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 30 August 2008 01:53 BST

Pakistan – a difficult year

Sunday, 18 Nov 2007 10:56
Mourners in the rubble after a bomb attack close to the Red Mosque in Islamabad

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The current political crisis in Pakistan has been brewing steadily over the past 12 months.

Meet Pervez

Pervez Musharraf has not had the most placid time in office since he first came to power eight years ago.

Ever since seizing power in a bloodless 1999 coup the general has refused to relinquish his military status. Despite becoming first 'chief executive' and then, in 2000, Pakistan's president, his administration has constantly been under pressure from those dissatisfied with his rule.

In 2002 he was even forced to pledge a planned abandonment of his military status. His subsequent reneging on this deal reinforced his unpopularity in certain quarters and Gen Musharraf has won international support only because of his enthusiasm at tackling Islamic extremism in the aftermath of 9/11.

This policy has led to its own problems, however, as many remained unhappy about his anti-militant stance.

Musharraf vs Chaudhry

Earlier this year Gen Musharraf clashed with his political archnemesis, Iftikhar Chaudhry, in a move which ultimatelyundermined the president's political potency.

On March 9th Mr Chaudhry was sacked from his post as chief justice. Rather than accepting his fate, the judge launched a campaign against his sacking which transformed into a wider protest against Gen Musharraf's military regime.

When a panel of supreme court judges voted down the dismissal by ten votes to three, Gen Musharraf had no choice but to accept the decision. The damage had already been done.

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Musharraf vs terrorism

Maintaining a hard line in the war against terror had helped Gen Musharraf ingratiate himself with the Americans in the aftermath of the September 2001 terrorist attacks.

But conflicts between security forces and militants actively supporting the Taliban in mountainous border regions like North Waziristan continued to pose a headache for the uncompromising leader.

Clashes intensified after a raid on an al-Qaida compound in early March 2006, contributing to the deaths of at least 300 militants in the 12 months to June that year.

On October 30th 2006 the Pakistani military announced that about 80 suspected Taliban sympathisers were killed in a raid on a madrassa in the border town of Chenagai, near Khar.

This did not stop Afghan president Hamid Karzai calling on Gen Musharraf's government to do more to stop the Taliban, however.

Plans to reinforce the border using landmines were unveiled last December but Kabul said the move was "neither helpful nor practical".

By August 2007 the problem had still not gone away, President Karzai calling on the Musharraf administration to wage "an effective fight against extremism and radicalism".

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Musharraf vs the US

"If we were not with you [the west], you would not manage anything," Gen Musharraf angrily told the Today programme in September 2006.

"You would be brought down to your knees if Pakistan did not cooperate with you… [If the] ISI [Pakistan's security service] is not with you, you will fail."

Although speaking about Pakistan's role in supporting anti-Soviet mujahedin fighters during the Cold War period, the president's comments said much about his frustration with Western nations over the modern-day terrorism issue.

His claims fell on deaf ears, however, as then-US intelligence chief John Negroponte announced in the new year that Pakistan was the global base for al-Qaida's recovery in the world.

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The Red Mosque and its aftermath

Events in Islamabad in July were a serious setback for Gen Musharraf's regime.

Radical Islamists holed up in the city's Red Mosque defied besieging troops for a week after their attempt to impose sharia law on the city was thwarted.

After a brief prevarication the general used military force to end a week-long siege of the mosque complex on July 11th.

The operation resulted in the deaths of over 100 people and caused the collapse of a ten-month-old ceasefire agreement with pro-Taliban extremist groups.

Around 160 are believed to have been killed in the first six weeks alone after the siege ended and the current wave of violence seems set to continue into the autumn.

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Upcoming elections

With elections looming later in the year, attention began to focus on how Gen Musharraf would go about attempting to cling on to power for a second term as president.

After declining to declare a state of emergency during a crisis period in early August, he spent much of the month engaged in secret talks with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto on a powersharing deal.

The deal appeared to collapse when Ms Bhutto insisted that Gen Musharraf finally give up his army uniform, but further deteriorations in the latter's political capital led to him conceding this point for the forthcoming presidential elections on September 17th.

Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister who was ousted in the 1999 coup that brought Gen Musharraf to power, was deported on his arrival in Pakistan. Between 200 and 2,000 activists supporting him were arrested, but he was forced back to exile in Saudi Arabia – and political impotence.

Ms Bhutto, by contrast, merely faced corruption charges and so looked a likelier candidate. She announced her intention to return on October 18th.

Click here for a summary of events in Pakistan in the autumn and winter of 2007.End of story


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