AFGHANISTAN & PAKISTAN
Afghanistan summary here and here.
Pakistan summary here and here.
Intrnal chaos abides.
Pakistani helicopter gunships killed four militants and destroyed bunkers and ammunition dumps at a village in a northwestern region where a pro-Taleban rebel has led an insurrection, the military said yesterday.
More than 200 people have been killed in clashes between fighters commanded by Maulana Fazlullah and security forces over the past few weeks in Swat, a picturesque, mountainous district of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) that was formerly a tourist haven. Article
Internal electoral chaos abides.
Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto demanded the resignation of U.S.-backed President Gen. Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday, dashing Western hopes that the two moderate leaders would form an alliance to confront strengthening Islamic extremists.
Bhutto, just placed under house arrest for the second time since her return from exile, said she was working to forge a partnership with Nawaz Sharif, the man overthrown as prime minister in a 1999 coup by Musharraf.
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Authorities imposed the detention to block her from staging a protest procession to the capital, Islamabad. The march went ahead but was quickly stopped by police, and security forces also clashed with anti-government protesters in other cities.
Tuesday’s events were in many ways a replay of Friday, when police sealed Bhutto inside her Islamabad villa for a single day and rounded up hundreds, possibly thousands, of her supporters to stop a mass rally she had called outside the capital.
Bhutto said thousands of her supporters were again rounded up Tuesday, although officials denied detentions on such a large scale. This time, Bhutto’s reaction was much sharper – calling the crackdown the “breaking point” in her relations with Musharraf.
“I’m calling for Gen. Musharraf to step down, to quit, to leave, to end martial law,” she said in a phone call with a group of journalists. “Pakistan is a nuclear-armed country. We cannot afford this kind of chaos and instability,” Bhutto said.
“I could not serve as prime minister with Gen. Musharraf as president. I wish I could,” she added.
[snip]
In the southern city of Karachi, Bhutto supporters angered by her detention fired on two police stations, and police used tear gas to disperse them. A 9-year-old boy and a woman were wounded in the crossfire of a gunbattle between demonstrators and police, witnesses said.
In unusually strong criticism of a key ally, U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson on Tuesday described emergency rule as an “ominous development.” Article
External confusion/chaos/wishful thinking abides.
“Washington’s approach to Pakistan has always been that the devil we know is better than the devil we don’t know. But there is every reason to believe that with Musharraf and Pakistan, that is not the case,” says Selig Harrison, director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy in Washington. “Musharraf has blinded Washington over and over again with a mastery of blackmail, but in the two areas we worry most about – nuclear proliferation and Islamist extremism – there are alternatives that are just as good, if not better.”
Captivated by Pakistan’s status as a nuclear power, linchpin in the US-led war on terror, and the presumed home of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the US has treated the military leader as if he were the last stand before nuclear Armageddon or a new triumph for Islamist extremism, many experts say. Musharraf came to power in a coup in 1999.
A Pakistan with Gen. Ashfak Kayani as military chief, for example, and a civilian government elected by the Pakistani people, would be at least as effective in opposing the extremists’ rise and perhaps better at safeguarding Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Many observers believe General Kayani is Musharraf’s likely successor as head of the armed forces.
[snip]
Another factor standing in the way of US backing for a real political transition in Pakistan could be private deals the US may have made with Musharraf over US actions vis-à-vis Afghanistan and Iran.
“This is just speculation,” Harrison says, “but it’s not hard to imagine some kind of agreements that might have been made with Musharraf about intelligence or special operations” in Iran or concerning the Islamist communities in Pakistan’s northern frontier areas “that are influencing our actions in this crisis.” Article
Constant punctuations of civilian slaughter.
The Polish Defense Ministry says seven soldiers serving with the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan have been detained for the killing of civilians in the eastern part of the country.
In a statement released Tuesday, Polish military prosecutors say the soldiers were detained for violating international law, specifically the Hague and Geneva Conventions. Article
