By Michele Dunne and Robert Kagan Friday, June 4, 2010; A17
When President Obama called for a "new beginning" in U.S. relations with the Muslim world a year ago, he picked Cairo as the setting for his speech. It was a provocative choice, the capital of a close ally of the United States but also of the three-decades-old autocracy of Hosni Mubarak.
When Obama declared his commitment to "governments that reflect the will of the people" and said that leaders "must maintain your power through consent, not coercion," Egyptians thought they heard a not-so-subtle reference to their aging leader. One enthusiastic Egyptian shouted, "Barack Obama, we love you!" -- the only such interjection during the address.
A year later, Egyptians are scratching their heads about why Obama came to Cairo. In meetings in Cairo this week, Egyptian civil society and political activists across the spectrum voiced their disappointment, asking, "I know they're busy, but can't the Obama administration spare any time at all for what is going on inside Egypt?" and saying resignedly of the president, "He seems like a nice guy, but I guess he's just not going to do anything for us."
The disappointment is understandable. As Egypt heads into controversial parliamentary elections in fall 2010 and a presidential election in 2011, the Obama administration has been tone-deaf, intent on continuing to improve relations with the increasingly brittle and unpopular Mubarak regime. It has cut democracy assistance spending in Egypt by half, agreed to forbid assistance from the U.S. Agency for International Development to groups that lack the government's stamp of approval, and is discussing a future "endowment" that would commit the United States to years of assistance with diminished congressional oversight. When administration officials have privately raised questions about democracy or human rights with the Egyptian government, their carefully calibrated "quiet diplomacy" has been dismissed or ignored. Obama himself politely asked Mubarak during an August 2009 Oval Office meeting to fulfill his 2005 pledge to lift the state of emergency under which Egyptians have been repressed since 1981. Mubarak brushed him off. Last month, Mubarak renewed the state of emergency for another two years, conveniently the period during which parliamentary and presidential elections will occur. The Obama administration called it "regrettable."
Meanwhile, Mubarak is in ill health and may not even make it to the next presidential election. His regime has systematically excluded or discredited new leaders who enjoy any public support, leaving the field of potential successors depressingly impoverished. One would think that under the circumstances both Egyptians and the U.S. government would be working to put in place an open political process so that any new leader could win the support of the people and thus ensure order in this important nation. But the Egyptian government is paralyzed by the aging Mubarak's refusal to look beyond his own rule. And the Obama administration, in pursuit of an illusory stability, stands mute and passive as the predictable train wreck draws nearer.
This administration prides itself on its progressive approach to this post-Cold War world, but it is repeating the mistake that Cold War-era administrations made when they supported right-wing dictatorships -- right up until the point when they were toppled by radical forces.
Obama's Cairo speech had the admirable goal of improving relations with the Muslim world, but the manner in which the administration has pursued this goal has been flawed from the beginning. It has focused almost exclusively on building bridges with leaders and governments. Yet in Egypt, and in Iran, a gulf has opened between the government and the citizenry. Obama has strengthened ties with the aging Mubarak while ignoring the concerns of Egypt's increasingly restive population. "What about us?" one prominent democracy activist asked. "Do we count for anything in this U.S.-Egypt relationship?"
When rebels ousted the corrupt government in Kyrgyzstan in April, they noted angrily that the United States had never stood up for their rights in the face of rigged elections and human rights abuses, placing a clear priority on strategic cooperation with the government. Watch out. If the Obama administration does not figure out how to make clear that it supports the political and human rights of Egyptian citizens, while cooperating with the Egyptian government on diplomatic and security affairs, people will be saying that about the United States in Cairo one of these days -- and maybe sooner than we expect.
There is still time to turn around this failing policy. Vice President Biden visits Egypt next week. There are, as always, numerous crises on the agenda. But if the administration wants to try to head off the next crisis, in Egypt, then Biden should use the opportunity to have a frank talk with Mubarak and other senior officials. In private, he can explain why it is so important, for both Egypt and the United States, that Mubarak take immediate steps to open the political process in this difficult period of transition. In public, Biden needs to make clear that the United States stands for free, fair and competitive elections -- for Egyptians, just as for everyone else.
Given the sorry history of the United States supporting the oppressors rather than the oppressed in that part of the world, such a commitment would be the kind of "new beginning" the Egyptian people seek.
The writers, senior associates at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, are members of the nonpartisan Working Group on Egypt, a consortium of policy experts from Carnegie, the Council on Foreign Relations, Human Rights Watch, the Center for American Progress, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Foreign Policy Initiative and Freedom House.
By Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, June 4, 2010; A08
Burma has begun secretly acquiring key components for a nuclear weapons program, including specialized equipment used to make uranium metal for nuclear bombs, according to a report that cites documents and photos from a Burmese army officer who recently fled the country.
The smuggled evidence shows Burma's military rulers taking concrete steps toward obtaining atomic weapons, according to an analysis co-written by an independent nuclear expert. But it also points to enormous gaps in Burmese technical know-how and suggests that the country is many years from developing an actual bomb.
The analysis, commissioned by the dissident group Democratic Voice of Burma, concludes with "high confidence" that Burma is seeking nuclear technology, and adds: "This technology is only for nuclear weapons and not for civilian use or nuclear power."
"The intent is clear, and that is a very disturbing matter for international agreements," said the report, co-authored by Robert E. Kelley, a retired senior U.N. nuclear inspector. Officials for the dissident group provided copies of the analysis to the broadcaster al-Jazeera, The Washington Post and a few other news outlets.
Hours before the report's release, Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) announced that he was canceling a trip to Burma, also known as Myanmar, to await the details. "It is unclear whether these allegations have substantive merit," Webb, who chairs a Senate Foreign Relations panel on East Asia, said in a statement released by his office. "[But] until there is further clarification on these matters, I believe it would be unwise and potentially counterproductive for me to visit Burma."
There have been numerous allegations in the past about secret nuclear activity by Burma's military rulers, accounts based largely on ambiguous satellite images and uncorroborated stories by defectors. But the new analysis is based on documents and hundreds of photos smuggled out of the country by Sai Thein Win, a Burmese major who says he visited key installations and attended meetings at which the new technology was demonstrated.
The trove of insider material was reviewed by Kelley, a U.S. citizen who served at two of the Energy Department's nuclear laboratories before becoming a senior inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency. Kelley co-wrote the opposition group's report with Democratic Voice of Burma researcher Ali Fowle.
Among the images provided by the major are technical drawings of a device known as a bomb-reduction vessel, which is chiefly used in the making of uranium metal for fuel rods and nuclear-weapons components. The defector also released a document purporting to show a Burmese government official ordering production of the device, as well as photos of the finished vessel.
Other photographs show Burmese military officials and civilians posing beside a device known as a vacuum glove box, which also is used in the production of uranium metal. The defector describes ongoing efforts on various phases of a nuclear-weapons program, from uranium mining to work on advanced lasers used in uranium enrichment. Some of the machinery used in the Burmese program appears to have been of Western origin.
The report notes that the Burmese scientists appear to be struggling to master the technology and that some processes, such as laser enrichment, likely far exceed the capabilities of the impoverished, isolated country.
"Photographs could be faked," it says, "but there are so many and they are so consistent with other information and within themselves that they lead to a high degree of confidence that Burma is pursuing nuclear technology."
A Washington-based nuclear weapons analyst who reviewed the report said the conclusions about Burma's nuclear intentions appeared credible. "It's just too easy to hide a program like this," said Joshua H. Pollack, a consultant to the U.S. government.
Eighteen months after Barack Obama's presidential win seemed to usher in a new era in racial politics, a different reality has emerged: African American candidates in campaigns nationwide are struggling so much that it's possible that there will be no black governors or senators by next year.
The drubbing Tuesday of Rep. Artur Davis (D), who was running to be the first black governor of Alabama, was the latest in a series of defeats this year of African American politicians in primaries for statewide office. And two of the three who already hold major statewide posts are leaving them. One of the nation's two black governors, New York's David Paterson (D), who has been plagued by ethics scandals, opted not to run this fall -- the same decision made by the only black senator, Roland Burris (D-Ill.).
The only African American favored to win a gubernatorial or Senate race is Massachusetts Gov. Deval L. Patrick (D), who is running for a second term.
Aspiring black politicians, such as Rep. Kendrick B. Meek (D-Fla.), who is seeking a Senate seat, are underdogs in general-election contests. And while a number of black Republicans are running, many are losing in primaries.
The defeats suggest that Obama's victory did not herald greater success for other black politicians.
"We have had breakthroughs, but the obstacles are still there," said Christopher Edley, who was special adviser for the President's Initiative on Race in the Clinton administration and is now dean of the University of California at Berkeley's School of Law. "The bench is weak. If you look at lower office levels or state legislatures, I think the picture is dramatically better, but we haven't been able to bring enough people up from there."
The majority of black politicians in Washington are members of the Congressional Black Caucus, representing districts that are disproportionately liberal and African American, making it difficult for them to build broader coalitions of supporters to win a statewide race. Two blacks, have been elected to governorships -- L. Douglas Wilder (D) of Virginia and Patrick -- and six, including Obama and Burris, have served in the Senate.
The recent losses do not have one unifying factor. Davis struggled to woo white voters in the primary but could not galvanize blacks, either. He lost to Alabama insurance commissioner Ron Sparks, who is white, in some overwhelmingly African American counties. Burris's connections to former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich (D) probably doomed his candidacy the moment he was appointed to fill the seat vacated by Obama.
Black voters and activists, perhaps because of doubts about some black candidates' ability to win, have not rallied around them as they did Obama.
African Americans "are so invested personally in Barack Obama the man, and it's unique to him," said Cornell Belcher, a black pollster who worked on the Obama campaign. "They are invested in him in a way they are not in other black political leaders."
The primary process is thinning the ranks of black candidates, but among the few who remain, Patrick has a double-digit lead in Massachusetts. And Meek could benefit from a three-way Florida race in which two of the candidates -- Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running as an independent, and GOP candidate Marco Rubio -- could split the conservative vote.
"There were a lot of people who were in fantasy land about black candidates all of sudden getting elected to all of these offices," said David Bositis, who studies black political trends at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. "But in most years, there are only a handful of Senate seats that are truly competitive, and a lot of people want these seats. And given this is going to be a favorable year for Republicans, the notion that it was going to be a great year for African American candidates, it just wasn't going to happen."
By Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, June 4, 2010; A02
The U.S. government is seeing "hints" that adversaries are targeting military networks for "remote" sabotage, the head of the Pentagon's recently launched Cyber Command said in his first public remarks since being confirmed last month.
"The potential for sabotage and destruction is now possible and something we must treat seriously," said Gen. Keith B. Alexander, who also heads the National Security Agency, the nation's largest intelligence agency. "Our Department of Defense must be able to operate freely and defend its resources in cyberspace."
In remarks afterward, Alexander said he is concerned about the safety of computer systems used in war zones. "The concern I have is when you look at what could happen to a computer, clearly sabotage and destruction are things that are yet to come," he said. "If we don't defend our systems, people will be able to break them."
James A. Lewis, director of CSIS's Technology and Public Policy Program, said advanced militaries are capable of destroying U.S. computer systems. "That wasn't true four years ago, but it's true now and Cyber Command will have to deal with it," he said.
The Cyber Command, launched last month at Fort Meade, was created by Defense SecretaryRobert M. Gates to streamline the military's capabilities to attack and defend in cyberspace, supported by NSA's intelligence capabilities.
Alexander stressed that the Command will focus on protecting the U.S. military's 15,000 computer networks under oversight of the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Congress and the administration. His remarks were aimed at assuaging concerns over the NSA's role in helping to protect civilian and private-sector networks, as well as fears of a "militarization" of cyberspace.
"We spend a lot of time with the court, with Congress, the administration, the oversight committees to ensure they know what we're doing and why we're doing it," Alexander said.
This is done in classified settings, he said, including before the surveillance court, set up as part of the effort to protect Americans from unwarranted government surveillance.
"The hard part is, we can't go out and tell everybody exactly what we did or we give up capability that may be extremely useful in protecting our country and our allies," he said.
Alexander's confirmation was delayed for months by congressional concerns over the command's role and scope of action, how its operations would affect Americans' privacy, and a lack of clarity over rules of the road in cyber warfare.
The rules are still being debated and formulated, he said. So are the rules of engagement for working with the Department of Homeland Security and private industry in protecting the private sector's systems, which is perhaps the most difficult challenge.
But Alexander has his hands full just hardening the military's systems. DOD systems are probed by unauthorized users more than 6 million times a day.
"While our front-line defenses are up to this challenge, we still have to devote too much of our time and resources to dealing with relatively mundane problems," such as poorly engineered software and missing patches, he said.
By Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, June 4, 2010; A01
Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials.
Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.
Commanders are developing plans for increasing the use of such forces in Somalia, where a Special Operations raid last year killed the alleged head of al-Qaeda in East Africa. Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot has been identified, or after an attack linked to a specific group.
The surge in Special Operations deployments, along with intensified CIA drone attacks in western Pakistan, is the other side of the national security doctrine of global engagement and domestic values President Obama released last week.
One advantage of using "secret" forces for such missions is that they rarely discuss their operations in public. For a Democratic president such as Obama, who is criticized from either side of the political spectrum for too much or too little aggression, the unacknowledged CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, along with unilateral U.S. raids in Somalia and joint operations in Yemen, provide politically useful tools.
Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed "things that the previous administration did not."
'More access'
Special Operations commanders have also become a far more regular presence at the White House than they were under George W. Bush's administration, when most briefings on potential future operations were run through the Pentagon chain of command and were conducted by the defense secretary or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
"We have a lot more access," a second military official said. "They are talking publicly much less but they are acting more. They are willing to get aggressive much more quickly."
The White House, he said, is "asking for ideas and plans . . . calling us in and saying, 'Tell me what you can do. Tell me how you do these things.' "
The Special Operations capabilities requested by the White House go beyond unilateral strikes and include the training of local counterterrorism forces and joint operations with them. In Yemen, for example, "we are doing all three," the official said. Officials who spoke about the increased operations were not authorized to discuss them on the record.
The clearest public description of the secret-war aspects of the doctrine came from White House counterterrorism director John O. Brennan. He said last week that the United States "will not merely respond after the fact" of a terrorist attack but will "take the fight to al-Qaeda and its extremist affiliates whether they plot and train in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond."
That rhetoric is not much different than Bush's pledge to "take the battle to the enemy . . . and confront the worst threats before they emerge." The elite Special Operations units, drawn from all four branches of the armed forces, became a frontline counterterrorism weapon for the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
But Obama has made such forces a far more integrated part of his global security strategy. He has asked for a 5.7 percent increase in the Special Operations budget for fiscal 2011, for a total of $6.3 billion, plus an additional $3.5 billion in 2010 contingency funding.
Bush-era clashes between the Defense and State departments over Special Operations deployments have all but ceased. Former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld saw them as an independent force, approving in some countries Special Operations intelligence-gathering missions that were so secret that the U.S. ambassador was not told they were underway. But the close relationship between Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is said to have smoothed out the process.
"In some places, we are quite obvious in our presence," Adm. Eric T. Olson, head of the Special Operations Command, said in a speech. "In some places, in deference to host-country sensitivities, we are lower in profile. In every place, Special Operations forces activities are coordinated with the U.S. ambassador and are under the operational control of the four-star regional commander."
Chains of command
Gen. David H. Petraeus at the Central Command and others were ordered by the Joint Staff under Bush to develop plans to use Special Operations forces for intelligence collection and other counterterrorism efforts, and were given the authority to issue direct orders to them. But those orders were formalized only last year, including in a CENTCOM directive outlining operations throughout South Asia, the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.
The order, whose existence was first reported by the New York Times, includes intelligence collection in Iran, although it is unclear whether Special Operations forces are active there.
The Tampa-based Special Operations Command is not entirely happy with its subordination to regional commanders and, in Afghanistan and Iraq, to theater commanders. Special Operations troops within Afghanistan had their own chain of command until early this year, when they were brought under the unified direction of the overall U.S. and NATO commander there, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, and his operational deputy, Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez.
"Everybody working in CENTCOM works for Dave Petraeus," a military official said. "Our issue is that we believe our theater forces should be under a Special Operations theater commander, instead of . . . Rodriguez, who is a conventional [forces] guy who doesn't know how to do what we do."
Special Operations troops train for years in foreign cultures and language, and consider themselves a breed apart from what they call "general purpose forces." Special Operations troops sometimes bridle at ambassadorial authority to "control who comes in and out of their country," the official said. Operations have also been hindered in Pakistan -- where Special Operations trainers hope to nearly triple their current deployment to 300 -- by that government's delay in issuing the visas.
Although pleased with their expanded numbers and funding, Special Operations commanders would like to devote more of their force to global missions outside war zones. Of about 13,000 Special Operations forces deployed overseas, about 9,000 are evenly divided between Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Eighty percent of our investment is now in resolving current conflicts, not in building capabilities with partners to avoid future ones," one official said.
Questions remain
The force has also chafed at the cumbersome process under which the president or his designee, usually Gates, must authorize its use of lethal force outside war zones. Although the CIA has the authority to designate targets and launch lethal missiles in Pakistan's western tribal areas, attacks such as last year's in Somalia and Yemen require civilian approval.
The United Nations, in a report this week, questioned the administration's authority under international law to conduct such raids, particularly when they kill innocent civilians. One possible legal justification -- the permission of the country in question -- is complicated in places such as Pakistan and Yemen, where the governments privately agree but do not publicly acknowledge approving the attacks.
Former Bush officials, still smarting from accusations that their administration overextended the president's authority to conduct lethal activities around the world at will, have asked similar questions. "While they seem to be expanding their operations both in terms of extraterritoriality and aggressiveness, they are contracting the legal authority upon which those expanding actions are based," said John B. Bellinger III, a senior legal adviser in both of Bush's administrations.
The Obama administration has rejected the constitutional executive authority claimed by Bush and has based its lethal operations on the authority Congress gave the president in 2001 to use "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons" he determines "planned, authorized, committed, or aided" the Sept. 11 attacks.
Many of those currently being targeted, Bellinger said, "particularly in places outside Afghanistan," had nothing to do with the 2001 attacks.
MuslinWhat the Facebook Ban Says About Pakistan's Judiciary
Kathryn Allawala KATHRYN ALLAWALA works at Foreign Affairs.
On May 19, news spread that Pakistan was blocking many open-content Web sites -- including Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Flickr -- after users complained about a Facebook page that was holding a competition encouraging users to draw caricatures of Muhammad. Before the ban, supporters used Facebook status updates to declare their intent to boycott the site. Many of those who were opposed updated their pages with messages that they would not be visiting the Web site until their government changed its mind. On the streets, the mood was darker. On one side, activists marched in favor of the move and called for even wider restrictions. On the other, another group demonstrated for the ban's immediate reversal.
In one sense, these events can be read as a sign of Pakistan's growing Islamization and the government's fear of social unrest. Acting at the behest of a group of lawyers called the Islamic Lawyers Movement, the Lahore High Court, the highest court of Pakistan's most populous region, argued that the courts had a responsibility to act against such a blasphemous offense. The government, which had favored blocking only the Facebook page in question, was apparently driven less by religious concern than by the desire to avoid a replay of the violent riots that shook the country following the 2005 Danish cartoon controversy.
Beyond the issues of religion and freedom of speech, however, lies a deeper story -- that of Pakistan's changing power structure and the shifting roles of the country's three institutional pillars: the government, the judiciary, and the military. Rather than simply a sign of creeping Islamism, the Facebook ban is an outgrowth of the power struggle that has consumed the judiciary and the government since 2007, when Pervez Musharraf's military dictatorship crumbled. Should these struggles persist, the third pillar might very well make a comeback.
Previous battles among Pakistan's three institutional pillars are evident in the nation's much-amended constitution, and the revisions to this document set the scene for the recent Lahore High Court ruling. As Humayun Akhtar Khan, secretary-general of the Pakistan Muslim League, recently wrote in Dawn, Pakistan's leading English-language newspaper, "Since Pakistan came into existence there has been a tussle between the politicians and the generals. When they assume power, the generals seek legitimacy and the politicians more power. Together, they shred the constitution to pieces." For the past 40 years, while the civilian government and the military have sabotaged the constitution, the country, and each other, the judiciary has stood quite helpless between them. But now its power is growing.
The institutional roles of Pakistan's three pillars solidified during the tenure of Pakistan's first popularly elected prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who came to power in 1971. During his seven-year rule, he used his constitutionally unrestrained power to ban opposition parties and centralize control over the provinces. In the meantime, he amended the country's constitution to set a fixed term for judges and gave himself the authority to transfer them between courts. The upshot was obvious: he could pack the high courts with whatever allies he wanted.
When his Pakistan People's Party (PPP) claimed 75 percent of the vote in the 1977 general election, it was a bridge too far and violent riots swept across the country. It was then that General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, Pakistan's most notorious military dictator, stepped in to restore order and abolished the overly powerful role of prime minister. Shortly thereafter, he amended the constitution to shorten the tenure of the chief justice of Pakistan, who was forced to retire immediately. By the fall of 1977, a pliant Supreme Court had officially validated his coup, and he became president. The court's action set a dangerous precedent: the civilian government would amass power and become corrupt, the military would intervene, and the courts would provide it with legal cover.
Over the next few years, Zia further weakened the courts. He forced judges to take oaths of allegiance to him and set up the Federal Shariat Court, an Islamic court independent from the federal courts with judges beholden to him. By the mid-1980s, Zia turned his attention from reforming Pakistan's judiciary to reforming its civilian government. He reinstated the post of prime minister and pushed an amendment through parliament that gave the president the ability to dismiss the prime minister and the National Assembly. Not only did the move further legitimize his dismissal of Bhutto it also put him at the center of Pakistan's political system and ensured that no one in government could cross him -- and no one did.
In fact, it wasn't until popularly elected civilian politicians returned to power after Zia's death, in 1988, that the amendment was ever invoked. And in the decade that followed, no democratically elected prime minister finished his or her term: Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was dismissed by the president twice, in 1990 and 1996; and in between, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was dismissed once, in 1993. The presidents cited incompetence, corruption, and nepotism in each case.
After Bhutto was ousted in 1996, Sharif was again elected to office. He was determined to reform the constitution and put an end to the government's clashes over power -- mostly by vesting all of it in himself. In addition to revoking the amendment that gave the president the power to dismiss him, he passed another to give party leaders (namely, him) the power to dismiss any legislator who failed to vote with the party head. In 1997, when the Supreme Court attempted to invalidate some judicial appointments Sharif had tried to make, he had party members storm the court and forcibly banish the chief justice and the president.
Sharif's unchecked rule spurred violent protests across the country, cueing Pakistan's military to intervene. In 1999, General Pervez Musharraf seized power. The coup was widely popular, and the Supreme Court quickly and unanimously validated it. To restore functioning governance, Musharraf, now president, amended the constitution to once again empower the president to dismiss the prime minister. This completed Pakistan's second tour through the cycle of civilian corruption and military intervention followed by a judiciary rubber stamp on the process.
In 2007, however, something surprising happened: a burgeoning civil society, a more professionalized class of young lawyers, and widespread fatigue after eight years of Musharraf's increasingly unpopular rule invigorated the judiciary. With elections looming, Musharraf needed the Supreme Court to renew an earlier ruling that he could remain head of the military and still run for president. The court refused to do so, and Musharraf attempted to dismiss its chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. In reaction, a peaceful movement of lawyers for the reinstatement Chaudhry and the ouster of Musharraf swept the country. The political parties were able to capitalize on the movement, and the PPP won the 2008 elections. Shortly thereafter, Musharraf left the country.
For the first time in Pakistan's history, it appeared that the government and judiciary would be empowered at the expense of the military, putting an end to the country's political problems. A more powerful judiciary, people hoped, would temper the worst of the civilian politicians' inclinations to amass power. And in turn, the government would be less vulnerable to military intervention because the military had historically only stepped in when the politicians' corruption led to political breakdown and popular unrest.
Now it appears that many battles between the judiciary and government loom on the horizon. Early this year, the government decided to amend Pakistan's constitution, proclaiming that it was strengthening the country's democratic institutions. The new amendment, the constitution's 18th, which passed the National Assembly in April, yet again revokes the main presidential power -- the right to dissolve the National Assembly and dismiss the prime minister. The PPP has argued that the amendment replaces the imbalanced, quasi-presidential system (which they see as a legacy of Pakistan's military dictators) with a more democratic, fully parliamentary, and stronger one. Even though the bill renders President Asif Ali Zardari little more than a figurehead, he nonetheless claimed at the signing ceremony: "I do not find myself powerless because my power is democracy and people of the country."
Certainly, the amendment restores the balance of power to Pakistan's National Assembly and strips some remaining vestiges of the military dictatorships from the constitution: it nullifies Zia's and Musharraf's major constitutional amendments, and even removes every mention of Zia's name. And safe from being sacked by the president at whim, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani might be able to lead the National Assembly to take up matters -- such as the country's economic problems and ongoing energy crisis -- that Zardari had neglected or over which he had been deadlocked with the main opposition party, the Pakistani Muslim League (PML).
But troublingly, the amendment removes from the constitution a clause that mandated regular intraparty elections, and it does nothing to address the power of party heads to remove rogue legislators. This means that Sharif -- who remains head of the PML but has been barred from holding elected office because of criminal charges against him (until the 18th Amendment changed this rule in order to get the PML vote) -- could dismiss parliamentarians of his party who do not vote as he directs on a range of issues. Although Zardari has been divested of much of his official power, he and his 22-year-old son, Bilawal Bhutto, remain co-chairmen of the PPP. It is unlikely that Gillani, now technically the most powerful PPP member in parliament, will take up legislative matters that Zardari doesn't approve. Nor will the PML cross Sharif. Without internal democracy, the major parties will remain conduits for personal power and new ideas will be crowded out. Progress on Pakistan's most pressing problems will remain stalled, as Zardari and Sharif continue to clash. Unfortunately, this sets the government up for a collapse and military similar to those of 1977 and 1999.
The wild card this time is the judiciary. Already the Supreme Court has decried the amendment as unconstitutional, arguing that these measures undermine democracy as laid out in Pakistan's 1973 constitution. It has also taken issue with the new commission to appoint judges, which will include representatives from the National Assembly, that the 18th Amendment mandates. At the same time, it has begun hearings on whether Zardari is legally able to hold the posts of president and PPP party head at once, and has started corruption cases against many leading politicians.
The by-product of the judiciary's increasing power will be plenty more cases such as these and the Facebook ruling, where the court system tests its limits and tries to eke out further control. Tellingly, the government did not speak out publicly against the ban when it was enforced, even though it had been opposed to shutting down pages and Web site other than the Facebook page with the "Draw Muhammad" contest. Indeed, this ban was a well-selected bit of judicial activism; since Islamic morality is such a divisive topic in Pakistan, the government would not be able to condemn the Lahore High Court without inciting a potentially violent response. Although the Supreme Court has now rolled back the ban, it has left open the possibility for the courts to censor offensive material in the future.
Given Pakistan's weak constitution and poorly institutionalized government, there is no guarantee that total judicial independence from elected politicians (even the terribly corrupt, power-hungry ones) will be a good thing. For all the professional and moderate lawyers and judges, there are plenty who are corrupt, are carrying out personal vendettas, are in the pockets of those who appointed them, or are beholden to religious groups such as the Islamic Lawyers Movement. If these kinds of rulings monopolize the judiciary's agenda, distracting it from the more pressing task of moderating a government that looks to be repeating the same mistakes as civilian governments past, Pakistan's empowered second pillar may end up being yet another problem. As always, the country's third pillar waits in the wings, ready to step in if the situation should get out of hand.
JohnAMacDougall #Kandahar #Province - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: http://bit.ly/994qlU via @addthis #afghanistan
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