Pakistan’s Democratic Insurgents: Inside the Awakening Youth Movement

by Amber Vora / December 5th, 2007

Talk of armed insurgents and Taliban hideouts near the Afghanistan border used to dominate the scant US media coverage of Pakistan affairs. These days, it’s Pakistan’s de-facto martial law, media blackouts, and court-martials for civilians that fill the newspapers, accompanied by images of police battling lawyers and journalists, and nationwide students protests.
Last week, President George W. Bush reiterated support for President Pervez Musharraf, stating that he “truly is somebody who believes in democracy,” and insisting that he hadn’t yet “crossed the line.” Following on the heels of Musharraf’s suspension of the constitution and zealous detention not of terrorists, but of Pakistan’s most fervent proponents of democracy and justice, Bush’s statement could only be understood as Orwellian doublespeak. After being spoon-fed shallow analysis of Pakistan’s political situation for several years vis-à-vis the War on Terror (it’s either Musharraf or the terrorists), Americans are finally waking up to a more complex reality.
The current constitutional crisis is alerting the world to other segments of Pakistani society worth paying attention to. They are lawyers, judges, journalists, students and human rights activists. Day after day they risk violence and arrest to protest the mockery that has been made of their constitution and judiciary. These are Pakistan’s new democratic insurgents.
A New Generation
While the valiant resistance staged by Pakistan’s lawyers was expected, given their mobilization earlier this year, the development of a student and youth movement has taken many by surprise.
On Monday November 5, two days after the de facto martial law was declared, hundreds of students at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) held a protest, breaking a nearly three decade drought on political activism by students in Pakistan. In the days and weeks following, many public and private universities throughout the country followed suit and pictures of the protesting students spilled across newspapers and blogs worldwide.
Three weeks later, I sat surrounded by twenty or so students in a room littered with paper cups of sugary chai and placards scribbled with slogans in Urdu and English. The group consists mostly of young men in jeans and T-shirts, along with a handful of outspoken women. They energetically debated the phrasing of the bilingual press release while a quieter student diligently lettered a placard reading: “Students of Pakistan, Unite!” These are the faces of Pakistan’s youngest agitators for democracy.
The meeting is the fifth of its kind in two weeks, including student representatives from over a dozen universities in Lahore which usually draw around 50 students. Together, they are working to consolidate the momentum of protests from their respective campuses into a more unified student resistance.
Most all of the students are new at political organizing and come from diverse backgrounds in Pakistan’s class-stratified society. Before martial law was declared, these students may have had little reason to meet up. Now, they’re getting a crash-course in coalition building. What they do agree on is their opposition to martial law and demands for the restoration of an independent judiciary and free press.
Awakening
Most students consider ‘politics’ a dirty word.– Rahim, youth organizer
Pakistanis have come to expect an aversion to politics from this generation, a sentiment which helps explain why the youth protests have surprised not only Musharraf’s regime but Pakistani society as well. Newspapers editorials proclaimed a long-overdue revival of student power, recalling a history when students were involved in every major political movement, most notably leading to the toppling of General Ayub Khan’s authoritarian regime in 1969.
In the early 80s, things began to change. Under the dictatorship of General Zia ul-Haq, student unions were banned and only the Islamist IJT (a student wing of the conservative Jamaat-i-Islami political party) was permitted on campus. The United States turned a blind eye to his repressive tactics and cozied up to the dictator in exchange for his participation battling the Soviets in neighboring Afghanistan. Over the years, the IJT earned a reputation for brutally suppressing other student political groups. At first, some attempted to defy Zia’s repressive regime and IJT dominance, but gradually, activism was was beaten down and a new generation of Pakistanis grew up associating student politics with IJT thuggery, something best avoided.
This time, however, the first protesters were not the institutionally-backed IJT cadres, but the sons and daughters of the country’s elite. If there was anywhere Musharraf might have expected tacit support, many thought, it was among these children, many of whose families are closely connected to his regime. What, then, has driven them to speak out?
The First To Act
They [students] are patriotic and they want to see their country have an identity which is very modern, civilized and governed under universal norms of law and justice. Pakistan’s image and international prestige has suffered and that really creates a problem of identity for young people… And the best way to change that is that Pakistan must be brought back to the rails of constitutionalism and democracy.– LUMS Political Science Professor, Rasool Bakhsh Rais
During the first week of martial law, I met with three student activists at LUMS, a private university in Lahore. It was the night before final exam week and it had taken a bit of wrangling to get in touch with them due to the fear many students had that ISI agents (Pakistan’s equivalent of a FBI and CIA merged into one agency) might be posing as journalists. To protect their identities, the students decided to adopt pseudonyms when talking to the media: All the men would go by Imran and the women by Amina.
We huddled into a study-room on the newly constructed campus, and I asked them if there was any history of student organizing on their campus. They quickly replied no. Why, then, had chosen to get involved? One young man, who I’ll call “Ardent Imran” responded decisively and passionately. “I remember something my parents used to tell me when I was young… if one generation doesn’t resist martial law, the next generation will curse them.” Some students are from families with a history of organizing against government repression. For these students, participating in the protests was the reawakening of a family legacy.
However, Amina noted, in general the upper classes do not want their children involved in the corrupt and messy realm of politics. Her family was among this group, worried more about her safety and the completion of her studies than the current political situation. But Amina is determined to participate and since she lives on campus, instead of with her family, she’s been able to join protests without their knowledge.
Recent political events have played a significant role in awakening Pakistan’s youth. Both Ardent Imran and Amina agreed that many students started paying attention to politics “since March 9th,” a phrase which they repeated several times. It was then that Musharraf dismissed the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Mohammad Iftikhar Chaudhry, on what most believe to be politically-motivated corruption charges. Shortly thereafter, Pakistani lawyers mobilized en masse against the perceived attack on the independence of the judiciary and students began to take notice. These days heroes are few and far between in Pakistani politics and most, including young people, are jaded by the corruption of political parties. However, the students noticed something different in the lawyers struggle. They weren’t fighting for petty power, they were fighting for a democratic ideal.
In his declaration of emergency rule, Musharraf did not attempt to conceal that the increasingly independent judiciary was a primary reason for his crackdown, imprisoning all those who refused to bow to his will. While international players such as the U.S. simply call for emergency to be rolled back and elections to proceed, they remain quieter on the restoration of the judiciary and free media. The youth resistance in Pakistan, however, is keenly aware that without the restoration of the pre-emergency judiciary and a free press, elections will be a joke and future of Pakistan’s judiciary as an independent institution will be crippled.
While Amina and Ardent Imran burst with excitement and analysis, the third LUMS student, who I’ll call “Reluctant Imran” looked exhausted. After dutifully answering questions about student organizing with poise, he confessed that personally, he was rather indifferent to the political situation. Reluctant Imran, it turns out, had been inadvertently sucked into the center of organizing when the LUMS administration had identified him to be a liaison with students. Ironically, as the least enthusiastic among them, he has found his name on an arrest list drawn up by police.
As thousands of students have taken to the streets, Reluctant Imran’s sentiments may be representative of the of thousands more who have remained inside, many stricken with the cynicism born of living in a country that has spent 31 of its 60 year history under military rule. However, others believe that for every Ardent Imran and Amina waving placards, there are dozens more Pakistanis sitting quietly at home, fearful of taking to the streets, but supportive of the youth from their living rooms. Indeed, my neighbor, a successful, upper middle-class business owner and father of three remarked hopefully, “If the students come out on the streets, only then might the government fall.”
Unexpected Insurgents
This was a blind spot for them, they didn’t see it coming, but neither did we. People like us who have encouraged students to organize before — we had hoped something like this would happen. But we didn’t necessarily see this much of a response.– LUMS Professor Aasiam Sajjad Akhtar
Privileged students at private universities like LUMS have a reputation for caring more about careers, clothes and cars than politics. However, Salima Hashmi, a Dean at another private school, Beaconhouse National University, where students also held protests, believes that one reason LUMS mobilized first was due to the rigorous academic environment at the elite institution. It is, she remarks, unusual in Pakistan in that it challenges students to think critically, after most have undergone years of nationalist indoctrination at the primary and secondary school level. But part of LUMS rapid response may also have been due to the serendipity of timing.
On Saturday evening, Nov. 3rd, at 5 p.m., celebrity cricket star turned one-man-political-party, Imran Khan was scheduled to speak on campus about youth’s role in Pakistani politics (and in his political party). The students joked that out of the huge turnout, most people were more interested in merely catching a glimpse of the famous cricket star and teenage heartthrob than in listening to his politics. In an unexpected turn, half an hour into the speech a professor came on stage to announce that martial law had been declared. It was as if Imran Khan had held a perfectly-timed a pep rally just before the declaration of martial law, and a large number of students stayed afterwards to discuss how they would address the situation.
The government also helped fuel student rage by arresting several professors who attended a meeting at the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan the next day (Nov. 4th), quickly transforming the impacts of martial law from an abstract concept to a personal one for previously apolitical students. The released professors gave speeches at rallies, helping students cultivate a political analysis and sense of personal engagement.
Professor Sajjad notes that the elite LUMS students have grown up wired, unlike their public-university counterparts, many of whom have never used a computer before university. Their tech-savvyness also enabled the mass dissemination of information to organize protests. Amina described how a professor quickly composed an e-mail via Blackberry as he was arrested. Following the arrest, sms messages spread across the campus faster than wildfire, coordinating meetings and rallies, while e-mail manifestos from LUMS inspired students at other campuses to join the fray. Facebook helped wired Pakistani students get the word out to friends and relatives abroad who organized solidarity protests, keeping the spirit of resisting Pakistanis high.
Evolution
I was not surprised. Because I [knew that] the last three or four years, we have been penetrating and trying to knock on doors, but for the masses it was a great surprise.– Diep Saeeda, Institute for Peace and Secularism
Herself the mother of three students, Diep Saeeda has spent many years mobilizing youth with her organization, the Institute for Peace and Secularism. Over the years, she says, the youth have become increasingly engaged in dialogue about social and political problems. After Diep’s organization had tried for years to unify Pakistan’s liberal left unsuccessfully, they realized what others are now awakening to, that the hope for a just and democratic Pakistan lies in the hands of its youth. These days, she’s one of the few faces over the age of 25 at the all-student meetings, providing support to the youth as they teethe on their first real political struggle.
It’s not only students, but recent graduates working in fields such as law and the media who have been instrumental in organizing protests of journalists and lawyers. Unlike their parents who grew up on state-sponsored news and programming, this generation has come to age in the last eight years of Musharraf’s tenure during which the media has enjoyed unprecedented freedom. With a taste of such freedom, these young people aren’t willing to give it up easily. Ali Asad, a 26 year old investment banker in Karachi, graduated from LUMS 3 years ago and comments that the media has been key in demystifying politics and giving him diverse perspectives needed to make informed decisions. Away from the heady action of the campuses, he, like many young graduates, was hungry to get involved. After November third, he joined a large coalition opposing martial law and is currently developing workshops on democracy and political involvement for local schools and colleges.
But it’s not only the elite who are organizing. Students at a public institution, Punjab University, have mobilized as well. Many, including Diep and LUMS Professor Sajjad believe that in the long-term, institutions like Punjab University (PU) are likely to be more influential than the smaller private schools, with its 30,000 strong student body more representative of Pakistan’s population which largely consists of working and lower class families.
At the all-student meeting, I interviewed a second-year law student from PU, Unlike his compatriots at LUMS, Tariq wore a handsome traditional kurta and spoke English with a bit more effort, but with no less eloquence than the others. When asked why he decided to get involved, unlike other students who waxed on about the illegality of Musharraf’s regime and actions, he started with a different story.
“I have been a student of Punjab University for the last 1 1/2 years. Several times we have faced threats and physical violence by a so-called students’ organization which is led by a pro-Islamic militant organization named IJT.” He proceeded to recount the history of the harsh repression meted out by the IJT to students who would not join their ranks or follow their strict interpretation of Islamic morality.
Under Zia’s rule, and before the era of private universities, government-funded schools, like PU, expelled many liberal and progressive teachers and students who attempted to organize, leading to an IJT stranglehold on campus, although they were a numerical minority (no more than 10% of the campus). For Tariq, the struggle is as much about reclaiming public and political spaces for all students from the monopoly of the IJT, as it is about opposing martial law.
As fate would have it, the tide at Punjab U. turned against the IJT on Nov 14th. Thousands of students gathered for a rally at which Imran Khan was scheduled to speak and then publicly give himself up for arrest. But before he could make it to address the crowds, a group of IJT students roughly manhandled him into a police van. The outcry was tremendous and even the IJT’s parent political party denounced the actions. But the damage was done. Professor Sajjad remarked, “In a matter of days , their basis to exist on campus has been wiped out, popular opinion has been swept away from them. It seems that before people were begrudgingly accepting their presence on campus, but clearly now there’s a space for new forms to emerge.” Since then, students at Punjab University have continued to come out in large numbers and without fear of IJT backlash.
Cautious Optimism
Certainly, the young men and women behind the rallies have shown a way, given a direction, to their elders to follow. They have ignited a spark of light amidst oppressive darkness, and it can now only be hoped this light is not allowed to fade out and die in the difficult days that lie ahead.– Nov 9th Editorial, The International News (Pakistan newspaper)
Thus far the state has been more lenient on students than other groups, not arresting them by the thousands as with lawyers and political party workers. In part, this leniency on students may be because the government fears the increased publicity and international outrage that coercive measures against students would likely bring to what has already been a public relations nightmare for the regime. As the emergency enters its second month and student organizing shows no sign of fizzling out, the state has slowly begun to ratchet up pressure. Recently, fourteen professors from Punjab University were charged with sedition and four professors at LUMS charged under the Maintenance of Public Order Act while this week, police surrounded the LUMS campus attempting to block students from attending an all-student protest.
The professors and student organizers I spoke to were uncertain about whether the mobilizations would become a mass movement and warned against direct comparisons to the movement of 1968-69. At that time, the popular politician Zulfikar Ali Bhutto backed the student movement, leading it to explode in strength and popularity across the nation. This time around, though, students been quick to dissociate themselves from association with any political party. Almost all are disillusioned with the major political parties although many expressed growing admiration for Imran Khan’s tiny Tehrik-i-Insaaf party (it won only 1 seat 2002 National Assembly elections).
They have good historical reason to be wary of co-optation. Decades earlier, after the groundswell of student power led to the toppling of Ayub Khan’s regime, the political parties recognized and coopted the movement. LUMS Professor Rasool Bakhsh Rais explains, “They carved out their own constituencies of influence, supplied them money, sometimes weapons and the battles of the political parties were fought on the campuses. There was a lot bloodshed and violence among student groups.” Bakhsh Rais hopes that today’s students will remain autonomous, noting that “If they come under the control of any political party… that will be the end of that social movement. [T]heir power, their strength, would become fragmented.”
Aasim Sajjad says that he is “cautiously optimistic,” noting that the students’ impact will likely be greater in the long-term, observing that, “It takes time for the infrastructure of a movement to develop. But an organization that comes from a movement will be more vibrant and long-lasting than one that comes from a few people getting together.” The question remains as to whether Pakistani youth, awakened to the potentials of their own power, will be able to harness their energy and idealism past the immediate crisis.
A November 19th report in the New York Times indicated that America is considering funding and training tribal leaders as well as the Frontier Corps, a group that has been blamed for for aiding and abetting Taliban insurgents, in order to combat militant insurgency. One can’t help but have a sense of déjà-vu to the tried and failed funding of the 80s which created today’s Taliban. As America continues to focus its financial aid and military training on dictators and frontier tribes, another insurgency lies neglected.
America’s short-sighted endorsement of repressive and unconstitutional tactics may have a less visible but no less devastating result — the stillborn hopes of Pakistan’s growing movement for the supremacy of democracy and the rule of law. Armed with civil disobedience, patriotism and the ideals of justice and democracy, this insurgency of lawyers, students, human rights activists and journalists is the one America and the world must support if we truly value the development of a stable, moderate and democratic Pakistan.

Students for a Free Pakistan

Jayati Vora

On Thursday, November 29, Pervez Musharraf was sworn in for a new five-year term as the President of Pakistan. The day before, the general tearfully handed over command of the army to his handpicked successor, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. Musharraf now claims he will also end the state of emergency on December 16. These gestures may hold out some hope for the restoration of true democracy in Pakistan, but on the ground not much has changed. For the moment, the state is under martial law. The curbs imposed on the media since November 3 have not been lifted, and the judiciary and the constitution have not been restored. Even if Musharraf fulfills his promise to lift the state of emergency, he is not stepping down from his position as dealmaker in Pakistan any time soon.
Little wonder, then, that the growing student movement in Pakistan held its biggest protest to date the day after Musharraf's swearing-in ceremony. In cities around the world--from Oslo to London to New York to Lahore--students rallied at roughly 2 pm and called for all political parties to boycott the January elections in order to expose them for the sham they will likely be.
In the weeks since Musharraf imposed a state of emergency, students in cities across the country have awakened from their political slumber. They have come a long way since 1999, when the general seized power in a bloodless coup. Then, the only people out on the streets were supporters of Nawaz Sharif, the ousted, democratically elected Prime Minister. This time, they are out in throngs--the lawyers, the journalists, the civil society activists and importantly, the students.
"If not now, WHEN? If not us, WHO?
"There is no neutrality anymore; SILENCE IS CONSENT. SPEAK!"
These words are part of a call to action issued by the newly formed Student Action Committee of Lahore, a coalition of students from fifteen universities and colleges in that city. It was created to organize the student body in their protests against Musharraf's state of emergency and consolidation of power.
The last time that students rose so powerfully in protest was in 1968, and they were instrumental in toppling General Ayub Khan (one of Musharraf's dictatorial predecessors). But when Musharraf claimed power in 1999, many breathed a sigh of relief. From 1988-99, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif both came to power twice. During this period--what Musharraf in his autobiography calls the "dreadful decade of democracy"-- Pakistan became one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Unemployment soared and cynicism held sway in the minds of ordinary Pakistanis. Musharraf promised change. He promised to get rid of corruption, to tackle economic reforms, and he was a moderate. It seemed like a promising recipe at the time. But in the eight years that he has been in power, he has broken his word countless times. The elections he held were nowhere near free and fair, and according to Transparency International, Pakistan's corruption rating has actually gotten worse by three percentage points since 1998, the year before Musharraf took power.
Living under a state of emergency, it's not surprising that many who once welcomed the general now agitate for his removal. And standing in the frontlines--but not the spotlight--of those protests are the students of Pakistan.
Ammar, 21, is a student at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), one of the most prestigious institutions in Pakistan. An economics and political science major, he was one of a handful of LUMS students who started a blog, The Emergency Times, two days after the imposition of martial law. At first, it began as a forum for discussion and a means to educate people, especially students, about the legal ramifications of the emergency. In the face of the media blackouts imposed after November 3, students starved of news reportage turned to blogs such as this one for their daily dose. The Emergency Times alone gets roughly 25,000 hits a day. (Not bad for a country where only 7.2 percent of 160 million people have access to the Internet.) Its printed version, a pamphlet that's photocopied and distributed by student volunteers in dozens of campuses across the major cities every other day, reaches as many as 200,000 pairs of eyes.
"Right now we're running on adrenalin," says Ammar over the phone. He only gives his first name. The police have been watching the more politically active students. They even seem to be tapping telephone lines. So the students try to take some precautions. Some have changed their cell phone numbers. When organizing protests and rallies, they use a separate number that cannot be traced. Only three to four people have a list of all the students who are involved in the Student Action Committee.
These twenty-somethings have to dodge not just the police gaze but also parental concern. Ammar's parents, for instance, are only partly aware of their son's activities. They know about the blogging, but not that he has attended protests, the kind where people get arrested and taken to undisclosed jails.
Ammar was at one such rally three weeks ago. He was among the mass of lawyers who protested outside the Lahore High Court on November 5, and says that the brutality he saw shook him to his core. "It was unbearable to watch," he says. "It's very difficult to stay quiet. If you don't speak out now, it might be too late."
Matters came to a head when three LUMS faculty members were arrested. They had attended a meeting of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a highly respected body. They were released a week later, but the LUMS students decided they had to do something. The Emergency Times was the result.
They were not the only ones. The students at FAST-NU, the Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Technology, a technical university with a campus in Lahore, followed suit with their "Fast Rising" blog and newsletter. A wave of similar websites and blogs followed, from the commentary of academics to coverage of the media blackout to legal analysis. Alumni of Pakistani universities scattered in places from Berlin to Boston contributed their stories, poems and their support to a movement that has galvanized a previously complacent student body.
Pakistani student societies in American universities such as Columbia and Harvard have organized seminars, written letters to newspapers editors and congressmen and even published articles about it. And everywhere, on the street corners in Pakistan, in classrooms all over the world, people are talking, debating, engaging with the political process.
Zeeshan Suhail, 26, a recent graduate of the City University of New York, and the author of one of those articles, was one of many who initially welcomed the dictator. After two decades of democracy, he says, people were fed up with crooked politicians.
"No one was concerned about the fact that the country had changed from a democracy to a dictatorship," he says. "Musharraf came to power talking of moderation, foreign policy imperatives and bringing the good side of Pakistan to the world. It took years for me to realize that the place of an army officer is in the barracks, not in the president's house."
Samar Abbas, 23, who graduated from Yale University earlier this year and has been in Pakistan for the last month, is another of the converted. For him, as for most of his generation, it's the first time he's ever been politically active. "There is definitely the feeling that we are living at a very critical juncture," he writes. "For this generation, this is our first shot at impacting Pakistan, and we have a very good chance."
Ali Almani, 26, a Harvard law student who will graduate this December and plans to return to Pakistan to practice law, is an exception. He opposed Musharraf from the very beginning. "Each time you have a military regime," he explains, "it exacerbates the conditions that requires the military to intervene, it weakens political institutions. And when politicians get a chance to rule, it's a big question whether they'll be able to make something of it." Almani doesn't approve of the way Musharraf is pitted against the opposition candidates in much of the mainstream media. It's reductive, he says. "Instead," he argues, "what the debate should be is whether you want to make the politicians accountable to the military or to the people."
The student movement in Pakistan is divided on many points, chief among them the question of who should succeed Musharraf. But the one thing they all realize is that Pakistani society has become intolerably repressed under Musharraf's reign. The army has penetrated every nook and cranny of society, to the point that virtually every NGO, business or civil society organization has a retired general sitting on its board. It controls 11.5 million acres, or 12 percent, of state land. Although there is much cooperation with the protesting lawyers, journalists and civil society activists, the student movement is a youth initiative. It uses technology in a way that would not have been possible in earlier decades. Virtually all students who have access to it use the Internet. Some use it to voice their protests in the form of websites and blog posts; others use it to watch reportage from the private television channel, the Urdu-language GEO TV, which is now being broadcast from Dubai. There are multiple Facebook groups that connect students in different parts of the world and list upcoming protests. And cell phones are used to organize "flash protests." A text message is sent out to a relatively small group of people, who gather at a crowded area, shout slogans and hand out pamphlets, then disperse as quickly as they arrived, before they can be arrested. The movement has spread like an Internet virus. Although it began in campuses of elite institutions such as FAST-NU and LUMS, the baton has been passed to the lesser-known, public colleges with larger student bodies. LUMS students, for instance, number only 2,500. Punjab University--which attained notoriety in the international press when opposition leader Imran Khan was apprehended there--is one of the new leaders of the movement, with roughly 25,000 students.
In the history of student politics, Ammar explains, this is quite common. "The 1968 student movement began in Government College and Gordon College, which were then as prestigious as LUMS is now. That didn't reflect class interests, but the quality of the education and the academic environment." Now other universities--among them the Quaid-i-Azam University, Punjab University, Hamdard University and Government College, Lahore--are taking the lead. But there are some who still believe in Musharraf. Of these, some hail from the business community that has always supported Musharraf and has benefited from his economic reforms. Many others have lived abroad for several years. Abbas disagrees with their stance but understands it. "Many of my good friends and family," he writes via e-mail, "especially those living abroad and working for the government, still think he is doing a good job and seems to be the only option." Indeed, Musharraf has been good for them. The GDP has been growing at a robust 7-8 percent per year in the past two years, and a former banker and non-resident citizen, Shaukat Aziz, was, until recently, the Prime Minister. "However, for people who live here in Pakistan," continues Abbas, "issues that are likely to matter more are security, inflation, social equality, community empowerment and access to justice--areas that this government has completely failed to tackle."
Now the students of Pakistan are calling their government to task about it. They are scared of possible retaliation by the police, but, as Ammar says ruefully, "We're too far into it to be scared."

Imran Khan faces terror charges after arrest in Pakistan

Jeremy Page in Lahore, and Times Online

The cricketing legend Imran Khan faces charges under Pakistani anti-terrorist laws after emerging from hiding today to join a student protest at which he was arrested.
Mr Khan's detention came as Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister under house arrest in the eastern city of Lahore, tried to forge a united opposition against the state of emergency imposed by President Musharraf.
Appearing in public for the first time since he slipped out of detention last week, Mr Khan was grabbed by Islamist students when he tried to take part in a rally at a Lahore university.
He was lifted onto the shoulders of demonstrators but punches flew when he was seized then pushed into a nearby building. He was later bundled into a white van and handed over to police. "He will be charged under the anti-terrorism act," said Malik Mohammad Iqbal, the Lahore police chief. "Through his speeches he has been inciting people to pick up arms, he has been calling for civil disobedience, he was spreading hatred."
Mr Khan, who has founded a small but vocal opposition party, called for General Musharraf to be hanged for treason after the military ruler imposed emergency rule on November 3. He was being held in custody under a 90-day detention order, and police sources said he was being moved to prison shortly ahead of being formally charged.
In an interview with The Times yesterday, Mr Khan said that General Musharraf could only be dislodged by popular protest. "Without a street movement, this guy is not going to go," the 55-year-old cricketer-turned-politician said. "That's the only thing dictators in the past have been affected by and that's what the Army looks to. When the Army realises someone has become a liability, they get rid of him."
Mr Khan was cheered and hoisted in the air by several hundred students when he arrived, alone, on the campus of the University of the Punjab to urge students to rise up against General Musharraf.
But his supporters were soon outnumbered by Islamist protesters from the student wing of the Jamaat-i-Islami party, who bundled him into the nearby Centre for High Energy Physics, held him incommunicado for an hour, then drove him off campus in a van and handed him over to police at the university gates. A spokesman for Mr Khan said that he was concerned at his plight. "They pulled him out like a piece of cargo and threw him into the police van," the spokesman told The Times. "We are very worried about his safety and very afraid of Musharraf."
The chaotic scenes on the campus today highlighted the fault lines in Pakistani society that make it hard for the opposition to unite against General Musharraf.
A 20-year-old student who gave his name as Mohammad, and who is a member Jamaat-i-Islami’s student wing, said Islamist students had intervened in Mr Khan's rally because politicans were banned from the campus. "We want Islam here. Allah rules here," he said. "Imran Khan cannot protest on this campus."
Others said Mr Khan had been detained to protect him from arrest by plainclothes policemen in the crowd.
But Aziz Nouman, 24, a third year law student, accused the Jamaat student wing of pursuing its own political agenda in detaining Mr Khan.
"We see Imran as a very strong character," he said."We have tried Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, we have tried everything. But we see a spark in him."
Student activists played a key role in previous political uprisings in Pakistan, but they have become politically dormant over the last 20 to 30 years - with the exception of Islamist organisations.
The University of the Punjab has been dominated for several years by Jamaat-i-Islami members, who ban music and dancing and have beaten up and harassed students for openly fraternising with women.
Mr Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice) party, founded in 1997, has only one seat (his own) in the national parliament, and critics dismiss him as a political lightweight.
Others have exploited his reputation as a playboy and his marriage to Jemima Khan, the British daughter of the late Sir James Goldsmith, which ended in divorce in 2004.
However, he is still regarded as a national hero for leading Pakistan to victory in the 1992 World Cup, and his political standing has risen since he took a stand against General Musharraf and President Bush.
Yesterday he accused Mr Bush of stoking anti-Americanism among Pakistanis by continuing to support General Musharraf. "For this one man, Bush is willing to sacrifice 160 million sheep – we are like sheep," he said.
"This is worse than the Shah of Iran. Have they learnt no lessons? Within the country people who don’t understand the West think this is a conspiracy against Islam."
He said that Pakistan should withdraw its troops from northwestern areas and negotiate with tribesmen sheltering the Taleban and al-Qaeda militants, while Nato should set a timetable for leaving Afghanistan.
He urged Benazir Bhutto to join him in starting street protests and boycotting the parliamentary elections that General Musharraf has promised by January 9.
But he said that she had lost credibility by negotiating a power-sharing deal with General Musharraf.

For Pakistani Students, a Reawakening: 'We Can't Just Sit Idle'

Long-Depoliticized Campuses Stirred Into Action by Military Government's Declaration of Emergency

By Emily Wax

Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 12, 2007; Page A14

LAHORE, Pakistan, Nov. 11 -- The accounting majors at the elite Lahore University of Management Sciences have rarely demonstrated against anything, preferring Punjabi pop music to protest songs. Cynicism about Pakistan's parade of autocratic and corrupt leaders had replaced civil disobedience, they said.

But in computer labs and cafeterias on this campus and others across the country over the weekend, students were busy making placards reading "Democracy Now" and "Students Against Martial Law" as they prepared to demonstrate against emergency rule. Some said they would join former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's so-called long march, scheduled to begin Tuesday in Lahore and progress to Islamabad, the capital, 250 miles to the west, in defiance of President Pervez Musharraf's ban on protests.

With police lining the streets of Lahore on Sunday, and a Bhutto rally blocked by authorities in Rawalpindi on Friday, many here say they doubt the protest will take place. But even if the long march turns into only a short protest, one thing is clear: Students are beginning to step forward in Pakistan's protest movement, a sign of the country's widening crisis.

"We're getting ready, no matter what. It's time for students to show that the future generation has a voice," said Ashar Hussain, 20, an engineering student at the management sciences school, known as LUMS. "We can't just sit idle and do nothing when Pakistan is suffering. This country is our future."

Student protests and campus unions were once a vibrant part of political activism in Pakistan, even during the nation's birth. But several dictatorial governments have depoliticized campuses by banning protests and requiring students to sign agreements not to participate in such activities.

Students also blame themselves. Disillusioned by a string of corrupt and repressive governments, many said, they stopped caring.

"It's like all this bad stuff happens and you just go numb. Nothing will help anyway, and even our favorite films and songs became about fluffy stuff and love," said Fatima Barbar, 20, an architecture student in Lahore. "This time, though, student consciousness is starting to awaken, and it feels really good."

One of the driving forces behind some of the student protests has been Imran Khan, a shaggy-haired cricket star turned opposition leader and an icon of cool among young people.

Although respected more for his prowess on the cricket pitch and for his charity projects than for his political leadership, Khan, 54, has street credibility among urban dwellers and well-to-do students and has used his popular Web site to encourage them to protest.

After Musharraf imposed emergency rule on Nov. 3, police targeted Khan in a roundup of opposition figures. Officers attempted to arrest him at 1:45 the morning after the emergency was ordered, Khan said, but he fled and has managed to evade them since by sleeping in a different location each night.

"I knew I had to run because I wanted to use this time to get the students out on the roads," Khan said in an interview, adding that he jumped two walls in his garden to escape police. "If I was a little older, I wouldn't have made it."

With juice boxes and teacups scattered over a table, Khan said he had never felt so politically energized and restless.

The students are the most passionate force in society," he said. "It's the idealism of the young. They are the force for change. They have to come out. If you have to give sacrifices, this is the time."

After the protests at LUMS and other schools this past week, an editorial in the English-language daily Dawn declared a "new era of political excitement on campus."

"The students of these elite institutions were least expected to speak up," the editorial said.

Some students, including Samad Khurram, 21, a Harvard junior who by coincidence had returned to his home town of Islamabad this semester to engage in student activism, have started blogs offering students advice on what to do if they are tear-gassed and media contacts in case of arrest, and stressing the importance of wearing closed-toe shoes to protests.

"For so long, students were absent from Pakistan's political life. It's really significant that the students are rising up now," said Khurram, whose blog is called Emergency Telegraph. "These students are going to be leaders of Pakistan."

So far, there has been no violence during the student rallies. Some opposition leaders, including Khan, predicted that the government would lose sympathy among the general population if it cracked down on the students too harshly.

Khan said he had rallied students before, raising money for a state-of-the art cancer hospital he built and named after his mother, who died of the disease after being unable to find the right treatment in Pakistan.

During construction, Khan said, he ran out of funds and called on university students to help raise more than $25 million. The hospital, in Lahore, offers free treatment to patients who cannot afford it, particularly children. Authorities sealed it off last week as part of their bid to capture Khan.

"They created a revolution," Khan said of the students. "Stopped people on streets, asked for money. Within months, not just the money that poured in, but the exposure. They were walking, talking advertisements for the hospital.

"They were all turned into mini-me, mini-Imrans," he said, laughing and adjusting his long flowing shirt. "So it is a force in this country which I have already tapped once. . . . The young have one thing, which is passion and idealism."

Khan said he would not participate in Bhutto's march because he believes she is too deeply involved in a power-sharing deal with Musharraf. He said he would hold a separate protest on campuses in Lahore this coming week.

And many students say they will join him.

In numerous cases, students have joined the protests in defiance of their parents, who have warned them about the potential for arrests and violence.

"I've seen many students suffering from spoiled careers after indulging in politics in their student life," said Malik Aman, a father of two students in Mardan district, near the northwestern city of Peshawar, adding that he was afraid his children would clash with police. "No father wants that."

Fayaz Tahir, a former student leader who led protests against Gen. Mohammed Zia ul-Haq during his 1977-88 rule, said that "today, the world fights a dictator so differently -- with the media, with international pressure."

"But if you add to that even a small movement on campuses," Tahir added, "well, then you will see that Musharraf will have to bow down to demands."

Special correspondent Imtiaz Ali in Peshawar contributed to this report.