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Musharraf's myopia

September 12, 2007 00:00:00


IT is not at all a matter of concern whether exiled Pakistani ex-prime minister Nawaz Sharif has been allowed to stay back in his country of origin or deported again to Saudi Arabia. What bothers us is the possibility of dreadful fallouts from the adverse public reaction in Pakistan to his fresh deportation.
Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, who is an immigrant from Delhi, previously used the MQM, a political conglomerate of migrants to his country from India, to mount an assault on once-sacked Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry in Karachi.
The carnage at that time to drive away the visiting embattled chief justice from that port city led to killing of several Iftikhar supporters and injuries to many, who were Pakistanis by heritage.
If Musharraf's foolhardy power struggle splits the Pakistanis along a line segregating the immigrants from the sons of soil, a great tragedy will unfold to dwarf the ordeal of Biharis in Bangladesh, who were wrongly fitted by the butcher gang, Yahya Khan and Z. A. Bhutto, against the sons of soil of this country in 1971.
When politics gets nasty owing to mindless manipulation, rationality takes back seat in public mind and nobility goes into asylum. Any thing is then possible and doable for revenge. As the inferno of civil unrest builds up, foreign supports burn down in its flames. Musharraf's madness must stop.

Abdus Sabur and Kaniz Fatema
Mohamedpur
Dhaka

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