Kafr al-Hanadwa

OK, so Gary Sick was right. That stomach-turning lowlife suit-wearing Ataturk Mubarak-wannabe Panjucrat Musharraf has gone ahead and declared a state of emergency and thrown his Chief Justice in jail, imposed martial law and shut down TV stations, dispensing with the appearances required by his American handlers - who are, of course, responding in the finest hand-wringing tradition:

The United States has given Pakistan more than $10 billion in aid, mostly to the military, since 2001. Now, if the state of emergency drags on, the administration will be faced with the difficult decision of whether to cut off that aid and risk undermining Pakistan’s efforts to pursue terrorists — a move the White House believes could endanger the security of the United States.

Adm. William J. Fallon, the senior American military commander in the Middle East, told General Musharraf and his top generals in Islamabad on Friday that he would put that aid at risk if he seized emergency powers.

But after the declaration on Saturday, there was no immediate action by the administration to accompany the tough talk, as officials monitored developments in Pakistan. Inside the White House the hope is that the state of emergency will be short-lived and that General Musharraf will fulfill his promise to abandon his post as Army chief of staff and hold elections by Jan. 15.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, traveling in the Middle East, called Mr. Musharraf’s move “highly regrettable,” while her spokesman, Sean D. McCormack, said the United States was “deeply disturbed.”

Teresita Schaffer, an expert on Pakistan at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, called General Musharraf’s action “a big embarrassment” for the administration. But she said there was not much the United States could do.

“There’s going to be a lot of visible wringing of hands, and urging Musharraf to declare his intentions,” she said. “But I don’t really see any alternative to continuing to work with him. They can’t just decide they’re going to blow off the whole country of Pakistan, because it sits right next to Afghanistan, where there are some 26,000 U.S. and NATO troops.”

The hand-wringing began even before General Musharraf imposed military rule. Ms. Rice said she has had several conversations with General Musharraf in the past few weeks — the last one two days ago — in which she appealed to him not to declare emergency powers. The American ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, had also been exhorting General Musharraf and his top deputies against making that step, Ms. Rice said.

“We were clear that we did not support it,” Ms. Rice said, speaking to reporters aboard a flight from Istanbul to Israel, where she is traveling for regional talks. “We were clear that we didn’t support it because it would take Pakistan away from the path of democratic rule.”

But even as she criticized General Musharraf’s power grab, Ms. Rice stopped short of outright condemnation of General Musharraf himself, even going so far as to credit him for doing “a lot” — in the past — toward preparing Pakistan for what she called a “path to democratic rule.”

As someone who came of age during the Cold War and should have absorbed some lessons from the US policy of supporting the convenient dictator against the menace du jour, you’d think Rice would have grown a pair - of frontal lobes.

Updates: Opposition party leaders have been arrested, predictably, but so has the chair of the Human Rights Commission, Asma Jehangir, presumably a turrrst-sympathiser merely posing as a firebrand, short-haired liberal female lawyer. In the finest old Pakistani military-dictator tradition, Musharraf is saying he will hold new elections soon, while BB makes ineffectual whimpering noises of protest after having run off safely to Dubai.

Further updates: I didn’t have the stomach to watch Musharraf’s speech myself, but here is a transcript/translation of the Urdu and English speeches. Do observe the rhetorical strategies in Urdu and in English, above and beyond the Orwellian nonsense about imposing dictatorship to save democracy that pervades the whole. Here’s the Panju speaking:

How is the government functioning? In my view, it is in semi-paralysis, stricken. All of the senior representatives of the government are constantly going to the courts - especially to the Supreme Court. They are being giving sentences. They are being shamed publicly in the courts. Hence, they don’t want to take any more decisions.

[...]

I am getting phone calls from everywhere … my own acquaintances, private, from outside the country, from inside the country, asking, “What is going on?” I am being taunted, “What are you doing?” They are taunting me that I was the decision maker, “What happened to you now? Why can’t you decide now?” I have listened to these taunts in silence, and watched in disbelief what has been happening to Pakistan, in Pakistan.

[...]

We saw the event of Lal Masjid in Islamabad where extremists took law into their own hands. In the heart of Pakistan - capital city - and to the great embarrassment of the nation around the world. Only I know how much shame that brought on us. We, who are such a great power, cannot control our own capital - where people are able to form a state within a state. Our image suffered tremendously. Our stature. Our standing was affected. These people - what didn’t they do? - these extremists. They martyred police. They took police hostage. They burned shops. The Chinese, who are such great friends of ours - they took the Chinese hostage and tortured them. Because of this, I was personally embarrassed. I had to go apologize to the Chinese leaders, “I am ashamed that you are such great friends and this happened to you”. And then they burned down the ministry’s building and torched their cars. What are we to do in this condition? We were publicly humiliated for months and people kept saying we were not taking action. But I was not taking action because I wanted to save lives not take lives. So then, as a last resort, when we did take action, I commend all of the law enforcement agencies that they acted against this humiliation, this embarrassment against us and finished it.

And here’s the Friendly Neighbourhood Dictator trying to push American buttons:

To the critics and idealists against this action, I say please do not accept or demand your level of democracy which you learned over a number of centuries. We are also trying to learn, and we are doing well. Please give us time. Please also do not demand and expect your level of civil rights, human rights, civil liberties which you learned over the centuries. We are trying to learn. And we are doing well also. Please give us time.

I would, at this time, venture to read out an excerpt of President Abraham Lincoln, specially to all my listeners in United States. As an idealist, Abraham Lincoln had one consuming passion during that time of supreme crisis and that was to preserve the Union - because the Union was in danger. Towards that end, he broke laws, he violated the Constitution, he usurped arbitrary powers, he trampled individual liberties, his justification was necessity. Explaining his sweeping violations of Constitutional limits, he wrote in a letter in 1864, and I quote,
“My oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensabale means, that government — that nation — of which that constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it.”

End quote. We are also learning democracy. We are going through a difficult stage. It is the nation which is important.