New Delhi
23 November 2005
United States President George Bush was sipping fermented
mare's milk a few days ago and listening to the Central Asian art of throat signing
outside Mongolian capital Ulan Bator when Pakistan Premer Shaukat Aziz was getting
ready to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting after a six-year gap.
Mr Aziz will attend the November 25 to 27 CHOGM in Malta after his country was
readmitted into the Commonwealth last year. Pakistan was suspended from the Councils
of Commonwealth after the October 1999 coup by Pakistan President General Pervez
Musharraf. However, not everybody in Pakistan is happy at the turn of events.
Speaking on behalf of Pakistani civil society in general and women in particular, Ms
Asma Jahangir, a human rights lawyer and currently United Nations Special Rapporteur
on Freedom of Religion or Belief of the Commission on Human Rights, has said that "all
institutions [in Pakistan] have been subjugated and eroded" by the military junta.
Questioning the motive of Bush-Musharraf duo on the war on terror, she said recently, "If
the US policy is to have tinpot dictators in our countries then I wish they would say it and
I'd have had far more respect for them but if we are told time and again that General
Musharraf is a democrat it is a slap on the face of the people of Pakistan."
Holding forth on "Towards Democracy: Pakistan at the Crossroads" at an Asia Society
lecture, she continued, "It is a slap in the face of all the democratic forces in Pakistan. It
is slap in the face of all those people who have struggled for years and years for
democracy. If he (General Musharraf) is a democrat, then surely we must all be
dictators."
Observing that it was important for Pakistan to take a turn and a transition because
"Pakistanis deserve better", Ms Jahangir went on to assert that "regionally, Pakistani
militarisation has affected adversely the policy and the position in Nepal. The theatre of
many of the Islamic militants is now shifting from Pakistan to Bangladesh."
Wondering which war on terrorism was General Musharraf fighting, the human rights
advocate and UN special rapporteur said: "I think that there is a misconception between
General Musharraf and President Bush. They are both fighting different wars on
terrorism and perhaps none of them know what it is, which is the real war."
She said she has met people in Waziristan who brought little fingers for her in
handkerchiefs. "They said to me could these little fingers be terrorists?" she remarked.
Ridiculing the "simplistic conclusion" in the US that if General Musharraf goes, the
Mullahs will come, she said: "The longer [he] stays the more certain it isthat the Mullah
shall come."
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