Over the last three months, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan has presided over the systematic and ruthless destruction of the building blocks of a democratic, pluralistic, rights-respecting society. The fired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and many of his colleagues remain under house arrest, as do leading lawyers, and the media is operating under heavy censorship. While the November state of emergency has been lifted, most of its odious provisions have been kept under the ‘restored’ constitution.
The country’s politics is in a shambles after the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on 27 December. Many Pakistanis suspect Musharraf and his intelligence services of responsibility for Bhutto’s death, and for many of the bombs exploding around the country.
Musharraf had been pressured by the US and UK to allow Bhutto and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif back into the country in exchange for continued support for his presidency and de facto military rule. Since Bhutto’s murder, Musharraf has unleashed a crackdown against her Pakistan People’s Party, arresting hundreds and filing criminal cases against at least half a million supporters and members. In a volatile environment, Musharraf’s own political supporters are openly fomenting ethnic tensions to prevent an emphatic victory by the PPP at the polls.
The British government pins its public rhetoric on free and fair elections on February 18, but these are nowhere in sight. Prior to Bhutto’s death, Human Rights Watch had documented extensive media censorship, disruption of party activities, bias among election officials and pre-poll rigging in favour of Musharraf-backed candidates. Government candidates are reportedly being provided with tens of millions of dollars’ worth of government funds and resources to run their campaigns. Large-scale financial and logistical support has been lent to district administrations, law enforcement agencies and sundry official departments connected with the administration and oversight of elections, creating a partisan state machinery that will work on behalf of pro-Musharraf political parties.
Though the British government has issued formulaic statements urging free elections, to date there has been no action, such as sanctions, to match these words and the UK has actually announced an increase in aid. Citing the need for a reliable ally in the US-led ‘war on terror’, the UK continues to play its part in propping up an isolated and reviled leader with substantial military and financial assistance, all in return for counter-terror cooperation of questionable morality or worth.
With significant territory along the Afghanistan border now in the hands of the ‘Pakistani Taliban’, the failure to capture the leadership of al Qaeda or the Afghan Taliban, and bombs routinely going off throughout the country, it is hard to see why the UK and the US see Musharraf as such an indispensible ally. It is certainly not winning them any friends among most Pakistanis.
The contrast with the British government’s strong response to the crackdown in Burma last September is striking. It is time for the UK to forge its own policy on Pakistan, one which is based on a realistic, not imagined, analysis of the situation in the country. It should press for reinstatement of the ousted judges, as the best hope for a free and fair election rests is an independent judiciary. A military-backed ruler who found himself unable to cohabit with such a judiciary, and dispensed with the constitution in order to get rid of it, is unlikely to preside over an electoral exercise that, if allowed to reach its logical conclusion, would ultimately contest his hold on power.
Ali Dayan Hasan is South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch.
