Police Battle Lawyers in Pakistan
Police armed with tear gas and clubs attacked thousands of protesting lawyers in the city of Lahore today, and rounded up lawyers in other cities as the government of the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, faced the first signs of concerted resistance to the imposition of emergency rule.
An estimated 150 lawyers were arrested in Lahore after a pitched battle between police and lawyers who stood on the roof of the High Court throwing stones at the police below. Some of the lawyers had bleeding heads as they were shoved into police vans, and some fainted in the clouds of tear gas.In Multan, another city in the province of Punjab, two new judges who had taken the oath of office under emergency rule Sunday were forced to leave the courtroom after hundreds of lawyers threatened to throw eggs at them.
“We threatened them saying: ‘You’ve taken an unconstitutional oath, if you don’t go we will throw eggs at you.’ They left,” said a lawyer from Multan, Riaz Gilani.
Things in Pakistan are clearly going from bad to worse. This is a case of only really bad options. Musharraf is clearly moving further from Democratic reforms and at the same time Al-Qaida and Taliban forces are conducting a very effective insurgency against the nation. At stake of course is Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, which cannot be allowed in extremist hands.
I am not sure what the best thing for the international community to do is. Supporting Musharraf is impossible given where he is going, and would likely backfire even if we decided that he was an SOB we could live with. At the same time, should his move to consolidate power and defeat the Taliban forces through harsh measures fail, we have an absolutely horrific situation.
I would disagree with your premise that Musharraf has made a “move to consolidate power and defeat the Taliban.” Musharraf actively supported the Taliban before 9/11, and passively did so afterward. This move of his seems to be directed against secularists in Pakistan who want democracy.