Our Man In Pakistan
The news keeps coming from Pakistan, and all of it is bad. It's clear that General/President Musharraf intends to clamp down on all of the opposition (not just the Islamic extremists). Benezair Bhutto is under house arrest and calling for her supporters to protest the imposition of martial law. The country's Chief Justice is under arrest and calling for the lawyers to protest the suspension of the Pakistan Constitution. And General Musharraf's best friend forever, George W. Bush, called him and suggested he allow the promised elections in January to go forward. Unfortunately, that's about all President Bush could do, given the relationship between the two countries.
Trudy Rubin has an interesting op-ed published in today's Sacramento Bee which quite nicely sets out what is going on in Pakistan, and hints at the impossible situation the US finds itself in. The opening of that column is a rather easily understood analysis. Even Dear Leader could probably follow along, if he were so inclined.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf says he imposed military rule to help fight terrorism.
The tragedy for Pakistan -- and the danger to us -- is that his police and intelligence agents are now beating and jailing judges and lawyers, rather than arresting Islamic radicals. When diplomats asked Musharraf at a meeting in Islamabad on Monday how he planned to crack down on extremists, he railed instead about the sins of Pakistan's judiciary.
So, when trying to figure out how the United States should now treat Musharraf, start from the premise that his imposition of "emergency rule" had little to do with terrorism. Rather, it was aimed at preventing the Supreme Court from ruling that his re-election to a second term was unconstitutional.
And therein lies the problem with the continuing habit of US administrations supporting dictators in return for whatever the US feels it needs at the time. We have supported the House of Saud to keep the flow of cheap oil coming. We have supported Latin American dictators to ensure that our multinational corporations can continue to get cheap goods and cheap labor. We have supported a general who took office via a military coup for assistance in fighting the Taliban in the neighboring country.
As a result, huge swatches of the world despises us for our coldly cynical foreign policy, some so much that they piloted jets into a couple of US skyscrapers in New York and others blew themselves up to wreak havoc in other parts of the world. Yet the US still doesn't get it, least of all this administration.
But wait, there's more.
Dictators will go along with the US policy as long as it is in their best interest. General Musharraf was perfectly willing to accept $11 billion in military aid over the past several years, using some of those weapons to hunt Al Qaeda operatives in the Pakistani Tribal areas. The radical Islamists didn't like the general any better than the US, and the general didn't want that kind of interference arising in his nation. When it became clear to him, however, that a there was a much bigger threat to his reign, he dropped all pretense of Al Qaeda hunting and turned the weapons on his opponents.
The US, still in need of assistance from Pakistan in Afghanistan, is stuck. It can't stop General Musharraf's crushing of dissent and imposition of martial law lest he stop cooperating with the US along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
This means, tragically, that the US will probably do nothing when it comes to reining in the dictator we have supported. The dissent will be crushed, people will die, probably by weapons we supplied.
Trudy Rubin has an interesting op-ed published in today's Sacramento Bee which quite nicely sets out what is going on in Pakistan, and hints at the impossible situation the US finds itself in. The opening of that column is a rather easily understood analysis. Even Dear Leader could probably follow along, if he were so inclined.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf says he imposed military rule to help fight terrorism.
The tragedy for Pakistan -- and the danger to us -- is that his police and intelligence agents are now beating and jailing judges and lawyers, rather than arresting Islamic radicals. When diplomats asked Musharraf at a meeting in Islamabad on Monday how he planned to crack down on extremists, he railed instead about the sins of Pakistan's judiciary.
So, when trying to figure out how the United States should now treat Musharraf, start from the premise that his imposition of "emergency rule" had little to do with terrorism. Rather, it was aimed at preventing the Supreme Court from ruling that his re-election to a second term was unconstitutional.
And therein lies the problem with the continuing habit of US administrations supporting dictators in return for whatever the US feels it needs at the time. We have supported the House of Saud to keep the flow of cheap oil coming. We have supported Latin American dictators to ensure that our multinational corporations can continue to get cheap goods and cheap labor. We have supported a general who took office via a military coup for assistance in fighting the Taliban in the neighboring country.
As a result, huge swatches of the world despises us for our coldly cynical foreign policy, some so much that they piloted jets into a couple of US skyscrapers in New York and others blew themselves up to wreak havoc in other parts of the world. Yet the US still doesn't get it, least of all this administration.
But wait, there's more.
Dictators will go along with the US policy as long as it is in their best interest. General Musharraf was perfectly willing to accept $11 billion in military aid over the past several years, using some of those weapons to hunt Al Qaeda operatives in the Pakistani Tribal areas. The radical Islamists didn't like the general any better than the US, and the general didn't want that kind of interference arising in his nation. When it became clear to him, however, that a there was a much bigger threat to his reign, he dropped all pretense of Al Qaeda hunting and turned the weapons on his opponents.
The US, still in need of assistance from Pakistan in Afghanistan, is stuck. It can't stop General Musharraf's crushing of dissent and imposition of martial law lest he stop cooperating with the US along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
This means, tragically, that the US will probably do nothing when it comes to reining in the dictator we have supported. The dissent will be crushed, people will die, probably by weapons we supplied.
Labels: Foreign Policy
posted by Diane at 10:07 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home