generalspeaking

Bargains With The Devil

Hellish bargains at the very least, those agreed to through a sense of desperation on the part of a truly besieged government. The executive branch of Pakistan, duly elected in an Islamic version of democracy - in a country whose devotion to corruption and broken promises, where the greater proportion of the population is comprised of landless peasants dependent for their wherewithal on a feudal system of social engineering - presents a veneer of control. In fact, the government is controlled by its military and by its Islamist-infiltrated secret services.

The lawyers and the judges and the social establishment who battled for integrity in the country's legal system appear to suffer a true disconnect between their vision of a democratic, secularly-ruled government and the reality that simmers under the radar, of a country critically infested by another type of religious/political/social contract entirely. The presence of the Red Mosque, and its clerics and its agenda for cleansing the country of gratuitous and corrupt Western influences was merely the vanguard, one too late recognized for the threat it represented.

The Islamists ensconced in the North-West Frontier Province - whom even many tribal chiefs recognized as a threat to their society worshipping Islam in a time-honoured manner not quite as fanatically-observed as the Taliban - slowly but with a certainty of purpose spread the virus of their pathology of hatred of social progress and the slender emancipation of women through educating girls and boys to live in a semi-modern society. The tenuous control that Pakistan's previous military president General Pervez Musharraf, held in keeping the Islamists in check, was disdained.

Conflicted Pakistan, enthralled with the idea of secular democratic governance on the one hand, and dedicated on the other hand, to Islamic rule, fractured the public and delivered the country into the hands of incompetence posing as a government in control, reflecting the diversity of the country. Had Benazir Bhutto been elected instead of assassinated, she would have done no better than her husband Asif Ali Zardari; the first and second time around the lesson for the third.

To quell the bloodshed, President Zardari succumbed to the insistence of the conservatives around him, and gave assent to Sharia law for three million people living in North West Frontier Province, benefiting the Taliban, but not the populace who had already suffered the destruction of hundreds of schools, the beheadings of teachers and those who resisted the Islamists. The tens of thousands who have since fled the area seeking refuge from the bitter rule of the Taliban speaks volumes of their betrayal.

That the Taliban, nicely emboldened, have now spread their rule into areas that had only recently voted down all the Islamist candidates in their area, further victimizes Pakistanis, with Taliban fighters establishing themselves further in other areas, with their rocket launchers and machine guns, taking local security forces into custody in their police stations and camps. The Taliban setting up their bases in mosques and banning music, dance and television, preparing to extend Islamic law.

The Taliban announce their intention to establish Islamic judges to hold court in additional towns. Training camps are being established around Swat with greater numbers of young tribal members being inducted as Islamist fighters. Recruitment is not difficult, since unemployment or educational opportunities are close to nil in the area, with many young men joining the militant movement in an effort to have their families spared and left in peace.

Islamist hardliners, while establishing their rule in an ever widening arc, are now closer than ever to the country's capital of Islamabad. The general population of the country should be, by now, extremely nervous. Certainly the world at large is. Although the Pakistani nuclear arsenal is thought to be a small one relatively speaking, and of a primitive design lacking the power of more technologically advanced devices, they're still enormously deadly.

India has reason to feel somewhat agitated by the state of affairs over her border, with a neighbour with whom she has never enjoyed civil relations. And the world at large is now somewhat less safe than it was two years ago, by a large factor. Leading world powers like the United States have a very good idea of the fragility of the situation, should Islamists take possession of the country's nuclear technology.

The Islamist terrorists plaguing the world are patient, waiting.

Labels: Conflict, Political Realities, Religion, World Crises

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, April 23, 2009