Not long ago, in a land not far away, a land called Islamabad, there lived a military dictator who was known for his invention of the term, "moderate enlightenment". What relation the term had to fighting terrorism few know, but it was thrown around by his administration as a philosophy much like capitalism or socialism. Somehow, a phrase that seems to indicate a limited amount of knowledge was supposed to bring the nation together to fight terrorism. It worked in the sense that it led to limited knowledge of the part of the people of Pakistan at the expense of Pakistan.
It would seem that the adminstration was criticizing the terrorists while arming them at the same time. According to Ahmad Rashid's "Descent into Chaos" (2008 Penguin Books), as long as General Musharraf's army was helping the US forces fight Al Qaida forces in Afghanistan, the ISI was free to do whatever it pleased. Using the power of the military adminstration behind it, the ISI were arming Taliban members to go fight against Afghanistan. When the Allied Forces planned a large offensive, a Pakistani military plane airlifted many militants out of danger citing the evacuation of ISI operatives as an excuse. These same militants were the fore runners of organistations linked to the Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaida. They wasted little time in establishing training camps in Waziristan and now Punjab. It seems that when General Musharraf was talking about "moderate enlightenment", he meant that the people ahould be enlightened about the army's efforts at eradicating terrorism in Afghanistan while being unaware of the ISI's efforts of arming Taliban and other non-state actors.
Due to the example of the US forces not following the Geneva conventions that detail legal rights of prisoners of war (which became a scandal in itself in the US and a key argument for Obama's campaign), the Pakistani security forces under Musharraf decided to follow suit and ignored the UN rules regarding ban on torture or the right to habeas corpus (due process of law). With the security forces detaning suspected militants without charging them with crimes, the Supreme Court was forced to step in on humanatarian grounds and direct the forces to free those not charged with anything. Had these suspected militants been arrested and charged with a crime while giving them trial, a genuine threat to national security could have been diminished. Instead, the militrary intelligence establishment forced the judiciary to free suspected militants. These militants could have been dealt with in ways to benefit the state and keep militancy at bay. Instead, due to the rash decision of following the policies of the then US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld (whose choice it was to ignore international law regarding the rules of war), the Pakistani administration ended up digging itself in a hole.
The follies of General Musharraf did not stop there. After a political conundrum involving
the courts over the legality of a President who was also an army chief, followed by democracy and still more political instability, General Musharraf (finally ousted from the presidency by parliament and as a retired army chief, no longer officially supported by the army and living in self exile in England) had decided he could not get enough of the Pakistani political arena. He has now formed the All Pakistan Muslim League, a party that has extended a hand of friendship towards the violent MQM Party (Mohajir Qaumi Movement Party) of Karachi. The question is, will anyone want to see a disgraced president (frequently called a dictator by the state leadership and the opposition) back in power? More importantly, is the world ready for the return of the Mushy?
