Martial law declared in pakistan!

[haider]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/11/03/pakistan.emergency/index.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Faced with increasing violence and unrest, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency Saturday, government sources told CNN.

Musharraf issued a provisional constitutional order proclaiming the emergency and suspending the nation's constitution, according to a statement read on state television. He is scheduled to address the nation at 1800GMT Saturday.

The Supreme Court declared the state of emergency illegal, claiming Musharraf had no power to suspend the constitution, Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry told CNN.

Shortly afterward, Chaudhry was expelled as chief justice, his office told CNN. Troops who came to Chaudhry's office said arrangements were being made for his replacement.

It was the second time Chaudhry was removed from his post. His ousting by Musharraf in May prompted massive protests, and he was later reinstated.

In Islamabad, troops entered the Supreme Court and were surrounding the judges' homes, according to CNN's Syed Mohsin Naqvi.

Aitzaz Ahsan, a leading Pakistani attorney and president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, was arrested at his home. A former interior minister, Ahsan represented Chaudry the first time he was forced to leave his post.

Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who left Pakistan last week to visit her family in Dubai, was returning to the country, according to a member of her Pakistan People's Party. The Associated Presss reported an opposition spokesman as saying she was on a plane at Karachi airport. Bhutto returned to Pakistan last month after several years in exile.

The declaration prompted a few hundred people to take to the streets in protest.

Earlier, private networks had reported the declaration was imminent as top officials huddled at Musharraf's residence in Rawalpindi. Shortly after that report, most media channels went off the air in an apparent blackout, although some flickered off and on.

The declaration could potentially delay approaching parliamentary elections, according to CNN's Nic Robertson. It also could provide Musharraf with a reason to continue serving as the nation's military chief, although he has pledged to step down from that post.

Bhutto initially planned to leave for Dubai on Wednesday, but delayed her departure after a senior PPP leader advised her not to leave the country because of the current political situation.

The nation's political atmosphere has been tense for months, with Pakistani leaders in August considering the imposition of a state of emergency because of the growing security threats in the country's lawless tribal regions. But Musharraf, influenced in part by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, held off on the move.

Since that time Musharraf has faced a flurry of criticism from the opposition, who demanded he abandon his military position before becoming eligible to seek a third presidential term. Musharraf garnered a vast majority of votes in presidential elections last month; however, those results have not been certified by the nation's high court.

For weeks the country has been coasting in a state of political limbo while the Supreme Court works to tackle legal challenges filed by the opposition that calls into question Musharraf's eligibility to hold office. Some have speculated that a declaration of emergency is tied to rumors the court is planning to rule against Musharraf.

Musharraf, who led the 1999 coup as Pakistan's army chief, has seen his power erode since the failed effort to oust Chaudhry. His administration is also struggling to contain a surge in Islamic militancy.

Bhutto, who has defied death threats, is working to lead her party into January's general elections and gain a third term as prime minister, possibly under a power-sharing deal with Musharraf.

On October 18, a suicide attacker killed at least 130 people in an assassination attempt on Bhutto during her homecoming. Bhutto received light wounds, but escaped largely unharmed.


 

[Butterbean]

The current reports are focusing on Pakistan having nukes and the concern that Al-Queida(sp) will rise to power there

[240 is Back]

I remember everyone mocking Barrack Obama when he talked about the need to possibly invade Pakistan.

Looks like, just as was the case with Iraq, he knew what the rest of us will know in 1 or 2 or 3 years.

[headhuntersix]

Alot of smart folks have considerd Pakistan the central front in the war on terror. Many have also said that they're not really our allies and have been at best counter productive to our efforts in Afghanistan. Obama is an idiot. They have nukes and that makes us and the Indians very nervous. I would imagine there is a plan in place to seize those nukes should things go south over there. The Indians aren't going to sit around and wait and see.

[Dos Equis]

Definitely a powder keg. 

[240 is Back]

I wondered from minute one why pakistan didn't get invaded too.

Osama is likely hiding on the border, if he's alive.
Pakistan's top general wired 100,000 to Muhammad Atta, 4 days before the 9/11 attacks.
Also Bush called off a 2005 (?) strike on OBL because he didn't want to piss off the locals.

[haider]

The current reports are focusing on Pakistan having nukes and the concern that Al-Queida(sp) will rise to power there

yeah.. what of the fucking tyrant who just took over the country...AGAIN?  The stupidity in the media is unbelievable.

[Butterbean]

(from bloomberg.com)

Pakistan Gets My Vote for a Black Swan Event: Frederick Kempe

By Frederick Kempe


 Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Washington is obsessed with the war in Iraq, the danger of Turkish troops clashing with Kurdish militants and President George W. Bush's possible showdown with Iran over its nuclear weapons ambitions.

Yet the larger threat may be a so-called Black Swan event, something that is both far outside conventional expectations and of such extreme consequence that it might shift not only U.S. electoral dynamics but also the global security calculus.

The odds are rising of such an event growing out of Pakistan, whose status as the most dangerous place on earth was further confirmed by President Pervez Musharraf's declaration of emergency rule on Nov. 3. His suspension of the constitution, dismissal of the chief justice, restrictions on free speech, and roundup of some 1,500 lawyers, judges and political activists do little to change the nation's frightening course.

Jihadist and extremist groups sympathetic to the Taliban and al-Qaeda have grown in frontier provinces and spread to Pakistan's main cities. Secular leadership is faltering in a nuclear-armed country. As Musharraf put it during an address to the nation: ``Inaction at the moment is the suicide of Pakistan, and I won't allow this country to commit suicide.''

What to watch is whether the emergency measures, which Musharraf's opponents say are aimed more at personal than national preservation, reverse these forces or merely push them underground to explode in the coming days and weeks. For now, what has died is a peaceful evolution toward secular, democratic rule through a power-sharing arrangement between the military- led regime and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Nightmare Scenario

Intact is the nightmare scenario: Musharraf's failure or death allows extremists, some of them certainly in the state security services, or ISI, to gain control of the country and its nuclear arsenal of 50 to 100 weapons.

Bhutto and others have suggested the possible role of ISI officers in the assassination attempt on her in Karachi when she returned from exile last month, a bombing that killed 136.

Short of extremists gaining power, imagine terrorists striking the U.S. in an event far worse than 9/11, but this time the trail leads to Pakistan. Any U.S. president will be forced to respond, but given the sobering lessons of Iraq it's not clear how to do so without making matters worse.

U.S. officials say the odds of an extremist takeover are remote. Islamist forces have never polled much more than 10 percent in elections, and Bhutto's giant reception underscored the appeal of secular leaders.

Avoiding Self-Deception

Yet the point of a Black Swan exercise is to avoid the self-deception of conventional wisdom and remember the world's most dramatic changes have come from unanticipated quarters: Iran's Islamic Revolution, Fidel's takeover of Cuba, the collapse of the Soviet Union and 9/11, to name just a few.

The term Black Swan grew out of an old idea that all swans were white, a notion that was turned on its head once black swans were discovered in Australia. Since then, author Nassim Nicholas Taleb used the phrase as the title of a book published earlier this year that describes hard-to-predict, potentially disastrous events beyond the realm of normal expectations.

Pakistan has been breeding Black Swan possibilities for years, but the situation has worsened.

Militants have spread from Pakistan's tribal areas, precipitating the Red Mosque assault in July and the Bhutto bombing. Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, compared the situation to Iraq and Afghanistan ``where people who have negative agendas are increasingly in positions to assert them.''

Gone Too Far

U.S. officials have long suspected that Musharraf's military hasn't wanted much to go after insurgents. He recently escalated his attacks amid U.S. pressure and fearful that he has let extremism go too far. The question now is whether Pakistan's military has the training and equipment to succeed in an insurgent fight.

Finally, Western intelligence agencies can't easily account for all Pakistan's nuclear weapons or where they might be found should Pakistan spin out of control.

The picture is so ugly that senior officials avoid discussing it in public.

So what to do?

For starters, the U.S. must encourage Pakistan to expand small, but effective programs to bring young people out of the radical madrassas, the Islamic religious schools that can be breeding grounds for anti-Western views and jihadism.

The U.S. also must deepen and intensify the military ties that were restored following September 2001 after they were cut in the previous decade by Congress. The Pakistani army's makeup and loyalty is too important to be left to chance at a time when it remains the best hope against extremists.

Extremist Threats

The U.S. should encourage Musharraf not to let up as extremists threaten not just the U.S. and Afghanistan but also Pakistan's future.

It is harder to prescribe a response should an ugly Black Swan event happen. I haven't found any U.S. official who has engaged in a successful war game involving Pakistani nukes in extremist hands. Nor can anyone predict how neighboring, nuclear India or distant Israel might react. To the best of my knowledge, there's no contingency plan for responding to a terrorist strike on the U.S. that has its origins in Pakistan.

I hope someone has better answers. But given recent events I fear my Pakistani Black Swan scenarios aren't as far-fetched as many Washington wishful thinkers might hope.

To contact the writer of this column: Frederick Kempe in Washington at fkempe@acus.org

Last Updated: November 5, 2007 00:14 EST

[Al-Gebra]

Who's Marshall? 

[Mad Nickels]

Who's Marshall? 

We are Marshall

[haider]

Who's Marshall?