WORLD

Zia faces biggest

Challenge so far

By KERRY McCUAIG

The recent demise of U.S. puppets
around the globe has turned eyes to-
wards the fate of Pakistan.

General Zia ul-Hagq, a creation of the
Carter administration, is facing the most
concerted drive against his dictatorship
since taking power in a bloody coup 12

_ years ago.

The core of the challenge comes from
Benazir Bhutto, head of the Pakistan
People’s Party (PPP). The 33-year-old,
Oxford-educated Benazir, has picked up
the mantle of her father, former Presi-
dent Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, executed by Zia
in 1979 after a two-year mock trial.

Today politics are different in this
Strategically important country of 80
million. Seven years of martial law was
lifted in January. Mass demonstrations
demanding a restoration of democracy
culminated in rallies totalling over 10 mil-
lion welcoming Benazir home when she
returned from exile in April.

In a matter of weeks she managed to
persuade the Movement for the Res-
toration of Democracy, a coalition of 10
Opposition parties, to agree on a joint
program for democratic reform with the
key demand being open and free elec-
tions by the end of the year. Aug. 14,
Pakistan’s Independence Day, was
chosen as a day of a national protest.

Bhutto Arrested

Unnerved by the momentum, Zia
launched a series of pre-dawn raids on
MRD leaders. Benazir was placed under
house arrest but the demonstrations
went ahead. Crowds converged on the
jails in an attempt to set the leadership
free. The military attacked, seven died,
hundreds were arrested and Benazir was
moved into solitary confinement where
she remains.

*‘Zia had hoped that the outpouring of
support for Benazir would die down.
When this didn’t happen he called out the
military, hoping to let his puppet prime
minister take the blame,’’ explains Riaz
Choudhry, president of PPP in Canada.

It was a strategy that didn’t work,
Choudhry told the Tribune in an inter-
view following Benazir’s arrest. . Al-
though Zia had absented himself to Saudi
Arabia during the military sweep, it was
his name, not the prime minister’s that
was condemned in the streets.

Prime Minister Khan Junejo,
“elected” last year is another American
invention.

International condemnation greeted

Zia sending out the gun boats to quell
uprisings in villages in 1983-84. In addi-
tion his human rights record, including
mass political hangings, public floggings
and the other manifestations of the most
brutal of orthodox Islam was making it
difficult for the Reagan administration to
win approval for the $2-billion ‘‘aid’’
package it wanted to advance. (This is in
addition to $4.2-billion already given).

Enter Dan Hitten, the U.S. ‘‘election
expert’ just returned from overseeing
the Duarte farce in El Salvador. A series
of secret polls indicated that no more
than 5 per cent of the population would
support Zia for president.

Hitten came up with an election pack-
age where no political party could take
part in the campaign, nor could any per-
son ever involved in mass political activi-
ty. Feudal lords and Muslim leaders
were fielded as candidates who came to
power and formed the ultra-right Muslim
League party.

On the ballot was also a referendum
asking for endorsation of an Islamic
state. When less than 10 per cent of the
electorate turned out, in a forerunner to
events in the Philippines, ballot boxes
were seized and stuffed. Zia came on TV
to announce support for the referendum
and himself as president for the next five
years.

U.S. Kingpin in Asia

Pakistan is a crucial kingpin for the
U.S. in Asia. When the Shah fell in Iran,
Strategic American bases, their guns
pointed north at the Soviet Union weré

.moved to Pakistan.

It is also a pawn in Washington’s war
against Afghanistan. Over three million
Afghan refugees are in the North West
Frontier province and the U.S. funnels
an unlimited supply of money and arms
to the mujahedin in camps along the bor-
der.

Part of Washington’s aid package in-
cludes a promise from Zia to ‘‘expand
humanitarian assistance to war-affected
Afghan refugees, including programs in-
side Afghanistan,’’ according to a report
in the Far Eastern Economic Review.

Choudhry reports that the MNR views
these bases with a great deal of appre-
hension. Not only are the refugees an
economic and social burden on the coun-
try, the rebels are an army unto them-
selves who could be enlisted to support
U.S. interests and destabilize the situa-
tion in the face of democratic change.

A MNR proposal presented to the

last spring’s Chernobyl nuclear acci-

dent in the USSR was, as we all re- -
member, the question of information

freedom. The self-righteousness of

the Western media, conveyed in in-

numerable sermons, was almost

unbearable on this point.

However, it is now a matter of re-
cord that three separate nuclear mis-
haps also occurred in Western coun-
tries during the same period — albeit
far less serious ones than Chernobyl:

e On April 10 a U.S. nuclear
weapons test in Nevada went wrong,
and two weeks later the Department
of Energy ‘‘vented’’ large quantities
of radioactive material from the blast.
The accident was covered up for three

x

Nuke accidents ignored

One of the important side-issues of _

weeks, while U.S. authorities blamed
high fallout levels on Chernobyl.

e A West German reactor failure at
Hamm on May 4 spewed large quanti-
ties of radiation into the atmosphere.
Authorities blamed it on Chernobyl
for six weeks.

e A major ‘‘disguised venting’
from the Cap de la Hague nuclear
power plant in France, identified by
scientists, has yet to be admitted by
French authorities.

Most remarkable in these cases is
not that authorities attempted to
cover-up, but that the media in general
has failed to display any of the
bulldog-like investigative tenacity we.
have been led to expect of them.

Pakistan’s dictator Zia

Afghani government calls for an amnesty
for returned refugees and a commitment

to cease all attacks emanating from -

Pakistan. :
It is still too early to say how num-

bered Zia’s days are says Choudhry.

Pakistan’s colonial legacy under Britain

has left a largely feudal setup divided

along ethnic and national lines. Ever
present is the massive mercenary army,
another “‘gift’’ of Britain’s, which Zia
has to date showed no hesitancy in using.

People’s Party head Benazir Bn q

However there is no doubt nl
nazir’s return has sparked rene
surge for a democratic renew: a
the arrests the MNR says a generals
to back its Sept. 20 ultimatum
announce new elections will g°

Key now, says the Edmontor i
Choudhry, is international dema™
the release of the MRD’s leaders”
a cancellation of the new U.S. 4!
age, the only lifeline Zia has fo! ™
nomic survival. 7

While on a visit to the Socialist
Republic of Romania July 31,
General Secretary of the Com-
munist Party of Canada William
Kashtan met with Nicolae
Ceausescu, Secretary General of
the Romanian Communist Party
and President of the SRR.

Both leaders expressed con-
cern over the deterioration of the
international situation due to the
continued arms race, especially
the nuclear arms race, over the —
escalation of military conflicts as
well as the worsening of the inter-
national economic picture.

They agreed no effort can be
spared to put an end to this
dangerous course. In this context,
importance of the Soviet proposal
for disarmament and for eradica-
tion of weapons of mass destruc- -
tion by the year 2000 was em-
phasized, as was the importance
of the proposal by the Warsaw
Treaty states for a 25 per cent re-
duction in conventional weapons
and stockpiles by 1990.

Kashtan visits Romania |

Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu greets Canadian communist lea
William Kashtan (left), during a fraternal meeting in Bucharest, July 31.

The leaders agreed that to im .
prove the international are 4
sphere, force and the threat ©
force to settle disputes be 1
placed by negotiations. They als®
stressed the urgency for an end t0
nuclear testing and the deploy —
ment of medium- -range missiles if ;
Europe.

They emphasized the determi-
nation of both Parties to furthe!
develop solidarity and ©® 4
operation among Communist ae ‘|
Workers’ parties based on full aif
equality of rights, mutual respect
and trust, the observance of eaC
Party’s right to develop its poll
tical line and revolutional
strategy and tactics in line with il
specific historical, national a!
social conditions. Both leadel
stressed the wish of their respe“
tive Parties was to develop ©
operation with Socialist and f
cial Democratic parties and all
progressive, anti-imperialist
the struggle for peace, economie
and social justice.

8 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, SEPTEMBER 10, 1986