International Update… Developing…
Duke, PolitiPorn Int’l Bureau Chief
PakistanIn one 32 hour period this week, Pakistan averaged about 1 killed and six wounded per hour, as suicide bombings brought the post-election death toll to 132. The deadliest of (by some counts) eight post-election bombings happened Tuesday when suicide bombers struck the relatively quiet city of Lahore, killing 27 and wounding 200. Located in the prosperous province of Punjab, Lahore is the second largest city in Pakistan (about twice the size of San Francisco). Despite its extremely diverse population the targets for Tuesday’s bombings turned out not to be a religious (although the attack did occur on the eve of Muhharam, the venerated first month of the Islamic calendar), but rather law enforcement and a business. Today’s bombings occurred in the troubled SWAT region of NWFP, leaving four soldiers and militants dead.If this wave of violence keeps up we are going to have a real situation in Pakistan. Islamic militant violence was the official justification of Musharraf’s previous imposition (and believe me it was an imposition) of ‘emergency rule’ (read martial law.)
The of course was the very same emergency rule that fought back against Islamic militants by eliminating the freedom of the Judiciary (which the militants didn’t exactly rely on) and the hard-won freedom of the press (militants don’t have televisions).Just to recap for those keeping score at home… last time militant violence reached a fever pitch it was used by Musharraf to dismiss the only branch of the government that disagreed with the legitimacy of his presidency. The judiciary, by the way, was about to rule on whether Musharraf’s candidacy was valid in these previous elections as the head of the Pakistani military, a position Musharraf has since abandoned.I’m not sure if Musharraf has the domestic or international legitimacy to re-impose martial law, but the implications of this week’s violence run deep. For instance, the bombings were carried out by Islamic extremists; during last month’s elections most of the hardline Islamic parties either boycotted or got trounced.
Failure to include the Islamic parties in the parliamentary elections tends to result in a more violent political campaign. Their participation should have been courted so that they could take a more legitimate beating. Another implication of the recent uptick in violence involves the political posture that the new powers (PML-N and PPP) will be forced to embrace in order to keep the peace. The campaign against terrorism was expected to be scaled back, but Islamic militants rarely put up with this type of tactic. Every time someone decides to stop killing Muslims at random, the extremists evidentially become furious (see Gaza).At this point the PML-N and PPP (formerly headed by Bhutto) have to address a dilemma that has become much more complicated than it was before the elections… what to do with the child killing Islamic militants. Just to clarify, the term child-killing Islamic militant is actually an oxymoron; the Qur’an explicitly forbids the killing of children, women and noncombatants.
Nawaz Sharif, head of the PML-N party, has been (fairly) accused of supporting Islamic extremists in the past, and is even rumored to have personally met with Osama Bin Laden. The PPP on the other hand was in power during the emergence of the Taliban, though Bhutto would later publically state regret for the nurturing of extremism. The crystal ball for Pakistan is very cloudy right now.
developing…
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