Summary
With police and soldiers in the streets and hundreds of opposition leaders jailed, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has just made it much more difficult for Western powers to support him. Days before an expected Supreme Court ruling which many speculate would have declared his October re-election illegal, Gen. Musharraf has imposed a state of emergency and suspended Pakistan's constitution. This is ostensibly an act of preemptive counterterrorism and counter-subversion. In reality it is a desperate bid to preserve Gen. Musharraf's flagging presidency. It may be his undoing.
Pakistan's security situation has been deteriorating swiftly in recent weeks, so this self-preservationism may seem to be at least in part a genuine antiterror move to the dwindling number of regime loyalists. Over the weekend, the general placed the Supreme Court under House arrest and cut their phone lines; he jailed lawyers who refused to endorse his declaration; he blocked many prominent television and radio outlets from broadcasting. Certainly this has all the trappings of the 1999 coup in which Gen. Musharraf seized the presidency.See the full content of this document
Extract
Musharraf's Latest Coup
Just last week, Pakistani Gen. Ehsan ul-Haq, the outgoing chairman of Pa...
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