Let us recall the Lal Masjid debacle in Islamabad in 2007. In July, the Pakistani army occupied the large mosque in the center of Islamabad, which had been host to a band of radical clerics openly defying the government on supporting terrorism, and the resulting scuffle killed something like 50 extremists and injured hundreds more. The Pakistanis caught one of the extremist leaders, a mullah named Abdul Aziz Ghazi, trying to escape wearing a burqa. He had languished under house arrest until today. What?
Since he was apprehended, Mr. Aziz has been held under house arrest in Rawalpindi, the garrison city next to the capital. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court set his bail at $2,500, in a charge related to illegally occupying a children’s library adjacent to the Red Mosque, his lawyer said.
“The court observed that in absence of evidence a person cannot be held indefinitely on the basis of mere accusations,” said the lawyer, Mr. Siddiqui. But he said the government might still issue detention orders “using the pretext that the release can cause a law-and-order situation.”
Right. The sad thing is, from a legal perspective this makes sense. However, rather than proving the moral superiority of extra-legal detentions, this again highlights just how slipshod and counterproductive the American insistence on Musharraf’s rule really was. There are several paragraphs in the NYT story about how the recently-reconstituted Supreme Court is trying to settle scores and “undo” some of the damage Musharraf had done to Pakistan’s legal infrastructure. Their decision today needs to be examined much more closely—I highly doubt there is no evidence against the man—but the fact that he was held for years apparently without charges is, much like the many Guantanamo cases, unacceptable. And in the midst of all of this, it cannot be emphasized enough just how much Pervez Musharraf seriously damaged anyone’s ability to address the terrorism issue in Pakistan.
But there is another angle to consider as well. Shortly after the Lal Masjid incident, it came to light that China quite probably had a role to play in the Pakistani government choosing that moment over any others to act against its extremists because they had finally touched Chinese citizens. Then, last December, more news of China exerting its influence in Pakistan’s fight against extremism surfaced.
Now, Pakistani officials are finally admitting that in February Meng Jianzhu, China’s minister for public security, met with Pakistani President Asif Zadari and urged him to take action against the militants in the tribal region. While their concerns could perhaps be manipulated—China has falsely hyped the Uighur threat before—their identification of Uighur groups with Pakistani groups is not especially new.
What is new, and potentially worth very close scrutiny, is China’s public insistence on Pakistan taking decisive action against the extremists. In the past, they’ve been able to exert pressure in a way the U.S. hasn’t—in part because, unlike the U.S., they invest in Pakistan’s economy and not just its military—but the way the situation in Pakistan has evolved recently changes the game somewhat. It will be interesting to see if China can achieve something the U.S. could not.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1849 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua's writing has appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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{ 4 comments }
All Pakistanis respest and trust China much more than US,Because,China is time tested friend of Pakistan.Whereas, US always showed back in time when we needed them the most.
Enjoyed this post. Raising the possibility of Chinese soft-power competition with U.S. influence in Pakistan’s domestic terrorism crack-down is probably the most interesting question raised on any Central Asia blogs this past week.
The assumption of waning U.S. influence, though, is somewhat questionable from the point of view that Islam’s treatment under Chinese authority, in regions like Xinjiang, don’t carry the flag well with Muslims. In addition, the U.S.’s stepping up of troop muscle, political pressure, and drone missile attacks in Pakistant’s northwestern region seems to undermine the assumption of decreasing U.S. influence.
However, the thought that the U.S.’s Soft Power is waning may carry some credit.
Thought-provoking post.
Sino-Pakistani relations are probably the most important and most overlooked aspect of the geopolitical equation in South Asia (at least among U.S. analysts). Always good to see more attention being brought to the issue. I wonder what you think then of the ‘pact’ signed between the CCP and JI?
Clearly Pakistan has always triangulated its relationship with the U.S. and China (it was after all the ‘back channel’ for Nixon’s opening to Beijing). When the U.S. imposes sanction Islamabad knows it can count on China. With Washington’s post-Cold War tilt towards Delhi is it inevitable that China’s influence over Pakistan eclipses our own?
As far as I’m concerned, the February JI deal brings up Saudis, Nawaz Sharif and old channels of influence in me. I don’t think that’s enough for someone to have too much influence over what happens in the Waziristans or the Swat valley these days. Some, yes. But not much. What do you say?