Every major city
in Pakistan’s Punjab is now under lockdown, and everyone
in Pakistan may soon be, as President General Pervez Musharraf
tries to contain the violent riots that began as protests against
those Danish cartoons. Demonstrators wrecked much of the middle
of Lahore in actions which peaked on Tuesday, but which local
reporters believe may peak again. In addition to such brand-name
Western targets as Citibank, KFC, McDonalds, and a Norwegian cellphone
company, they set fires in hotels, cinemas, and the Punjabi provincial
assembly. This last is the clue that anti-Danish sentiment was
merely an excuse to get people onto the streets.
Similar targets were
struck in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, and Multan. Karachi
was also partially alight, though it is harder to distinguish
one riot from another there. Only towards the end of the week
was the main highway into Karachi blockaded by nominally anti-Danish
fanatics.
For the tense moment,
mounted police are parading through the warmer parts of several
of these cities -- in the time-honoured British Imperial tradition
-- and the most incendiary imams are under house arrest, to prevent
their preaching in the mosques. Especially, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed
of Lahore is being watched, one of several potential “Mullah
Omars” who has generously offered himself to be Pakistan’s
first “Taliban” president, should Gen. Musharraf lose
his footing.
On the other hand,
Maulana Yousaf Qureshi, a cleric in Peshawar, was still free and
speaking to the media, the last I heard. He is one of several
leaders across the Muslim world who have offered rewards of $1
million U.S. and up (plus “a new car” in Qureshi’s
case) to anyone who can kill a Danish cartoonist. No expiry on
that offer, and it appears any Danish cartoonist will do.
A visit from President
Bush is impending. At the moment it is going forward, but at the
moment one also wonders if Pakistan’s government can cope.
It would be unedifying to watch the body parts of a President
of the United States being waved about in fanatic crowds, the
way they do with dead Israelis in Gaza.
Westerners complain
that Gen. Musharraf has not done enough to eliminate terrorist
encampments in Pakistan’s North West Frontier (infiltrating
Afghanistan), and Kashmir (trying to infiltrate India). But among
the triggers for the present round of riots, quite apart from
the Danish cartoons, were recent successes in ambushing leading
Al Qaeda figures -- who, it must be understood, are folk heroes
to several million graduates of Pakistan’s Saudi-financed
madrassahs. Gen. Musharraf himself would love to drain the odd
swamp; but they are filling faster than anyone can drain them.
Moreover, he must be sceptical of the allegiance of many of his
senior officers, who have publicly stated “Islamist”
views.
His army is anyway
distracted by what amounts to a general rebellion in Pakistan’s
Baluch territories of the southwest. (The Baluchs also wander
through the deserts of south-eastern Iran, and southern Afghanistan.)
Though sparsely inhabited, it is the region where most of Pakistan’s
natural resources lie, including uranium, copper, natural gas,
and untapped oil fields both off and onshore. A unified force
of some tens of thousands of Baluch tribesmen, enjoying nearly
unlimited financial support and weapons smuggling from various
Gulf states, is keeping a larger number of Pakistani troops tied
down.
This is a problem
which India is constantly tempted to exacerbate, to improve its
negotiating position over Kashmir. Baluch and Sindhi leaders (the
Sindh being the province that surrounds Karachi) have been so
indiscreet as to appeal for Indian help in liberating them from
Pakistan’s mostly Punjabi rulers. And Hindu nationalist
politicians in India have sometimes mused aloud about how the
“problem as a whole” could be solved, if the Indian
army were to divide Pakistan into five or more ethnic states,
each attached by treaty to India on the analogy of Indian-occupied
Kashmir.
Gen. Musharraf presides,
tenuously, over the large Muslim country that is most likely to
suffer the next political meltdown. He has no choice but to govern
with increasing ruthlessness. Various human rights intercessions
from NGOs in the West are a long distance wide of the point.
If Pakistan falls,
it will be into the hands of Punjabi and Pushtoon religious fanatics.
If that happens, Baluchistan and the Sindh will break free. India
will be drawn into the heart of the chaos. A war will follow,
in which nuclear weapons might well be used. That’s why,
for all his occasionally murderous duplicity, we should all be
cheering for General “Mush".
Copyright
2006 Ottawa Citizen
