included the start of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Jail term and Allegations

However, he also faced allegations of corruption in his term, for which he was disqualified from holding office by the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 2017 after the Panama Papers leakage. Since then, he has been under constant legal pressures and received convictions in prison for corruption cases. In 2019, for medical treatment, he arrived in London on bail.

 In addition, he has also been declared an absconder by a Pakistan court; however, subsequently, the Islamabad High Court had granted him protective bail in the Avenfield and Al-Aziza cases. In 2023, after four years of exile, he made a comeback to Pakistan, for which he was acquitted by the Islamabad High Court in the Avenfield and Al-Azizia Steel Mills cases.

Family and Personal Life

Nawaz Sharif is married to Kulsoom Nawaz who died in 2018. He has four children, one of whom, Maryam Nawaz, is actively involved in the politics of Pakistan. His younger brother, Shehbaz Sharif, is also an important political figure, who served as the Chief Minister of Punjab and later became the Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Legacy and Impact

Sharif's political life has been characterized by remarkable success and scandals. Major infrastructure projects and moves towards economic liberalization marked his rule. However, charges of corruption and battles with the military have also characterized much of his political career. He has led the PML-N through a good part of the country's political history for decades now.

Recent Developments

As of December 2024, Nawaz Sharif continues to be a prominent Pakistani politician. His return from exile and acquittal by the courts in major cases of corruption has rejuvenated his political fortunes. As of now, the PML-N remains one of the major political forces within the country, with Nawaz Sharif playing an important role in its control and strategy.

Stay tuned, visit Nawaz Sharif's Journey: From Prime Minister to Politics and Imprisonment.

[darkmaga-returns]

By Eric S. Margolis

December 2, 2024

Pakistan is the world’s most important Muslim nation.  It has 251 million people, nuclear weapons, the world’s sixth largest armed forces, intelligent, capable people, vast lands and major sources of water.

Yet Pakistan is a giant mess.  Its current politics are a form of tribal warfare.  Corruption engulfs almost everything. Disease, particularly diabetes, afflicts its long-suffering people.  Polio is making return.

In recent years, Pakistan has suffered vast floods that have ravaged this nation.  Equally menacing, next-door India remains an ever-present danger.  Far-right Hindu extremists who are heavily represented in the current Modi government, keep talking about ‘reabsorbing’ Pakistan into ‘Mother India.’  This would have happened long ago except for Pakistan’s important nuclear arsenal and delivery systems.

India has also built an extensive nuclear arsenal, including three new submarines armed with intermediate-range nuclear missiles. This while people in India and Pakistan starve in the streets. And 60% of homes in India lack indoor plumbing.

The only institution in Pakistan that really works well is the armed forces.  I have met many of its generals: most of them are intelligent, combat-ready officers. I knew Gen. Akhtar Abdur Rahman Khan, the ferocious chief of ISI intelligence service who led the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. He was murdered with the tough tank general Zia ul Haq who ruled Pakistan until his aircraft was sabotaged in 1988.  Zia was a great Islamic warrior and man of steel.  Many Pakistanis still believe he was assassinated by the US though there is no direct evidence.

I was friends with the late Benazir Bhutto, a fascinating and alluring woman who was murdered in 2007.  I interviewed Gen. Pervez Musharraf in 1999, a man who seemed insignificant compared to Gen. Zia.

Benazir Bhutto, whose father Zulfikar was ordered hanged by Zia, used to tease me, ‘oh Eric, you love your Pakistani generals.’ I did. Most were fierce Pashtuns from the NW Frontier, born warriors. They first defeated the Soviet Union, then the mighty USA.

I also took to some of the Indian generals that I met. They and their Pakistani counterparts had none of the slipperiness and deceit of most politicians.

[crystalheart-kazmi]

Red Alert or Red Hot? The Case for General Pervez Musharraf By Imran Owais Kazmi – A Dubai-based political analyst and peace guru (www.ahappyworld.info) Theodore MacManus once wrote, “The leader is assailed because he is a leader, and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership. Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks to depreciate and to destroy.” This quote,…

[werindialive]

Nawaz Sharif accepts that Pakistan violated the peace agreement signed with India in 1999

On Tuesday, Former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif accepted the fact that Pakistan had ‘violated’ a contract signed between him and ex-prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1999. He made the acceptance while referring to the misadventures done by Gen Pervez Musharraf.

He was addressing a meeting of the PML-N general council of which he was recently elected as a President of the ruling party after being disqualified by the Supreme Court 6 years back. in his address, Sharif said, "On May 28, 1998, Pakistan carried out five nuclear tests. After that Vajpayee Saheb came here and agreed with us. But we violated that agreement...it was our fault."

The said agreement, the Lahore Declaration, between Pakistan and India was signed by Nawaz Sharif and Ata Bihari Vajpayee on February 21, 1999. While the agreement was signed on bringing peace and stability to the two countries, Pakistan showed intrusion in the Kargil district in Jammu and Kashmir a few months later which eventually led to the Kargil conflict.

"President Bill Clinton had offered Pakistan USD 5 billion to stop it from carrying out nuclear tests but I refused. Had (former prime minister) Imran Khan like a person been on my seat he would have accepted Clinton's offer," said Sharif.

Sharif also talked about the role of former ISI chief Gen Zahirul Islam in the conspiracy against his government in 2017 which made Imran Khan the next Prime Minister of Pakistan. "I ask Imran not to blame us (of being patronized by the army) and tell whether Gen Islam had talked about bringing the PTI into power," he said while asking Imran to deny the fact.

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[wordexpress]

Pak Admits Violating Pact With India, Nawaz Sharif Says "Was Our Fault"

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday admitted that Islamabad had "violated" an agreement with India signed by him and ex-prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1999, in an apparent reference to the Kargil misadventure by Gen Pervez Musharraf.

"On May 28, 1998, Pakistan carried out five nuclear tests. After that Vajpayee Saheb came here and made an agreement with us. But we violated that agreement…it was our fault," Sharif told a meeting of the PML-N general council that elected him president of the ruling party six years after he was disqualified by the Supreme Court.

After a historic summit here, Nawaz Sharif and Ata Bihari Vajpayee signed the Lahore Declaration on February 21, 1999. The agreement that talked about a vision of peace and stability between the two countries signalled a breakthrough. Still, a few months later Pakistani intrusion in the Kargil district in Jammu and Kashmir led to the Kargil conflict.

"President Bill Clinton had offered Pakistan USD 5 billion to stop it from carrying out nuclear tests but I refused. Had (former prime minister) Imran Khan like a person been on my seat he would have accepted Clinton's offer," Sharif said on a day when Pakistan marked the 26th anniversary of its first nuclear tests.

Sharif, 74, talked about how he was removed from the office of the prime minister in 2017 on a false case by then Chief Justice of Pakistan Saqib Nisar. He said all cases against him were false while the cases against Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf founder leader Imran Khan were true.

He also talked about the role of former ISI chief Gen Zahirul Islam in toppling his government in 2017 to bring Imran Khan into power. He asked Imran Khan to deny that he was not launched by the ISI.

"I ask Imran not to blame us (of being patronised by the army) and tell whether Gen Islam had talked about bringing the PTI into power," he said and added Khan would sit at the feet of the military establishment.

The three-time premier talked about receiving a message from Gen Islam to resign from the office of prime minister (in 2014). "When I refused, he threatened to make an example of me," he said.

Sharif also praised his younger brother Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif for standing by his side through thick and thin. "Efforts were made to create differences between us but Shehbaz remained loyal to me. Even Shehbaz was asked to become PM in the past and leave me but he declined," he said.

[jobaaj]

🔴BREAKING NEWS: Pakistan is starving! But its leaders have property worth $12.5 billion in Dubai!! 1️⃣What happened?🤔 An important study called 'Dubai Unlocked' was done by journalists from 75 different places around the world. They worked together to find out who owns property in Dubai from 2020 to 2022. Dubai has rules that aren't very strong, so it's a popular place for bad people like criminals, politicians, and people who are not allowed to do certain things in their own countries to put their money. Surprisingly, people from Pakistan owned the second most properties in Dubai after people from another country. These properties belonged to politicians, government workers, and military people. They owned 23,000 properties that altogether were worth $12.5 billion!

2️⃣What are the details revealed?🧐 Lots of important people from Pakistan are mentioned in this report:

Pervez Musharraf, the former leader, and his wife had 3 properties.

Asif Ali Zardari, who used to be the president, has kids who own 3 properties in really nice areas!

The son of General Qamar Javed Bajwa, a high-ranking military leader, is also listed as owning property!

Nawaz Sharif’s son, the wife of Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi, Provincial Assembly member Sharjeel Memon, and Senator Faisal Vadwa are all said to own properties too!

There are also mentions of retired Army and Air Force officials, 4 members of the National Assembly, and around 6 members of the Provincial Assembly who own property in Dubai!

3️⃣Interestingly:😲 - Pakistan is desperately struggling to secure another long-term loan with the International Monetary Fund! - The country is barely hanging on and one misstep away from total economic collapse! - 40% of its citizens are below the poverty line and over 20% are undernourished!! - Pakistani lawmaker Syed Mustafa Kamal recently went on a rant in the Sindh parliament where he spoke of how India went to the moon but Karachi lacked drinking water and children were dying in open gutters!! 4️⃣Is there hope for Pakistan?❓ Follow Jobaaj Stories (the media arm of Jobaaj.com Group for more)

[supertreecollectorfan]

In a vote of confidence, Pakistan General Pervez Musharraf wins 658 out of 1,170 votes in the Electoral College and is "deemed to be elected" as President according to Pakistan Constitution (Article 41(8))

[multithinker]

Musharraf to Alvi

In Pakistan, the role of the President is largely ceremonial, except in cases where the President is a military general. After the overthrow of Nawaz Sharif, General Pervez Musharraf governed the country for eight years. During this period, there were significant developments such as the media becoming more independent, the Red Mosque incident, civilian casualties in Afghanistan, the killing of…

[mariacallous]

Pakistan is scheduled to hold elections on Feb. 8, the latest crucial date in the country’s democratic experiment. Some observers feared Islamabad’s election commission could postpone the vote due to worsening security conditions, but even as the elections go ahead, many analysts worry they may not be free or fair. Pakistan has a long history of political interference in democratic processes by its powerful military.

The upcoming elections offer little hope for near-term political stability. Pakistan, currently led by a caretaker government, faces myriad political, economic, and security threats. Popular opposition leader and former Prime Minister Imran Khan sits in prison, convicted on corruption and state secrets charges. On Feb. 8, the military establishment is betting on a leader it dethroned not too long ago: former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whose brother Shehbaz led the most recent coalition government.

Because Pakistan’s civil-military relations tilt in favor of the army, politicians are incentivized to side with the generals to attain power. This dynamic has weakened the constitution, compromised the judiciary, and undermined democratic elections. The military no longer intervenes in politics via coup, but its leaders have invested in the political system. Pakistan has developed into a hybrid regime where elements of electoral democracy and military influence mingle. Next week’s vote will only mark the next chapter of hybrid rule.

In 2017, Pakistan’s Supreme Court ousted Sharif as prime minister after his family was linked to offshore companies in the Panama Papers leak; he was later disqualified from holding public office. Sharif had also tried to assert civilian supremacy over the army, and there are strong claims that the army played a role in his ouster, as well as the election of Khan in 2018. As Khan suffered his own fall from grace, Sharif was allowed to return to Pakistan last year. The cases against him have been cleared, potentially enabling him to participate in the elections—hinting that the military may condone his return to the prime minister’s seat.

Many observers regard Khan’s rise to power in 2018 as the outcome of electoral engineering by the military establishment. For a time, Khan seemed to share a mutually beneficial relationship with the army. However, he made a series of missteps in policy areas dominated by the military. First, he endorsed an inexperienced official to become chief minister of Punjab province, which irked then-Pakistan Army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa. His disagreement with Bajwa in 2021 over a replacement for the director-general of Pakistan’s premier intelligence service further alarmed the army.

Khan had promised to create Naya Pakistan—a new Pakistan—and to carry out sweeping reforms, but he mostly failed to realize these promises during his almost four years in power. Growing economic volatility and the indifference of some of Pakistan’s closest allies toward the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government further undermined Khan’s leadership. In April 2022, the old guard led by the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) called a vote of no confidence against Khan. He was voted out and sentenced to three years in jail last August after a conviction for illegally selling state gifts. Khan alleges the military arranged his ouster.

Motivated by their own interests, Pakistan’s political elites have long been complicit in tolerating the military’s domination of the democratic system. But Pakistan’s political parties have also attempted to establish civilian supremacy and failed to sustain it. As prime minister in the 1990s, Sharif sought to exert his control over state institutions, including the military. Gen. Pervez Musharraf led a military coup against his government in 1999 and became president in 2001. A conflict between Pakistan and India in the hills of Kargil is widely seen as the reason for the coup, but such analysis ignores the role of Sharif’s quest for civilian supremacy.

Musharraf not only prolonged the first exile of Sharif and the self-exile of then-opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, which reshaped Pakistan’s political parties. Ultimately, rivals PML-N and the PPP grew closer, especially after the fallout between the judiciary and Musharraf over the latter’s decision to suspend Pakistan’s chief justice. In 2006, the PML-N and the PPP agreed on a Charter of Democracy, an unprecedented development that sought to limit the army’s role in politics. In 2008, the two parties briefly formed a coalition government to keep the army and its disciples away from politics.

Sharif’s PML-N won a simple majority in the 2013 elections, and Pakistan saw its first peaceful transfer of power. However, Sharif’s growing clout didn’t sit well with the military establishment. In 2014, the military helped Khan launch mass protests against the government; they were also supported and attended by prominent religious figures and clerics. However, Khan called off the four-month protest movement in the wake of a terrorist attack against Peshawar’s Army Public School that killed 149 people. “Pakistan cannot afford [our] opposition in these testing times,” he said at the time.

A deteriorating security situation also contributed to the end of Khan’s tenure in 2022. Following his removal, a coalition of traditional political parties led by PML-N took over, with Shehbaz Sharif as prime minister. It needed the army’s backing to succeed. Instead of working for democratic rights, the coalition government amended Pakistan’s Official Secrets Act to give vast powers to the army and intelligence agencies to conduct raids and arrest civilians. The Pakistan Army Act amendment of 2023 criminalized criticism of the military, especially from retired service members. Army Chief of Staff Asim Munir became a member of a new council aimed at garnering foreign investment and boosting economic growth.

The expanded powers that the Pakistani Army now possesses seem to classify the state as what scholar Ayesha Siddiqa calls a hybrid-martial law system, in which all real power lies with the military while a civilian government is relegated to the position of junior partner. It now appears the judiciary is also toeing the military establishment’s line, with the Islamabad High Court recently acquitting Sharif in a corruption case and ultimately enabling him to contest elections. Khan, in prison, still faces a host of charges. His supporters have not been allowed to hold political conventions or meetings ahead of the elections. Mass protests against Khan’s initial arrest last May seemed to spook the military establishment.

The military’s greater machinations have yet to play out. Interestingly, the PPP chairman, Bilawal Bhutto, has accused the establishment of favoring Sharif—raising questions about the strength of the party’s alliance with PML-N. Bhutto may be filling the political vacuum left by the sidelining of the PTI. Sindh province recently saw a reshuffling of senior bureaucrats seen as favoring the PPP. Meanwhile, the PTI has raised concerns about election officers appointed ahead of the vote and demanded the appointment of officials from the lower judiciary as supervisors for the polls.

PML-N appears to be forging alliances with its traditional partners such as Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Pakistan (Fazl), or JUI-F, which has significant political support in the tribal areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In Baluchistan province, PML-N has managed to secure two dozen so-called electables, local leaders with strong support base. The new Istehkam-e-Pakistan Party—made up of disgruntled former PTI members—has announced a pre-election seat-sharing arrangement with PML-N. The PML-N also finalized a seat-sharing arrangement with the Pakistan Muslim League Quaid e Azam Group, itself formed by former PML-N members in 2002.

Even behind bars, Khan remains the most popular politician in Pakistan. If the military establishment secures an election outcome in its favor, the next coalition government will still struggle to maintain its power across Pakistan’s political institutions. Pakistan urgently needs consensus among its stakeholders about how to create a robust democracy; the easiest way to reach it would be through free and fair elections without military interference. Perhaps the political parties should come up with a new charter of democracy.

But until and unless politicians stop pursuing narrow interests, the military establishment will continue to pull the strings of any government in power in Pakistan.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 10.12 (after 1970)

1970 – Vietnam War: Vietnamization continues as President Richard Nixon announces that the United States will withdraw 40,000 more troops before Christmas. 1971 – The 2,500 year celebration of the Persian Empire begins. 1973 – President Nixon nominates House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford as the successor to Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. 1976 – Indian Airlines Flight 171 crashes at Santacruz Airport in Bombay, India, killing 95. 1977 – Hua Guofeng succeeds Mao Zedong as paramount leader of China. 1979 – Typhoon Tip becomes the largest and most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded. 1983 – Japan's former Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei is found guilty of taking a $2 million bribe from the Lockheed Corporation, and is sentenced to four years in jail. 1984 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army fail to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. The bomb kills five people and wounds at least 31 others. 1988 – Two officers of the Victoria Police are gunned down execution-style in the Walsh Street police shootings, Australia. 1992 – A 5.8 earthquake occurred in Cairo, Egypt. At least 510 died. 1994 – The Magellan spacecraft burns up in the atmosphere of Venus. 1994 – Iran Aseman Airlines Flight 746 crashes near Natanz, Iran, killing all 66 people on board. 1996 – New Zealand holds its first general election under the new mixed-member proportional representation system, which led to Jim Bolger's National Party forming a coalition government with Winston Peters's New Zealand First. 1997 – The Sidi Daoud massacre in Algeria kills 43 people at a fake roadblock. 1998 – Matthew Shepard, a gay student at University of Wyoming, dies five days after he was beaten outside of Laramie. 1999 – Pervez Musharraf takes power in Pakistan from Nawaz Sharif through a bloodless coup. 1999 – The former Autonomous Soviet Republic of Abkhazia declares its independence from Georgia. 2000 – The USS Cole, a US Navy destroyer, is badly damaged by two al-Qaeda suicide bombers, killing 17 crew members and wounding at least 39. 2002 – Terrorists detonate bombs in two nightclubs in Kuta, Bali, Indonesia, killing 202 and wounding over 200. 2005 – The second Chinese human spaceflight, Shenzhou 6, is launched, carrying two cosmonauts in orbit for five days. 2010 – The Finnish Yle TV2 channel's Ajankohtainen kakkonen current affairs program airs controversial Homoilta episode (literally "gay night"), which leads to the resignation of almost 50,000 Finns from the Evangelical Lutheran Church. 2012 – The European Union wins the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. 2013 – Fifty-one people are killed after a truck veers off a cliff in Peru. 2013 – An apartment building collapse in Medellín, Colombia results in the deaths of twelve people. 2017 – The United States announces its decision to withdraw from UNESCO. Israel immediately follows. 2018 – Princess Eugenie marries Jack Brooksbank at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. 2019 – Typhoon Hagibis makes landfall in Japan, killing 10 and forcing the evacuation of one million people. 2019 – Eliud Kipchoge from Kenya becomes the first person to run a marathon in less than two hours with a time of 1:59:40 in Vienna. 2019 – The Hard Rock Hotel in New Orleans, which is under construction, collapses, killing three workers and injuring 30 others.

[questlation]

Musharraf has promises to break https://questlation.com/little-things/musharrafhaspromisestobreak/?feed_id=75218&_unique_id=643fb6a3a12d4

[crystalheart-kazmi]

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[hif7]

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