Pakistan and General Masharraf

While I was disturbed to hear the in Pakistan that General Masharraf had suspended and arrested the judiciary as well as imposing marshal law. While I was concerned that the reason for this, as claimed by the opposition, was that the judiciary were about to rule that it was unconstitutional for the head of the military to also be the head of the country. However, I wanted to look at the reality before making any comment, as General Masharraf was claiming that it has only been done to stop Islamic militants from gaining control of the country.

As when one of the opposition leaders, Benazir Bhutto, returned to Pakistan from exile there was a bombing attempt on her life, it looked as though there could be some truth in the general’s claim.

However, having looked at the situation it looks more as though he has imposed this state of emergency purely to retain power. It was looking as though his attempt to stand for president was going to be declared unlawful, so by imposing a state of emergency, arresting the judges then appointing his own judges, suddenly its declared legal.

The General does have a history of not keeping his word and allowing the electorate to decide who rules their country. Going back to when he first ceased power, when George Bush was seeking election to the presidency, George W rather famously didn’t know the General name. Well George W knows his name well now, perhaps he even learnt from him how to stage a coup, remember Florida and the hanging chads?

Then the General was saying that he would step down as head of the Army and would move to proper democratic elections. That still has not happened and it increasingly looks as though the elections that are due in Pakistan will have an inevitable outcome, the general gets elected.

This all makes the lack of condemnation by the British government and more importantly by the American Bush regime appear odd at least. In the past the UK and the US supported dictators only to rue the day. Iraq and its support is the most obvious example. At that time the US in particular thought that Iraq would destroy or at least seriously damage Iran. This proxy war ended up with the debacle we have now.

The parallels here is stark, the UK and US see Pakistan as an important partner in the “War on Terror”. But unlike the Dictator in Iraq, General Masharraf already has Nuclear weapons. If we don’t ensure that yet another dictator doesn’t take power again, in a few years time we could be looking at an even more serious war.