muzammilkhan
FULL MEMBER
New Recruit
- Joined
- May 29, 2012
- Messages
- 54
- Reaction score
- 0
TO ENTER the office where Asif Ali Zardari, the president of Pakistan, conducts his business, you head down a long corridor toward two wax statues of exceptionally tall soldiers, each in a long, white tunic with a glittering column of buttons. On closer inspection, these turn out to be actual humans who have been trained in the arts of immobility. The office they guard, though large, is not especially opulent or stupefying by the standards of such places. President Zardari met me just inside the doorway, then seated himself facing a widescreen TV displaying an image of fish swimming in a deep blue sea. His party spokesman, Farhatullah Babar, and his presidential spokesman, Farahnaz Ispahani, sat facing him, almost as rigid as the soldiers. Zardari is famous for straying off message and saying odd things or jumbling facts and figures. He is also famous for blaming his aides when things go wrong and things have been going wrong quite a lot lately. Zardaris aides didnt want him to talk to me. Now they were tensely waiting for a mishap.
The president himself, natty in a navy suit, his black hair brilliantined to a sheen, was the very picture of ease. Zardari beamed when we talked about New York, where he often lived between 2004, when he was released from prison after eight years, and late 2007, when he returned to Pakistan not long after his wife, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated by terrorists. For all that painful recent history, Zardari is a suave and charming man with a sly grin, and he gives the impression of thoroughly enjoying what must be among the worlds least desirable jobs. Zardari had just been through the most dangerous weeks of his six months in office. He dissolved the government in Punjab, Pakistans dominant state, and called out the police to stop the countrys lawyers and leading opposition party from holding a long march to demand the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who had been sacked, along with most of the high judiciary, by Zardaris predecessor, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Zardari defused the situation only by allowing Chaudhrys return to office and giving in to other demands that he had previously and repeatedly rejected.
Yet, despite this spectacular reversal, the president was not in a remotely penitent state of mind over his handling of the protests against him. Whoever killed my wife was seeking the Balkanization of Pakistan, he told me. There is a view that I saved Pakistan then by calling for calm at a perilous moment and there is a view that by making this decision I saved Pakistan again. There had been, he said, a very real threat of a terrorist attack on the marchers on their way to Islamabad. That is why his government invoked a statute dating back to the British raj in order to authorize the police to arrest protesters and prevent the march from forming. I pointed out that Benazir Bhutto faced a far more specific threat and was outraged when General Musharraf kept her from speaking on the pretext of protecting her. The president didnt miss a beat. And therefore, he rejoined, we moved to the other side: that is, he reversed his order to the police, and permitted the protesters march, just before giving in to their demands altogether.
Zardari has a special talent for maneuvering himself out of the tight spots he gets himself into. But the Pakistani people have grown weary of his artful dodging. Zardaris poll numbers are dreadful. More important, he has given little sustained attention to the countrys overwhelming problems including, of course, the Islamist extremism that, for the Obama administration, has made Pakistan quite possibly the most important, and worrisome, country in the world. Zardari has bought himself more time, but for Pakistan itself, the clock is ticking louder and louder.
When I arrived in Islamabad on March 10, the long march was set to begin in two days and had come to feel like a storm gathering force at sea one that might peter out before it hit land or turn into a Category 4 hurricane. In a country where democracy feels as flimsy as a wooden shack, the foreboding was very real. Our condition is much more fragile than it was in the 1990s, Samina Ahmed, the International Crisis Groups longtime Pakistan analyst, told me. (The I.C.G. is a sponsor of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, where I am the policy director.) The Taliban and other extremists had, she estimated, placed half the country beyond the control of security forces. The government had recently ceded control over the Swat Valley, 100 miles from the nations capital, to the extremists.
Pakistan feels as if its falling apart. Last fall the country barely avoided bankruptcy. The tribal areas, which border on Afghanistan, remain a vast Taliban sanctuary and redoubt. The giant province of Baluchistan, though far more accessible, is racked by a Baluchi separatist rebellion, while American officials view Quetta, Baluchistans capital, as Taliban HQ. American policy has arguably made the situation even worse, for the Predator-drone attacks along the border, though effective, drive the Taliban eastward, deeper into Pakistan. And the strategy has been only reinforcing hostility to the United States among ordinary Pakistanis.
The president himself, natty in a navy suit, his black hair brilliantined to a sheen, was the very picture of ease. Zardari beamed when we talked about New York, where he often lived between 2004, when he was released from prison after eight years, and late 2007, when he returned to Pakistan not long after his wife, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated by terrorists. For all that painful recent history, Zardari is a suave and charming man with a sly grin, and he gives the impression of thoroughly enjoying what must be among the worlds least desirable jobs. Zardari had just been through the most dangerous weeks of his six months in office. He dissolved the government in Punjab, Pakistans dominant state, and called out the police to stop the countrys lawyers and leading opposition party from holding a long march to demand the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who had been sacked, along with most of the high judiciary, by Zardaris predecessor, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Zardari defused the situation only by allowing Chaudhrys return to office and giving in to other demands that he had previously and repeatedly rejected.
Yet, despite this spectacular reversal, the president was not in a remotely penitent state of mind over his handling of the protests against him. Whoever killed my wife was seeking the Balkanization of Pakistan, he told me. There is a view that I saved Pakistan then by calling for calm at a perilous moment and there is a view that by making this decision I saved Pakistan again. There had been, he said, a very real threat of a terrorist attack on the marchers on their way to Islamabad. That is why his government invoked a statute dating back to the British raj in order to authorize the police to arrest protesters and prevent the march from forming. I pointed out that Benazir Bhutto faced a far more specific threat and was outraged when General Musharraf kept her from speaking on the pretext of protecting her. The president didnt miss a beat. And therefore, he rejoined, we moved to the other side: that is, he reversed his order to the police, and permitted the protesters march, just before giving in to their demands altogether.
Zardari has a special talent for maneuvering himself out of the tight spots he gets himself into. But the Pakistani people have grown weary of his artful dodging. Zardaris poll numbers are dreadful. More important, he has given little sustained attention to the countrys overwhelming problems including, of course, the Islamist extremism that, for the Obama administration, has made Pakistan quite possibly the most important, and worrisome, country in the world. Zardari has bought himself more time, but for Pakistan itself, the clock is ticking louder and louder.
When I arrived in Islamabad on March 10, the long march was set to begin in two days and had come to feel like a storm gathering force at sea one that might peter out before it hit land or turn into a Category 4 hurricane. In a country where democracy feels as flimsy as a wooden shack, the foreboding was very real. Our condition is much more fragile than it was in the 1990s, Samina Ahmed, the International Crisis Groups longtime Pakistan analyst, told me. (The I.C.G. is a sponsor of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, where I am the policy director.) The Taliban and other extremists had, she estimated, placed half the country beyond the control of security forces. The government had recently ceded control over the Swat Valley, 100 miles from the nations capital, to the extremists.
Pakistan feels as if its falling apart. Last fall the country barely avoided bankruptcy. The tribal areas, which border on Afghanistan, remain a vast Taliban sanctuary and redoubt. The giant province of Baluchistan, though far more accessible, is racked by a Baluchi separatist rebellion, while American officials view Quetta, Baluchistans capital, as Taliban HQ. American policy has arguably made the situation even worse, for the Predator-drone attacks along the border, though effective, drive the Taliban eastward, deeper into Pakistan. And the strategy has been only reinforcing hostility to the United States among ordinary Pakistanis.
