Pakistan Government In A Panic

By Steve Hynd

Yesterday I wrote that Zardari's government was getting desperate. Well now they're panicking and looking like they're scrambling to keep up with events, let alone keep a grip on the nation.

Nawaz Sharif has walked out of his house arrest, surrounded by supporters,

Describing the order - denied by the government - as "illegal" he left his Lahore home urging people to join him.

Police fired tear gas at the stone-throwing protesters who plan to march to Islamabad to demand judges sacked by the former government be reinstated.

But Mr Sharif's car was allowed to drive through a police cordon as it approached the rally in central Lahore.

However, it is not clear if he will be allowed to join Monday's planned "long march" by lawyers on the capital for a sit-in outside parliament, says the BBC's Barbara Plett in Islamabad.

The Pakistani interior minister, Rehman Malik, tried to tell the BBC that there was never a warrant for Sharif's arrest and that riot police blocking access to his house were only there to protect Sharif from terrorists. But Punjab province home secretary Rao Iftikhar Ahmed told AP that authorities had decided to relax restrictions on Sharif so that he could address the rally and return home.

They couldn't even get their story straight in advance - and neither is likely true. It seems more likely that the riot police, faced with large numbers of Sharif supporters and media lenses, took the most sensible course and decided they weren't personally all that interested in defending Zardari's politically cack-handed manouver.

Armed police commandos are still searching for the head of Pakistan's main Islamist part and cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan to arrest them too, but both are in hiding along with hundreds more of Zardari's competition. Meanwhile, Sharif headed off to join one contingent of the "lawyer's march", which is rapidly getting out of hand. That AP report continues:

Lawyers and opposition party supporters had planned to gather near Lahore's main court complex before heading toward Islamabad to stage a mass sit-in front of Parliament, in defiance of a government ban.

To thwart them, authorities parked trucks across major roads on the edge of the city, and riot police took up positions outside the railway station and government buildings.

Still, several thousands flag-waving demonstrators pushed past police barricades to reach the courts.

Protesters pelted some of the hundreds of riot police ringing the area with rocks, triggering running clashes. An Associated Press reporter saw one officer led away with a head wound.

Police repeatedly fired tear gas, scattering the crowd, and beat several stragglers with batons, only for the demonstrators to return with fresh supplies of sticks and stones.

Wajahat Ali, an astute observer of Pakistani politics, writes in the Guardian that Sharif's motives are hardly pure however - he's far more likely to see the unrest as an opportunity to advance his own bid for power. Still:

As back-channel diplomacy is in full effect with US envoy Richard Holbrooke talking to Zardari and Sharif, the United States would be remiss to neglect the lawyers' movement, which is representative of a moderate, democratically inclined Pakistani electorate.

As [prominent lawyer activist Muneer] Malik told me, "Absent a revolution the only hope is to empower the people through a fearless and independent judiciary and thus chip away the domination of the military bureaucratic- Zardari establishment."

By playing musical chairs in supporting Pakistan's recurring cast of rogues, both Pakistanis and the US now risk playing a deadly game of Russian roulette in light of the drastic rise in extremism igniting the Afghanistan/Pakistan region.

With military head General Kayani apparently threatening to topple Zardari if he can't get his act together, both the Pakistani military and Western governments are probably looking for another from that cast of rogues to replace Zardari as the acceptable "democratic" veneer on the military/feudal elites rule. It's unlikely to be Sharif - he's seen as too anti-American - unless Sharif wants to sacrifice all his previous promises in return for power. With Sharif, I wouldn't write that off. But Wajahat Ali is correct that true democracy in Pakistan is not on the elite's agenda and that if the U.S. and its allies are serious about the need to break Pakistan's self-destructive cycles then they should be talking to the lawyers.

(More from Juan Cole.)

Comments

[Russ Wellen]

Never too late to bring back Musharraf!