Article by Saeed Malik

ARTICLE BY SAEED MALIK -- (Extensions of Remarks - December 04, 2007)

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SPEECH OF
HON. ZOE LOFGREN
OF CALIFORNIA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2007

* Ms. ZOE LOFGREN of California. Madam Speaker, I would like to enter into the RECORD this article by Saeed Malik entitled, ``U.S. Can't Support Both Musharraf and Ideal of Liberty.''

Today, Pakistan is gripped by an existential crisis. This crisis comes just when Pakistanis were beginning to feel optimistic. An independent judiciary was taking root and the fourth estate of the press was in ascendancy. Accountability, long overdue, had finally arrived, or so the people of Pakistan thought.

The optimism was cut short this month when the U.S. ally-in-chief, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, fearing invalidation of his recent election by the Supreme Court, dissolved the court, closed the media and jailed dissidents by the thousands.

The measured and somewhat muted reaction of the Bush administration to this barbarity is not only morally bankrupt, it is downright dangerous. The fundamentalists on one side of this war on terror cannot defeat the fundamentalists on the other. Fundamentalism in any society will only be defeated and sidelined by moderates from within. By supporting Musharraf, albeit tacitly, the United States is sidelining the very moderates who must win this war. Musharraf's occasional delivery of a wanted terrorist cannot justify suppression of the fundamental freedoms of Pakistani civil society. A society thrives when its constituents take a stake in its well-being and its decision-making process.

It has been said that terrorists hate us because of our liberty and one must be either on the side of terrorists or the side of liberty. If today we do not support the Pakistanis who seek liberty, what will they think of us? Will our government deliver on this slogan when liberty is at stake in a Muslim country? Our goals are advanced by demanding restoration of the Supreme Court. We must also demand the immediate release of all judicial activists jailed after the so-called emergency. Pakistanis must realize that America stands for the rule of law and the liberty of all people. A golden opportunity to win the hearts and minds of the Pakistani masses beckons us. Sticking to support for an increasingly unpopular dictator in Pakistan will only solidify President Bush's 9 percent favorable opinion rating in Pakistan.

Although it has been generations since the CIA deposed Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq and installed the Shah, and decades since our government tried to forestall the Iranian revolution, Iranians have not forgotten these travesties. International relations must be based, first, on democratic principles. Propping up Musharraf negates these principles, fueling antagonism among Pakistanis.

I have a personal stake in this sad saga. My 57-year-old brother, Muneer Malik, a Santa Clara University law school graduate, has been ``detained'' under ``preventive measures'' in Pakistan's version of Guantánamo Bay. He is reportedly critically sick and without outside contact. Muneer's crime is that as president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, he was in the forefront of the movement to assert the independence of the Pakistani judiciary. Thousands of heroic lawyers have met a similar fate. Rejecting the recent purge of the Supreme Court, 13 of the 17 judges refused to

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take extraconstitutional oaths under a draconian ``Provisional Order.'' Predictably, they were summarily dismissed and locked up. The few opportunists who obliged now preside over empty courts boycotted by an overwhelming majority of lawyers. If this takes hold, the judicial purge would amount to retaining the weeds while killing the flowers.

Pakistani citizens view the emergency proclamation as Musharraf's desperate attempt to hold on. Democratic stability requires an orderly, defined and predictable means of transferring power. Musharraf, like others in the dust-bin of Third World history, is trying to break this mandate, subjugating national interest to personal power. Does the self-professed ``enlightened-moderate'' appreciate the difference between Robert Mugabe and Nelson Mandela? Why, then, does he walk in Mugabe's footsteps?

Muneer, who is supported by Santa Clara's and Yale's law schools, along with the American Bar Association, said while free, ``No army can stop the march of an idea whose time has come.'' I urge our government to be on the side of an advancing idea and on the right side of history. This is also the moral side and the right tactic in the war on terror.

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