Yearbook 2007
 Pakistan. Pakistan celebrated 60 years as a country near
collapse. The year was marked by extremist violence and
political chaos.
Protests erupted across the country since President
Pervez Musharraf dismissed Supreme Court President Iftikhar
Chaudhry in March after accusations of unspecified abuse of
office. Assessors likely found that Musharraf, before the
presidential election to be held towards the end of the
year, wanted to get rid of the chief judge, who made himself
known as a critical reviewer of the state's actions and
defenders of human rights. Musharraf's supposed plans to
allow the incumbent, loyal parliament to re-elect him and
only then announce new elections to the presidential post,
as well as to be re-elected without first leaving the post
of defense chief, were expected to lead to complicated legal
trips.
According to
CountryAAH, Chaudhry's campaign journeys around the country in
protest of the sacking made him something of a madman figure
for the opposition, whose chief leader was on the run. In
July, he was reinstated by his court colleagues; a tough
political blow for Musharraf.
Another difficult crisis for the president took shape a
few blocks from the government offices in Islamabad. In the
Red Mosque, Lal Masjid, thousands of mainly young followers
of the extreme mosque leader Abdul Aziz entrenched
themselves. With demands for the introduction of Islamic
law, Sharia, kidnapped or abused the people they considered
behaved immoral. A female minister was threatened with life.
In July, the army besieged the mosque, turned off the
electricity and water supply and prevented food supplies
from entering the area. Abdul Aziz was arrested as he tried
to escape with the hundreds of youths who took advantage of
the offer to capitulate. When, after a week, the army
stormed the mosque, some 70 people were killed.
The storming of the Red Mosque triggered a wave of
suicide attacks against military and state targets. In the
clan-controlled area of North Waziristan, the local militia
canceled a ten-month-old peace agreement with the army. Hard
fighting erupted there, as in other clan-controlled areas
along the border with Afghanistan. In the fall, political
violence, including a large number of suicide attacks, was
estimated to have claimed over 800 lives.
Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returned in September
after seven years of exile. He was deposed by Musharraf in a
coup in 1999. However, he was deported after only a few
hours. At the same time, the second former Prime Minister
Benazir Bhutto was reported to negotiate with Musharraf on
some sort of power-sharing after the upcoming elections. The
Supreme Court gave Musharraf the go-ahead to run for
re-election, and he appeased the opposition by appointing
another general to his successor as military chief at an
undetermined time. He then won by a large margin in the
elections, which were decided by Parliament and the four
provincial assemblies. However, the Supreme Court did not
want to approve the election until a number of appeals had
been examined.
After being pardoned by corruption charges, Benazir
Bhutto returned from her country escape in October. During a
triumphant cortege through Karachi, she was subjected to an
attempted murder. She escaped unharmed but 139 people were
killed in two explosions near her vehicle.
On November 3, President Musharraf announced a state of
emergency. He justified it with the increasing extremist
violence and with the judiciary's complicating the fight
against terrorists. The constitution was repealed and most
members of the Supreme Court, including Iftikhar Chaudhry,
were replaced. A large number of lawyers and human rights
activists were arrested. A new, provisional government led
by the Senate President was appointed. The new HD judges
approved both the presidential election and the state of
emergency, while the Commonwealth excluded Pakistan. Prior
to the repeal of the exception laws on December 15,
Musharraf made amendments to the Constitution which stated
that everything he did during the six weeks was legal and
could not be questioned by any judicial or political body.
He then left the post of Defense Chief.
In November, Nawaz Sharif was allowed to return and the
electoral movement started, despite the fact that the
leading opposition parties were biased to stand. On December
27, the whole world was shaken when Benazir Bhutto was
killed in connection with an election in the garrison city
of Rawalpindi. Most of it indicated that she was taken care
of by a man who then triggered an explosive charge that
killed another 20 people. The murder led to severe unrest
and deepened the country's difficult crisis. The PPP quickly
appointed Bhutto's 19-year-old son Bilawal and her husband
Asif Ali Zardari to jointly lead the party and demanded that
the election be carried out programmatically. However, the
situation in the country was so tense that it was not yet
clear on New Year's Eve what would happen.
In the Swat Valley in northern Pakistan, battles between
a Taliban-like militia and the army were fought during the
fall. A radical mob called on radio broadcasts to holy war
against the state and his followers took control of a number
of major places. Only in December did the army claim that it
was overcome with extremists after fighting that claimed up
to 300 lives. However, the leaders of the uprising managed
to get away.
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