Pakistan’s Political Monsoon

Already shaken by the crisis caused by his suspension of Pakistan's Chief Justice four months ago, President- General Pervez Musharraf is being buffeted by yet more storms -- real ones. For the last ten days Pakistan's southern seaboard has been lashed by a cyclone and now by floods caused by torrential monsoon rains, with the port city of Karachi, Balochistan and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) bearing most of the deluge.

As of 2 July 900 people had been killed, 250, 000 made homeless and 1.5 million affected in some way by the storms. The 2007 monsoon represents the worst disaster to have hit Pakistan since the cataclysmic earthquake of October 2005 that left 73,000 dead and three million displaced.

But scale is not the only difference between the two calamities. The 2005 quake drew Pakistan's disparate communities together in a rare show of national unity, as thousands took to the road to bring relief to the victims. It also saw Musharraf cash in on his alliances with the West and Washington to raise $6 billion to repair his broken country. But devastation this time has exposed a fractious people and an increasingly isolated regime.

Karachi, Balochistan and the NWFP are three parts of Pakistan most alienated from its Islamabad center, where Musharraf and the army rule. For the last three years Baluchistan has been in the grip of a low intensity insurgency. Baloch nationalists have taken up arms against a hated central government in the name of greater autonomy or outright independence. Large chunks of the NWFP too are restive, under the control of the Taliban and their allies, whose loyalty to Musharraf can be measured by at least three attempts to kill him.

And Karachi is the teeming capital of Sindh province, heartland of the exiled and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, the largest opposition force to Musharraf's rule. On 12 May a rally in support of the ousted Chief Justice in th city degenerated into a gunfight between pro and anti-government militias that left 50 dead and a people traumatized.

Each one these fractures has been widened by the rains. The cyclone hit Karachi on 23 June, for barely an hour. But over 200 people were killed, mostly from avoidable causes. For example 200 mud walled homes were washed away in Karachi's barrios, some with residents inside them. Others perished when massive hoardings, unhinged by the high winds, crashed down on cars, roads and houses below. The sense of breakdown was compounded by prolonged power outages, often in temperatures of 42 degrees. On 24 June hundreds took to the streets, trashing every government emblem they could see. One person was killed.

In Balochistan it took the state 48 hours to provide minimal relief to tens of thousands marooned by rising water. In Turbat, where a dam had breached, a thousand homeless people attacked a police station and government offices to seek some redress for their lives. The police opened up with tear gas: a deputy police chief and three protestors were wounded. "What do you expect?" demanded Ghulam Jan, a Turbat protestor, on 29 June. "Our homes have been destroyed, there has been no drinking water and no food for the last four days".

Even in the NWFP, where government is supposedly stronger and the rains were less, the authorities were unprepared for the monsoon, with hospitals admitting they could not cope with the influx of the wounded and the sick. In some cases state action only made matters worse. In Peshawar, capital of NWFP, 500 people were taken ill after receiving anti-TB and anti-cholera vaccinations. Apparently the vaccine had not been refrigerated properly, said a medic.

The 2005 earthquake and the army's reaction to it had distracted attention from the shortcomings of Musharraf's regime, with many acknowledging the military's professionalism. But the government's botched response to the monsoon rains has refocused criticism, says analyst Ghazi Salahuddin. "It is very likely that the cyclone and the floods will set off a new tide of popular discontent," he predicts.

Unlike the earthquake too, Musharraf has pronounced rarely on this crisis. He is preoccupied with means to extend his rule, say sources. Islamabad is replete with rumors that general elections may be brought forward from January next year to divert attention from the Chief Justice imbroglio. Others say Musharraf is determined to seek another five-year presidential term from current assemblies rigged in his favor, although this would bring collision with every opposition party in Pakistan, secular, nationalist and Islamist alike. Still others say presidential and general polls may be deferred under a state of emergency or a renewed bout of martial law.

But whatever the political scenarios in flooded Pakistan, the unmistakable sense is of a regime that is keeling and a leader who has lost his way.