DarkTimes - 24Hr Global News Blog

Pakistan’s president Pervez Musharraf has been a key member of the coalition in the “war on terror”, in particular by supporting US efforts to root out Osama bin Laden. Yet Musharraf was a general, now officially out of uniform, who took power in his country in a coup in 1999, and who recently introduced a state of emergency that has seen leading political figures placed under house arrest. These actions sit ill with US president George Bush’s commitment, in his 2005 inauguration speech, to “seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world”.

The problem for those observing current events in Pakistan is that the country’s democratic politicians have, in their attempts to govern, hardly covered themselves with glory. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, prime minister from 1973 to 1977, was executed for involvement in the murder of political rivals. His daughter, Benazir, twice prime minister, was convicted in 1999 of corruption. Her great political rival, Nawaz Sharif, twice dismissed for corruption, was convicted in April 2000 on terrorism and hijacking charges.

Even taking aside the peccadilloes of its rulers, Pakistan is a country wrought by faction. Of its four provinces, Baluchistan, North-West Frontier Province, Punjab and Sindh, only Punjab lacks an independence movement that at some point has aimed to break away. North-West Frontier Province remains in large parts beyond the control of Islamabad and is believed to be the hiding place of Taliban from Afghanistan, and of members of Al-Qaeda.

The country also suffers from religious intolerance, between Sunni and Shia muslims and, within the Sunni community, between Islamists and secularists. Periodic religious conflicts have punctuated Pakistan’s history: indeed the current crisis was precipitated by the storming of the radical Red Mosque in Islamabad, which, the government claimed, was a breeding ground for Islamic extremists.