Where the Wild Frontiers Are by Manan Ahmed

Author:Manan Ahmed [Ahmed, Manan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781935982067
Google: IISfuAAACAAJ
Publisher: Just World Books
Published: 2011-01-15T02:57:11+00:00

Tick Tock VIII: The Emergency Plus Edition14

November 3, 2007

The wag will say that the nation has never left the state of emergency, but that is just being silly.

We now have a legal state of emergency in Pakistan. Actually, it is officially being called “Emergency Plus”—more than “Emergency” but less than “Martial Law.” Just right.

The move is hardly surprising considering the chaos engulfing Pakistan at the moment—from political (Supreme Court deliberations on the fate of the “election”) to military (the tribal/militant conflict has spread to Swat and Peshawar) to ideological (Baluchistan) to international (Rice has decided she wants democracy).

According to the Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) declaring emergency, the steps were taken because of the recent terrorist attacks, the release of terror-suspects by the judiciary, the lack of oversight of the judiciary, and the low morale of police and army in the nation.15

The emergency law, Article 232 of the Constitution (summarized): The Proclamation of emergency is issued by the President if he deems that the country is threatened by internal or external violence or disturbance. The Federals can take over the Provinces, the High Court. It has to be affirmed by joint Assemblies within two months or it will automatically end. All the supreme courts in the country will have to retake their oaths to the state, and they will be barred from issuing any orders against the army or the state.

Musharraf has suspended the TV broadcasts—and prohibited any “print or electronic media discussion or analysis that hurts the national interests.”

The Supreme Court, which was expected to rule on Musharraf in a few days, is currently boarded up. Cities like Sarghoda, Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad have mobilized against suicide attacks.

Emergency Rule, maybe Martial Law, the replacement of Klashnikovs with Suicide Belts, the Vanished . . . Pakistan needed our help a year ago. It needed a genuine push for democratic processes back in March. We left unchecked, and unhindered, a megalomaniac “enlightened moderator.” We keep insisting on our own interests ahead of the interests of the people of Pakistan. We remain steadfast in our belief that those people are not as developed nor as functional as we would like them to be. Pakistan needs a strong dictator. The fallacy . . . the gross oversight . . . has always been that he was never in control. He did not control Baluchistan, where a genuine call for accountability and justice was quashed by horrific military violence—including missile assassinations. Baluchistan should have been afforded our attention in 2005—but we were too busy in Iraq. It became, contiguous with Waziristan, the outpost and then the center of Taliban/extremist insurgents over the next two years. We insisted on supporting the one person who had no legitimate power to negotiate or fight for over 40 percent of territorial Pakistan. Can you imagine that?

Next up? Martial Law. More bombings. And the eventual drain of all that capital that had accumulated in the country in the past 8 years. Zimbabwe, here we come—unless, the United States and China can come to their senses and do some actual diplomacy.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.