Friday, January 11, 2008

Another IIF email

The International Issues Forum is a discussion group in Atlanta, USA that looks at global issues, and Pakistan has once again attracted their attention. The following is an informational email before their next discussion in which you might find some resources or perspectives of interest.


When we selected Pakistan as the topic for one of our IIF discussions last October, in the wake of the violence surrounding the return of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to the country, in the e-mail I sent out to the group (see below) I said that I doubted if anyone would object that we were giving too much attention to Pakistan if we chose to make the country the subject of another of our discussions in the near future. Little did I know what was to come!
Since our October discussion:
In November, President/General Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency, and replaced several of the judges of the Supreme Court, including Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, with new, compliant judges, who promptly dismissed challenges to Musharraf's re-election as President; Pakistan's Election Commission announced that general elections would be held on January 8, 2008, as originally scheduled; former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, deposed by Musharraf in 1999, returned from exile for a second time, and this time was allowed to remain in the country; and at the end of the month, Musharraf resigned his post as head of Pakistan's armed forces, which he had long been promising to do, and was sworn in to a new five year term as President, this time as a civilian.
On December 15, Musharraf lifted the state of emergency. Although the two still had differences, it appeared that there was some chance that an accomodation might be reached between Musharraf an Bhutto, and that Pakistan might be on the road to returning to more democratic rule after the January elections.
Then, tragically, on December 27, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated at a campaign rally in Rawalpindi. The exact cause of her death and the circumstances surrounding the assassination remain the subject of controversy, and violence has once again swept the country.
The elections scheduled for January 8 have been postponed until February 18.
A recent Wall Street Journal story began with the line, "The world's most unstable nuclear-armed nation is plunging deeper into crisis." A sobering thought indeed! We should have plenty to talk about at our IIF discussion on Pakistan this Thursday!
As usual, I am sending along some background information:
There are a number of excellent items concerning Pakistan on the Council on Foreign Relations web site:
I found this Daily Analysis, with its many links to articles from various sources, especially useful:
Here are two items from the BBC:
Many great links, and the Timeline's coverage of recent events is most helpful.
Even before the most recent turmoil, I was alarmed by this article from The Wall Street Journal about Pakistan's nuclear weapons program:
Also from The Wall Street Journal, here is a 2007 Timeline and a link to the paper's complete coverage of the Bhutto assassination:
From The New York Times, here is a site with a profile of Pakistan:
Scroll down past the archive articles, and you will find links to all of the paper's recent articles about the country.
In a situation that continues to appear grave, I was able to find at least a small degree of encouragement in this story about General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Musharraf's successor as head of Pakistan's armed forces:
The NewsHour on PBS has aired numerous stories on Pakistan:
I found particularly interesting this report, in which Shahid Husain, a special assistant for economic affairs to Benazir Bhutto's father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, during the mid-1970s, who also had a 33-year career at the World Bank, harshly criticized Ms. Bhutto's role in Pakistan's politics:
Also quite critical of Ms. Bhutto was this op/ed piece from the New York Daily News:
Finally, from The Economist, here is a link to the Country Briefing on Pakistan, which has links to recent articles:
Some articles from The Economist are "premium content," which requires that you log in to receive them. When you are asked for an e-mail address and password, use my e-mail address, [deleted for privacy], and the password "[deleted for privacy]," and you should be able to get them. If this does not work, let me know by return e-mail, and I will send you the articles you want, either as zip files or as regular attachments, whichever you prefer.
If I was wrong, and some of you feel that we are devoting too many of these Thursday night discussions to just a single country, Pakistan, please accept my apology, and understand if I completely disagree with you. For those of you who still maintain a strong interest in this important but troubled nation, please join us at Villa this Thursday evening.
CRH
If you would like to be removed from the list to receive articles, please let me know by return e-mail.
www.i-i-f.org
www.i-i-f.blogspot.com
----- Original Message -----
From:[deleted for privacy]
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 6:27 PM
Subject: IIF; Articles on Pakistan

Knowing that Pakistan's presidential election would occur in early October, we had been planning for quite a while to have a discussion about the results and their implications. But when Pakistan's Supreme Court ruled that despite the fact that current president Pervez Mushrraf won a wide majority of the votes (cast in the two houses of Pakistan's parliament and the four provincial assemblies), no winner could be declared until they ruled on whether his candidacy was legal, I was of the opinion that perhaps we should postpone our discussion until the situation was clarified. After all, we did not want to make Pakistan our subject so frequently that we would tire of it. Well, the events of the past week completely changed my mind. The return to Pakistan of Benazir Bhutto and the ensuing violence made it imperative that we follow through on our original intention to make Pakistan the subject of this week's IIF discussion. And when we again make the country the subject of a future discussion after the election is finally sorted out,or after new parliamentary elections are held, I seriously doubt that anyone will object.
As usual, I am sending along some background information:
In the past month, a number of excellent items relating to Pakistan have appeared on the Council on Foreign Relations web site. Here are a few of them:
From The New York Times, here is a site with a profile of Pakistan, and if you scroll down, links to all of the newspapers recent articles about the country:
Here is an opinion piece from The Wall Street Journal:
From The Economist, here is a link to the Country Briefing on Pakistan, which has links to recent articles:
Some articles from The Economist are "premium content," which requires that you log in to receive them. When you are asked for an e-mail address and password, use my e-mail address [deleted for privacy],
and the password "[deleted for privacy]," and you should be able to get them. If this does not work, let me know by return e-mail, and I will send you the articles you want, either as zip files or as regular attachments, whichever you prefer.
From the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia, here are biographies of three Pakistanis who we will most likely be hearing a lot about in the coming months:
And a few weeks ago Newsweek published this profile of Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani (a/k/a Ashfaq Parvez Kayani), Musharraf's likely successor as head of Pakistan's armed forces:
From the October issue of Atlantic Monthly, here is an article that discusses the future of Pakistan and its relations with the U.S.:
And here is an interview with the author of the article:
Here is an article from last summer's issue of Foreign Affairs:
Finally, here is the most recent update I could find on the internet of the Congressional Research Service Report dealing with Pakistan:
Since this is a pdf file, to read it you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader, which can be downloaded for free; here is the link:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.
Just click on the arrow beside "Choose A Platform" in step one, select your operating system from the drop-down menu, then click on "Download" in step two.
You might want to check to see if a more recent update has become available. Here is the best site to find these CRS reports:
Recently, Newsweek, with some justification called Pakistan "the most dangerous nation in the world." Pakistan is clearly an important country, and given the current state of world affairs, its relationship with the U.S. should be of interest to us all. I, personally, find what is going on in the country at present fascinating. I hope that you agree with me and that you will join us at Villa this Thursday for what I expect to be a most interesting discussion.
CRH
If you would like to be removed from the list to receive articles, please let me know by return e-mail.
www.i-i-f.org
www.i-i-f.blogspot.com
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