A daunting challenge for democracy in Pakistan

Politics in Pakistan is a dangerous game. As the country gears up for its first-ever democratic transition from one elected government to another, militants have drastically increased the violence. In the last three weeks, there have been around 50 bomb blasts, mainly targeting secular, liberal parties. More than 80 people have been killed, including two candidates, and more than 350 have been injured. It is no wonder that many are describing this as Pakistan’s bloodiest election ever.

Amid this deluge of violence, it can be easy to lose sight of the individuals who have lost their lives. Last Friday, Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali, the main prosecutor in the case of Benazir Bhutto’s murder, was shot dead in Islamabad. Ali was driving to a hearing pertaining to the Bhutto case, when two gunmen on motorbikes shot him multiple times in the head and chest. Several hours later, in an apparently unrelated attack in Karachi, Sadiq Zaman Khattak, a candidate for the Awami National party (ANP), was shot dead, along with his six-year-old son. He was the first National Assembly candidate to be killed during this campaign.

Taken together, the two murders demonstrate how political violence — whether one is actually a politician or merely sticking one’s head above the parapet — has become the norm in Pakistan. The scale of political deaths is dizzying. The ANP alone has lost 700 members to terrorism in the past five years. The death toll of prominent public figures such as Bhutto and the former Punjab governor, Salmaan Taseer, is rising. Yet, most of the time, their killers never face justice.

Ali’s death, in particular, illustrates the precariousness of the situation. There is no clarity about who killed him. Certainly, as one of Pakistan’s most senior criminal lawyers, he had no shortage of enemies. At the time of his death, he was prosecuting seven men for their alleged role in the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008, which were orchestrated by militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

Yet, as has been widely reported, he was also in the process of leading the charge against the former military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, who has been accused of failing to provide adequate security to Bhutto before her death. Ali had received death threats. There is a grim irony that his friends say he was never given the extra security detail he was promised. As yet, no militant organisation has claimed responsibility for the attack and the police have not issued an official statement on who is to blame.

It took just hours to circulate the theory that Ali had been killed not by militants, but by the powerful security agencies. Ever since Musharraf’s arrest, many have said it is inconceivable that the army would allow a former leader to be tried for acts committed while he was head of the military. Most people I have spoken to since Ali’s death view it as a veiled threat to those seeking to pursue the case.

Whether or not this turns out to be true — and of course, it is entirely possible that Ali was killed by one of the militant groups he had angered — a very real question exists. If you can have no trust in those supposed to protect you, you are incredibly vulnerable. The military and intelligence officially severed ties with militant groups more than a decade ago, but in practice all elements have not maintained this separation.

We do not know — and probably will never find out — who was responsible for Ali’s death. However, it demonstrates the delicate balancing act in Pakistan, where it is fatally dangerous to anger either the militants who oppose the democratic process or the security forces who are supposed to defend it.

— Guardian News & Media Ltd

Samira Shackle is a freelance journalist. She was formerly a staff writer at the New Statesman and is also a published fiction writer.