Discussions

There has of course been a lot of trouble brewing in Pakistan over the last decade, but the latest may get a little more attention again. Pakistan's equivalent to our Supreme Court has issued a ruling demanding that Facebook be blocked from Pakistan for depicting an image of the prophet Mohammad. Now that will likely garner a bunch of publicity and discussion over basic freedoms and tolerance, but that's really missing the point.  
 
If your even vaguely interested, please keep reading I'm convinced this is really going to be very important over the years to come.  
 
The real ploy that appears to be going on is another chip in a power struggle within the country. Social sites like Facebook have proven to be useful tools for people rallying for democratic rights and freedoms against parties interested in ruling through military might or religious authority. The Lahore High Court has been consistently attacking and undermining the PPP, the Pakistan People's Party currently being lead by Benazir Bhutto's widow. It's bias is so blatant that it has been more aggressive in pursuing Benazir's widow over corruption charges than it has been in pursuing former dicatator Musharraf as a primary suspect in Bhutto's assassination. For the record, the corruption charges against the Bhutto family were first placed by Musharraf when he was still controlling the country. If there was any question of the legitimacy of the corruption charges, note that the members of the Bhutto family who's character was not assassinated with such charges were more simply assassinated physically.  
 
Sorry, I'm trying to pack a lot in and it's probably not easy to follow. The short of it is that the PPP, although currently in power, is being constantly undermined by the other powers in the country that are either loyal to Musharraf's former regime, or to the conservative Mullahs that would sooner Pakistan be run by the Taliban than another female Prime Minister like Benazir Bhutto.  
 
The last piece tying it all together, is that this week also saw Musharraf declare his intentions to return to Pakistan and found his own new political party. His first allies are one of Pakistan's larger opposition party's, the PML-Q. They are a strongly conservative religious party, and their merger with the military might of Musharraf would probably bring Musharraf back into power, again. And his main ally politically would be the extreme right religious conservatives that frequently support and defend jihad, again.  
 
The people of Pakistan would once again be the biggest losers. I would insist though that we would be losing a great deal as well. Instead of seeing the growth of democratic and moderate forces in Pakistan against the likes of the Taliban, we would instead see it run by the kind of conservatives that want to crush those moderates.  
 
It would be run by those who have put in place judges that have banned Facebook for portraying the prophet. In contrast, those same judges have failed to issue any actions over the assassination of multiple former political leaders of the country. Tellingly, those same judges are showing much favor towards one of the prime suspects in many of those assassinations.