“Pakistan is about to cross an important threshold: this weekend’s elections, if all goes to plan, will mark the country’s first transition between elected governments. But this is not a moment for triumphalism,” writes a prominent analyst.

Opinion surveys show extremely high levels of public disgust with politicians and, indeed, with the workings of Pakistani democracy in its present form,” writes Anatol Lieven, author of Pakistan: A Hard Country. “If the lives of ordinary Pakistanis are not significantly improved over the next five years, a return to authoritarian solutions remains a possibility.”

Popular support for democracy is dangerously thin in Pakistan, according to a Pew Research Center Survey. By almost a two-to-one margin (56% to 29%), respondents prefer “a leader with a strong hand” over “a democratic form of government” to solve their country’s problems, say Pew’s Alan Cooperman and James Bell.

“This is among the lowest levels of support for democracy in the 37 countries and territories where the question was asked, as the chart on the right shows, and in a new Pew Research infographic (see below),” they note.

The most influential actor in the election is not even contesting the poll.

The Pakistani Taliban – other campaigner – “is setting the election agenda as much as anyone,” The Economist notes.

This week’s kidnapping of former Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s son highlights the insecurity and violence that have marred the election campaign.

“The kidnapping is likely to demoralize the Pakistan People’s Party leadership and supporters alike,” said Raza Rumi, a political analyst with the Jinnah Institute, a grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy.

“Thus far, they had adopted the strategy of minimum risk to the top leadership,” he said, “but now the family of the former prime minister has been targeted. This does not augur well for the democratic transition.”

“It also reflects that lawlessness and nonstate actors are gaining more and more power and voice in Pakistan.”

The Pakistani Taliban has waged a campaign of deliberate intimidation and targeted assassination against secular parties and ratcheted up its attacks towards the end of the campaign.

“It’s obviously a new tactic,” said Peter Manikas, director of Asia programs for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, which has sent 44 poll watchers here. “It’s a different type of violence in trying to disrupt the election as a whole. It makes everything unsafe.” 

Imams at the country’s mosques are echoing the Taliban’s election message, according to Islamabad-based Victor Mallet and Farhan Bokhari.

“Pakistani liberals like to recall that overtly Islamist parties have never won more than 12 per cent of the vote in the country’s elections,” they write for the FT:

They argue that the beliefs even of the majority Sunni – let alone – are too heterogeneous, traditional and steeped in saint-worship and Sufism for Pakistan’s 180m people ever to embrace a narrow, Saudi-style form of puritan Islam.  Yet for all the television stations and mobile telephones, society has nevertheless become markedly less tolerant over the past four decades. Zia ul-Haq, the military ruler who ran the country until his death in 1988, is still mentioned with venom by liberals in Lahore for imposing fundamentalist laws and co-opting extremists for his own political advantage.

A strong vote for the Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf, or Justice party (PTI) “would demonstrate both that many ordinary Pakistanis are disgusted with the record of the main parties; and that for the moment they are still prepared to express their anger within the existing system,” writes Lieven, a professor at King’s College London.

But more fundamental reform is needed to ensure the sustainability of Pakistan’s fragile democratic institutions, he adds: 

To tackle what is really a kind of criminal conspiracy of the elites against Pakistan, one thing that is absolutely necessary is a rebalancing of the distribution of parliamentary seats from the countryside to the cities, both to reflect the actual distribution of the nation’s increasingly urban population and to reduce the power of the “feudal” elites who are at the heart of tax prevention. This, however, would require the new governments to attack some of their own crucial supporters – for Mr Khan, too, has had to form alliances with rural bosses in order to be elected.

Some imams have countered the Taliban message by encouraging voters to go to the polls, the FT’s Mallet and Bokhari note:

Tahir Ashrafi, a Deobandi who heads the Pakistan Ulema Council (PUC), an umbrella group of Islamic scholars, has been promoting the council’s 40-page fatwa telling Pakistanis it is their duty to vote. The fatwa, he says, “supports elections so that well-meaning people can go as public representatives to the parliament and reform Pakistan”.

Mr Ashrafi’s moderate views, however, place him in constant danger of assassination at the hands of his enemies. In a recent interview in Lahore, he said he had survived the sixth attempt on his life when an active telephone Simcard in an iPad in the boot of his car allowed police to trace his whereabouts and free him from his abductors.

Mr Ashrafi boasted then that more than 60 per cent of students at the 5,362 madrasas affiliated to the PUC were “not involved in any training or terrorist activities”.

Did that not mean, he was asked by his startled interviewer, that 40 per cent or so of the madrasa students were involved in such activities? “That’s the reality,” he replied.

RTWT

Most of Pakistan’s Muslims doubt that they can have any real political influence, Pew’s Cooperman and Bell write:

Two-thirds of Pakistani Muslims either completely agree (53%) or mostly agree (13%) with the statement that “people like me don’t have any say about what the government does.” Just 25% disagree, either completely (20%) or mostly (5%).A plurality of Pakistan’s Muslims say Islamic parties are about the same as other parties (39%). Just 10% say Islamic parties are worse, while 29% see Islamic parties as better than other parties.

More broadly, many of Pakistan’s Muslims think that religious leaders should have a role in politics. About half say that religious leaders should have either “some influence” (27%) or a “large influence” (27%) in political matters, while about a quarter say religious leaders should have “not too much influence” (12%) or “no influence at all” (14%).

The ruling Ennahda party has facilitated the rise of Salafists, say rights groups. Photo: France24

Tunisia’s major parties may have ended a months-old stalemate by negotiating a provisional agreement on the country’s future constitution, but the country’s democratic transition faces an overlapping threat from violent jihadists and ultra-conservative Salafists, say analysts.  

“We have overcome the impasse, we are heading towards a mixed regime where neither the head of state nor the head of the government will have supreme control over the executive power,” said Ennahda’s Rached Ghannouchi, the de facto head of the majority Islamist party.

Yet the transition process may be threatened by the emergence of violent jihadist groups.

“The hunt for al-Qaida-linked militants in a mountainous region near Tunisia’s borders with Algeria in recent days has raised alarm that the birthplace of the Arab Spring has become the latest battleground for violent jihadis,” AP reports:

With neighboring Algeria and Libya full of weapons and violent movements of their own, Tunisia is struggling to prevent the growth of armed groups while making its own tentative transition to democracy.

“We have discovered a terrorist plan targeting Tunisians and the state,” said Interior Ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Aroui, citing the presence of some 20 militants encamped in Jebel Chaambi, near the southern city of Kasserine.

Prime Minister Ali Larayedh yesterday insisted that Tunisia’s security situation was improving and that jihadist groups would be defeated, Middle East Online reports.

“We will pursue our confrontation with the violent terrorist groups… dismantle their structures and bring them to justice,” said the former interior minister and Ennahda stalwart.

But opposition MPs criticized Larayedh for failing to crack down on radical Islamist groups when he was interior minister between December 2011 and March 2013, when there was a spike in Salafist violence.

“We are heading towards civil war,” said Hichem Hosni, an independent MP.

The attacks on the US embassy in Tunis last September, on the UGTT labor union HQ last December, the torching of 60 Sufi shrines – zaouias– and the assassination of leftwing lawyer Chokri Belaid (left)have forced the authorities to act, “yet most of the perpetrators of such acts have gone unpunished,” says a leading analyst.

“It has taken the Nahda-dominated government quite some time to take off the kid gloves it wore when treating its Salafi brothers,” writes Francis Ghilès, a North Africa expert at the Barcelona-based CIDOB think-tank.

“As long as this impunity lasts, even speaking of “free and fair” elections makes little sense,” he writes. “The sense of fear and foreboding that stalks Tunisia, not least among its womenfolk, will last as long as many ordinary people remain unconvinced that the government truly believes in the rule of law and democracy.”

French-language daily Le Temps raised fears of “a spiral of deadly violence similar to the one that ravaged Algeria” during its so-called black decade of civil war in the 1990s.

Le Temps blamed the “policy of impunity and the complacency of the authorities, who encouraged the terrorists to continue,” accusing the government of doing nothing to curb the rise of Salafist groups since the revolution in January 2011.

Le Quotidien called on Tunisia’s leaders to “take the bull by the horns,” saying “the moment is very grave, and the fight against terrorism has inevitably become a collective responsibility.”

The Salafist violence “sent the country’s delicate political transition into turmoil, prompting then-Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali to resign in February and raising fears that the Ennahda-led government was failing not only at the economy but security as well,” AP reports:

“The terrorist threat has moved to a higher level,” Jebali said in a recent interview with the French-language daily La Presse. “The top priority is to launch a decisive campaign to recover all the weapons circulating in the country.”

He added that the country is still in the delicate process of writing a new constitution and holding elections for a new legislature and president, by the end of the year. The process has been riven by angry disputes between Ennahda and the opposition parties, partly over Ennahda’s alleged laxity towards salafis.

“Please don’t add political and social landmines to those already on Jebel Chaambi,” said Jebali, calling for national unity in face of the threat.

The security threat coincides with growing concern over the influence of ultra-conservative Salafist groups which have conducted attacks against secularist individuals and institutions. While not all Salafists are violent, human rights groups and democracy advocates fear that Ennahda, the majority Islamist party, has colluded with extremist elements, facilitated the immigration of foreign imams and taken an ambivalent stance on the issue of political violence.

“Even though some of them have extremist views, these foreign imams often come to Tunisia with the blessing of the government or the Islamist party Ennahda, the party in power, which accommodate and welcome them,” said Messaoud Romdhani (right), the vice president of the Tunisian League for Human Rights.

 “The authorities have not reacted to our warnings, and no concrete measure has been taken to stop these practices,” he told France 24, adding that “civil society organizations also have a duty to act.”

“People need to be aware of the dangers of this type of preaching and understand that they have the right to challenge the preachers’ presence. It’s every citizen’s role to ensure public spaces are protected,” he said. “Unfortunately, civil society organizations don’t have the same presence on the ground as the imams.”

A parliamentarian from the centrist Democratic Group this week criticized the authorities’ failure to wrest control of mosques from the hardline Salafists.

“There is a lack of policy for controlling mosques… The Chaambi terrorists can take refuge there,” he said, said Samir Bettaieb,

Some observers contend that Ennahda leaders have been conspicuous in their double talk on the question of political violence.

Ghannouchi, the party’s spiritual and de facto leader, this week urged “young Tunisians” not to join the “so-called jihad which has no place here… The jihad is in Palestine, not on Mount Chaambi,” he told the radio station Mosaique FM.

“Salafist jihadists pose a threat to Tunisia. The Tunisian government ought to tighten the screws, following the attack on the American Embassy,” he told Agence France Presse. “These people pose a threat not only to Ennahda but to the country’s civil liberties and security,” he added.

The UGTT labor union has been the target of violent Salafist attacks

Responding to criticism that Tunisian authorities have yet to arrest anybody for the attack on the US Embassy, the Ennahda leader compared Abu Iyad, the leader of Tunisia’s Salafist jihadist movement, to Osama Bin Laden. “Bin Laden remained free for several years. The international secret services spent a long time chasing him before finally being able to stop him,” he said.

But less than 24 hours later, he asked to “slightly modify” his accusation that Salafist jihadists, “pose a threat.” He said on national TV that “his statements were distorted and reported imprecisely,” adding that “those who attacked the US Embassy in Tunis do not belong to the Salafist movement. They are criminals and terrorists.”

Ghannouchi (right) told local media that he lacked “any desire to fight a religious group,” stating that “Salafist jihadists constitute an integral part of Tunisian society.”

Ennahda’s need to maintain party unity and appease a membership base sympathetic to Salafi ideology lies behind this “double discourse,” say analysts.

“The double talk of Ghannouchi can be explained based on electioneering purposes. Ennahda includes a quasi-Salafist radical wing, which is part of the party’s leadership, represented by Sadok Habib Ellouze and Sadok Chourou,” said Naji Jalloul, an expert on Islamist movements.

“Ghannouchi cannot ignore these two figures in his electoral strategy, especially given that the results of the Troika government are not terribly impressive at the socio-economic level,” he said. ‘The leader of Ennahda is, therefore, caught between a desire to sell his moderate Islam to the West and the requirements of his radical group. This explains the double talk strategy.”

Political violence is the major threat to Tunisia’s transition, according to a new report from Human Rights First. The introduction of blasphemy laws would undermine freedom of expression and provide a pretext for political violence against rights and democracy advocates, as in Pakistan, the report suggests.

“Whether and how blasphemy and other speech deemed offensive to religion or religious symbols is regulated in Tunisian law is a contentious issue in the transition process,” says Human Rights First’s Neil Hicks. “Rights and freedoms would be threatened by any broadening or strengthening of laws criminalizing allegedly blasphemous or offensive speech, and several such proposals have been made since the revolution that ousted former President Ben Ali.”

The threats to freedom of expression partly a legacy of authoritarian rule, but also a reflection of Salafist influence, said rights activist Romdhani.

“People here have been so deprived of freedom for so many years that they have a poor understanding of freedom of expression and how to express this, sometimes confusing it with anarchy,” he said. “These practices are being encouraged by the wave of preachers visiting Tunisia from the Gulf or the Middle East.”

The jihadist Salafist movement has been able to expand its influence for two principal reasons, said analyst Ghassan Ben Khalifa:

First, it appears that the Salafists are attracting a lot more young people from the slums that surround large cities (specifically, Tunis, Sousse and Sfax) than from the cities or the rural areas. The second phenomenon is that despite the “limited” numbers of jihadist Salafists, they have proved their ability to persist and remain active…not only in violent protests but also in proselytizing and charitable work.

Alarm over the recent attacks has been overblown when taken in a broader regional context, said Riccardo Fabiani, the North Africa analyst of the London-based Eurasia group.

“If we compare the situation in Tunisia to the rest of the region, particularly Libya and Algeria, it is pretty much under control,” he told AP, adding that state and foreign interests were not under any significant threat.

He said that part of the problem is how demoralized security forces have been since the fall of Ben Ali, sapping their ability to maintain border security as well as in the past.

“They are countering the problem with limited resources and security forces are downbeat,” he said. “They feel powerless.”

“Fears over the safety of women voting in next week’s elections in Pakistan are rising after letters have been circulated in regions of the country warning men not to allow their wives, sisters and daughters out to the polling stations,” The London Observer reports:

Now a group of young female activists are planning to challenge what they call the government’s inability to protect women’s right to vote by organising their own protection teams at individual polling stations in tense and volatile Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, one of the four provinces of Pakistan, formerly known as the North West Frontier Province.

Saba Ismail (above), 23-year-old founder and director of Aware Girls, a peace group for and led by young women to train girls in leadership skills, said they already planned to monitor 30 polling stations with volunteers who would support women who came out to vote and hoped to reach many more.

Malala Yousafzai [the 15-year-old activist for girl's rights who was shot in a Taliban assassination attempt] was one of those trained by Ismail’s group.

“Malala is not the only one who has been so brave, but she is a hero to all of us now,” Ismail said. “Such a strong young woman and a true role model, I was very impressed by her. Many women and girls will feel empowered by Malala to come out and vote.”

“Imran Khan’s supporters believe the serious injuries he sustained from a fall during a rally on Tuesday night could help his bid to become a major political force, despite the fact he will be hospitalized for the crucial last two days of Pakistan’s general election campaign,” The Guardian reports:

Khan has benefited from a wave of public concern and sympathy from supporters and opponents alike, with other leading parties cancelling many campaign events on Wednesday……The shaken looking Khan said it was up to voters to elect leaders “in the name of ideology” rather than on the basis of personality…

Mohammad Malick, a prominent journalist, said the images in the broadcast would more than compensate for the loss of time on the campaign trail. “This really resonates because people like the image of a fighter, of a warrior,” he said. “He took this terrible fall and he’s recovering quickly – that is a powerful image.”

While Khan’s fall was accidental, the Pakistani Taliban has waged a campaign of deliberate intimidation and targeted assassination against secular parties during the campaign.

The number of people killed over the past month of election campaigning in Pakistan has reached more than 100.

“The Pakistani Taliban has inexorably ratcheted up its attacks on politicians over the weeks and is now warning the public to stay away from the polls or risk death,” The Washington Post’s Richard Leiby reports.

“It’s obviously a new tactic,” said Peter Manikas, director of Asia programs for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, which has sent 44 poll watchers here. “It’s a different type of violence in trying to disrupt the election as a whole. It makes everything unsafe.”

The military says it will deploy 70,000 troops to protect polling stations, augmenting more than 500,000 police and security personnel.

“It’s pretty clear that this is the most violent election I have witnessed in 23 years” of monitoring votes in Pakistan, Manikas said.

The Taliban threat to the election campaign has been alarming, said Raza Rumi, the director of the Jinnah Institute think tank,

“It is the first time that non-state actors are even now determining the course of elections. That is a major worry,” he said.

“The surprise is Imran Khan’s growing support in the country. Whether he wins or not is a separate issue, but the fact that he mobilized so many people, he gave confidence to so many people, is good for the democracy.”

“The Pakistan Peoples’ Party campaign looks most enfeebled” by the violence, says The Economist:

Its chairman, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Benazir’s son, is reduced to issuing video statements from the badlands of Dubai. Policies have been affected too. Both Mr Khan and the election front-runner, Nawaz Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), dare not provoke the militants. Condemnations of Taliban attacks on politicians’ opponents have been mealy mouthed when they have been made at all. Mr Khan, a former playboy cricketer, contradicts his reputation abroad as a Western liberal. He says he will not scrap discriminatory laws against the Ahmadiyyah, a Muslim sect branded as heretics, which provide cover for widespread violence against this peaceable community. Mr Khan has also vowed to end what he calls “America’s war”, by pulling all Pakistani soldiers out of the tribal borderlands, including where the Pakistani Taliban are strongest.

Mr Sharif is scarcely more liberal. In recent years the provincial government of his brother, Shahbaz Sharif, in Punjab has been accused of going soft on local militant groups in return for immunity from attack

The militancy is not monolithic, but is a fractured movement of many competing groups, including those with shifting alliances, said Ijaz Khattak, a professor at the University of Peshawar.

“These elections are the bloodiest in Pakistan’s history,” Khattak said, “and they were expected to be.

“But people know that is the price one has to pay,” he added. “Democracy is the only viable way out of the mess Pakistan is in.”

Young people dominate Pakistan’s electoral demography and they could hold the key to unlocking rusted governance on May 11, said Zafarullah Khan, Executive Director of the Centre for Civic Education.

“About 48.45 per cent voters in new electoral rolls are below thirty-five, whereas the total turnout during the last election was 44.55 per cent,” he told a Voter Awareness Campaign rally, jointly organized by the Center for Civic Education Pakistan and Inter-University Consortium for Promotion of Social Sciences Pakistan. The initiative was supported by the National Endowment for Democracy.

Pakistan’s forthcoming elections will be “severely compromised” unless the interim government takes measures to ensure the safety of candidates and party activists threatened by the Taliban and other militant groups, according to a new report.                                                   

On May 11, 2013, for the first time in Pakistan’s history, the country will hold general elections after a legislature has completed its term. While much attention has been paid to security’s effects on the elections, other key factors, such as demography, will also influence the outcome. Of Pakistan’s 90 million voters, 40 million will be voting for the first time. This makes the election seem more open than ever. The event will also provide an opportunity to discuss new Pew Research Center polling on Pakistani public opinion.

Simbal Khan, Malik Siraj Akbar (right), Richard Wike, and Daniel Markey will discuss the key factors, the stakes, and prospects for Pakistan’s elections. Steve Inskeep, host of NPR’s Morning Edition, will moderate.  

12 noon – Venue: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. Register here.  

Speakers

Simbal Khan is a Pakistan scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, and director for Afghanistan and Central Asia at the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Malik Siraj Akbar is the editor in chief of the Baloch Hal, Balochistan’s first online English newspaper. He is also a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. He was a 2012 Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, DC.

Daniel Markey is senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he specializes in security and governance issues in South Asia. From 2003 to 2007, Markey held the South Asia portfolio on the secretary’s Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State.

Richard Wike is associate director of the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project. He conducts research and writes about international public opinion on a variety of topics, including America’s global image, the rise of China, and views in predominantly Muslim nations. Previously, he was a senior associate for international and corporate clients at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.
Moderator

Steve Inskeep is host of NPR’s Morning Edition. Since joining Morning Edition in 2004, Inskeep has hosted the program from New Orleans, Detroit, Karachi, Cairo, and Tehran. Inskeep covered the war in Afghanistan, the hunt for al-Qaeda suspects in Pakistan, and the war in Iraq for NPR. Inskeep is the author of Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi (Penguin Press, 2011).

“Muslims around the world express broad support for democracy and for people of other faiths being able to practice their religion freely,” according to a major new survey. “At the same time, many Muslims say religious leaders should influence political matters and see Islamic political parties as just as good or better than other political parties.”

Slight majorities favor democracy in key Middle Eastern states – 54 percent in Iraq, 55 percent in Egypt – but only 29 percent in Pakistan, says a study from the Washington-based Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. By contrast, it enjoys the robust support of 81 percent in Lebanon, 75 percent in Tunisia and 70 percent in Bangladesh.

Large majorities want to see Islamic legal and moral code of sharia as the official law, but there is little consensus on its definition and purview.  Over three-quarters of Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia want sharia courts to decide family law issues such as divorce and property disputes, with support highest in Afghanistan, where 99 percent of respondents support sharia, followed by the Palestinian territories, Malaysia, Niger and Pakistan.

“While the vast majority of Muslims in most countries say suicide bombing is rarely or never justified to defend Islam against its enemies, substantial minorities in a few countries consider such violence justifiable in at least some circumstances,” says the report – 40 percent in the Palestinian territories, 39 percent in Afghanistan, 29 percent in Egypt and 26 percent in Bangladesh.

“With the notable exception of Afghanistan, fewer than half of Muslims in any country surveyed say religious leaders should have a large influence in politics,” says the report:

Democracy

In 31 of the 37 countries where the question was asked at least half of Muslims believe a democratic government, rather than a leader with a strong hand, is best able to address their country’s problems.

Support for democracy tends to be highest among Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. In 12 of the 16 countries surveyed in sub-Saharan Africa, roughly two-thirds or more prefer a democratic government, including nearly nine-in-ten (87%) in Ghana. Fewer, though still a majority, prefer democracy over a strong leader in Guinea Bissau (61%), Niger (57%) and Tanzania (57%). In Southeast Asia, more than six-in-ten Muslims in Malaysia (67%), Thailand (64%) and Indonesia (61%) also prefer democracy.

In the Middle East and North Africa, at least three-quarters of Muslims support democracy in Lebanon (81%) and Tunisia (75%). At least half in Egypt (55%), the Palestinian territories (55%) and Iraq (54%) do so as well.

In South Asia, the percentage of Muslims who say a democratic government is better able to solve their country’s problems ranges from 70% in Bangladesh to 29% in Pakistan. In Central Asia, at least half of Muslims in Tajikistan (76%), Turkey (67%), Kazakhstan (52%) and Azerbaijan (51%) prefer democracy over a leader with a strong hand, while far fewer in Kyrgyzstan (32%) say the same.

Religious Leaders’ Role in Politics

Compared with support for democracy, sharper regional differences emerge over the question of the role of religious leaders in politics. The prevailing view among Muslims in Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Middle East-North Africa region is that religious leaders should have at least some influence in political matters. By contrast, this is the minority view in most of the countries surveyed in Central Asia and Southern and Eastern Europe. With the notable exception of Afghanistan, fewer than half of Muslims in any country surveyed say religious leaders should have a large influence in politics.

Support for religious leaders having a say in political matters is particularly high in Southeast Asia. At least three-quarters of Muslims in Malaysia (82%) and Indonesia (75%) believe religious leaders should influence political matters, including substantial percentages who say they should play a large role (41% and 30%, respectively).

In South Asia, a large majority in Afghanistan (82%) and Bangladesh (69%) believe religious leaders ought to influence political matters, while 54% of Pakistani Muslims agree. Afghan Muslims are the most likely among the populations surveyed to say religious leaders should have a largeinfluence on politics (53%), while roughly a quarter of Muslims in Pakistan (27%) and Bangladesh (25%) express this view.

In the Middle East-North Africa region, a majority of Muslims in most countries surveyed say religious leaders should play a role in politics. Support is highest among Muslims in Jordan (80%), Egypt (75%) and the Palestinian territories (72%). Roughly six-in-ten in Tunisia (58%) and Iraq (57%) agree. Lebanese Muslims are significantly less supportive; 37% think religious leaders should have at least some role in political matters, while 62% disagree. In each country in the region except Lebanon, about a quarter or more say religious leaders should have a large influence on politics, including 37% in Jordan.

RTWT

“A thriving underground social media network is challenging the Communist government’s grip on power and information in Cuba and beginning to bring change, a leading dissident said on Thursday,” Reuters reports:

“There is a network of clandestine information, the volume, speed and efficiency of which you cannot imagine. It is not in megabytes or gigabytes but in terrabytes,” dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez (right) told a Geneva news conference.

“One family has an illegal parabolic antenna hidden in a pseudo watertank and can transmit to 200 to 300 families who pay a monthly fee,” said Sanchez.

“There has been a growth of critical civil society, a new phenomenon, through audiovisuals, culture, journalists, bloggers and Twitter. It is no secret that the subsidies from Venezuela that have prolonged the Cuban system will also be phased out.”

“All this will accelerate change,” she said.

Cuban security forces still repress dissidents but they have changed tactics from imposing long jail terms sentences to harassment and short-term detentions, Sanchez said.

“Quite often, dissidents, bloggers, journalists are taking a walk and a private car stops, they are insulted and dragged into a car with three men. They are hit, threatened and dropped off later on the road,” she said.

Her comments came shortly after fellow dissident Antonio G. Rodiles argued that networks connecting exiles with home-based activists could facilitate a democratic transition to ‘Another Cuba’.

Despite the low-level but consistent repression, the regime is unsustainable, she said.

“The so-called Raulista changes are superficial,” Sanchez told reporters, referring to President Raul Castro.

“The Cuban model is like a house in Old Havana. You look at the house and ask how it’s possible that it’s still standing,” she said in Geneva, where she was attending a UN human rights meeting.

“Then the owner comes along and wants to change the door. He unscrews one screw, and with that screw, the whole house comes down. The question is, which screw is it going to be?”

The presence of small-scale entrepreneurs on the ruling party’s May Day parade drew attention to the regime’s anemic economic reforms that have permitted the establishment of private enterprises for the first time in decades.

“We’re in this very interesting phase in which the public and private sector collaborate and compete at the same time,” said Richard E. Feinberg, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who is doing a study of Cuba’s private sector.

New economic freedoms and the taxes paid by private-sector workers are also beginning to alter the relationship between individuals and the state, analysts say.

“The willingness of people to express an alternative point of view has definitely expanded,” Dr. Feinberg told The New York Times. “But it’ll take a while before they begin to develop a class consciousness and a political articulation of their interests.”

But Sanchez cautioned observers against being taken in by recent incremental reforms.

“The reforms lack depth,” she said, adding that the same goes for politics.

“There’s no such thing as freedom of association, as freedom of expression, there’s no political freedom and no freedom of opposition,” she told AFP.

Cuban dissidents say the number of political prisoners in the country has fallen from 300 in 2003 to around 50 — though the government denies there are any at all.

“There’s been a transformation of the strategy of repression in Cuba. Under Fidel Castro it was like a ‘reality show’, with people taken to court, sentenced to 10 years,” Sanchez said.

“The Raulista methods are methods that don’t leave any legal traces, so they can say there’s no repression in Cuba,” she added, highlighting continued harassment and threats.

Sanchez was in Geneva for today’s United Nations review of Cuba’s rights record which, observers complained, was tainted by the regime’s use of 454 front groups to subvert the review. The fronts were encouraged to officially register 93 statements praising Havana’s policies and practices, says a new report from UN Watch entitled “How Cuba Hijacked its UPR.”

“Cuba used hundreds of front groups to hijack the United Nations compilation of NGO submissions and turn it into a propaganda sheet for the Castro Communist regime,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch, a non-governmental human rights monitoring group.

“While critiques of genuine NGOs do appear,“ he said, “they are overwhelmed by an unprecedented amount of submissions by fraudulent ‘NGOs’ that, if they do exist, are mere puppets of Cuba and its allies abroad.”

Neuer also condemned Cuba’s “resort to friendly tyrannies and non-democracies” who took the floor to praise Havana’s “abysmal record,” including Nicaragua, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Palestine, Syria, Bolivia, China, North Korea and Iran.

The United States should give a higher priority to advancing global religious freedom as a matter of national security, says a major new survey. The persecution of people of faith is inherently dangerous because it has the effect of empowering extremists at the expense of moderate religious believers, according to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

“The state of international religious freedom is increasingly dire due to the presence of forces that fuel instability.  These forces include the rise of violent religious extremism coupled with the actions and inactions of governments,” said Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett (left), USCIRF’s Chair.

“Extremists target religious minorities and dissenters from majority religious communities for violence, including physical assaults and even murder,” she said. “Authoritarian governments also repress religious freedom through intricate webs of discriminatory rules, arbitrary requirements and draconian edicts.”

The Boston bombings highlighted the implications of religious intolerance, she said. The report is notably scathing about religious repression in the former Soviet bloc states of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Russia, including the north Caucasus.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are among the worst violators of religious liberty, but the Commission has also expressed concern about the recent kidnapping of two Christian bishops in Syria. The commission reserves the right to name Syria a “country of particular concern,” said Lantos Swett.

“Helping create and protect civic space for diverse religious opinions on matters of religion and society can help counter the rise of violent religious extremism,” its 2013 annual report (excerpted below) suggests.

The U.S. and its allies should “increase and strengthen diplomatic, development and military engagement to promote human rights, especially religious freedom,” it concludes.

But the Syrian case highlights a difficulty with the Commission’s mandate, laid out by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998,” says The Economist:

The system assumes that most religious repression is practiced by state authorities, and can be corrected by putting pressure on governments. But some of the world’s worst persecution is practiced by what political scientists call “non-state actors” who may be relatively immune to diplomatic pressure. Nobody knows for certain who kidnapped those Syrian bishops but it happened in a rebel-controlled area, so calling the government names might not help very much.

IRFA requires the administration to designate as “countries of particular concern” (CPCs) those regimes that engage in or tolerate “particularly severe” violations of religious liberty, with “particularly severe” defined as violations that are “systematic, ongoing, and egregious,” including torture, prolonged detention without charge, disappearances, or “other flagrant denial[s] of the right to life, liberty, or the security of persons.” After a country is designated a CPC, the President is legally required to take action.

The 2013 recommends that eight countries – Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Uzbekistan – be re-designated as CPCs, and proposes that seven other countries – Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam – should also be designated as such.

A country is included on USCIRF’s Tier 2 list, on the threshold of CPC status, when the violations are particularly severe and meet at least one of the three elements of the “systematic, ongoing, egregious” standard. USCIRF deems that eight countries – Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Laos, and Russia – meet the Tier 2 standard, which designation provides advance notice of negative trends that could become severe violations of religious freedom, giving policymakers an opportunity to pre-empt, prevent or diminish the violations.

An extract from the report:

Justifications for Tier 1 CPC Designation

Burma: Ongoing and important political reforms in Burma have yet to significantly improve the situation for freedom of religion and belief. During the reporting period, most religious freedom violations occurred against ethnic minority Christian and Muslim communities, with serious abuses against mainly Christian civilians during military interventions in Kachin State and sectarian violence by societal actors targeting Muslims in Rakhine (Arakan) State. In addition, Buddhist monks suspected of anti-government activities were detained or removed from their pagodas, and at least eight monks remain imprisoned for participating in peaceful demonstrations.

China: The Chinese government continues to perpetrate particularly severe violations of the freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief. Religious groups and individuals considered to threaten national security or social harmony, or whose practices are deemed beyond the vague legal definition of “normal religious activities,” are illegal and face severe restrictions, harassment, detention, imprisonment, and other abuses. Religious freedom conditions for Tibetan Buddhists and Uighur Muslims remain particularly acute, as the government broadened its efforts to discredit and imprison religious leaders, control the selection of clergy, ban certain religious gatherings, and control the distribution of religious literature by members of these groups.

Egypt: During the reporting period, the Egyptian transitional and newly elected governments have made some improvements related to freedom of religion or belief and there was positive societal progress between religious communities. Nevertheless, during a February 2013 visit to Egypt, USCIRF found that the Egyptian government continued to engage in and tolerate systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of freedom of thought, conscience and religion or belief. Despite a significant decrease in the number of fatalities and injuries from sectarian violence during the reporting period, Coptic Orthodox Christians, and their property, continued to experience sustained attacks.

Eritrea: Systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations continue in Eritrea. These violations include: thousands of religious prisoners; arbitrary arrests and detentions without charges of members of unregistered religious groups; a prolonged ban on public religious activities; revocation of citizenship rights of Jehovah’s Witnesses; interference in the internal affairs of registered religious groups; and inordinate delays in responding to registration applications from religious groups.

Iran: The government of Iran continues to engage in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, including prolonged detention, torture, and executions based primarily or entirely upon the religion of the accused. Iran is a constitutional, theocratic republic that discriminates against its citizens on the basis of religion or belief. During the past year, the already poor religious freedom conditions continued to deteriorate, especially for religious minorities, in particular for Baha’is as well as Christians and Sufi Muslims. …………

Iraq: Over the last several years the Iraqi government has made efforts to increase security for religious sites and worshippers, provide a stronger voice for Iraq’s smallest minorities in parliament, and revise secondary school textbooks to portray minorities in a more positive light. Nevertheless, the government of Iraq continues to tolerate systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations, including violent religiously-motivated attacks.

Nigeria: The government of Nigeria continues to tolerate systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom that lead to particularly severe violations affecting all Nigerians, both Christian and Muslim. For many years, the government has failed to bring those responsible for sectarian violence to justice, prevent and contain acts of such violence, or prevent reprisal attacks. As a result since 1999, more than 14,000 Nigerians have been killed in sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians. Boko Haram, a militant group that espouses an extreme and violent interpretation of Islam, benefits from this culture of impunity and lawlessness.

North Korea: The recent leadership transition in the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea (DPRK or North Korea) has not improved human rights or religious freedom conditions. North Korea remains one of the world’s most repressive regimes, where severe religious freedom abuses continue. In the past year, refugees and defectors reported discrimination and harassment of both authorized and unauthorized religious activity; the arrest, torture, and possible execution of those conducting clandestine religious activity or engaging in “fortune-telling;” and the mistreatment and imprisonment of asylum-seekers repatriated from China.

Pakistan: The government of Pakistan continues to engage in and tolerate systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of freedom of religion or belief. Sectarian and religiously-motivated violence is chronic, especially against Shi’i Muslims, and the government has failed to protect members of religious minority communities, as well as the majority faith. Pakistan’s repressive blasphemy laws and other religiously discriminatory legislation, such as the anti-Ahmadi laws, have fostered an atmosphere of violent extremism and vigilantism.

Saudi Arabia: During the reporting period, the Saudi government made improvements in policies and practices related to freedom of religion or belief, but remains a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, for violations of freedom of religion or belief. The Saudi government continues to ban most forms of public religious expression other than that of the government’s own interpretation of one school of Sunni Islam; prohibits any public non-Muslim places of worship; and periodically interferes with the private religious practice of non-Muslim expatriate workers in the country.

Sudan: Systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of freedom of religion or belief continue in Sudan. While religious freedom conditions greatly improved in South Sudan and improved in Sudan during the Interim Period of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the civil war in January 2005, conditions in Sudan have deteriorated since South Sudan’s independence. ……………

Tajikistan: Tajikistan’s restrictions on religious freedom remained in place during the reporting period, and systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of freedom of religion or belief continue. The government suppresses and punishes all religious activity independent of state control, and imprisons individuals on unproven criminal allegations linked to religious activity or affiliation. These restrictions and abuses primarily affect the country’s majority Muslim community, but also target minority communities, particularly Protestants and Jehovah’s Witnesses……..

Turkmenistan: Severe religious freedom violations persist in Turkmenistan. Despite a few limited reforms undertaken by President Berdimuhamedov after he took office in 2007, the country’s laws, policies, and practices continue to violate international human rights norms, including those on freedom of religion or belief. Police raids and other harassment of registered and unregistered religious groups continue. The repressive 2003 religion law remains in force, causing major difficulties for religious groups to function legally.

Uzbekistan: Since Uzbekistan gained independence in 1991, its government has systematically and egregiously violated freedom of religion or belief, as well as other human rights. The Uzbek government harshly penalizes individuals for independent religious activity regardless of their religious affiliation. A restrictive religion law facilitates state control over all religious communities, particularly the majority Muslim community. The government arrests Muslims and represses individuals, groups, and mosques that do not conform to officially-prescribed practices or that it claims are associated with extremist political programs. ………….

Vietnam: The government of Vietnam continues to expand control over all religious activities, severely restrict independent religious practice, and repress individuals and religious groups it views as challenging its authority. Religious activity continues to grow in Vietnam and the government has made some important changes in the past decade in response to international attention, including from its designation as a “country of particular concern” (CPC). Nevertheless, authorities continue to imprison or detain individuals for reasons related to their religious activity or religious freedom advocacy………..

Justification of Placement on Tier 2

Afghanistan: Conditions for religious freedom are exceedingly poor for dissenting members of the majority faith and minority religious communities. Individuals who dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy regarding Islamic beliefs and practices are subject to legal actions that violate international standards. The threat of violence by the Taliban and other armed groups is an increasing reality……

Azerbaijan: Despite the government’s claims of official tolerance, religious freedom conditions in Azerbaijan deteriorated over the past few years. During the reporting period, religious organizations were closed and non-violent religious activity was punished with detentions, fines and other penalties.

Cuba: Serious religious freedom violations continue in Cuba, despite some improvements for government-approved religious groups. Reports indicate a tripling in the number of violations, such as detentions and sporadic arrests of clergy and religious leaders; harassment of religious leaders and laity; interference in religious groups’ internal affairs, and pressure to prevent democracy and human rights activists from participating in religious activities.

India: There has been no large-scale communal violence against religious minorities in India since 2008, and in recent years the Indian government has created special investigative and judicial structures in an effort to address previous such attacks. Nevertheless, in the past year, progress in achieving justice through these structures for the victims of past incidents continued to be slow and ineffective. …

Indonesia: Indonesia is a stable and robust democracy with political institutions able to advance and protect human rights. In recent years, however, the country’s traditions of religious tolerance and pluralism have been strained by ongoing sectarian tensions, societal violence, and the arrest of individuals considered religiously “deviant.” While the government has addressed past sectarian violence and effectively curtailed terrorist networks, religious minorities continue to experience intimidation, discrimination, and violence. ……

Kazakhstan: Religious freedom conditions in Kazakhstan deteriorated in 2012. In late 2011, the Kazakh government adopted a repressive new religion law, which resulted in a sharp drop in the number of registered religious groups in 2012. Unregistered religious activity is illegal, and the activities of registered groups are strictly regulated. ………..

Laos: Serious religious freedom abuses continue in Laos. The Lao legal code restricts religious practice, and the government is either unable or unwilling to curtail ongoing religious freedom abuses in some provincial areas. In the past year, provincial officials violated the freedom of religion or belief of ethnic minority Protestants through detentions, surveillance, harassment, property confiscations, forced relocations, and forced renunciations of faith. …..

Russia: During the reporting period, religious freedom conditions in Russia deteriorated further and major problems discussed in previous USCIRF reports continue. These include the application of laws on religious and non-governmental organizations to violate the rights of allegedly “non-traditional” religious groups and Muslims; the use of the extremism law against religious groups and individuals not known to use or advocate violence, particularly Jehovah’s Witnesses and readers of Turkish Muslim theologian Said Nursi…………In addition, an arsenal of restrictive new laws against civil society was passed in 2012, and a draft blasphemy bill before the Duma, would, if passed, further curtail the freedoms of religion, belief and expression.

Pakistan’s forthcoming May 11 elections will be “severely compromised” unless the interim government takes measures to ensure the safety of candidates and party activists threatened by the Taliban and other militant groups, a new report warns.

The authorities “should use law enforcement agencies and, if essential, the army, to provide as much protection as possible to candidates and political parties from Taliban attacks,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan director at Human Rights Watch. “Unless the government, the country’s independent election commission, and security forces ensure that all parties can campaign freely without fear, the election may be severely compromised.”

The Pakistani Taliban has carried out a wave of explosions, suicide bombings and targeted shootings that left 46 dead and more than 190 injured since campaigning officially started on April 21, says the group.

Another attack, in which eight people died, occurred Monday in Peshawar, Affan Chowdhry writes from Karachi. “The target is always the same: a candidate, an activist or an office belonging to one of Pakistan’s secular political parties.”

The Islamist militants are aiming to deter liberal secular activists and give an advantage to hardline candidates.

“Their objective is to create fear among people so that they don’t vote for us in elections,” said Faisal Subzwari, a leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement. “They want the right-wing parties to win.”

“This is a clear attempt by the so-called ‘non-state actors’ to oust and defeat moderate parties,” said Raza Rumi, a political analyst who runs the Jinnah Institute (left), an Islamabad-based think tank. “This can’t be a fair and free election.”

“What is happening is that the Taliban is basically calling the shots as to who is allowed to contest the elections and who must be discredited in the process,” he contends.

A successful grass-roots election campaign in Pakistan “depends on having committed, hardworking volunteers. Iftikhar Ali Mashwani, an aspiring provincial lawmaker, has come to realize that his supporters are neither,” The Washington Post’sRichard Leibyreports:

Mashwani, running on the Movement for Justice ticket headed by cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan (right), is learning tough lessons as he scrabbles for votes against well-established foes in this largely rural area. On May 11, Pakistanis will choose the next prime minister in an election hailed as a landmark of democratic progress for a country ruled by the military for nearly half its 65-year history. Yet decades of tradition dictate why democracy has remained more of a concept than a reality.

Even as Pakistan prepares to witness its first democratic transition of power, elite political families, powerful landholders and pervasive patronage and corruption undermine the prospects of a truly representational democracy, political analysts say. The dominant Pakistan People’s Party and its rival, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, have the money, experience and connections that Mashwani does not as a novice contender from an upstart party.

Over the years, U.S. officials have seen only diminishing returns in their democracy-promoting efforts. The upcoming election, while historic, will not necessarily solve anything. Pakistan remains under siege by insurgents and shot through with corruption — and it is still a beggar nation seemingly always on the brink of collapse.

“I see elections not bringing change,” said Shamshad Ahmad, a former Pakistani foreign secretary. “Without a change in the system there will be the same feudalized, elitist hierarchy that remains in power.”

Some political experts see Khan and his candidates paving the way for a more democratized Pakistan just by picking up a meaningful bloc of seats from which to challenge the status quo,The Post’s Leiby reports.

“Can he prevail? Difficult to say at this point,” said Rasul Baksh Rais, a political science professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. “Has he changed Pakistani politics forever? I think he has. He has a presence in every corner of the country.”

The election also gives analysts and practitioners an opportunity to revise their “ongoing negative narrative about youth, which assumes that young Pakistanis are prone to violence, radicalization, or simply disinterest,” says youth development specialist Maryam Jillani.  

“This is unfortunate given that close to half of Pakistan’s voters are considered youth by Pakistan’s government standards,” she writes for Foreign Policy:

Local youth feel disengaged with the national and provincial policymaking process, as revealed by a recent roundtable on youth participation organized by the Jinnah Institute, an Islamabad-based think tank. The roundtable further noted that when youth–particularly those from rural constituencies–do vote, it is largely along the lines of traditional allegiances and biradari (tribal) affiliations. This is a reality check for pundits who feel that youth as a demographic entity in and of itself will affect change.

“It will take well-defined policy measures and serious resource allocation to transform the country’s youth into a demographic dividend,” Jillani concludes.

The Jinnah Institute is a grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington-based democracy assistance group.

As it approaches its first ever peaceful transfer of power, Pakistan is “beset by a torrent of maladies,” a leading analyst suggests:

Its government is bankrupt. Its economy is mired in stagflation as the population booms. Terrorists strike all corners of the country. Civil conflict in its largest city, Karachi, has evolved from feuds between ethnic political parties into a Taliban war against them all, exacerbated by ever-powerful criminal mafias. The cancer of extremism is spreading deeper and the death toll mounts.

“But there is opportunity for change” in the unprecedented transition of power from one democratically elected government to another, says Arif Rafiq, an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington:

Pakistan’s political leaders have taken major steps toward institutionalizing civilian, democratic rule. In March, for the first time in Pakistan’s history, a democratically elected National Assembly completed its term. ….Indeed, since 2010, Pakistan’s parliament has passed three landmark constitutional amendments that resolve long-standing conflicts, including power sharing between the federal and provincial governments and bipartisan methods to make appointments to the superior courts and election commission. Political reforms that had been delayed for decades were passed in the last few years amid a budding political culture of consensus and compromise.

But there are also serious institutional constraints on genuine democratization arising from the legacy of military rule.

The Islamist General Zia ul-Haq “created structures for limiting democracy that would outlast him,” based on Islamic provisions “enabling the establishment to use Islam as an instrument of control and influence over the body politic,” according to Farahnaz Ispahani, a writer and minority rights advocate:

Article 62 demands that a candidate for parliament demonstrate that “he is of good character and is not commonly known as one who violates Islamic Injunctions; he has adequate knowledge of Islamic teachings and practices obligatory duties prescribed by Islam as well as abstains from major sins; he is sagacious, righteous and non-profligate, honest and ameen, there being no declaration to the contrary by a court of law; and that he has not, after the establishment of Pakistan, worked against the integrity of the country or opposed the ideology of Pakistan.”

Article 63 disqualifies a Pakistani from becoming an MP if “he has been convicted by a court of competent jurisdiction for propagating any opinion, or acting in any manner, prejudicial to the ideology of Pakistan, or the sovereignty, integrity or security of Pakistan, or morality, or the maintenance of public order, or the integrity or independence of the judiciary of Pakistan, or which defames or brings into ridicule the judiciary or the Armed Forces of Pakistan.”

“Both constitutional provisions provide considerable leeway to an ideological judiciary to influence the electoral process and exclude critics of the establishment from the next legislature,” Ispahani writes for Foreign Policy.

“Pakistan’s establishment may have refrained from another direct coup, but it is still far from accepting the basic premise of democracy – the supremacy of parliament among institutions and the right of the people to vote for whomever they choose.”

One dominated by a power-hungry military, the last few years have seen Pakistan’s political system “become a heavily contested domain,” writes analyst Abdul Basit.

“Unlike the last two elections, a wide array of political actors is contesting the May 2013 elections,” he notes. “They include the Baloch nationalist political parties, cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (Party of Justice, PTI) and the right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), which boycotted the 2008 elections.”

The rise of PTI as a third force has made the electoral environment more competitive, writes Basit, a South Asia expert with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

“Notwithstanding a 6% decrease its public ratings in the last six months; PTI is still the second most popular political party in Pakistan after PML-N, according to US-based International Republican Institute (IRI) survey,” he observes. “The 2013 elections will be a three-way contest unlike the two-way fights between the PPP and PML-N in the past. The urban, upper middle class supports PTI in Punjab and KP.”

The quality and integrity of Pakistan’s democracy have also been sapped by criminal and sectarian attacks on civil society activists, including the recent murder of Parveen Rehman, the director of the Karachi-based Orangi Pilot Project, one of Asia’s largest slum housing and drainage projects.

“After five years of inaction, and pursuing a play-it-safe policy, it seems that the civilian government has woken up to the horrific Shia genocide taking place in the country — be it professionals in Karachi and Lahore, young children, or the beleaguered, ghettoized Hazara community of Quetta,” says Raza Rumi, director of policy and programs at the Islamabad-based Jinnah Institute.

The most celebrated victim of violent Islamists, Malala Yousafzai (below), has demonstrated her resilience and defiance by launching a charity for girls’ education via video link from Britain, where she is recovering after surgery to reconstruct her skull.

“Today I’m going to announce the happiest moment of my life,” she said, as she announced that money from the fund (launched by actress Angelina Jolie (above), would go towards building a school for 40 girls in Pakistan.

“Let us turn the education of 40 girls into 40 million girls,” she said.

But “change is taking place [and] the army has taken a back seat, at least for now [as] two new power brokers, the Supreme Court and the private media, though activist and in need of restraint, act as bulwarks against military intervention,” analyst Rafiq writes for the LA Times:

But the Pakistani public’s appetite, or some would say tolerance, for democracy could wane if the next government fails to address the country’s deep structural problems. Whoever is in power in Islamabad after the May elections will have to push forward major reforms: getting the wealthy (including most members of parliament) and the middle class to pay income taxes; restructuring state-owned enterprises that serve as vehicles for political patronage and bleed increasingly scarce government cash; and developing a comprehensive counter-terrorism and counter-extremism strategy.

Democracy and good governance are not mutually exclusive in Pakistan. In fact, Pakistan cannot continue to exist without both.

The Jinnah Institute is a grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington-based democracy assistance group.