-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Pakistan: Taliban Grip SwatValley, Musharraf's Claim of "Judicial
Activism"
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
IPS News - Nov 3, 23007
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39916
Pro-Taliban Militants Grip Swat Valley, Defy Army
By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Nov 3 (IPS) - Violence has escalated this week in Swat, a
high valley in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) bordering
Afghanistan, where a tenuous ceasefire was broken by brazen attacks on
government targets by pro-Taliban militants.
The resumption of hostilities prompted more people to flee their homes
and move to safe places.
The two-day-old ceasefire collapsed on Oct. 31 when security forces
used helicopter gun****ps against militant hideouts after a spate of
violent incidents including rocket attacks on a police post in Kabbal
and the camp of the Frontier Reserve police in Saidu Sharif, the
district capital.
A day later, 48 security personnel were taken hostage in Swat, where
armed clashes have left more than 150 people dead since last week. On
Friday the soldiers were paraded before the media before being released.
The security personnel had surrendered after militants in the
Khwazakhela area in Swat ambushed them on Nov. 1. They were held in
Charbagh, a stronghold of the radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah.
The government had deployed thousands of additional troops on Oct. 24
to regain control of 59 villages from the pro-Taliban Maulana
Fazlullah, son-in-law of the jailed leader of the
Tehreek-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat who has declared jihad on the authorities.
Maulana Fazlullah, who preaches over his own FM radio station, has
mobilised some 4,000 volunteers in an armed wing called Shaheen Force,
and established courts. Three persons were lashed in public on Oct. 12
for their role in the abduction of a woman.
"A huge crowd witnessed the la****ng and were full of praise for the
clerics quick dispensation of justice. People are extremely fed up
with the state-run judicial system," said a local journalist,
Hameedullah Khan.
There is a complete ban on music, Internet cafes and CD shops in Swat.
Maulana Fazlullah set 15 CD shops on fire before Ramazan after paying
the owners, 2,000 dollars each. The radical cleric has even changed
names of places that he has deemed un-Islamic. Schools in Swat,
especially for girls, have been closed. In August, the principal of a
paramedical institute was killed in a bomb attack on his vehicle for
failing to stop teaching female students.
With a population of roughly one million, picturesque Swat was a major
tourist destination for westerners before the breakdown of law and
order. There were more than 300 bomb blasts in the NWFP, a third of
these in Swat, during the Muslim holy month of Ramazan or Ramadan.
In a chilling reminder of the shameful dynamiting of the centuries-old
Buddha statues in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, by the Taliban in March 2001,
militants twice attempted to demolish a Buddha statue carved into the
mountainside in Swat, in September.
According to eyewitnesses, local armed militant sup****ters of Maulana
Fazlullah attacked the 7th century statue in the small village of
Jihanabad. The seven metre high statue of the Buddha, in a meditative
pose, is widely recognised as the most complete and inspiring symbol of
Gandhara art.
The statue was built around the 2nd century, during the Gandhara
civilisation, which flourished in that part of Pakistan from the 6th
century B.C. to the 11th century A.D., according to Prof. Fidaullah
Sehrai, an expert on Buddhist archaeology and former director of the
Peshawar Museum.
"We fear that while the statue has survived (the second attack in 20
days), the next time more powerful explosives could be used to complete
the destruction of what the militants say are ~symbols of evil if the
government does not take steps to protect these national monuments,"
commented archaeologist Zainul Wahab.
A police official at the closest police station said: "Due to the
precarious law and order situation in the area we are confined to the
police station and could not go to the place."
Historians and citizens groups have urged the government to protect
Pakistans ancient past from 21st century vandals.
Sehrai told IPS: "The Butkarra ruins, Chakdara museum and Takht-i-Bahi
ruins are particularly vulnerable and must be protected from any
possible targeting by religious zealots."
Swat was a centre of Buddhism in ancient times. According to
historians, its ancient name was Udhyana, which can be loosely
translated as a land of gardens. Once the most holy land for Buddhists
after Bodh Gaya, there are several rock carvings from the 5th and 6th
centuries on the road from Charsadda to Chilas districts in Pakistan's
Northern Areas.
The influence of pro-Taliban groups has spilt over into NWFP from the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which became a safe haven
for the Taliban after the dismissal of their government in Kabul by
United States-led forces in end-2001.
Pakistan has massed troops along the 2,400-km ****ous border with
Afghanistan to check cross border movement of the Taliban and al Qaeda
operatives, but militancy has engulfed many areas.
(END/2007)
***
IPS News - Nov 3, 2007
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39917
'Judicial Activism' Triggered Emergency
Analysis by Beena Sarwar
KARACHI, Nov 3 (IPS) - By taking a stand on crucial constitutional
issues, implicit in cases before it, the Pakistan Supreme Court may
have raised the political temperature to a point where, in order to
remain in power, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf felt compelled to
declare emergency on Saturday.
Rumours of an emergency had been persisting for several days, but on
Saturday evening private television news channels were taken off the
air and the state-run Pakistan Television (PTV) announced: ~'The Chief
of the Army Staff (Musharraf) has proclaimed state of emergency and
issued provisional constitutional order (PCO).
According to various sources, judges of the higher judiciary were asked
to take a new oath under the provisional constitutional order (PCO) --
which a bench of the Supreme Court bench rejected.
The court ruled that no judge and chief justice of the Supreme Court
and High Courts could take oath under the PCO and that no civil and
military officials could abide by any order of a government that went
against the constitution or the law. The prime minister and the
president were made parties in the ruling.
Soon afterwards, troops entered the Supreme Court building and
'escorted' Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry out, his services
~terminated. The president of the Pakistan Supreme Court Bar
Association (SCBA) Aitzaz Ahsan and other members of the influential
lawyers body were also arrested.
The PCO, read out on PTV, squarely blamed the judiciary for the
imposition of emergency rule and accused it of interfering with the
fight against Islamist militancy. "Some members of the judiciary are
working at cross purposes with the executive and legislature in the
fight against terrorism and extremism, thereby weakening the government
and the nation's resolve and diluting the efficacy of its action to
control this menace, the order said.
But this only reinforced the general impression that the emergency had
been declared in order to keep Musharraf in power. Talking to
television channels on a mobile phone, from the restroom of the police
station where he was detained, Ahsan termed the emergency and the
suspension of the Constitution ~illegal.
The Supreme Court is seized of a slew of petitions likely to have
far-reaching implications on Pakistani politics -- including the
validity of Musharraf holding the dual offices of president and army
chief. Musharrafs term as president expires on Nov. 15.
After Musharraf pledged to quit the army, before starting a new
presidential term, the court in a short order dismissed these petitions
as "not maintainable" and allowed the presidential elections to be held
on Oct 6 as scheduled -- although the results could not be announced
until the final verdict. This in effect allowed Musharraf to contest
the presidential elections while remaining army chief.
The final verdict has been expected for some time, but the hearings
kept getting delayed. "This is not a matter that should take so many
days," said eminent jurist and former High Court judge Fakhruddin G.
Ebrahim, talking to IPS on Friday.
The delay has been attributed to the great pressure the judges were
obviously under. Musharrafs refusal to say whether he would accept a
negative verdict from the court also fuelled rumours of emergency rule
or martial law. "Musharraf is behaving like a bad loser as the decision
was not going to be in his favour," said Ahsan.
Until about a year ago, ~judicial activism in Pakistan was largely
limited to taking notice of human rights cases involving, for example,
violence against women. But in terms of politics, this activism
traditionally validated undemocratic actions rather than striking them
down, commented Anwar Syed, professor emeritus of political science at
the University of Massachusetts, United States.
The military has staged several coups, seized the government, abrogated
the Constitution or put it in abeyance (1958, 1977 and 1999). In
addition, various presidents dismissed the National Assembly (1988,
1990, 1993, and 1996). The judiciary validated these situations by
invoking the ~doctrine of necessity, which was not a part of the law,
but "a rationale for evading or defeating the law. Resort to it is,
therefore, clearly an exercise in judicial activism," commented Syed.
Democracy advocates argue that this doctrine should be buried and the
judiciary under Chaudhry appeared inclined to agree.
The Supreme Court has been playing an increasingly pro-active role over
the last year, starting with the cases of enforced disappearances that
have been rising alarmingly since Pakistan became a partner in the
U.S.-led ~war on terror. The media has been sup****tive to this process.
In July 2006, Pakistani journalists working for the BBC Urdu service
initiated a ground-breaking special debate on Pakistans ~disappeared.
Held in the capital Islamabad, the debate included several government
officials and families of the disappeared.
"In effect, this broke the silence around the issue," said Mazhar
Zaidi, a producer with the BBC in London who was involved in organising
the event. "Once a powerful international media organisation takes
notice of something, local journalists feel safer taking it on." The
local media had held back due to fear of the powerful intelligence
agencies that were behind most of these disappearances.
The greater openness generated public awareness and facilitated
collective action by the families. When two of the affected families
filed a petition in Aug. 2006, seeking information on 41 missing
persons, the Supreme Court took the matter seriously. Many individual
petitions were also filed. The independent Human Rights Commission of
Pakistan in February 2007 filed a joint petition seeking information on
150 missing persons.
The courts pro-active stance shook up the intelligence agencies and
led to the production of several missing persons in court.
"The Chief Justice took an excellent stand in the missing persons
case," said lawyer Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim. "Every time a person was
found, the court said this is not good enough. When was this person
picked up and why? They were pu****ng for accountability."
Political analysts speculate that this contributed to Musharrafs
decision to ~suspend Choudhry in March this year.
But this, in turn, catalysed a four-month-long ~lawyers movement that
came to symbolise Pakistans long struggle between constitutionality
and military rule. The stand-off ended in July when a full bench of the
Supreme Court reinstated Choudhry. The court then returned to the cases
of the disappeared with renewed zeal.
Another case that analysts saw as forcing Musharrafs hand relates to
exiled, twice-elected, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif who has filed
a petition on the question of his right to return and participate in
politics.
The Supreme Court upheld his plea on Aug. 23. When the government
bundled the Pakistan Muslim League party leader back to Saudi Arabia
within hours of his landing in Islamabad on Sep. 10, his lawyers
promptly filed a contempt case against a long list of respondents for
violating the court verdict.
The hearings soon falsified the governments claims that Sharif had
left ~voluntarily, bound by his ~agreement with the Musharraf
government soon after the military coup of 1999. As the truth began to
unravel, Sharifs unceremonious departure emerged as part of a
long-standing plan initiated at the highest level.
The apex court was also reviewing a petition regarding the National
Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) that President Gen. Musharraf
promulgated on Oct. 5 a day before the presidential elections. The NRO
cleared the way for another former twice-elected prime minister,
Benazir Bhutto, to return to Pakistan without being arrested for the
corruption charges she faced after being ousted from power in 1996.
Bhutto has been criticized for this ~deal, in exchange for which her
Pakistan Peoples Party legitimised Musharrafs presidential candidacy
by abstaining from the vote. The opposition boycotted the proceedings
in protest at Musharrafs nomination as President while still army
chief.
Another case relating to fundamental rights was that of police
brutality on lawyers and journalists outside the office of the Election
Commission in Islamabad when the presidential nomination papers were
being filed on Sep. 29. The main TV channels broadcast the beatings in
graphic detail. The courts suo moto notice of the incident resulted in
the suspension of the top police officers involved.
*
=================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
Our main website: http://www.blythe.org
List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/
Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr
=================================================================
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (FreeBSD)
iD8DBQFHLezoiz2i76ou9wQRAoEdAKC7/2J21kho+7xkUHbOR0/KvtcnRwCgrFYO
cw1v/wqq16xG5cRCw76IRM4=
=IyLi
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
|
