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India-Pakistan
Musharraf-Benazir plan was to keep Sharifs away: ex-UK envoy
2009-03-04
True that Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif have been disqualified by a controversial Supreme Court decision but there are possibilities that the script for their political elimination was written outside Pakistan.
Never picked up on that, didja? They are a subtle lot, I'll give 'em that.
And one of the reasons could be their public perception as rightist politicians opposed to the American designs for South Asia.
Or maybe it's because nobody can stand Uncle Fester...
Evidence is increasingly available in the Western writings that Washington and London "induced" former president Parvez Musharraf to facilitate the return of Benazir Bhutto in 2007 after spending over a year in secret diplomacy.
Benazir was the voice, or at least the face, of sweet reason, especially when compared to the rest of Pakistain. People tried to overlook the fact that she was married to Mr. Ten Percent and surrounded by as rapacious a bunch of crooks as most people could imagine.
But more important part of the US-UK plan was to make sure Nawaz Sharif did not return to Pakistan lest he jeopardised the ascendancy of Bhutto to power.
Most people noticed that when Benazir was invited back and not Uncle Fester.
Writing in the latest edition of Survival, the International Institute for Strategic Studies' bimonthly magazine, former British high commissioner to Pakistan Hilary Synnott revealed that the American and British governments were concerned to protect their interests in Afghanistan and in countering terrorism, especially after Musharraf sacked his chief justice in March 2007 and suspended some 60 judges.
Oh, yeah. That was brilliant, wasn't it?
"The ensuing militant protests by the judiciary, being neither religious nor party political activists, introduced a new and unusual dimension to the political crisis. "When Musharraf rashly declared a state of emergency on 3 November, it became clear that his days are numbered."
Perv yanked the lever on himself with that one...
The US and the UK, according to Synnott hoped they could still promote democracy while maintaining Musharraf in power and that was why both Musharraf and Bhutto were encouraged to come to an accommodation despite their deep mutual antipathy.
Nawaz, meanwhile, was hustled back on the plane when he showed up uninvited...
"Musharraf was induced to arrange for the criminal charges against Bhutto and her husband to be dropped so as to allow her to lead her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) in the general elections due in late 2007.
That doesn't mean they weren't guilty as sin, just that the charges were dropped. There's a diffo.
The plan was that, with the aid of the so-called "king's party" (Pakistan Muslim League-Q), which backed Musharraf, the PPP would assume the prime ministership while Musharraf remained as president, having first stood down as chief of army staff.
We knew they weren't gonna let Perv retain both offices, even if the presidency was a ceremonial position. Zardari's occupying the same post, and it's not ceremonial.
"Sharif, however, would not be allowed to return to Pakistan from his forced exile in Saudi Arabia, which would severely disadvantage his Pakistan Muslim League-N, Pakistan's only other significant national political party, which might otherwise threaten Bhutto's ascendancy."
I don't think Benazir was ever in real danger of losing to Nawaz, though I'm sure there were lotsa ballot boxes waiting to be stuffed. He was too recent a memory, smelled too strongly of Kargil, and just as corrupt as the Bhutto's. Benazir was a whiff of the romantic past, her father fondly if inaccurately recalled, and better looking than Uncle Fester.
In his essay "What is happening in Pakistan", the former British envoy analysed that Pakistan could experience more violence and disorder unless greater attention was paid to its challenges but "it is unlikely that the country is on the brink of state failure".
I'da said it went over the brink about the time Benazir was murdered. And I'm not positive Gomez was uninvolved in that.
His reasons for optimism lie in relatively stable areas including the Punjab, which have weathered many storms in the past and are unlikely to disintegrate into chaos.
Precisely where in Punjab is it relatively stable?
But diplomatic sources are concerned that the present Zardari-Sharif episode can turn ugly in coming days when the lawyers march towards Islamabad with overt support from Sharif loyalists.
Gomez and Uncle Fester play the violin and the clarinet, respectively, whilst Peshawar burns.
But analysts like Hilary Synnott were ready for such eventualities even before the Pakistaní apex court saw the Sharifs as unfit to partake in electoral politics.
Was he, by Gad? Good olde Hilary! Always on top of things Pakistained...
His pre-Supreme Court decision advice for Pakistanís international friends was to avoid prescribing solutions to the mess the country is getting into. "In the light of past experience, the friends of Pakistan would do well not to be too prescriptive in dealing with Pakistan's complex political scene. If Zardari's political star will fall, the current working assumption is that his leadership, in some form or other, would be replaced by that of Nawaz Sharif."
Or that of Baitullah Mehsud. My personal opinion is that they're gonna squabble and bicker and "long march" and stage shutter-down strikes until both sides are too exhausted to lift their snouts out of the trough, at which point there'll be another coup and both will be packed off to London or Riyadh again.
The former diplomat reasons that Nawaz Sharif of 2009 could be different from the one Pakistan experienced in the 1990s. "In view of the failings of Sharif's previous leadership, there are grounds for concern. Responding to popular sentiment, he may be expected to be cautious about alignment with the United States and, as in the past, have closer relationship with religious groupings than does the centre-left PPP. Nor can there be any certainty that he has learned from the mistakes of the past.
My guess is that he hasn't. And he's been on the other side ever since he got back.
"But that is equally true of Zardari, about whom there are grounds for concern.
He's the slicker of the two, but I'm not sure he's the greedier.
"For all his past and possibly present shortcomings, Sharif is no revolutionary and may be expected to adopt a pragmatic approach.
They said that about Khomeini, too. And Brezhnev. And Assad the Younger. They probably said it about Attila: "Aye! Yon princeling's no so mindlessly ferocious as the old man! He's much more pragmatic! You can deal with him if you approach him right, Aetius!"
"His stated priorities for the issues, which need attention and reform, exhibit a clearer focus than in the past and offer some hope that his leadership would extend beyond mere politicking and the maximisation of power."
Posted by:Fred

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