[NYTr] Musharraf Plays Bush for a Fool

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Counterpunch - Nov 20, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/cohn11202007.html

Musharraf Plays Bush for a Fool

Is the Agenda to Destabilize Afghanistan?

By MARJORIE COHN

Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf declared a state of
emergency on November 3rd after the Pakistani Supreme Court indicated
it would overturn the results of an illegitimate election that would
have extended Musharraf's term as president. Musharraf quickly fired
the Supreme Court justices who planned to rule against him. And his
declaration of emergency attacked the entire population of Pakistan by
suspending fundamental constitutional rights to life and liberty,
freedom of speech, assembly and association, and equal protection of
the law.

As a result of Musharraf's action, Pakistani Chief Justice Iftikhar
Mohammed Chaudhry is being held under house arrest, and over 2500
lawyers in different parts of Pakistan have been detained. The
detainees include the President of the Supreme Court Bar Association
and officials of the Democratic Lawyers Association of Pakistan. The
government also ordered that journalists who brought "ridicule or
disrepute" to Musharraf could face three years in prison.

The real motivation for Musharraf's declared emergency is not to defend
the country against "Islamic extremists," as he claims, but to maintain
Musharraf in power. He acted to prevent public protests that lawyers
and political parties were organizing. And his scheme is working.
Musharraf's new brand-new, hand-picked Supreme Court ruled on Monday
that Musharraf can remain in power for five more years.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration is scurrying around in damage
control mode. Musharraf's actions would be very embarrassing for Bush
-- if Bush were the type of guy to get embarrassed. After all, Bush has
been claiming for the past several years that he wants to spread
democracy throughout the Islamic world. Somehow, Musharraf's declared
state of emergency, followed by mass arrests of his political
opponents, doesn't seem very democratic.

Bush dispatched Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte to Pakistan
to talk sense to Musharraf. Negroponte urged Musharraf to end the state
of emergency. But Bush's man didn't complain about Musharraf shutting
down the Supreme Court and replacing it with his loyalists. Negroponte
also failed to tell Musharraf to release the judges and lawyers from
prison. So much for democracy and an independent judiciary.

The recipient of nearly $11 billion of U.S. aid since 9/11, Musharraf
will cover for his benefactor Bush to keep him from losing face in
light of the Pakistani strongman's blatant and tyrannical power grab.
Musharraf has agreed that parliamentary elections scheduled for January
will proceed and that he will take off his military uniform after the
sham elections are held. Of course, Musharraf's jailed political
opponents will likely find it difficult to campaign effectively for
seats in parliament while incarcerated under a state of martial law.

American citizens whose tax dollars are being used to prop up this
ruthless and corrupt regime should demand an accounting of how their
money is being spent.

Bush claims that Musharraf is an indispensable ally in his "war against
terror," and that money sent to Pakistan supports that goal. It appears
from my vantage point, though, that Musharraf is playing Bush for a
fool. Musharraf tells Bush he will help destroy the Taliban. However,
Pakistani Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy wrote in the November 18 Los
Angeles Times that some people in Pakistan believe Musharraf is
"secretly supporting the Taliban as a means for countering Indian
influence." Moreover, if Musharraf wants to regain and maintain support
of the Pakistani people, he will continue to support the Taliban.
Hoodbhoy also wrote, "Most Pakistanis see the [Taliban] as America's
enemy, not their own. The Taliban is perceived as the only group
standing up against the unwelcome American presence in the region."
According to Hoodbhoy, "For more than 25 years, the army has nurtured
Islamist radicals as proxy warriors for covert operations on Pakistan's
borders in Kashmir and Afghanistan."

Hoodbhoy's remarks are corroborated by Adrien Levy, co-author of
"Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Weapons
Conspiracy." Levy told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, "The [Musharraf]
agenda is to destabilize Afghanistan, to create a government there
which is favorable to Islamabad. These are goals which are actually
contrary to the goals--very largely contrary to the goals of the West.
Yet," Levy, said, "this slowly moving car crash of the U.S. pumping
billions of untraceable cash into the Pakistan military has continued
since 2001 and we're left with the position where Pakistan is devoid of
democracy, democracy is weakened and feeble, and we have just increased
instability, quite honestly."

If Congress stands by and does nothing to cut off the funds to
Musharraf while he maintains martial law in Pakistan, it will confirm
our worst fears that Democrats and Republicans alike are making a sham
of our democracy.

[Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and
president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is the author of Cowboy
Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law.]