Impeachment Proceedings to Begin Against Musharraf
News comes from Reuters this morning that Pakistan's ruling coalition has announced its intention to begin impeachment proceedings against President Pervez Musharraf. Mr. Musharraf had previously stated that he would not remain in office if he faced impeachment proceedings against him, so it may be that the government believes they are swinging the camel's-back-breaking-straw. Still, according to this morning's report, Musharraf's allies have stated that he plans to fight the impeachment. At this point not very much seems clear to outside observers.
Adil Najam at All Things Pakistan expresses some doubt that the PPP-led coalition in Pakistan has the muscle to pull off an impeachment at this point, but notes that people, including those close to Musharraf, seem to be taking the notion of impeachment seriously.
From a perspective of U.S. policy, I have several initial thoughts on this issue. If Musharraf is impeached (and if that impeachment isn't contested by the Pakistani military, which would open up a whole new can of worms) our influence in Pakistan will almost certainly be reduced, at least in the short term. That's the price one pays (and one we have paid a bit too often for my taste) for getting too cozy with dictatorial regimes. Still, having a more democratic regime in Pakistan - even one that is cooler towards the United States than is Pakistan's military - strikes me as a positive development in the medium-to-long term. It might help diffuse some of the anti-U.S. sentiment on the Pakistani street by making us less complicit in propping up a bankrupt autocracy. Also, having a power center in Pakistan that provides a political check against some of the less helpful elements of the Pakistani security and intelligence services might actually turn out to be a positive development.
All this to emphasize the point that we need to do a better job developing political relationships with numerous elements of Pakistan's government and society, rather than taking the obvious-but-corrosive route of cultivating generals and strongmen.
More developments will follow I'm sure.
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Update: Check out Arif Rafiq's initial reaction to the news.
3 comments:
Not to be too glib, but I really hope you're not anticipating Zardari, Ghilani, or (gulp) Sharif will become any sort of counterweight to either the Army or the ISI. They are WAY too weak.
I'm not so naive as to think that civilians will all of a sudden start calling the shots. Musharraf or no Musharraf, the Pakistani military and security services will be in the driver's seat for the forseeable future as far as I can tell. I was saying that in the long term, a more robust civilian government with a power-base outside military channels would be a good thing. I'm talking about the next 20 years, though, not the next 2.
That would be wonderful -- the civilian side of the government has been systematically undermined ever since Zia ul-Haq's aggressive Islamization of Pakistani society. Guys like Nawaz Sharif, though, who were never more than puppets of the military anyway, aren't helpful.
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