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The Frontline BlogMSN UK's Foreign Correspondent
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March 10 We have a winnerAlmost a month after the Pakistani election, the final results are in, and the new government is about to take control of the country. As per the rules, caretaker Prime Minister Mohammedmian Soomro has written to President Pervez Musharraf, advising him to convene the new parliament session, and get on and swear in the new prime minister and his cabinet. We have a date? Oh yes. The future starts on March 17th. Who's going to be in charge then? Well, this is a bit, shall we say, unclear at the moment. What we do know, and really have known since the morning after the election is that the government will be made of a coalition between the PPP party, run by the widow of Benazir Bhutto, Asif Zadari, and the PML-N, run by ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. So it'll be one of those two, then? You'd think, but no. Neither are eligible to be Prime Minister. That job was thought most likely go to a man from the PPP called Makhdoom Amin Fahim, but there appears to have been something of a rift within the party. So far no one as been named as their man for the job, but reports in the local papers say that it will be a guy called Chaudhary Ahmed Mukhtar. The PPP leadership have until the 18th, obviously, to make their minds up. But what about Sharif? Well, quite. As junior partner in the coalition, the PML-N don't get to choose the Prime Minister, but they are going to have some of their members in the cabinet. This comes as part of the deal that has taken so long to broker: the PML-N hadn't wanted to be in the cabinet because that would mean their members being sworn in by the President - a man whose authority they don't recognise. So what happened? The biggest problem for the PML-N was the fate of the Pakistani supreme court. Last November, President Musharraf had put the supreme court justices under house arrest, after the chief justice had threatened to rule his presidency illegal. It was a core demand of the PML-N that the parliament's first task was to reinstate the judges, and the PPP have now agreed to this. They are also going to be trying to pass laws that restrict the president's power to dismiss the governments of the day. Musharraf won't like that, will he? Very probably not. But there's little he can do about it, bar dissolve the government. He's very unlikely to do that: it would be internationally condemned, and probably start a civil war. Nasty. Yes, and very unlikely indeed. Instead, we're really looking at either Musharraf giving in to the democracy he claims to champion, or a very severe constitutional crisis. We'll know what's more likely as the week goes on. March 03 Suicide BombersTerrorism is a problem in Pakistan. Over five hundred people have been killed in terrorist related incidents since the beginning of the year - and the toll was over three thousand last year - but this weekend was quite unusually violent. Yesterday at least 40 people where killed at a gathering of tribal elders in Dara Adam Khel. The day before another forty were killed at a funeral in Swat. Both attacks were carried out by suicide bombers, and both against members of the Pashtun tribes.
"These are direct attacks on Pashtun society," Mahmood Shah, a former security chief for the tribal areas, said to Reuters newsagency, "All institutions, which represent Pashtun society, the mosque, a wedding, a funeral or a jirga, they have all been targeted."
This isn't good. Apart from the deaths and injuries, the targeting Pashtuns is a very calculated thing. Pashtuns, who live in the area stretching over North West Pakistan and Afghanistan, live by a very strong code of honour. Called Pashtunwali, it requires Pashtun men to avenge the deaths of their family members, and to defend their land from invaders with ferocity. A terrorist group wanting to stir trouble in Pakistan would do worse than killing Pashtuns: by doing so you soon have a spiral of revenge killings and a very volatile situation. This, incidentally, is one of the reasons the war in Afghanistan is more complicated than it is usually portrayed: a lot of people fighting there are doing so for their tribal honour, and not for any Islamacist reason.
The question to be asked is why are people trying to cause chaos in the Pashtun region? The answer seems to be to destabilise the area's support for President Musharraf's anti-terror policies, and his own support for the Nato, and specifically American, activities in Afghanistan. By equating continued support for Musharraf with continued suicide bombings, the militants responsible may well be trying to swing public opinion in the region. What the PPP and the PML-N plan on doing about the situation when they come to power in the next few weeks, however, is yet to be seen. February 29 The CoalitionWhile it's days yet until the new Pakistani government comes to power - see the previous entry - the negotiations over who is actually going to be in charge when it does are continuing. The PPP party, with their bigger share of the parliamentary pie, are leading the show, but they need the support of Nawaz Sharif's PML-N party to really have any power. Sharif, however, is being a little curious at the moment. Sure, he says, they'll be part of a coalition, but they don't want any cabinet posts.
This is a bit weird, if you think about it. A party forced from power by the coup ten years ago has the chance to share ministerial power once again, and it doesn't want to. Why? Well, they say it's because they don't want to go to a swearing-in session led by President Musharraf. For one, he was the guy who kicked them out in the first place, and two they don't recognise him as a legitimate head of state.
But according the The Dawn newspaper, the real reason, and the one that the PPP are worried about, is that the PML-N see this as an opportunity to play a longer game. By supporting the government in this way they get to take a lot of credit for the good stuff that happens over the next few years, and to disavow any responsibility for anything bad that might happen. Clever... What happens nowSo, here we go, then, finally we get a timetable for the short term political future of Pakistan. Syed Afzal Haider, the caretaking Law Minister of the interim government has said what's going to happen now. The Election Commission of Pakistan, the ECP, are about to start calling the elected members of parliament and officially inform them that they won. Once this is done, and it's meant to be all over by March 5th (presumably they'll be waiting by their phones). After that, the Law Minister sends a letter to the President to ask him to call a two day session of parliament. When that happens - on, say, the next week - the first day sees everyone sworn in, and the second day they elect a Speaker and Deputy Speaker. Then, and I hope you're keeping up with this, the parties put forward their names for their candidates for Prime Minister, the Law Minister writes to the President again, who calls another session of parliament for the election of the PM. Once that is settled, the PM is sworn in, he appoints his ministers, and the new government starts. However, the new PM must then have a Vote of Confidence in the parliament within 60 days - presumably incase they realise they've made a really bad mistake. February 26 The Trouble with the WestOf all the results in the Pakistani elections, the most surprising - and the most heartening to Western observers - was what happened in the North West Frontier Province, centred around Peshawar, under the red pin label in the map below.
The area, along the border with Afghanistan, is traditionally a much more hardline Islamic area than the rest of the country. The last election, in 2002, saw the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), an alliance of six Islamic parties, win a landslide victory in the area. Since then the province has seen pro-Taliban groups take root, and violence has increased month-on-month. As the election approached, the violence escalated: attacks on the ANP party, secular grouping who were fighting the MMA, killed over 40 people on the day before the election alone. But the threat of violence didn't prevent enough people from coming out to vote, and the ANP won very convincingly, relegating the MMA to fourth place both nationally and in the regional assembly. The people of the North Western Frontier seem to have turned against the Islamic parties, and towards a more secular leadership. "Through this election, the Pashtun people have sent a message to the world that they are neither extremists nor terrorists," said Asfandyar Wali Khan, the chief of the ANP, referring to the ethnic group that spreads across North West Pakistan and into Afghanistan. It's difficult to say what effect this will have on the area in the long term. One of the problems that both the Pakistani forces on that side of the border, and NATO on the Afghan side have is that the North West Frontier is largely lawless. The area along the border, the Tribal Area, is not officially under the control of the Islamabad government at all - it hasn't been since during the British rule. And the local culture and beliefs make them very good hosts for terrorist groups crossing the border. It's in this general area, for example, that Osama Bin Laden is believed to be hiding. But if the Islamic groups have lost their power over the local imagination, this safe haven might start to weaken. In the short term, however, there has been more violence already. Yesterday, three local aid workers for the British organisation Plan International were killed after their offices in Mansehra were stormed by up to 12 attackers. It's not known who exactly is behind the attack, nor the suicide bombing that killed a Pakistani general, and injured seven others, in Rawalpindi the same day. February 25 Death of a generalThe Associated Press is reporting that a bomb has killed Lt. Gen. Mushtaq Baig, the Pakistani army's surgeon general, along with his driver and a guard. The blast, it says, occurred on Mall Road, a busy thoroughfare in Rawalpindi, a city just south of Islamabad where the Pakistan military has its headquarters. More on this, and the rest of the weekend's happenings, as it's available.
Rawalpindi, Pakistan February 22 The flight backI, along with most of the rest of the UK press corp, am back in London. The BA flight yesterday was filled with journalists: the BBC sat to my right, Kylie Morris and the Channel 4 team a bit further back, Swedes and Dutch and Italian press over there, the legendary Owen Bennett-Jones down the aisle, the impossibly glamourous Italian correspondent and European Parliament member Lilli Gruber sat imposingly next to me. And all of us seemed to have the same thing on our minds: what if you came for a fight, and no one turned up? This is a strange job. Most people, upon seeing impending trouble, tend to run the other way. For those of us on that plane, our job and our instinct is to run towards the trouble. Certainly, last week, as the election approached, my preparation was for Islamabad to be on fire on the morning after the election. Judging by the bag after bag of bullet-proof vests that came off the carousel at Heathrow yesterday, I was not alone in that assumption. After all, there has never been a peaceful transition of power within Pakistan. The question that most interested me was not whether the vote was going to be rigged, but once the mob reached the parliament building on the next day in which direction would the army be pointing their guns? As Siddique, my driver this week, said to me, "if Musharraf wins, there is rigging. If there is rigging, Mr Ben, there will be much trouble." But this didn't happen. As we know, the election may have been dodgy, but it was representative. There was no march on parliament, no trouble. The army didn't leave its barracks, and there was no blood in the streets. For this, despite our secret hopes for a story of violent revolution, I am hugely grateful. So now, here's the plan. While your correspondent unpacks, and the situation becomes ever more clear in Pakistan, we'll be bringing you up to date with the more in-depth topics. Over the next days, come back to this blog for special reports on the corruption allegations against Zardari, exactly what happened in the North West and what that means for the War on Terror, and the fate of President Musharraf. Pakistan elections: MSN special report
It's a boy!Well, ok, not a boy, but certainly a coalition. Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif met yesterday and have agreed a coalition between the PPP and the PML-N. This is rather expected, but it does put an end to the intriguing possibility that President Musharraf would be pushed by his own party, the PML-Q, in order for them to make an offer to be part of the government. The new coalition, however, does not have the two-thirds majority they need to impeach the president. It's known that Sharif is very keen to do so - after all, Musharraf did take him out of power in a coup ten years ago - but Zardari has been less forthcoming in his views on the subject. Still, with plenty of supporter potentially available from the other parties for the impeachment, Musharraf isn't safe yet. All this, and the official election results won't be announced by the Election Commission until March 1st. We'll be following the story here all the way. Pakistan elections: MSN special report
February 20 The Benazir ShrineThe PPP party's victories in this election are partly down to the sympathy felt for the death of their leader Benazir Bhutto. I visited the place in Rawalpindi where she was assassinated. It's a street corner, by the entrance to Liaquat Park. On the day, Benazir had been addressing a political rally, when she stopped to get inside an bullet-proofed car. Getting out the sunroof to wave to the crowd, she was killed either by the blast from a suicide bomb, or by shots fired after the bomb went off. Pakistan elections: MSN special report
Five go mad in IslamabadJust to add something quickly, here's exactly why this election is a bit odd. None of the five most important people in Pakistan actually stood for election. Zardari and Sharif couldn't, as they're convicted felons; Musharraf didn't as he's President; Bilawal Bhutto, Benazir's son and heir to her political power, couldn't as he's too young; and Altaf Hussain, leader of the MQM, the previously third most popular party, didn't because he's in exile in London. Apart from being curious, this fact means that the Prime Minister Elect isn't going to be anyone we've heard of yet. The Pakistanis went to the polls to elect a new Prime Minister, not actually knowing who they were voting for, only the party. Of course, those who say this is an affront to democracy need only look to Gordon Brown's premiership in the UK. Pakistan elections: MSN special report
The Coalitions FormIt's just past lunchtime here in Islamabad, two days after the election, and the picture of the future of Pakistan is still fuzzy. Let's recap what's happened so far. The opposition parties made massive gains in the national assembly, sending the PML-Q, the party of President Musharraf, into third place. But neither of the two leading parties, the PPP of the late Benezir Bhutto, or the PML-N of Nawaz Sharif, have enough seats to form a government of their own. The Islamic fundamentalist parties, although never likely to win power, have lost huge amounts of seats, especially in the North West Frontier Province where previously they'd been thought to be very strong. There the ANP party did far better than anyone expected. President Musharraf has said that he won't resign, and will work with the new government whoever it shall be. The polls seem to have been largely free and fair, and the election day itself went off with relatively little violence. Pakistan elections: MSN special report
ANP in the badlands of the frontierZak writes, "Why no mention of the Awami National Party's (the ubiqitous red shirts success in the elections. I think there success even in the tribal areas and Swat shows the people of that area are contrary to their image fed up with violence and being portrayed as extremists. As a person from the area and with good contacts in the region I feel it gets little positive coverage." Zak is right. I've not mentioned the ANP. So here we go. The tribal areas to which he refers are the along with western side of Pakistan, along the border with Afghanistan. Because of a deal the British did with the local warlords a few hundred years ago, the areas are both part of Pakistan and not: they're represented in the national assembly, but the local power rests entirely in the local traditional structures. I went there a few years ago, and it's a tricky place. As a foreigner you're not allowed through the tribal areas without an armed escort, and they're not allowed off the main roads. It's these areas that you will have heard give sanctuary to, say, the taliban and al-qaeda. That's true to an extent, but doesn't really gather the whole story. The area isn't completely the extremist mullah-following place it's meant to be. This was shown in the election. The ANP, who are secular, were up against the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, a coalition of Islamic groups. The MMA want to establish hardline sharia law in Pakistan, or at least their region, and are against Pakistan's involvement with the US and her allies in the 'War on Terror'. The ANP are for equal rights, democracy and the rule of law. Now, despite the entire area being subject to massive amounts of violence in the past few weeks, people did get out to vote. And they voted massively for the ANP. In the provincial assembly for North West Frontier Province, the MMA won 9 seats, but the ANP got 31. Add that to the 17 the PPP won in the same regional vote, and you've got a sure sign that locals are, as Zak says, fed up with violence and being portrayed as extremists. Pakistan elections: MSN special report
February 19 ZadariSo far the numbers are the PPP with 87, PML-N with 66 and PML-Q with 39. This confirms what we knew this morning: Pakistan is having its first peaceful democratic transfer of power in its history. Pakistan elections: MSN special report
The AmericansAmong the election observers in Pakistan this week are three American senators: Joseph Biden, John Kerry, and Chuck Hagel. Although they are here on an non-official basis, in that they are speaking for themselves and not the White House or the US Senate, their visit is an important one. I just escaped from their hastily called press conference. Pakistan elections: MSN special report
So now what?Siyab, a reader, just wrote to ask the following: "Hi Ben, Can I just ask? If the Bhutto party do win this election who's going to lead the party?? Pakistan elections: MSN special report
The morning after the night before.So, results then. With half the figures in, the trend is becoming clear: the late Benezir Bhutto's PPP party have so far won 52 seats, Nawaz Sharif's PML-N party have got 47, and President Musharraf's previously ruling PML-Q party only 20. The other parties and independents have another 40 seats between them. What does this mean? Well, If it continues like this, President Musharraf is going to be in trouble. If the opposition win more than a two-thirds majority of the house, which they look set to do, they can start impeachment proceedings against him. But it's still too early to say exactly what's going to happen. By this evening we should have an idea of the final numbers. Because neither the PPP or the PML-Q look like they'll have a full majority, it will most likely take a few weeks of haggling to decide who takes which position in government. This is where the independents and smaller parties come in: alliances between the parties could throw the parliament one way or another. In fact, Musharraf's PML-Q could hold the balance of power, despite their evident unpopularity. Arithmetic aside for a moment, at least 24 people where killed and over 200 injured in election-related violence yesterday. President Musharraf's spokesman, Rashid Qureshi, called the incidents "normal." Pakistan elections: MSN special report February 18 And now we wait...Voting ended here half an hour ago, and the counting is about to begin. The next few hours will be crucial for the future of the country. As every single person I've spoken to today has said, if the party of the current president, Pervez Musharraf, wins this evening the country will consider the election entirely rigged. If that happens the opposition will take to the streets. Although the official results probably won't be announced for a few days, full results are due to appear overnight. Tomorrow could be a very difficult day for Pakistan. Thankfully, however, today has so far been incident free. Despite some reports of intimidation, there haven't been any suicide bomb attacks so far. Pakistan elections: MSN special report
Returned from the polling stationsI've been travelling around the local polling stations this morning. Election days are national holidays, so apart from around the polling stations - which like the UK are in the local schools - the streets are very quiet. There are small crowds outside the polling stations, but the officials told me that the voting was happening very slowly. Men and women are voting in different buildings, but equally as keenly, and inside the polling stations themselves everything seems very fair. There are representatives from every party monitoring the voting, and independent monitors in some of the rooms. Whenever I appeared, with my observer's pass, the voting officials were very keen to show how many checks there had in place. But that didn't stop some people stopping me outside the polling station to complain. One man, who declared himself an official of the PPP party, showed me two voting slips made out to the same woman's name. His sister, he said, and with this she'd be able to vote twice. "This is how they will make it a fraud," he said. Whether that is happening is hard to say right now: exit polls and interim results were made illegal last week. Pakistan elections: MSN special report
Voting starts, and tensions are highVoting has started in Pakistan's general elections, and tensions are still extraordinarily high. Overnight it's become clear just how much the violence in this country is affecting the voters. Two policemen were killed in Swat yesterday, making people from that area reportedly increasingly unwilling to leave for the polling stations. Saturday's bomb in Parachinar, which has killed 49 so far, has meant that town's election has been postponed entirely. At least ten bombs were found and defused in Bajaur Agency, according to local reports. And so on, and so on. Here in Islamabad, I'm told to expect people will not want to hang around the polling stations longer than they have to. Everyone is terrified of terrorist attacks, and many think the election will be rigged anyway. The potential for violence, and the fear of rigging, is causing one new phenomenon however: civil servants and police are calling in sick. According to the local press, doctors at an Islamabad hospital have had a record number of officials apply for medical certificates to spend today in bed. If they're not at work, the reasoning goes, they cannot be accused of being part of a grand conspiracy. Pakistan elections: MSN special report
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Invite as friend
