Imran Khan, the cricketer turned opposition firebrand, was imprisoned on Wednesday under Pakistan’s draconian anti-terror laws, silencing another prominent critic as the emergency rule crisis deepened.
His arrest came as the military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, defended the crackdown, in which at least 5 000 people have been detained, saying he expected to step down as army chief by the end of November.
But Musharraf’s Western allies want him to rescind the authoritarian rule imposed 12 days ago as quickly as possible. Washington dispatched the Deputy Secretary of State, John Negroponte, who is due in Islamabad on Friday, to drive home its case.
”I am not a dictator, I want a democracy,” Musharraf told Sky News in one of several interviews, by turn defiant and defensive, given in recent days. ”The day when there is no turmoil in Pakistan, I will step down.”
He told the Associated Press he would resign from the army once a Supreme Court challenge to his rule as a civilian was decided, probably by the end of the month. ”I take decisions in Pakistan’s interest and I don’t take ultimatums from anyone.”
Opposition hopes now lie with Benazir Bhutto, who spent a second day under house arrest in Lahore after authorities thwarted a planned ”long march” through Punjab province. Bhutto has called on Musharraf to give up power but has not yet thrown her lot in with other opposition parties.
The ease with which Musharraf has crushed dissent was evident at Punjab University, where Khan emerged on Wednesday after two weeks in hiding. The former cricket captain, who leads a small opposition party, had been a fugitive since police tried to arrest him shortly after emergency rule was imposed. He has flitted between safe houses, promising in phone interviews to lead a ”student revolution”.
Amid cheering from a crowd of several hundred people he was hoisted on to supporters’ shoulders at Punjab University. But moments later he was dragged into a physics building by activists from the student wing of Jamaat Islami, Pakistan’s largest Islamist party. A burly student held Khan in a headlock.
The JI students had warned Khan against bringing his campaign to the university, which has been a stronghold of the often violent Islamist activists since the 1980s. ”This is just for his protection. We are gathering students so that the [intelligence] agencies cannot enter the campus,” said one bearded student.
An hour later Khan was bundled into a white van and driven to the campus gates, where police took him into custody.
He was charged under the anti-terrorist Act, most often used against political opponents of the Musharraf regime. Penalties under the Act include life imprisonment and death, although police did not specify the charges against Khan. He was being held at an undisclosed location.
”I want the students to be mobilised, as well as the lawyers and the political parties, because it has to be a comprehensive movement against the brute force of a military dictator,” he said shortly before being taken away.
The chaotic scenes underscore the difficulties facing Pakistan’s fractious opposition. Speaking from exile in Saudi Arabia, the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif offered to bury differences with Bhutto to forge a united front.
Officials said Bhutto could be released from house arrest as early as today. Khan is unlikely to get out so quickly. Before emergency rule he regularly featured on TV chat shows, denouncing Musharraf.
Since emergency rule critical TV stations have been blacked out and political rallies banned. But Musharraf insists that free and fair elections are possible by January 9. ”Emergency is not meant to rig elections. Emergency is in fact meant to make sure that elections are held in a peaceful manner,” he said.
Pro-Taliban militants continued a march across troubled North-West Frontier province. Two days ago Islamist fighters captured a town in Swat, a tourist area near the Afghan border. On Wednesday the army said it had killed 16 fighters in three separate incidents.
Instability
March 9: Musharraf, suspends the head of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, for alleged misconduct. Musharraf’s popularity starts to nosedive.
April 5: Hardline religious leaders establish a Qazi court — a parallel judicial system — in the Red mosque (Lal Masjid) in Islamabad, again challenging the writ of the government.
May 12: At least 34 die and more than 130 are injured during violent clashes between supporters of Musharraf and backers of Chaudhry on the streets of Pakistan’s commercial capital, Karachi.
May 14: Shops and markets in all major cities close after opposition parties and lawyers’ bodies call for a strike in protest at the violence in Karachi.
May 18: Pro-Taliban militants at the Red mosque take four police officers hostage, accusing them of spying for the government. Maulana Abdul Aziz, who is in charge of the mosque, threatens suicide attacks across Pakistan if any operation is conducted against the mosque.
June 22: Red mosque students raid a Chinese massage centre, alleging that it is a brothel, and take five Chinese nationals — three women and two men — hostage.
July 3: Abdul Aziz is caught trying to escape from the mosque wearing a burqa.
July 4: At least 1 200 students surrender as security forces surround the mosque complex, offering an amnesty to those who give up their weapons.
July 10: Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the deputy chief cleric of the Red mosque and Abdul Aziz’s brother, is among dozens who die as commandos storm the mosque complex after a week-long stand-off. More than 50 militants and nine soldiers are killed in the 15-hour operation, according to the Pakistan military. Independent sources say the death toll runs into hundreds.
July 15: Tribal militants in north Waziristan, on the border with Afghanistan, unilaterally scrap their 10-month-old peace accord with the government and threaten to launch attacks against the security forces.
July 17: A suicide bomber kills 16 people and injures at least 63 at a lawyers’ rally in Islamabad.
July 20: Pakistan’s top court reinstates Chaudhry as the country’s chief justice, declaring Musharraf’s decision to suspend him illegal.
August 7: Musharraf says recent suggestions by the United States that it might launch unilateral strikes against al-Qaeda in Pakistan are ”counterproductive” to the fight against terrorism.
August 22: US and British authorities express disappointment at Pakistan’s decision to release Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, a 28-year-old suspected al-Qaeda expert accused of training suicide bombers and plotting to attack Heathrow airport.
September 10: The former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who has been in exile since being ousted in the 1999 coup, is arrested and deported to Saudi Arabia, four and a half hours after arriving in Islamabad from London.
September 14: The former prime minister Benazir Bhutto declares she will return to Pakistan on October 18.
September 17: A member of the ruling party says Musharraf will step down as the head of the military. The Supreme Court begins to hear petitions seeking to block Musharraf’s plans for a second presidential term.
September 20: The election commission announces that a vote for the presidency will be held on October 6, when Musharraf will seek re-election. In Pakistan, the president is elected by members of the Parliament — the national assembly and the senate — as well as those from the four provincial assemblies.
September 20: Osama bin Laden calls on Pakistanis to rise against their ”infidel” leader in retaliation for the storming of the Red mosque.
September 24: Riot police arrest dozens of opposition activists protesting against Musharraf as the Supreme Court dismisses two challenges to his bid for re-election.
September 27: Musharraf files nomination papers for a second five-year term. Chaudhry orders the release of hundreds of opposition activists rounded up by police.
September 28: The Supreme Court throws out a major legal challenge to Musharraf standing for election, to shouts of ”shame” from lawyers in the courtroom.
October 2: More than 80 Pakistani opposition politicians resign in protest at Musharraf’s attempt to be re-elected. It is also announced that General Ashfaq Kiani will take over as the head of the army after the election.
October 6: Musharraf sweeps to victory in the presidential elections, winning 252 of the 257 votes cast in Parliament and prevailing in all four provinces, thanks to a boycott by opposition parties. But he still faces legal challenges in the Supreme Court.
October 9: Three days of fighting between Pakistani troops and pro-Taliban supporters in the lawless north Waziristan region on the Afghan border leave about 250 dead.
October 12: The Supreme Court rules days before Bhutto’s scheduled return to Pakistan that she could still face prosecution on long-standing corruption charges.
October 18: Bhutto touches down at Karachi airport to a tumultuous welcome. She narrowly escapes a suicide bombing during a homecoming procession in Karachi.
October 19: Bhutto alleges a military and intelligence services link to the attempt on her life, as the death toll from the attack rises to 138. But she makes clear that she is ”not accusing the government”.
October 22: Bhutto accuses the government of a cover-up after it refuses to agree to her request to call in British and US experts to help investigate the assassination attempt. Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, the chief of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League party, responds by alleging that Bhutto’s husband arranged the blasts to stir up public sympathy.
October 23: The Pakistani army sends 2 500 troops into a remote valley in the north-west of the country to combat followers of a militant cleric, Maulana Fazlullah, calling for Taliban-style rule.
October 30: A suicide bomber kills six people in the city of Rawalpindi, in what was thought to be an assassination attempt against Musharraf.
November 2: The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, says the Bush administration is opposed to emergency rule, as rumours sweep the country that Musharraf is about to suspend the Constitution.
November 3: Musharraf imposes emergency rule, triggering condemnation from leaders around the world. He says the reaction is a response to Islamist militancy and to the ‘paralysis of government by judicial interference’. Judges and lawyers are arrested and television and radio stations taken off the air. Chaudhry is sacked.
November 5: More than 350 lawyers arrested in latest protests. Musharraf forced to deny he is under house arrest as rumours circle of a coup.
November 8: Musharraf says elections will be held by February 15, one month later than they were due. He also says he will step down as head of the army and be sworn in as a civilian president once new judges appointed to the Supreme Court strike down challenges against his re-election.
November 9: Bhutto, effectively under house arrest, is blocked from leaving her house in Islamabad to attend a rally in nearby Rawalpindi. A suspected suicide blast at the home of the minister of political affairs, Amir Muqam, in the north-western city of Peshawar, kills three people. The minister was unhurt.
November 12: Commonwealth foreign ministers threaten to expel Pakistan from their group if Musharraf fails to repeal the state of emergency and step down as army chief in the next nine days.
November 13: Bhutto calls for Musharraf to resign as she is put under house arrest for the second time in five days. The government deploys police to stop a planned march from Lahore to Islamabad by her supporters. – Guardian Unlimited Â