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Posted on 01/01/2008 11:12:41 AM PST by UKrepublican
PLAGUED BY CORRUPTION AND TERROR, PAKISTAN HAS NO HOPE OF DEMOCRACY
IS there something wrong with Gordon Brown’s calendar? I only ask since I always thought that practical jokes were meant to take place on April 1, not January 1.
Because it has got to be a wind-up hasn’t it? I’m talking about Mr Brown’s article in Pakistan’s Daily Jang newspaper in which he urges a swift transition to democracy.
“A strong, representative democracy in Pakistan will defeat terrorism and extremism,” Mr Brown blithely writes. A Prime Minister too chicken to seek his own democratic mandate at home is trying to foist an early election upon a country which is on the brink of anarchy after the assassination of one of its main party leaders. Priceless. Or should that be worthless? Because that’s the term which would better describe British foreign policy as regards Pakistan.
Under Mr Brown and rookie Foreign Secretary David Miliband the simplistic notion that a move to “democracy” will magically sort out Pakistan’s many problems has taken root. Mr Miliband has claimed that democracy will liberate the voice of the “moderate majority” in this Islamic state.
It is pure conjecture on his part and Mr Brown’s that such a moderate majority exists. Even if most Pakistanis desired the standards of the democratic West, there is no chance that the country’s most powerful forces would allow such a transition to take place.
The most powerful of all – the army – is a strictly hierarchical institution, not a democratic one. It has frequently stepped in to topple civilian regimes, mainly when their corruption has become too extreme.
Because Pakistan’s political parties are not democratic either. The way the leadership of Benazir Bhutto’s PPP has been handed down like some family heirloom to her 19-year-old son Bilawal Zardari – an even less experienced statesman than Mr Miliband – should give a clue to that.
The hapless Bilawal’s initial remarks, along the lines of democracy requiring him to do everything his mother ever told him to, indicate that he has not really understood what it’s all about. More time with his books at Oxford University is clearly called for. Ms Bhutto’s last administration was itself a byword for embezzlement.
Her husband Asif Ali Zardari, Bilawal’s father, was known as “Mr 10 Per Cent” and still faces money laundering charges in Switzerland. The other main political party, the Pakistan Muslim League under Nawaz Sharif, is little better. The idea of an administration based on Western notions of fairness and democracy is anathema in Pakistan. Whoever is in charge feels obliged to use the power of the state to enrich allies and supporters to ensure their future loyalty – that is how Pakistani society works. A similar thing happens on a smaller scale in Britain. In areas with high proportions of Muslims originating from Pakistan, electoral fraud and corruption in local government are rife.
The other dominant force in Pakistan is radical Islam. The Islamists who murdered Ms Bhutto are clearly no democrats. Some elements among them will certainly be prepared to contest elections but if they ever gained power at the ballot box their first act would be to abolish democracy and establish a radical theocracy.
At this point I must make a confession. Although, in an ideal world, I would love Pakistan to become converted to democracy, I don’t desire that as much as something else: that its nuclear weapons and materials should not fall into the hands of extremists. Imagine Al Qaeda sympathisers gaining power in Pakistan, with its nuclear capability and formidable army. There cannot be a more chilling prospect in the world today.
There is no doubt radical Islam has made big inroads in recent years among the Pakistani populous, as it has elsewhere in the Muslim world. So democracy could itself lead to an Islamist regime. The other possibility is of an Islamist uprising seizing power by force.
Standing foursquare against both prospects is President Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s unelected military and political leader. No one should pretend that General (retired) Musharraf will ever be top of an Amnesty International Christmas card list. Under his stewardship there has been no Pakistani equivalent of the Human Rights Act. But he has, at least, kept the lid on Islamist fanaticism during testing times and therefore protected our way of life in the Western world.
At considerable risk to himself he has allied Pakistan to the West in the war on terror. He has repeatedly warned Britain about the deadly use of radical madrasas in Pakistan as terrorist finishing schools for young British Muslims. And he has set his security services the task of smashing them.
For this, what thanks does he get? An ongoing campaign by the British Government to get rid of him. According to Mr Brown’s utopian article in the Daily Jang, democracy in Pakistan will not only defeat extremism but will also “stand as a lasting memorial to the life’s work of Benazir Bhutto”. He claims: “We owe it to her memory to strive together to achieve that goal.”
Given that it’s panto season, the correct retort to that is: Oh no we don’t. The British Government owes nothing to Ms Bhutto but everything to its own citizenry. Its job is to protect us.
It could start by pulling the plug on its lunatic campaign to inflict a general election on a country which is in an even more emotionally charged state than usual following the murder of Ms Bhutto. If elections do take place this year they will be neither free nor fair but almost certainly the catalyst for a fresh bloodbath. Far better that an old man named Musharraf should keep us safe for a good while longer yet.
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Well worth a read FRiends.
This guy makes a lot of sense.
Don’t let any of them in this country, or anyone from any middle eastern country.
—a dunce named Richardson whose former claim to fame was pinping for jobs for Clinton’s girlfriend has similar thoughts—
—http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1945926/posts
Someone understands the reality of the situation. I'm pleased.
“PLAGUED BY CORRUPTION AND TERROR, PAKISTAN HAS NO HOPE OF DEMOCRACY”
Geeeeee ..?? Isn’t that what the world said about IRAQ ..??
Trying to impose democracy in Pakistan is like trying to fit an elephants trunk onto a chiwawa. What we need to do is go in and remove the nukes and let them revert to the bronze age as is their most fervent wish.
The UK doesn’t exist any more. A ping list is futile.
Pakistan is FAR more backward than Iraq.
Yep. Until then, democracy in Pakistan is like Hindu holy men guarding Fort Knox.
Iraq was a different thing. As a nation they are more civilized by Western standards, and they don't have nukes.
Well it most certainly does, and the ping list is doing very well indeed and has been for some time.
But thank you nonetheless.
Iraq always has been a far easier prospect than the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (1977-1988) spawned Islamofascist fervor that took root among the population of Pakistan unlike that of any other country except perhaps the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This jihadism metastasized in the ever-lawless Pashtun barbarian tribal areas and apparently in certain cities like Rawalpindi. With plentiful Saudi financing, this part of the world gave rise to the Taliban barbarians and sanctuary to Usama bin Laden. With sane Americans operating in the Traditional Islamic State of Afghanistan, Pakistan no longer can export its extremists to its neighbor.
Saddam Hussein supported and funded Islamofascist terrorists abroad, but at least he was nominally secular at home and almost certainly never particularly popular, especially among the Shia majority or among the starving masses. The Islamofascist ideology embraced only a minority of even the Sunni Arabs in Iraq. The initial unpopularity of the Islamofascist lifestyle make Iraq a relatively simple and easy challenge.
Pacifying, democratizing, and stabilizing Pakistan presents a far different, far more volatile proposition. We ultimately must solve this conundrum, but weakening terror-funding Saudi Arabia and pacifying Iraq first will help, although time is decidedly not on our side. Pakistan contains several enormous cities, vast dense agricultural regions, and barbarous mountain tribal zones. Its total population ranks sixth in the world at 162 million. And this basketcase of a state actually already possesses nuclear weapons and knows how to use them.
“the simplistic notion that a move to “democracy” will magically sort out Pakistan’s many problems has taken root.”
Sadly this has been our foreign policy as well. Its brought the world a Mookie Al Sadr, a murderer of US troops, as kingmaker in the Iraq govt, a democractically elected Hamas govt and plenty other assorted miseries. Nation building is and was idiotic.
They aren’t Christians....that’s why they have those problems.
Musharraf may not fit the American model of a national leader but for the moment he is better than nobody ruling Pakistan. The army is the most stable entity and apparently supports Musharraf. He has survived nine assassination attempts. With al Qaeda and the Taliban threatening to overrun Pakistan, experiments in democracy can come later.
You’re all too moderate for him :)
Britain has become a godless, spineless parody of its former self. No freedom of speech. No freedom to own firearms. A weak military that sponges off the American taxpayer for protection. A citizenry that lives in fear of little yobs with knives.
God bless the England of old. I miss it.
Did he start another Website?
I had heard that he was on another forum.
Just who do those Pakistani people think they are?Democracy? LOL,,, idiots....
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