Judicial spark stifled in Pakistan

Life under house arrest described

By Kim Barker | Tribune correspondent
January 18, 2008

The judge's family has been locked in its house for more than 10 weeks. The 8-year-old son is disabled and has difficulty walking. His two teenage sisters are not allowed to go to school. Strangers often padlock the gates, and armed men roam the neighborhood.
"How mad they are," the 16-year-old daughter, Palwasha Iftikhar Chaudhry, wrote in an e-mail to a lawyer, referring to government officials who have kept the family detained.

The father, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, is the former chief justice of Pakistan, a man detained since a state of emergency was declared by President Pervez Musharraf on Nov. 3, still the object of the president's ire and watched constantly by police and the intelligence agencies.

"We are being treated as if we are militants, terrorists, extremists," said Palwasha Iftikhar Chaudhry in a rare telephone conversation from her house.
Forgotten in chaos

With the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto dominating the country's politics and headlines, the fate of the many judges fired or suspended in the emergency has faded. But many critics of Musharraf's move say a case like Bhutto's -- allegedly mishandled since her assassination Dec. 27 -- shows exactly why Pakistan so badly needs an independent judiciary.

The handpicked judges who now sit on the country's Supreme Court and provincial High Courts all signed a new oath to Musharraf after he declared emergency rule. Many legal observers believe this oath destroys the judges' independence and credibility -- especially in the investigation of Bhutto's killing, in which many Pakistanis accuse the government of complicity or even responsibility.

The Pakistan Bar Council has demanded a judicial inquiry into the assassination, led by Chaudhry. An editorial on the Bhutto probe in the respected Dawn newspaper concluded: "If the independence of the judiciary had not been compromised as a result of the extra-constitutional measures taken by President Musharraf on Nov. 3, perhaps that institution could have stepped in to bridge the credibility gap that the government so desperately needs filled today."

Although the government had wanted to name an independent judicial panel to investigate Bhutto's killing, critics say they doubt such a panel can be formed.

Critics say the country's legal system has been in tatters, the higher courts paralyzed. Of the top 96 judges in Pakistan before the emergency declaration, 44 lost their jobs because they refused to sign the oath or were not asked. Thirteen of the 18 Supreme Court judges were dismissed.

Corrupting influence

Former Supreme Court Justice Ghulam Rabbani, one of several justices allowed to leave the judges' Islamabad enclave after emergency rule ended Dec. 15, said he did not think it was possible for judges who took the new oath to Musharraf to form a neutral investigatory commission into Bhutto's death.

Many of Bhutto's supporters have accused elements of the government of being somehow responsible for the slaying after a rally for the Feb. 18 parliamentary elections.

"They are not going to appoint or nominate any judge who is going to be independent [or] anyone they have the least fear would be independent," said Anwar Zaheer Jamali, a former judge on Sindh province's High Court. "Why was normal procedure not followed [in the Bhutto case]? What was the motive? There can be no other motive but to destroy valuable evidence."

Musharraf, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, tried to fire Chaudhry first on March 12, accusing the judge of corruption. Pro-Chaudhry rallies drew hundreds of thousands of supporters, and the remaining justices threw out the government complaint and reinstated Chaudhry as chief justice in July.

Since declaring the emergency, Musharraf has made his personal animosity with Chaudhry very clear. To Western diplomats, he rails against Chaudhry, who had pursued probes into missing detainees and an earlier attack on Bhutto. At his first news conference after declaring emergency rule, the Pakistani president spent at least five minutes discussing Chaudhry and the minutiae of his expense reports.

"He demoralized law enforcement," said Musharraf at another news conference. . "He demoralized the whole nation."

The new judiciary named by Musharraf already is raising questions about its handling of cases. On Oct. 1, Chaudhry had suspended three police and administrative officials accused of beating up lawyers, journalists and other protesters at a demonstration the week before. On Jan. 3, the new Supreme Court retracted that order.

Imprisoned at home

The judges' leafy enclave of 19 homes on a hill in Islamabad, with a jogging track, a children's park and a mosque, remains locked off from the world -- security officers guarding the roads in and out. Four former Supreme Court judges are still being held under a kind of neighborhood arrest: they can leave their homes but not their neighborhood.

Chaudhry and his family are being held under house arrest in their five-room home. His daughter Palwasha, nicknamed "the commander" by lawyers helping the family on the outside, helps smuggle in mobile phones.

A phone number can usually only be used once or twice before the intelligence agencies somehow manage to scramble it, she said. She said she has read one Harry Potter book more than 20 times since the crisis started, as she has had no other books.

As she spoke, her father's voice could be heard in the background, but he refused to come to the phone. Palwasha said the call would be cut off immediately if he spoke. Even so, the line went dead three times. She said her father worried that the upcoming elections would be fraudulent without a neutral judiciary to help evaluate the fairness of the results.

"I just want to say to the international community, why aren't they being supportive of the chief justice and the other Supreme Court judges?" she asked. "They didn't do anything wrong."

Source: Chicago Tribune

Pakistan Tourism: Still Trying

By SIMON ROBINSON
Friday, Jan. 04, 2008


The Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, Pakistan, one of the country's most beautiful destinations.
(Charles Bowman / Alamy)









The young man at the airport approached me with a nervous smile and a hint of hesitation. He was from the Ministry of Tourism, he explained. Would I be so kind as to fill out a survey on my stay in Pakistan? The previous week had been eventful, to say the least. I had landed in Lahore on Thursday, Dec 27. As I left the airport for my hotel my cell phone pinged with an SMS from my wife: "Bhutto dead in Rawalpindi blast." The following few days are a bit of a blur, and then on New Year's Eve I fell sick with some intestinal bug that took two days to beat. "I'm not sure I'm the best person to help you," I told the man. But he insisted, and so I was soon filling out the three-page form, which mixed statistics gathering (nationality, places I visited, number of nights I spent in hotels) with questions like "During your stay which features did you like most?"

The hardest two questions came at the end. "Would you please like to identify the problems you faced during the trip?" the first of them asked. "You want me to be truthful?" I asked the survey man, who hovered over me to make sure I didn't skip any questions. "Of course," he said, smiling. "Information will help us improve. We need to hear the truth."

The truth is Pakistan could be — should be — an incredible tourist destination. It offers wonderful Mughal ruins, evocative British colonial architecture, world-class hiking and climbing in the Karakoram Mountains, gorgeous rolling green meadows, captivating culture, great food (especially the fruits and kebabs), and some of the best carpet shops in South Asia. Unfortunately, it is also regularly described as the world's most dangerous country — which, while more intriguing than slogans like "Malaysia, Truly Asia" or "I Feel Slovenia," is not exactly an inducement for people to visit.

It's not like Pakistan's tourism ministry hasn't been trying. The survey I was filling out is part of a two-year-long project that will wrap up this year. Pakistan has a great tourism website. And the country even decided to make last year "Destination Pakistan 2007." But there's the rub. Last year was one of the most troubled in Pakistan's history. Terrorist attacks became a weekly, sometimes daily, occurrence. President Pervez Musharraf threw out the Supreme Court Chief Justice triggering massive street protests. The Swat Valley, a picturesque tourist spot renowned for its skiing and trout fishing, is now, as my colleague Aryn Baker so vividly described just two months ago, Taliban Central. And to end the year, the leading opposition figure was assassinated.

Even the most beautiful country in the world is going to struggle to air its charms with all that going on. The problems I faced during my trip? "Rioting, looting, burning of shops and tires along roads, shooting, general chaos, mayhem and insecurity — and a very bad stomach ailment," I wrote. I looked up and saw that the survey man, who was waiting patiently for me to finish the forms, was no longer smiling.

The next question read: "Would you please like to give suggestions for improving tourist facilities in Pakistan?" "How do you think I should answer this?" I asked the man, "Pakistan has so many troubles it's not fair to complain about particular tourist facilities." He shook his head and agreed that there had been a lot of unrest. "It's only 10% or 20% of the people," he said. "The rest of us are very welcoming." I nodded in agreement — Pakistanis are indeed warm, hospitable and generous — and lamented that he had a tough job. He nodded: "It's a struggle."

We both looked at the last question again and talked a bit more about what might help. Then, with a smile from my new friend, I wrote in: "Democracy and Stability." Easy to write, of course. Harder to make real.

Source: TIME

Save Judiciary Save Pakistan

E ILAHI

I received the original poster about the deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry from the Emergency Mailing List. I read and liked it and as it was originally in Urdu decided to translate it into English so that people who do not know Urdu, can also understand what it is about.

English [translated] version:

click to enlarge the poster

Urdu [original] version:

click to enlarge the poster

More Suicide Bombers Head to Twin Cities

Security has been red alerted in Islamabad and Rawalpindi in view of information of 7 suicide bombers entering the twin cities, said the Interior Ministry sources.

The police authorities have been informed in writing about the intelligence agencies information that 7 suicide attackers had entered the twin city, sources said.

They have been directed to step up security at all the important places and people.

The police have started to chalk out a fresh security plan while monitoring is being carried out at sensitive places besides strict watch is being maintained for suspected individuals.

Source: Geo News

Bhutto Scene Analysis by a Former Secret Service Agent [CNN]

Bhutto Assassination

December 29, 2007

GWYNNE DYER

Benazir Bhutto did five years of hard time in prison, much of it in solitary confinement, after her father, prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was overthrown and hanged by the worst of Pakistan's military dictators, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.

But she was a woman who liked her privileges and her luxuries, and she was never a very effective politician.

I got to know Benazir Bhutto a bit in the mid-1970s, when she had finished her degree at Harvard and was doing graduate work at Oxford University. She actually spent much of her time in London, in a grand flat she kept just off Hyde Park.

If you knew a lot of people in town who took an interest in Middle Eastern and subcontinental affairs (I had been studying at the School of Oriental and African Studies), and you weren't too old or too boring, you were likely to end up at her flat once in a while, at what some would call a salon, but I would call a party.

A fairly decorous party as those things went in '70s London, to be sure, with everybody showing off their sophisticated knowledge of the region's politics and nobody getting out of hand, but definitely a party.

The hostess was well informed and quite clever, and she obviously had money coming out of her ears.

We knew her dad had been prime minister of Pakistan before Zia overthrew him, of course, but she was neither a serious scholar nor a budding politician.

She seemed more American than Pakistani in her style and attitudes, but beneath the Radcliffe and Harvard veneer she also seemed like thousands of other young upper-class women from Pakistan and India who were floating around London at the time. They called one another by girlish nicknames like "Bubbles," they didn't take anything very seriously (including their studies), and they seemed destined for a life of idle privilege.

Then Benazir Bhutto went back to Pakistan in 1977, just about the time that Zia had her father sentenced to death in a rigged trial.

He was hanged in 1979, and Benazir was thrown into jail for five years.

But when she came out after Zia died, she was already the head of the party her father had founded, the Pakistan People's Party, and by 1988 she was prime minister.

She was only 35.

She was prime minister twice, from 1988-90 and 1993-96, and was removed from power both times on corruption charges.

The charges have never been proved in court, but the evidence of kickbacks and commissions, especially to her husband, Asif Zardari, whom she foolishly made investment minister, is pretty overwhelming. But that was not the real problem.

The problem was that she never seemed to have any goal in politics, apart from vindicating her father by leading his party back to power.

At the start she was hugely popular, but she wasted her opportunity to make real changes in Pakistan because she had no notion (beyond the usual rhetoric) of what a better Pakistan would look like. Pakistan is already pretty good for her sort of people, so it should not surprise us that there was almost nothing to show for her years in office.

If she had become prime minister again, which was a quite likely outcome of the current crisis, there is no reason to believe that she would have done any better this time. Her assassination just makes it harder to solve the crisis at all.

Benazir Bhutto's party, the PPP, has no alternative leader with national visibility. The other major opposition party leader, Nawaz Sharif, is equally compromised by his past failures, and is currently planning to boycott the elections scheduled for Jan. 8.

Ex-general Pervez Musharraf, who had himself "re-elected" president in October and imposed emergency rule in order to dismiss the Supreme Court judges who would have ruled his "election" illegal, is totally discredited and unlikely to last much longer.

The most probable outcome is a new period of military rule under a different ruler, simply for lack of a good alternative. It is pathetic that a country the size of Pakistan should have so few inspiring or even promising candidates for high political office.

The vast majority of Pakistan's politicians, and of the people who run pretty well everything else in the country apart from the armed forces, are drawn from the 3 or 4 per cent of the population who constitute the country's traditional elite.

It is a very shallow pool of talent, made up of people who have a big stake in the status quo and a huge sense of entitlement.

Look east to India, west to Iran, or north to China and, by comparison, Pakistan's political demography is absolutely feudal.

So long as that remains the case, it is absurd to imagine that democracy will solve Pakistan's problems.

I admired Benazir Bhutto's courage and I am very sorry that she was killed, but she could never have been Pakistan's saviour.

*Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

Source: The Spec

Pakistan Polls Likely to be Delayed

[Election Commission spokesman Kanwar Dilshad has just announced that the date of the poll will be decided on Wednesday, after consultations with all the political parties]

Parliamentary elections are set to be postponed for weeks in the wake of Benazir Bhutto's assassination, Pakistani officials said Monday.

A senior government official said that he expected a six-week delay in the elections now slated for Jan. 8, despite calls from Bhutto's party, other opposition politicians and world leaders for the polls to be held on time. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the information.

Election Commission Secretary Kanwar Dilashad told reporters that a decision on the timing would be announced on Tuesday, but a recommendation "has been sent to the government for a delay." The opposition has accused the commission of favoring President Pervez Musharraf's backers

"We will make an announcement on Tuesday morning," election commission spokesman Kanwar Dilshad told AFP. He declined to give the length of the delay, which was confirmed by three senior officials.

A cabinet official said it would be at least a month, after election offices were ransacked and voter lists burnt in the wave of unrest that shook Pakistan following Bhutto's killing.

"Certainly it will be pushed back for at least four weeks if not more," the official said.

Separately, a government official told AFP: "It is out of the question that the elections will be held on January 8 because of the widespread unrest that has directly affected election staff and vote preparations."

An official on the election commission, which held an emergency meeting on Monday in the capital Islamabad, said: "No doubt, the elections are going to be delayed."

Meanwhile, the government says the country suffered colossal damage in the turmoil following Ms Bhutto's death.

A cabinet meeting was told that losses to the railway system alone amounted to about $200m (£100m), with carriages and locomotives destroyed and signals damaged.

The ruling PML-Q party has said the 8 January vote should be delayed for several weeks, on the grounds that the vote would "lose credibility" if held under current conditions.

But the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) - now led by Ms Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari and his son, Bilawal - says it wants the elections to go ahead as planned.

The BBC's Chris Morris in Islamabad says the PPP wants elections as soon as possible, in order to take advantage of what could be a big sympathy vote.

The other main opposition party, led by Nawaz Sharif, has said that it is also in favour of holding the elections on 8 January, after dropping plans for a boycott and calling for a national unity government.

Foreign election monitors cautioned, however, that a full observation mission would be impossible if the polls went ahead next week because the unrest had caused them to delay preparations.

"We cannot follow our standard methods if the date stays Jan. 8," said Mathias Eick, a spokesman for the European Union-led mission, saying the best it could manage was a limited assessment.

The political uncertainty caused the stock markets to tumble on the first day of trading since the killing. The benchmark Karachi Stock Exchange's 100-share index plunged 694.92 points, or 4.7 percent, to 14,077.16 in its biggest single-day loss in points and percentage, while the rupee hit a six-year low.

Watch BBC News video of the Aftermath of the Protests in Sindh that could Delay the Elections [CLICK HERE]

Sources: Reuters, AP, AFP, BBC News

Doctor relives father's fate after Bhutto attack

Sun Dec 30, 2007

By Kamran Haider

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A grim twist of fate saw Pakistani doctor Mussadiq Khan struggling to save the life of a Pakistani leader struck down by an assassin, just as Khan's father had done 56 years ago.

Khan battled in vain to save the life of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto when she was brought to his hospital in Rawlapindi on Thursday following a gun and bomb attack as she left an election rally at a city park.

Khan's doctor father, Sadiq Khan, was on duty at his Rawalpindi hospital in October 1951 when Pakistan's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was brought in after he was gunned down at a rally in the same park where Bhutto was attacked.

Liaquat Ali Khan was also killed and the park was later named Liaquat Bagh after him. Bagh means garden in Urdu.

"It's God's will," Khan told Reuters when asked about the coincidence of father and son attending to two Pakistani leaders attacked in the same place.

Khan said Bhutto was almost dead when she was brought in.

"She was not breathing. She had no blood pressure, no heartbeat. We did a full resuscitation. We worked hard but unfortunately we could not revive her."

"I did my best but I didn't succeed. What can I say? ... She was a great leader. She was our leader."

Khan's two sons are also doctors. He hopes there will be no more coincidences: "God forbid it doesn't happen to them."

* Dr. Mussadiq Khan is also the Principal of Rawalpindi Medical College

Source: Reuters