In a desperate bid to stay in power, General
Pervez Musharraf has staged a coup against the
rule of law in Pakistan. His declaration of
martial law, suspension of the constitution and
basic rights was aimed at overthrowing Pakistan’s
Supreme Court, which was expected to rule next
week that Musharraf could not continue as both
president and chief of the army.

Faced with choice of being president and being
bound by the constitution or chief of the army
and ruling by diktat, Musharraf chose khaki and
force. His coup announcement is titled
"Proclamation of Emergency declared by Chief of
the Army Staff General Pervez Musharraf“and ends”I hereby order and proclaim that the
Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
shall remain in abeyance."

Musharraf’s proclamation is a litany of
complaints about the courts. The Supreme Court
was the only branch of government Musharraf and
the army did not control. In the eight years
since his October 1999 seizure of power,
Musharraf has rigged parliamentary elections to
give himself a majority, hand-picked his prime
minister, and replaced many senior generals. His
control, and through him that of the army
leadership, over government and the state was
nearly complete. But none of this was enough to
give him either the unchecked power or the
legitimacy that he wanted.
Supreme Court

Musharraf complained in particular that
Pakistan’s courts, and especially the Supreme
Court, were subverting the administration. His
proclamation claims that the Court’s "constant
interference in executive functions, including
but not limited to the control of terrorist
activity, economic policy, price controls,
downsizing of corporations and urban planning,
has weakened the writ of the government." It
laments "the humiliating treatment meted to
government officials by some members of the
judiciary on a routine basis during court
proceedings."

A particular concern was the Supreme Court taking
up the cases of the hundreds of people picked up
in recent years by law enforcement agencies
without warrants and held in custody, without
charge or trial. The demands for due process and
habeas corpus proved fruitless as officials
simply lied to the courts about the people they
were holding.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan was
finally able to convince the Supreme Court to
act. The Court began to summon senior officials
and demanded the government produce the detained
people in court. It threatened senior law
enforcement officials with contempt of court and
jail if they did not comply and was considering
calling the chiefs of the armed forces to answer
to the court. The system cracked and the
disappeared started appearing.

Iftikhar Chaudhry, the chief justice of
Pakistan’s Supreme Court, emerged as a key figure
in confronting the arbitrary exercise of power by
the government. General Musharraf responded
earlier this year by firing him, triggering a
national movement led by lawyers for the
justice’s restoration. It attracted a lot of
public support, reflecting the widespread
disenchantment with the eight years of
Musharraf’s rule. Across the country, large
crowds lined the roads and assembled to see and
hear the chief justice. The other judges of the
Supreme Court declared that the chief justice
must be reinstated and Musharraf had to back down.

The Court has returned to the cases of illegal
detention. It also sentenced seven senior
officials to suspended jail terms for manhandling
the chief justice during the campaign for his
reinstatement.
Islamic Militancy

General Musharraf has also claimed that the
courts are hampering his efforts to stem the
Islamic militancy in the tribal areas, the
creeping talibanization of Pakistan’s
northwestern province, and the suicide bombing
that have erupted across major cities over the
past few years. But the Courts have only insisted
on the rule of law. Musharraf’s failure to
effectively counter the militancy springs from
more other causes.

The most important problem has been the military
regime itself and its policies towards the
Islamic political parties and militants. In need
of some kind of political cover after seizing
power in 1999, Musharraf and his generals cobbled
together an alliance of opportunistic
politicians, defectors from other parties and the
Islamist political parties. This included the
most radical and violent militant groups, which
the army, led by Musharraf, had organized and
used in the war against India in the Kargil
region of Kashmir in the spring of 1999. This
military-mullah alliance in Pakistan stretches
back over 30 years, and was central in the
U.S.-backed jihad against the Soviet Union in
Afghanistan of the 1980s and the Kashmir
insurgency of the 1990s.

When not offering direct support, the Musharraf
regime has preferred neglect and appeasement of
Islamist political parties and militants. Islamic
laws are allowed to stay on the books. Militant
groups are grudgingly banned in public and
privately allowed to operate. Whether is in the
tribal areas of Waziristan or the militant
take-over of the Red Mosque in the heart of
Islamabad, Musharraf and his generals preferred
to ignore it, and then make concessions to the
militants in the vain hope that the problem would
go away.
Second Coup

The government has responded to the militancy
only when domestic and international demands do
something became overwhelming. But instead of a
legal, politically measured, and thought-out
response that is part of a long-term policy to
counter the militancy, Musharraf and his generals
have responded time and again with a spasm. They
unleash a dramatic show of force including
artillery, helicopter gun ships and air strikes,
which inevitably result in large numbers of
civilian deaths and injuries, inflame public
opinion, and stoke the militancy.

At the heart of Musharraf’s second coup, and what
has determined its timing and character, is not
an activist court, illegal detentions or the
militancy. The Court had begun to hear challenges
to Musharraf’s role as both chief of army Staff
and president of the republic. Pakistan’s
constitution explicitly forbids holding both
positions. A showdown was imminent. It has been
claimed that a Supreme Court judge told the
government that the court was set to rule against
Musharraf. Musharraf ended this threat by
removing the chief justice and most of the rest
of the Supreme Court. Before they were bundled
out of the Supreme Court building, seven of the
justices, including the chief justice, issued an
order declaring Musharraf’s proclamation of
emergency to be unconstitutional and called on
government officials and the armed forces to
refuse to obey it. In a message to the country’s
lawyers, the chief justice called for opposition.

The target of the coup is also obvious from the
list of those who have been the first to be
detained in the police raids: leaders of the
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, prominent
lawyers, and pro-democracy activists. The goal is
clearly to prevent a movement for democracy and
rule of law that could confront General Musharraf
and the larger structure of army rule in Pakistan.
Sharif and Bhutto

Protests have started across the country, led by
lawyers and civil society groups. They have been
met with tear gas and brute force. Thousands are
reported to have been arrested. It is likely to
be a determined campaign, building on the
experience of the mobilization earlier this year.
But Pakistan’s civil society, while heroic, is
fragile. It is poorly equipped for a long and
difficult struggle against a military regime.
Central to any prospect of success will be
Pakistan’s major political parties, Benazir
Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party and Nawaz
Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League.

But both the Peoples Party and the Muslim League
are led from the top-down. They are populist
vehicles for their leaders, both of whom are
former prime ministers, rather than well-rooted
democratic political parties with resilient local
structures. Further, the leaders of both parties
are deeply compromised. With U.S. and British
support, Bhutto recently made a deal with General
Musharraf to drop all corruption charges against
her and enable her return from exile to join a
Musharraf-led government. She has summoned her
party activists to the barricades, but she may be
willing to negotiate terms with the General on
power sharing.

Sharif was overthrown by Musharraf in his 1999
coup and agreed to go into exile in Saudi Arabia.
His party will willingly join the fray but many
in his party abandoned ship to join the rag-tag
group of politicians assembled by General
Musharraf as a fig leaf for his rule. Sharif also
tried to return from exile but was bundled into a
plane and sent back, despite a clear Supreme
Court ruling that Sharif had the right to return
to Pakistan. There were no major protests.

With the government at odds with the people, the
police being tasked to crush pro-democracy
activists, and chaos in the streets, the Islamic
militants may try and take advantage of the
unrest. They have already spread their influence
far beyond the tribal and border areas and now
control three major towns in the Swat valley, a
few hours drive from Islamabad. Government forces
simply surrendered and handed over their weapons.
Pakistani flags have been replaced by jihadi
banners on public buildings. Across the country,
there have been attacks on soldiers and police.
The bombing that killed over 100 people in a
Karachi rally welcoming Bhutto may be a sign of
things to come.
Where’s Washington?

Washington was alerted to the coup in advance.
Admiral William Fallon, the head of U.S. forces
in the Middle East met General Musharraf in
Islamabad the day before the coup and is reported
to have warned Musharraf about declaring an
emergency. According to The New York Times,
administration officials said "General Musharraf
had been offering private assurances that any
emergency declaration would be short-lived."

The Bush administration’s response has been
predictable thus far. General Musharraf’s aides
told the Times that in the crucial first few days
after the coup there had been no phone calls from
President George W. Bush or other leading U.S.
officials demanding an immediate end to the
martial law. The newspaper quotes Pakistan’s
minister of state for information as saying the
United States "would rather have a stable
Pakistan - albeit with some restrictive norms -
than have more democracy." In short, Islamabad
expected, rightly it turns out, that Washington
would wring its hands, offer platitudes about
restoring democracy, perhaps a token slap on the
wrist, and keep on supporting General Musharraf.
When President Bush did call, he told General
Musharraf that “you ought to have elections soon.”

Washington has invested heavily in General
Musharraf and will not want to write this off.
Since September 11, 2001, the United States has
given enormous political and diplomatic support
and over $10 billion to Pakistan to buy General
Musharraf’s support for its “war on terror.” It
is a doomed policy.

The United States has supported all of Pakistan
military dictators, politically and with guns and
money, starting as long ago as 1958. In the 50
years since then, it has failed to learn that
supporting Pakistan’s generals and the army they
command does little for Pakistan’s people. Under
American tutelage, the army has grown in size and
developed a fierce appetite for high-tech
expensive weapons, which now include nuclear
weapons and ballistic missiles, and a habit of
seizing power while people continue to struggle
with grinding poverty and failing institutions.
It is no wonder that the United States is deeply
unpopular in Pakistan. A 2007 poll found that
only 15% of Pakistanis had a favorable attitude
towards the United States. This hostility toward
the United States will only worsen as Pakistanis
see the United States set aside democracy and the
rule of law in favor of a general and his army.

To get out of this crisis, the international
community must demand that General Musharraf
immediately end his emergency, restore the
constitution and Supreme Court, and fulfill his
commitment to step down as chief of army staff.
Having lost what little trust was vested in him
by the country, Musharraf should also stand down
as president. An interim administration could
hold elections and let Pakistanis choose lawful
leaders.

No one expects elections and a shift to civilian
rule to be a panacea. And though Pakistanis have
had bitter experiences with democracy, they still
prefer it to the army. Elections can mark the
start of the long and difficult task of building
democratic institutions and creating a system of
accountability and trust between government and
people, state and society. This can bring
Pakistanis some hope for the future, and foster
confidence that democracy and the rule of law can
deliver the justice that has so long been denied
to them.