Confusion about what the coming days could bring can be gauged from Benazir Bhutto’s travel schedule. The News (November 1) reported that at a “hastily-arranged press conference in Karachi on Wednesday, she said she had postponed plans to visit her family in Dubai upon hearing rumours that the government could impose emergency in her absence. The next day the newspaper reported that she had left for Dubai on Thursday afternoon: “(She) told the media that she left for Dubai to see her ailing mother Begum Nusrat Bhutto and her children who were disturbed after the bomb blast incident in the homecoming parade for Benazir on Oct 18.” She is scheduled to return in time to address a rally in Rawalpindi on November 9.The Daily Times’s editorial on Friday connected the timing of the rumours to the impending Supreme Court verdict on the re-election of President General Pervez Musharraf. The verdict is likely to come early next week. “Emergency or martial law” would allow the government “to suspend the normal application of the Constitution, allowing the General Musharraf establishment to postpone the January 2008 general elections.” In his Friday Times column, Najam Sethi weighed the possible outcomes of the verdict: “The Supreme Court’s judgment on the fate of General Pervez Musharraf will have a profound impact on Pakistan’s future. If the judges should decide to accord legitimacy to President Musharraf, he will take off his uniform (which is what everyone wants him to do), hold relatively free elections (which is what everyone wants him to do) and enable a merited successor to take over as army chief (which is what everyone wants him to do). This will provide a degree of continuity and stability. But if the judges decide to sway with the wind and try to knock out General Musharraf, he will impose martial law, scuttle the court, and reverse the transition to democracy. Pakistan would plunge into an abyss of fear and uncertainty. The domestic political process would be derailed and the international community would become anxious. There would be protests and repression.”Not that the second scenario would hold: “Pakistan is not Myanmar. Sooner rather than later, martial law would have to be removed. That is when General Musharraf and Pakistan would arrive at the beginning and struggle to invent the wheel all over again.”Political strawsAnd what of Nawaz Sharif’s travel plans? During proceedings in the Supreme Court on a case pertaining to his deportation to Jeddah in September, “Foreign Secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan (said) he had been asked by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz by telephone to arrange a special aircraft”. Meanwhile: “The court adjourned the proceedings till November 8 with an observation that keeping in view the complex nature of allegations involving high-ups, it considered it appropriate to adjourn the matter with instructions that the judgment passed in the Nawaz Sharif case holding that any citizen of Pakistan could not be restrained from entering the country still held the field and, therefore, should be implemented in letter and spirit.” (Dawn, October 31).South by northwestIn Swat, fighting continues between “pro-Taleban” militants loyal to Maulana Fazlullah and the security forces. According to Dawn (November 2), “Militants on Thursday claimed to have captured 44 militiamen in the Khwazakhela sub-district after day-long heavy fighting in which the government said over 60 militants had been killed.” The newspaper’s editorials have raised alarm over militancy “being allowed to spread from Fata (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) to settled areas like Swat where it is casting a long shadow.” In Thursday’s Daily Times, Ejaz Haider carried forward on this thought: “The state’s approach to insurgency in parts of the North-West Frontier Province, right now in Swat, suffers from two problems. The frontier is all but lost. And it’s a full-spectrum failure, ranging from military reverses to political and ideological loss. This is not a pessimistic view; it’s a realistic assessment. Consider. What is happening in Swat is a replay of what we have seen in Waziristan, what we are witnessing in other tribal agencies, Bajaur for instance, and what we shall witness in the settled lowlands of NWFP if this tide cannot be stemmed. The second problem. Even if we discount the military disadvantage the security forces have in exactly the same proportion that the militants have the advantage on the ground, we have a scary scenario: the state may be trying to do something for which it has no popular, political backing.”The fighting comes in a week of audacious suicide attacks, one in Rawalpindi on Tuesday, the other on Thursday near an airbase in Sargodha.
