Blogging Pakistan’s Election
Apropos of Jack, I am in Pakistan as an election observer with Democracy International and will be blogging about it…to the extent that I have access to the internet. We arrived in Islamabad this afternoon. The scene at immigration was reassuring in a developing country way: long lines, hot, and officials zealously stamping any papers in sight. Unfortunately, we have seen very little of Islamabad except the inside of the airport and the hotel.
I know little about Pakistan outside US-Pakistani relations and am trying to educate myself as quickly as I can so I will be able to understand its politics better. I am surprised at the freedom of the English press here (I can’t say anything about the Urdu press). On TV and in print I have seen stories that are very critical of President Musharraf and the government. I also saw a journalist on TV asking people on the street what democracy means to them. It is clear that people take politics seriously here and are not afraid to say they want Musharraf’s dictatorship to end.
The main question I have at the moment is trying to understand why there have been so many bombings at political rallies and other venues likely to kill innocent Pakistanis. Support for Al Qaeda has fallen dramatically over the past year due to these bombings. This doesn’t seem to be a logical strategy. I can understand why they would target the government. It seems to me that if they want to present themselves as a viable alternative, however, they would choose the Hamas and Hezbollah tactic of providing benefits to build public support and target attacks only against the enemy. I don’t see how preying on regular citizens advances their objective. Causing chaos in the country is reducing support for the government but it seems like a Pyrrhic victory to me as people dislike Al Qaeda as much as they dislike Musharraf. Perhaps a savvy reader can answer this question.
Jack on 15 Feb 2008 at 12:43 pm #
Power hates a vacuum. Create a vacuum and try to step in. Who but Al Qaeda and the military have guns?
Anand on 16 Feb 2008 at 4:10 pm #
Well, I took a quick opinion poll among a couple of our classmates and friends at iHop this afternoon about Barak’s question. What emerged some degree of consensus on the theory that chaos that undermines the legitimacy of the Pakistani central government bolsters the position of separatist movements and their Islamist colleagues. All parties, whether the PPP or Musharraf, are prime targets because general unrest furthers the cause of numerous separatist groups. Currently, neither the Pakistani state nor its people actively support the separatist movements. However, the states’ hands are tied by the political unrest that pervades the country. The sins are thus of omission, not commission. The sooner the Pakistani state is able to show legitimacy through elections and consolidate on that legitimacy through harsh crackdowns, the sooner separatists lose talking points and the upper hand.