Arab Spring and Pakistan

Arab Spring & Pakistan The winds of change which arose in Tunisia following the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in a small village on December 17, 2010, and which have since then swept through many countries in the Arab world, may finally arrive in Pakistan. The most important aspect of the Arab Spring is “hope”. Hope can, in fact be the other name of this movement which has reinvigorated millions of hearts which had experienced nothing but despair for decades – that same dark despair which Pakistanis have experienced at least since the overthrow of Nawaz Sharif’s government by a man whose name will always be linked to the darkest chapter in Pakistan’s history because he not only destroyed institutions, he brought to Pakistan unprecedented violence and despair. Since that dark day of October 12, 1999, when Nawaz Sharif committed the greatest blunder of his life through his ill-planned and poorly executed order to replace General Musharraf with the Inter-Services Intelligence Director-General Lieutenant-General Ziauddin Butt while Musharraf was en route from Sri Lanka to Karachi, Pakistanis have seen nothing but despair. Sharif, who was deposed by Musharraf, cannot be held responsible for the action of Pakistan’s last military dictator, but his incompetence was certainly proven beyond doubt by his poorly planned move. Musharraf’s illegal rule saw some of the most extraordinary events in Pakistan’s history: one man’s will ruling over all institutions, including the supreme judiciary, the capitulation of a nuclear state to the United States of America, the emergence of violence at a scale unknown to Pakistan until then, and the extraordinary involvement of military in all spheres of national life. When Musharraf was forced out on August 18, 2008, he left behind a dysfunctional parliament and senate and a political vacuum created by the lack of growth of Pakistan’s political parties. Instead of fresh faces entering the political arena after a decade of