Mush

With my step-father being an attorney, I have heard (and told) an incredible amount of lawyer jokes, as well as heard every proclamation of the civic and civil necessity-cum-privilege of lawyership. The recent crises in Pakistan have raised an awkward question, what happens when the most outright demonstrators in a nation take to the streets in a suit and tie? It's like a riot on Wall Street, with stockbrokers railing against the Fed. Quite simply, things are weird in Islamabad.

So why was the neck-tied silhouette of a man throwing back a teargas canister the top photo on yesterday's New York Times? President and General Pervez Musharraf – unpopular with the Pakistani judicial system – dissolved the Pakistani supreme court and declared emergency rule in the volatile nation. This come on the heels of Bhutto's return from self-imposed exile, and the subsequent assassination attempt. Indeed, there is much instability in Pakistan. This is unsurprising, even though Bush has described Musharraf as a stabilizing force.

“In fact, Western diplomats here said, each step the president takes to strengthen his hold on power in the name of stability generates instability of its own,” said David Rohde in a piece of news analysis for the Times. Rohde also wrote a straight news account of the lawyers protest, a double identity that would make me uncomfortable as a journalist.

Juan Cole writes with insider attitude on Salon, describing the two crises than moved Musharraf to act: an emboldened supreme court, which had rebuked Musharraf's effort to fire Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. The court was going evaluate the legitimacy of Musharraf's office, Cole said. The opposite pressure comes from Muslim fundamentalists, including the Taliban, who have challenged Musharraf's secular rule.

Many U.S. interests in the Middle East and Central Asia are contingent upon Pakistan and its regime. Most of the war materials needed for the war in Afghanistan come through Pakistan. America has bankrolled the Pakistani military with $10 billion – with a B – in aid since 2001, the Times reports.

Musharraf seems less than concerned about those interests, such as the War on Terror, than about his political survival, Rohde reports, regarding a meeting between Musharraf and Western diplomats. “There was serious concern that terrorism and security was not front and center. What was really amazing was him going on and on and on about how bad the judiciary was,” one diplomat said.

The poltically aware classes in Pakistan, including academics, students and obviously the lawyers, are rightly upset with Pervez's actions. Emily Wax did the codfish reporting for the Washington Post, ...
Many of have been arrested in the imposition of emergency rule, including attorneys and human rights activists. Over 2,000 have been arrested or place under house arrest since the suspension of the constitution last Saturday, the Chicago Tribune reports.

What we have here is a case of authoritarian action without the benefits of authoritarianism, including stability, which has become one of Musharraf's talking points. Across the country, police that would be hunting terrorists are instead hunting lawyers, Rohde reports. Between this trend and the regime's preoccupation with the judiciary, the increasingly lawless northwestern frontier territory bordering on Afghanistan has grown nigh-ungovernable. Musharraf's actions may increase militancy in those areas, the Tribune reports.

Pakistan is not ready for democracy, Musharraf said, and anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't understand the country. Even the decorum of Western democracy is absent from Pakistan. Musharraf – and U.S. interests in the region – are in a quagmire. Musharraf faces challenges from the left as well as extremists on the right. More and more, it seems America has ventured into a forest of which she knew little, with a general in the most precarious of positions.