Pakistan’s politicians frequently speak of their desire to restore the supremacy of the country’s parliament. The lawyers’ movement has been accused by some politicians, including from the PPP, of subverting this principle.

But the parliament itself has constraints. On today’s Kamran Khan show, retired Justice Wajihuddin Ahmed made an excellent point: the constitution, not parliament is supreme.

And so while some have criticized the lawyers’ movement for things such as threats of long marches, they should know that one, the lawyers’ movement is well within its right as part of civil society to engage in peaceful protest, and two, there should be nothing controversial about restoring Pakistan’s constitution and the guardians of that document, the Supreme Court.

The judiciary in Pakistan should be independent. It cannot simply exchange one master for another. If it does, Pakistan will find itself back at square one in another five years (or less).

An angry mob attacked the Multan office of the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA), ostensibly to protest load shedding. The odds are such acts of violence will increase.  Load shedding, Pakistani authorities say, will continue for three more years.  Meanwhile, foodflation rises in Pakistan and the World Bank has put it on a list of 36 facing severe food shortages.  The organization fears greater civil unrest.

The new government in Pakistan should be more upfront with the Pakistani people regarding the continuation of the energy and inflationary pressures.  It was elected perhaps with a sense of unreasonable public expectations.  These must be managed.  A press conference or two won’t do.  I think the situation requires the government piecing together a preliminary, yet broad outlook and then making it public, perhaps through a national address by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani.

Gillani should be frank, explaining how the average Pakistani will continue to absorb undue difficulty in the coming months, if not years, and what specific relief measures the government will take.  And he should make it clear that while peaceful protests are fine, rioting will not be tolerated.  After all, how can WAPDA operate if you burn its office down?

Altaf Hussain has resigned as leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM). His stated reasoning: his party failed to contain the violence in Karachi on Wednesday. In one incident, up to five lawyers were locked in an office room and burned alive.

Yet, rather than being conciliatory, Altaf is currently giving one of his characteristically bizarre speeches, lambasting the lawyers’ movement, Punjab, and the Muslim League-Nawaz.

I would take this news with a grain of salt. Altaf could be issuing an easily retractable resignation to rally his supporters. His move could be a crude imitation of Aitzaz Ahsan’s resignation from the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) on Tuesday. Regardless, Altaf will still be controlling the shots in the MQM.

Update: 11:54AM (New York) – For those of you who don’t know, Altaf Hussain heads the MQM from London and speaks to crowds in Karachi via telephone calls that are broadcast on speakers. In the middle of his speech, his telephone connection disconnected. Then, Farooq Sattar of the MQM said that if Altaf Hussain does not retract his resignation, the party’s entire coordinating committee and all of its elected legislators will resign. He said no one will leave the MQM headquarters, Nine-Zero, till Altaf calls back. And the Emmy goes to………

Update: 12:16PM – Altaf Hussain has called back. Apparently got a new calling card.

Update: 12:20PM – FYI, a 21-member Sindh cabinet took its oath today. Twenty were People’s Party (PPP) members and one was from the Awami National Party (ANP). No MQM right now.

Update: 12:23PM – Altaf Hussain has taken back his resignation. The whole charade lasted less than an hour. The crowd has been chanting his name for about five minutes. Great performance. Friday evening, prime time.

Sher Afgan Niazi, a minister in the previous government and member of the Musharraf-allied Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q), was attacked at a lawyers movement rally this evening in Lahore. After being assaulted, the tires of the ambulance sent to take him away were punctured and its keys were stolen.

Though the lawyers movement has always been a bit rowdy, they have been the victims of state violence. The impression given by this event is that they have now become perpetrators of violence.

Aitzaz Ahsan, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), desperately tried to stop the beating of Niazi. He made his way through the mob to reach Niazi and even climbed on to the ambulance to call on those in the rally to cease their attacks. His call was not heeded. After exhausting all efforts, Ahsan then announced his resignation as president of the SCBA.

In my opinion, there is a high likelihood that the violence was perpetrated by provocateurs not associated with the lawyers movement. Why?

One, video images of the rally show an unusually high presence of plain-clothed individuals, not the black suit lawyers that have become a symbol of the lawyers movement. One of the most aggressive attackers was a plain-clothed man who was hitting Afgan with a shoe. Aitzaz Ahsan has said that upwards of 60% of those in the crowd were not lawyers (he asked the lawyers to raise their hands), and said these individuals were the most violent.

Two, the incident occurs in the midst of a campaign to discredit Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and the lawyers movement. [Note, for example, how Justice Iftikhar's meeting meeting with Asif Zardari was immediately spinned in the media to taint him as "political." But not too long after that, the PPP's Ahmed Mukhtar defended Musharraf as "cashable." If seems as if Justice Iftikhar's credibility can be tarnished by as little as a speeding ticket, while Musharraf can go off scot-free, as long as he remains 'useful'.]

At the very least, the violence today is extremely convenient for those who seek the movement’s downfall. Images of Niazi being pushed and pulled in various directions are fodder for sensationalists in Pakistan’s media. Television producers bring out their favorite red pen to mark a circle around Niazi as he’s inhumanely tossed like a volleyball. The violence is then said to be associated with the lawyers movement and even with democracy.

So, what needs to be done?

One, senior leaders of the lawyers movement — Aitzaz Ahsan, Munir Malik, and others — should meet with Sher Afgan tomorrow. They should apologize for the violence inflicted against him, yet make it clear that the lawyers movement’s rank and file was not behind the incident. They should directly engage, with concrete evidence, the question of whether outside provocateurs were behind the attack on Afgan.

Two, the lawyers movement should preserve its leadership, cohesiveness, and overall objectives. The likely goal of the violence, if it was done by provocateurs, was to get the lawyers movement to give up on its goal to restore the deposed judges, particularly Justice Iftikhar, deposed by Pervez Musharraf in November. The new government has 21 days left to bring the judges back, according to the Murree Accord.

Three, the lawyers movement should revamp its public presence. Lawyers should behave like lawyers. Their rallies need to be more tame. Though it is likely that authentic lawyers movement members were not behind tonight’s violence, the previous aggressiveness of the lawyers movement makes the idea that the lawyers are responsible for today’s violence, in the eyes of the general public, more believable. For example, the enthusiasm of Ahmed Ali Kurd is much appreciated, but his firebrand rhetoric is often excessive.

Finally, the movement needs to develop a strategy to push for broad-based judicial reform in Pakistan. Restoring the deposed judges is significant for Pakistan’s political development. It is in Pakistan’s national interest. But beyond the judges and the Supreme Court, there is the Pakistani majority that benefits little from the justice system. If wronged, the average Pakistani does not have any legal resort. And so, in order to maintain an independent bond with the people of Pakistan and continue much needed political reform, the lawyers movement should push for the rule of law and justice for the common man.

UPDATE – 3:40PM (New York): Take a look at the two photos above.  Both clearly show a plain-clothed young male on the right assaulting Sher Afgan.  Both lawyers in suits and plain-clothed people are also shielding Afgan.  They are clearly doing more work than the police (controlled by the pro-Musharraf interim provincial government), who Aitzaz Ahsan says were vastly short in number.

Call the video what you will. The birth pangs of democracy. The slap heard all around Pakistan. But taking a deeper look, the whacking of Arbab Rahim with a shoe is a sign of how far Pakistan’s politics and media needs to grow.

I have little sympathy for Rahim. Yesterday’s ugliness, in a sense, was simply a matter of reciprocity. After all, Rahim slapped a journalist in the face last year. What goes around comes around.

Unfortunately, Rahim was simply hit with a shoe. Sense was not knocked into him. Yesterday afternoon, Rahim did an interview with Aaj TV’s Bolta Pakistan. After speaking with him, the show played the video of Rahim dishing out his own thapar (slap) last year. Rahim immediately called back to ‘clarify’. No apology. He simply said the person he hit was not a journalist, but a member of his security team who misbehaved with members of the media.

Aside from the inference that the media is almost a priestly class in this new Pakistan, Rahim’s excuse was telling, even though it was not true. It’s ok to slap another human being. Pakistanis have tended to react to Rahim’s twist of fate with disgust and/or a sense of pleasure at the irony. But I think Rahim represents not only some of the ultimate nastiness of feudalism in Pakistan, but also a broader culture that suffers from an almost inescapable hierarchy in which the ‘lessers’ are punished, often with humiliation. This sort of culture creates a false aristocracy. It breeds mediocrity and suppresses any real socio-economic change. Things, granted, are changing, but the new rich in Pakistan do their own crude imitation of the old guard.

And so in that sense perhaps it was good that Rahim was slapped (back). Pakistan’s distressed and underserved majority need to do some more slapping, albeit in a more constitutional and constructive fashion.

On a somewhat related note, it’s clear some news outlets in Pakistan have let sensationalism supplant journalism, making such stories the news of the day.

A smaller English-language newspaper has put out a story alleging the formation of a PPP splinter group led by Fatima Bhutto that would include Amin Fahim, Aitzaz Ahsan, and Ghinwa Bhutto. Simple logic would rule this story out. Feudal loathing Fatima + the “pro-establishment” Pir of Hala (Fahim) + the anti-establishment Ahsan? Please.

Similarly, the daily focus of a major public affairs show seems to be the supposedly imminent collapse of the People’s Party and Muslim League-Nawaz coalition. For weeks it has latched onto any news thats portends the doom of the governing coalition or its senior politicians.

But there are exceptions. In the midst of all this hulla bulla, there is Live with Talat (Hussain). Recent topics have included the emerging food crisis in Pakistan and two consecutive shows on the Kashmir issue. He even made an episode a call-in program after, I think, viewers of Bolta Pakistan (a partially call-in show that airs after Talat’s) complained the show wasn’t allocating enough time for calls. (Though I think they’d agree that Nusrat Javed and Mushtaq Minhas’ arguing is priceless). Anyway, Talat’s show is a clear contrast to its ADD-afflicted competitor. And I think his popularity demonstrates that the best restraint on the excesses of a free media is consumer choice, not paternalistic government censorship. After all, who censors the censors? In the end, Pakistanis are looking for a way out of their country’s malaise and the outlets that best address that need will be rewarded most.

In an address to army officers at the General Headquarters (GHQ), Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani said, “Every nation has the right to secure its national interests.”

He also emphasized on the importance of national consensus to adequately address the nation’s security threats, describing it as being of the “utmost importance.” He added that all elements of government need to be on the same page. Kayani said that the securing Pakistan requires a comprehensive appreciation of the country’s threats and a similarly multifaceted solution.

Kayani’s public statements have often been somewhat general and susceptible to multiple interpretations. But it appears as if he is responding to international pressure, particularly from Washington, against talks with militants in Pakistan’s frontier. He seems to also be biding for some time. Kayani is not diminishing the importance of the military component to Pakistan’s counterinsurgency campaign, but he is possibly indicating that any policy, whether it is new or a continuation of the old, requires bringing Pakistan’s influentials and general public on board.

It will be difficult for such a national dialogue to proceed successfully as time simply won’t stand still. The snow has melted and the region is entering a critical spring.
Militants have held off from attacking Pakistan’s large cities since the new government has come into power. They’re trying to see in which direction the government will go. But it is unclear as to whether the government itself is moving along in a singular direction. The political intrigue certainly does not help.

Furthermore, Washington remains committed to hitting al-Qaeda and Haqqani targets in North Waziristan. But it also seems to be targeting Maulvi Nazir, a Pakistani Taliban figure who has acted against al-Qaeda and other foreign militants. If true, Washington could be sending a message to Islamabad: there is no such thing as ‘good Taliban’. (Alternatively, Islamabad could have consented to the attacks, based on a belief that Nazir was renegging on his opposition to foreign militants). The Taliban are also heating things up in the Khyber Agency along major transit route for U.S. and ISAF supplies.

To a large degree, the new coalition government finds itself between the militants and pressure from Washington and other Western capitals. It’s an unenviable position. Decisive movement in either direction will have a serious cost. And vacillation is not an option.

Both Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif plan on running in the by-elections this May. It appears that Asif Zardari will not, but this is by no means certain.

All three face potential roadblocks to election. For Zardari, there is the graduation requirement. A Musharraf-era constitutional amendment requires elected officials to hold a bachelors degree. That Zardari really holds an undergraduate degree is under question. However, this issue could be moot if Zardari’s proposed judicial reform package repeals the degree requirement or he decides not to run for a National Assembly seat.

The Sharifs are also barred from politics due to a previous conviction post-Musharraf’s 1999 coup. The National Reconciliation Ordiance benefited the late Ms. Bhutto, Zardari, as well as a host of Musharraf’s allies (including some bankers and Muttahida Qaumi Movement figures), but does does not apply to the Sharifs. The Election Commission rejected their nomination papers for the recent elections. Preventing them from doing so would require further compromise between the PPP and PML-N, or even the PML-N and Pervez Musharraf.

Source: The Swamp

The letter below was signed by most Democrats in the Senate.

April 6, 2008
The President
The White House
Washington, DC

Dear Mr. President:

We write out of deep concern over the deteriorating situation in both Afghanistan and Pakistan: the negligent policies of the last half-decade have permitted al-Qaeda and the Taliban to regenerate, and to pose a greater threat to the national security of the United States than at any point since September 11, 2001. In order to protect our homeland from attacks which may well be developing in the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan at this very moment, we urge you to refocus the U.S. counter-terrorism strategy and our national security resources on this region and implement a comprehensive new strategy to keep America safe.

For too long, this Administration has treated Southwest Asia as an afterthought, even as it committed more U.S. troops and treasure to the war in Iraq. The neglect of Afghanistan and Pakistan reflects a failure to recognize this region as the central battlefield in the war against al Qaeda. This Administration’s misguided priorities have deprived our military of the resources they need to win the fight against al Qaeda: as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen put it in December, “in Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must.” The commander of American forces in the region, Admiral William Fallon, echoed the sentiment in January: “Back in 2001, early 2002, the Taliban were pretty much vanquished,” he said, “but my sense looking back is that we moved focus to Iraq, which was the priority from 2003 on, and the attention and the resources focused on a different place.”

Such neglect cannot continue indefinitely without endangering not only Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the safety of America as well. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently expressed concern that the shadow of Iraq was decreasing public support in NATO countries for the war effort in Afghanistan. A prominent nonpartisan report chaired by Marine General (Ret.) James L. Jones and former Undersecretary of State Thomas R. Pickering urged that the United States “decouple” the two conflicts— both in funding and in diplomacy. We urge you to take this advice, in order to prevent the war in Iraq from further impeding our vital struggle against our most dangerous enemies.

More than six years after the ouster of the Taliban, the promises made by this Administration for success in Afghanistan remain further than ever from being fulfilled. As the Jones-Pickering report notes, “The United States and the international community have tried to win the struggle in Afghanistan with too few military forces and insufficient economic aid, and without a clear and consistent comprehensive strategy.” Security has been gravely degraded throughout much of the nation, with the Taliban making much of the country ungovernable and ravaging the capitol itself by frequent bombings and suicide attacks. According to testimony presented by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell in late February, the central government of Afghanistan controls less than one-third of the country’s territory. Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Maples has said that al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan is “increasing to levels unseen since 2001-2002.”

On this Administration’s watch, Afghanistan has become a virtual narco-state supplying 93% of the world’s opium and heroin, while drug-fuelled corruption and warlordism are recreating the chaos that enabled the Taliban to seize power in the 1990s. Your pledge of a reconstruction program on the scale of the Marshall Plan remains an unfulfilled promise, and the lack of adequate development has undermined the legitimacy of the Afghan government and increased popular support for our enemies.

The situation in Pakistan is just as troubling. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda’s top leadership remain at large, most likely in the sanctuary of Pakistani territory near the Afghan border—and a new generation of terrorists move and operate openly there, free to plot new attacks against our homeland. According to the declassified key judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate of July 2007 entitled The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland, al-Qaeda has “protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safehaven in the Pakistani Federal Administered Tribal Areas.”

The recent election in Pakistan provides a rare opportunity to chart a new and more effective course in our two nations’ counter-terrorism partnership. Much of the Pakistani population believes that this Administration has used, and is still using, the weight of the United States government to bolster President Pervez Musharraf rather than facilitate a democratic transition. We urge you to embark on a new relationship with Pakistan based on cooperation with institutions rather than individuals, and to support the will of the Pakistani people as expressed in the February 18 parliamentary elections. Promoting democracy and legitimate government is not only in line with our nation’s core values, but also with our national security interests: Every day that the Pakistani government remains distracted by political uncertainty is a day when the intelligence, military, police and other resources of its government will be diverted from the fight against terrorists who threaten the lives of Pakistanis and Americans alike.

An al Qaeda attack on the U.S. homeland would likely originate in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. We urge you to work with Congress on a comprehensive new strategy—to change course now, while time still remains. Clearly, a bold new plan is urgently needed. Our nation cannot afford to stand by while the danger to the region—and to America—grows stronger day by the day.

The dire threats facing Afghanistan and Pakistan are inextricably linked: there can be no successful policy in either country without a comprehensive strategy for both. Given the urgency of the threat, we look forward to your prompt response.