The Puppet Masters

Apparently the only way left to export democracy is to support military dictatorships. On the 8^th of October, General Pervez Musharraf, the dictator of Pakistan for the last 9 years won another rigged presidential election. Half of his parliament boycotted or resigned in frustration. General Musharraf still enjoys the United States undivided support as its most important partner in the war on terror.

Without U.S support, Musharraf could never have maintained illegal military control over a democratic country for so long. The U.S has a strategic interest in having a friendly government in Pakistan, as it shares a border with Afghanistan and has become the new front line for the war on terror. Sadly, where strategic interests are involved, promoting democracy and respecting sovereignty take a back seat.

The people of Pakistan have had to live with the consequences of America’s foreign policy, facing the ever present threat of bomb blasts and attacks by extremist organizations which see Pakistan as a proxy for the American government. More than 700 Pakistanis have been abducted by their own government’s intelligence organizations and the FBI. The fortunate ones get detained and tortured by the ISI (Pakistan’s version of the CIA) while the unluckier ones get sent off to Guantanamo and other secret U.S prisons where the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply and human rights magically cease to exist. No evidence or warrants are necessary, cash rewards offered by the U.S government for the arrest of suspected Al-Qaeda sympathizers are enough to circumvent any due process that may have existed in this once democratic country.

The government has played to the population’s anti-U.S sentiments by officially denouncing America’s slaughter of the people of Afghanistan, while secretly launching a military offensive against some of its own citizens in the Taliban sympathetic Northwest Frontier of Pakistan, because of U.S demands. These clashes were the result of mounting U.S pressure on Musharraf to deliver on their investment in diplomatic and monetary support. As a result, thousands of Pakistani citizens living in the tribal belt and at least 2000 Pakistani soldiers, by some unofficial estimates, lost their lives while fighting each other in order to satiate U.S demands.

The General, in order to stay in power has also had to take measures previously thought impossible. In order to garner support in the Sindh province, The MQM, an organization heavily involved in organized crime and held responsible for many incidents of terrorism in Karachi, was allowed control of the provincial government. Individual’s against whom active murder cases were pending, were allowed to take office and the MQM openly massacred any political opposition in the province resulting in massive bloodshed in Karachi on the 12^th of May 2007, that left more than 200 opposition political workers dead. All this happened under the watchful eye of government security personnel that refused to intervene.

Another consequence of America’s continued support for the “General President” has been the complete undermining of Pakistani institutions such as the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Earlier in the year, Musharraf “fired” a Supreme Court justice when he questioned the constitutional basis of him holding power. This caused massive upheaval in the country and the people of Pakistan rioted and rallied behind the deposed Chief justice until the government had to reinstate him. Many people, including lawyers, lost their lives in the riots, others were injured and maimed. Throughout all these events, the U.S never once officially condemned the draconic measures that Musharraf was taking in order to stay in power.

One can argue that America shouldn’t care about what happens in other countries, that it can write these things off as someone else’s domestic problem. If only that were the case, there would never be situations like the one that prevails in Pakistan today. In a country like Pakistan, burdened by debt and reliant on foreign Aid, the U.S has a lot of say in who takes power as it controls the purse strings for foreign aid and provides much needed military equipment and technology.

Any General taking power in Pakistan needs the blessings of Pakistan’s U.S masters, otherwise his regime would be overthrown by a more favorable candidate. This alone goes against promoting democracy, not to mention the heinous acts perpetrated by the puppet governments on behalf of the puppet masters in order to maintain the status quo. All the while the people, who are supposed to elect their own leaders, suffer under tyrants chosen by foreigners sitting half the world away who have no stake in their country’s destiny, only selfish short-term strategic interests.

This isn’t anything that the world hasn’t seen before. The Shah of Iran, The Saudi Royal family, Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan are a few other examples of the U.S putting strategic interests before its ideal of exporting democracy. The only difference between how Myanmar or Pakistan are perceived internationally is how vital they are to U.S interests, and that is injustice in a nutshell. One can only hope that the U.S wakes up from its self induced moral slumber and once more realizes its true role as a defender of democracy instead of an exporter of Tyranny.

A Failure to Communicate

There is a huge problem with government’s that operate on a different logical wavelength than their subjects, the problem obviously being that the government completely fails to understand the needs of the people it is supposed to be serving. Thus as you move across the spectrum from the liberal to the more authoritarian forms of rule you see this phenomenon of people serving the establishment rather than the other way round.

In a democracy the government is not supposed to preach to the people or impose laws that the majority of the people it rules, dislike. There is always due process, and laws are made by institutions like congress that are made up of representatives of the people.

Short circuiting that representation, such as in a theocracy, move’s us to a more oppressive system where laws and rules are imposed on people whether they like them or not.The logic behind this oppressive system being that if people live life in the way we believe is the right way, they will start to see the light and start to approve of our system. This is all well and good but it does give rise to a very obvious question, what if people don’t see things your way?

This ideological gap is apparent in most theocracies or partial theocracies. One excellent example of this is Iran and its battle to portray a public image that is both acceptable to the international community and also in accordance with its Islamic fundamentalist principles. It will suffice to say that Iran doesn’t always succeed in its tight rope walk to please both audiences. In a debate organized by Columbia University, President Ahmedinejad (in a very questionable manner I might add) was asked why homosexuals were persecuted in his country. His reply to the question, "we do not have homosexuals in Iran like you do in your country.” It isn’t the fact that Iran doesn’t have Homosexuals or that the president isn’t aware of them, its just that the ideological gap mentioned above is sadly apparent here.

Do the people of Iran not want there to be any homosexuals in their country? One cannot be certain about that in the absence of a poll or a referendum, but one does find it hard to believe that public opinion would require them to be treated as they are now. According to the religious hardliners in control, homosexuality is not allowed in Islam and thus it would not do to have the president of an Islamic country admit to having homosexuals in his constituency. Thus Homosexuality is treated like a crime in Iran, with people being jailed and/or executed if thought to be homosexuals. Gay Rights is just one in a plethora of issues that the public disagrees on with the government, but are silenced with accusations of opposing religious logic. But isn’t the whole purpose of having an organized government to give the people what they need? obviously not in theocracies like Iran. In such cases it is not the dog that wags the tail, but the tail that wags the dog.

SNL's reply to Ahmedinejad's official position

What’s Wrong With Theocracy?

Communism, socialism, imperialism, egalitarianism and democracy are some of the different systems of rule and social order that mankind has witnessed throughout the ages. All have their flaws and their shortcomings but to some extent provide a degree of stability to society and allow for progress. The one system of rule that is different from most of those mentioned above is a theocracy, because while communism or democracy may be based on man made rules and logic, theocracy relies strictly on religious teachings and thus the rules and principles that it is based on cannot be questioned by society on the basis of logic.

The problem occurs when a society’s beliefs are not uniform, and this is usually the case since societies are made up of people and people are as different as the five fingers on your hand. Most people are fairly passionate about their beliefs, as someone once said “Ideas are like children, everybody loves their own.”. Every individual is unique and different in his own way and thus every individual’s beliefs may vary. The idea of organized religion is counter to this argument. Organized religion seeks to make a society’s beliefs uniform, and this is the case in almost all religions. Even though many religions teach tolerance for other peoples beliefs, the idea of propagating and spreading the “true” message is present in almost all religions and thus in itself preaches religious uniformity in society.

But what happens when, say in a theocracy, a religious code is imposed as law on an entire society or an entire nation. The flaw behind the idea of a functioning theocracy becomes evident in cases like Afghanistan and Iran, where certain parts of the country and certain parts of society may accept and welcome the rule of religious law, but other parts of the population may chose to differ and offer resistance. It is in these scenarios that some of the worst atrocities occur, the worst part being that it is all done “in the name of God”.

[ Audio Feed] describing inset picture.