Author: Editorial
Publication: Irish Independent
Date: August 15 2007
URL: http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/chaos-in-pakistan-has-now-become-the-worlds-problem-1058990.html
Pakistani dictator General Pervez Musharraf
has played both sides ? the US and the Islamic fundamentalists ? against each
other for too long. Religious fanatics in the country's madrassas, which he
supported, are determined to drag his nation into chaos We must pay attention
to Pakistan. When a country with 50 nuclear weapons and hundreds of thousands
of jihadi fanatics is hissing and crackling towards collapse, it is time to
pay attention.
General Pervez Musharraf -- the man who seized
power illegally in Pakistan in 1999 -- is rarely more than a month away from
an assassination attempt, and they are inching closer every time. So far this
year, he has seen a bodyguard standing next to him shot in the neck, and driven
over a bridge that was blasted to pieces just minutes later.
It will take just one bullet in this curdled
old general's chest for a massive nuclear arsenal to be up for grabs. Musharraf
is one of a long line of mediocre military dictators installed by the Pakistani
army and backed by the White House.
His grand promises on grabbing control --
of a swift return to democracy and a rejuvenated economy -- have been sent
down the memory hole. In the name of "emergency powers", he has
imposed censorship of TV and radio, and the 7pc economic growth he has achieved
goes only to a
fattening elite.
Today, the general is trapped between three
very different forces. The first is a great swelling of liberal lawyers and
democrats demanding basic freedoms, triggered by the Bush administration's
demands for the
extra-judicial "disappearance" of its enemies.
This spring, the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court, Iftikhar Chaudhry, decided to probe into the long list of cases where
suspected jihadis have been seized by the police and then "vanished".
We know where some of them ended up, at least:
of the 600 alleged al-Qa'ida suspects first detained without trial in Guantanamo
Bay, 328 were captured in Pakistan. The general panicked at the prospect of
his relations with the CIA being disclosed -- so he sacked Chaudhry.
And then something extraordinary happened.
The entire Pakistani legal profession rebelled, en masse. Sitting judges and
lawyers -- backed by tens of thousands of protesters -- took to the streets.
And then something more extraordinary still
happened, something new in Pakistani history: the civilian beat the general.
Musharraf backed down, and Chaudhry was restored
to office.
But Musharraf is also being squeezed from
another direction -- an Islamic fundamentalist movement that demands even
greater restrictions on basic freedoms. Karachi is being ravaged by freelance
Islamist militiamen known as the Lal Masjid, who beat women who dare to drive
with sticks, and have declared a fatwa against the Tourism minister, Nilofer
Bakhtiar, because she was pictured -- gasp! -- hugging a male friend.
This kind of aggressive Wahhabism is relatively
new in Pakistan.
Musharraf has always had a mixed attitude
towards Islamic fundamentalism.
He had been happy to use jihadis for his own
purposes until -- in the wake of 9/11 -- the Americans threatened to "bomb
this country back into the stone age". He then screeched into reverse
and began to obey many of the US demands, pocketing $10bn in "aid"
as he went.
The fundamentalists now feel betrayed, and
are determined to topple him. The rallying point for the Islamists this summer
came in the form of a building sitting in the shadow of Musharraf's presidential
palace, called the Red Mosque.
The old building was scheduled to be demolished
for simple structural reasons, but rage-filled fundamentalists flocked to
occupy and "save" it. The general eventually sent in the troops
-- massacring more than 100 civilians in the process.
Musharraf is now left as a bleak clown, trying
to juggle preventing a liberal rebellion, preventing an Islamist rebellion,
and pleasing the US. It cannot be done.
Musharraf is now trying desperately to coax
back his old enemy, in the hope she will broaden his tiny base of support
and perhaps save him from being toppled, for a while.
But a breaking, bitter country with nukes
and legions of jihadists is not a risk either India or the world can tolerate
for long.
There are two long-term solutions. The first
is phased, multilateral nuclear disarmament. The second is to unmake this
jihadism where it is smelted: in Pakistan's madrassas. There were 245 madrassas
at the time
of independence 60 years ago. Today there are 6,870.
Even though they offer a worthless, mind-withering
education consisting entirely of rote-learning the Koran and other empty rituals,
many parents reason that it is better than nothing.
There is a shimmering alternative. In 1995,
a group of horrified Pakistani businessmen established a charity called the
Citizens' Foundation to provide a superb secular education for the very poorest
children.
Today they have 311 schools where 40,000 pupils
are taught science and literature and the joys of life. Gordon Brown has been
recently talking about finding ways to use soft power to fight the war against
jihadis.
Building a network of schools like this across
Pakistan is one real way to win the generational fight to undermine Islamic
fundamentalism.
While Pakistan waits for these sane solutions,
it is breaking into jagged pieces. If we leave these shards untended, they
will cut some of us -- and soon.
