A lot of us remember the Pinochet regime and its nasty practice of "disappearing" critics of that government. I think a similar situation has begun to emerge in Pakistan, so far on a much smaller scale. This has been going on for a while, but this is the first time I've seen this reported in a major US newspaper.
You can read the full story in the NY Times here.
The "Global War on Terror" (tm) has become a rationale that excuses violating the human and civil rights of anti-government protestors, regional separatists, and critics of the Musharraf government. It began shortly after 9/11, as our government began putting pressure on Pakistan to cooperate with the war in Afghanistan. The wife of one of the disappeared, Amina Masood Janjua, says she has a list of 115 names of missing people. The Human Rights Commission says they've listed 400 people as missing. The question is, how many families have not reported their loved ones as missing, out of fear of what the Pakistani authorities might do to them?
Peaceful protestors have long been harassed and publicly humiliated. A good example of this is the small photo in the NYT online article, showing Mrs. Janjua's eldest son standing in the middle of the street, surrounded by the police, with his pajama down around his ankles. For South Asian Muslims, this sort of treatment is considered extraordinarily shameful. The taboo on adult nudity is pretty strong, and this is partial stripping.
While I've never been to Pakistan, I have been to India. You don't deal with the police there unless you absolutely have to, and they can and will harass you with impunity if the mood strikes them. There's nothing, for all practical purposes, an individual can do about it. Police forces in both countries are deeply distrusted, even feared, for their corruption, abuse of power, and willingness to be used for political purposes.
The political implications of "disappearing" people ought to strike a chord for those Kossacks who are conversant with the history of political disappearances in Latin America. Musharraf is not popular outside the military, and even there he is not as secure as he might wish. When he first took power, most Pakistanis were relieved. That feeling has largely dissipated since 9/11. Within a few days of that event, Musharraf made a speech to his country, the subtext of which essentially begged his people to understand that he was being backed into a corner by the US. Some believe he is now a creature, a tool if you wish, of the Bush Adeministration. To keep BushCo happy, Musharraf has ordered the army into the old NW Frontier provinces, particular Waziristan, hunting for al-Qaeda operatives among the Pathans. For those who are familar with the history of the British Raj, that ought to make you nervous: if they love you, the Pathans will defend you to the death. If they don't like you, you'd better make your funeral arrangements. They make great friends, and terrible enemies.
There are separatist movements in Pakistan, particularly in Baluchistan in the southwest of the country, and Sindh, the province where Karachi is located. Both of these provinces have long had serious problems with political center of Pakistan, the Punjab. While there are significant cultural differences between these two regions and the Punjab, another serious factor involves the politics of water, as Punjab gets the lion's share of the waters of the Indus River flowing down from the mountains. Farmers further downstream have long complained that they cannot sustain their crops with what is left to them. It's in part another resource war, this time internal, not international. The bottom line is that the Pakistani government desperately wants to hold onto all of its territory. If Musharraf manages by some miracle to come to some agreement with India about Kashmir, he will have to hang onto these other provinces or he'll be in more trouble than we can even begin to imagine.
The Islamists in Pakistan are also putting a lot of pressure on Musharraf to separate Pakistan from US influence, and to maintain those elements of shari'a that Zia installed as civil law. This isn't new. And moderates and progressives in Pakistan are screaming for greater rights, for real elections, and for Musharraf to make up his mind -- is he the head of the army or the president? They don't want him to be both. And this is just the abbreviated list.
So between the US pressurization and the internal turmoil, the general/president is stuck. He has little maneuvering room. Could Musharraf wind up going the way of Pinochet? I'm beginning to think he's clsoe to heading down that long, ugly road. He's definitely bought into the cult of personality business: a recent video clip I saw of him, in uniform, showed his name label. Usually it's the soldier's last name. Not his: it read Pervez. Not a good sign, people.
We are not popular in Pakistan, and for good reason. It's not just the GWOT. We backed Zia ul-Huq, who seized power in a military coup and proceeded to violate all sorts of human and civil rights. (For Pakistani feminists, this guy really was a demon -- he's the jerk who established the notorious hudood laws, that turn rape into adultery if a woman can't come up with four witnesses to say, she didn't consent.) While Pakistan is very different from Chile socially and culturally, these parallels are really distrubing. We're backing a military-led government that is being called a dictatorship in many circles. And that government is "disappearing" its own people. It doesn't matter that this is happening on a small scale thus far. Our government has fostered the atmosphere in which it could begin, and is complicit in this. The question is, have any of these people wound up in Guantanamo?