General President Pervez Musharraf has seen fit to personally order a ban on Feroz Khan’s entry into Pakistan. Feroz Khan? Oh yes, that has-been film producer from Bombay who recently visited Pakistan in connection with the showing of the film Taj Mahal and made some stupid drunken remarks at a celeb show about how Indian Muslims have got their act together in India while Pakistan’s Muslims are still floundering in Pakistan. He was hauled over the coals by our media and retreated into an apology-cum-denial mode before hightailing it home. That should have been the end of this eminently forgettable matter – after all, there are some relatively successful Indian Muslims who are constantly vying with Indian Hindus to prove their loyalty to their state just as there are some overly insecure Pakistani Muslims who are constantly outraged over any perceived “insult” to their country. But it wasn’t. General Musharraf has jumped into the fray and made sure than the likes of Feroz Khan will dine out on this story for years to come as yet another example of Pakistani xenophobia, paranoia and insecurity. Whoever advised General Musharraf to make this intervention must really be a small-minded, short sighted person. Or, having admitted that he is losing popularity, is General Musharraf on edge?
The Musharraf government has also deemed fit to get an anti-terrorist court to sentence Nawab Khair Bux Marri in absentia to 20 years imprisonment in connection with some murder that took almost a decade ago and for which no evidence has ever been produced. This is ridiculous. The octogenarian Sardar of the Marri tribe is a recluse in Karachi who has not been seen or heard from for over three decades. He is already under some sort of house arrest. If the government is hoping to put pressure on his sons to abandon their rebellious ways, it has another thing coming. Indeed, if the Balochistan problem is a “mere pin-prick”, as General Musharraf recently claimed, this action is akin to trying to smash a fly with a hammer. Knowing Mr Marri, it is likely that he won’t even bother to challenge his conviction in the High Court or apply for bail. Under the circumstances the government will either have to arrest him or let him be. In either case, it will compound the government’s problems and make the Nawab a martyr. Whoever advised General Musharraf to approve this action either doesn’t have a clue about Balochistan and is bent on proving that the President is increasingly alienated from facts and ground realities and surrounded by small, inexperienced, bureaucratic minds, or is General Musharraf on edge?
Now we hear that Commander Khaleelur Rehman has been given his marching orders barely a year from when he was appointed Governor of the NWFP. This is ominous. It suggests a turnabout of 180 degrees in General Musharraf’s perspective on FATA, the JUI and Talibanism. The irony is that Mr Rehman took a hard line against the insurgents in FATA and against their JUI supporters in the NWFP government on the precise orders of General Musharraf. Now he has been sacked for carrying them out. Indeed, Commander Rehman’s head has been offered as a sop to the very elements who, as General Musharraf recently admitted, had “double-crossed” the army in Waziristan – taken its jirga-recommended money and used it to fuel Talibanism in the region! Unfortunately, this new “flip-flop” on Waziristan policy suggests dangerous trends. One, it seems to be staking Pakistan’s national-security interests at the altar of General Musharraf’s personal political interests. It is aimed at strengthening the JUI and encouraging it to defy the pressures of its Jamaat i Islami ally to heave General Musharraf out by a series of “million-man” marches. Hence the recent statement by Maulana Fazalur Rehman that the JUI would participate in elections and saw no reason to abandon General Musharraf. Two, it is bound to make the US nervous because it will lead to a resurgence of Talibanism in Afghanistan. Indeed, it is almost as if General Musharraf is deliberately thumbing his nose at Hamid Karzai and the international community. Equally, since the move is simultaneously designed to bring the JUI back in power in the next elections, it should be disquieting for those at home and abroad who see the country’s future in terms of a pluralistic, moderate and democratic dispensation based on free and fair elections. Combined with General Musharraf’s “soft tactical spot” for the jihadis, the ambiguities and contradictions in his policies are coming to the surface in the run up to the elections next year.
A chorus of voices from the King’s party is saying that the King’s current parliament should re-elect him before going home next year. If this comes to pass it would amount to cynical rigging of the next presidential election. Is General-President Musharraf clutching at straws to retain his power? Certainly, the scene is getting murkier by the day in a depressingly familiar way.