Ayesha Siddiqa
OPEN DEMOCRACY
24 September 2008
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/pakistan-a-country-on-fire
The rubble of the
Ayesha Siddiqa is an independent political and defence analyst. She is the author of Military Inc: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy is published by Pluto Press (15 April 2007)
The bombing of the Marriott Hotel in
In assessing the country's predicament at this critical juncture, three elements that often fail to get the attention they deserve need to be borne in mind: the role of Washington and the way it is perceived by Pakistanis; the distinction between the country's ostensible (or political) government and its real (or shadow) one; and the role of class and its changing dynamics in Pakistan's economy and society.
A disunited nation
When the newly elected president of Pakistani, Asif Ali Zardari, made his maiden speech before the joint session of parliament on 20 September 2008, many Pakistanis thought that the country would at last begin to stabilise. The 53-year-old widower of the Pakistan People's Party uncontested leader Benazir Bhutto - who was assassinated on 27 December 2007 - might carry with him a questionable reputation, but the support he received during the election process gave him at least the plausible appearance of a unifying figure.
The feeling didn't last long. Within a few hours of the speech in which Zardari, successor to Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan's hot-seat, promised the nation he would fight terrorism and uphold the country's sovereignty - the Pakistani capital was struck by one of the most destructive urban terrorist attacks in the country's history.The bomb-blast outside the five-star, five-storey Marriott hotel - which was frequented by diplomats, foreigners and affluent Pakistanis - left also a huge crater as a mark of its scale (see Beena Sarwar, "The Marriott Bombing: 'Pakistan's 9/11'?", Chowk, 22 September 2008).
A matter of equal concern was that the terrorist attack had taken place a mile away from the presidential palace where the just-installed president was hosting a party for the top leadership of the country, including the military.
The event, profoundly shocking and depressing in itself, also raises questions about
The bombing of 20 September thus has divided the nation at the very time it most needs unity in response to the terrorist threat. This disunity, if it continues, will make it even harder for the new civilian regime to continue the struggle to maintain and enlarge democracy in
The real and the shadow
The majority of the dead in the
Many diplomats - stunned especially by the death in the blast of the Czech ambassador Ivo Zdarek - are now thinking of relocating their families, and foreign missions have generally warned their staff and nationals to avoid hotels and public places. The government's bizarre explanation for the blast, meanwhile, shows it to have little confidence in the people. The interior minister Rehman Malik, who is seen as one of Zardari's favoured colleagues, tried to deflect claims that the target was the American marines staying in the hotel; on 22 September he declared that Pakistan's political leadership had planned to meet for dinner at the hotel, but that the security agencies had received a tip-off about a possible attack on the venue, and had acted quickly to avert this.
The evidence proves otherwise. The owner of the hotel said that the government had made no such original booking. But the sequence of statements raises fresh questions about the veracity of Rehman Malik's claim, as well as more general concerns about why enough had not been done to protect a place that was home to many foreigners and had already been attacked.
What is worse is that Zardari left the country for his trip to the
But with every passing day the division between the "political" government and the "invisible" government - which includes the military - seems to increase. While Zardari chose to follow his schedule of visitng the
There is a difference of opinion within the state regarding which is the larger at threat: domestic terrorism or the
A third option
It is a matter of concern that the
Those involved in small or medium-sized businesses in the urban areas of
Things become even more complex in the lack of understanding of the need to reform the education system, including the madrasas. The international aid agencies and governments must shoulder the responsibility for skewed thinking here. The present-day seminaries are different from what such schools were like in the past. Today, they produce ideological zealots who are more likely to be reinforced in their beliefs than re-educated by the sort of madrasa reform projects sponsored by the
The present crisis is far more serious than any
This effort to create a domestic coalition that can address such acts of terror should be part of a larger agenda to reach out to the rest of the world - including
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