Scared to Death in Pakistan

I happened upon This Crazy Report in GQ this afternoon. Its really long and reads more like a travel diary than a piece of journalism, but it does give some great insights into whats been going on in Pakistan since the death of Benazir Bhutto. My favorite part of the article comes when the author is interviewing Nawaz Sharif. Sharif is the head of the Pakistan Muslim League, the second largest political party in Pakistan. He is also an ex-Prime Minister who was deposed by Musharraf's coup.

"Nawaz has made the restoration of the judiciary his first principle. He says this without my asking, because he knows it’ll play well with me, the American democracy freak convinced that the one way for the world to succeed is for everyone to look like us. “Our first priority is to reinstate the judges. To restore the judiciary to the status of November. And to abandon the role of military in politics. These are our primary objectives.”

"He does not mention that he himself had the Supreme Court stormed by military forces when he was in power. I ask him what he’ll do about the militancy. And he turns the question around, like every question, to make it about Musharraf. “These problems have always cropped up whenever there is a dictatorship in this country. They never posed any problems under democracy. These are the so-called fruits of dictatorship that we are seeing at this time.” The one plank of his political platform is “Go, Musharraf, go.” Because Musharraf is of course the root cause of every problem. It’s normal politics, but played at an extraordinary frequency."

"I think to myself: If Musharraf is gone, and things are still bad, what will they do then?"

A common theme in the article is that everyone in Pakistan uses Musharraf to excuse all the country's ills, as though his removal will magically improve the economy and introduce stability and safety.

The only person in the interview who deviates from this point of view is Humayun Gauhar, a Musharraf hanger-on. Gauhar treats Musharraf's political rivals as a bunch of corrupt phonys whose ascension would lead to even more instability than the General has presided over. Gauhar comes off as a stereotypically corrupt bureaucrat treating every broken rule, greased palm, jailed dissident and assassinated rival as business-as-usual. Shockingly, he advocates America deposing President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan and reinstalling Mullah Omar and the Taliban. This man has had the ear of Pervez Musharraf for years, and even ghost-wrote his autobiography.

Nothing in the article is particularly encouraging. Scratch that. Everything in the article is downright scary. Remember, these guys have nukes. I cannot believe that we are worried about Iran at this point.