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 [...]

Supreme Court Bar Association President Aitzaz Ahsan is currently speaking at a lawyers gathering in Karachi. An impassioned Ahsan said the people of Pakistan have made their decision and Pervez Musharraf is near his exit. He asked the United States and other Western states why, despite this clear message, they continue to support [...]

Senior People’s Party figure and lawyers’ movement leader Aitzaz Ahsan just completed a press conference. He said the restoration of the deposed judges, including Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, is the elections’ “unfinished business.” Chaudhry, said Ahsan, remains Pakistan’s Supreme Court chief justice. He vowed to hold a “long march” to [...]

Pakistan continues along a mixed, though largely negative trajectory as the spate of urban suicide bombing continues and insurgents make bold moves in South Waziristan, while the army strengthens its control over Swat and leaders flinch toward national reconciliation. The army’s immediate workload increases, but Gen. Ashfaq Kayani takes clear steps to depoliticize [...]

The murder of Benazir Bhutto has created a leadership vacuum within the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). The populist, center-left party gained patrimonial colors after the execution of its founder, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, in 1979.
Party leadership passed on to his wife, Nusrat. However, their daughter, Benazir, would soon rise to center [...]

Benazir Bhutto recently blamed Pakistan’s intelligence services for the fractures emerging in her party’s elite. The former prime minister is highly concerned with cohesiveness of the PPP, making party members take loyalty oaths on the Qur’an. Though the intelligence services have previously and will continue to cause defections from her party, Bhutto [...]

For much of this year, Aitzaz Ahsan has been pulled in opposite directions by the lawyers’ movement, of which he is a leader, and the Benazir Bhutto-led People’s Party.   Jailed by Musharraf after imposition of emergency rule, Ahsan was recently released from prison so he could file his election nomination papers.  His party had, [...]

SAUDI AMBASSADOR TO PAKISTAN MEETS CHIEF JUSTICE CHAUDHRY
The Pakistan government prevented Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif from meeting deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. However, it did permit the Saudi Ambassador to Pakistan Ali Awadh Asseri to pay a visit to Chaudhry today.
Asseri likely did not come to deposed chief justice with an olive branch [...]