The eyes of the world have been on Iran in recent weeks as the hardline Ahmedinijad regime, with the backing of the Ayatollah's, appears on the brink of stealing a national election to keep hardline fundamentalists in power. While the world reacts in horror to the utter contempt for democratic practice, the rule of law, and basic human rights, one might wonder what, if anything, this event tells us about Pakistan. As it turns out, quite a bit.

The Promise of Progress
The Iranian election should serve as a stern warning for peacful citizens who ask nothing more than to elect their own governments and be free from the tyranny of fundamentalist oppression. While it remains a far cry from the restricted society that exists under the iron fist of the Ayatollahs in Iran, Pakistan is currently undergoing an internal struggle that will decide if continues on its path of development and joins the modern, free world; or if it is shackled to the repressive tendencies of dictators hiding under the robes of clerics.

Iran's current opposition leader, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, has opened up the first opportunity for democratic reform that Iran has seen in years. Similarly, in Pakistan, President Zardari has reversed the self-destructive course that Pakistan had been on for years under Musharraf. Neither of these men are perfect, by any means, but they both represent new beginnings and fresh opportunities for stronger democracy, increased development, and a greater connectivity with the modern world.

The Nawaz Sharif Threat
Despite the impressive gains in Pakistan recently, the bright future of the country is under serious threat. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been trying to put himself in the spotlight again, and trying to rebuild his personal political empire. Nawaz Sharif is considered an "old hand" in Afhganistan's religious extremism. As reported by ANI in 2008,

During his two stints as prime minister, Nawaz Sharif had developed good working relations with almost all the Afghan Mujahideen leaders...

In fact, Nawaz Sharif built his political career on religious extremism, calling his opponents part of an "Indo-Zionist lobby." Nawaz Sharif has already tried to impose Sharia law on Pakistan twice so far, in 1991 and 1998.

A former official from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) - the nation's premier spy agency - has alleged that Nawaz Sharif met with and received funding from Osama bin Laden in 1990.

Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal president Qazi Hussain Ahmed had said in a recent interview that Sharif had repeatedly met bin Laden, who had offered him money to topple the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) government in 1990.

Khawaja, who developed a friendship with bin Laden while fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, told AKI that the Al Qaeda head wanted the "secular" PPP government overthrown to ensure that Pakistan continued supporting the Afghan jehad.

Khawaja claimed that bin Laden gave him funds, which he personally delivered to Sharif, AKI reported.

"Sharif insisted that I arrange a direct meeting with the 'sheikh', which I did in Saudi Arabia. Nawaz met Osama thrice in Saudi Arabia," Khawaja said. However, he did not indicate when precisely the meeting took place.

Even today we see Nawaz Sharif protecting Talibani militants who wish to overthrow and destroy Democratic Pakistan.

Lessons Learned
If we have learned any lesson from the recent elections in Iran, it is that religious fundamentalists are not honest political partners. Judging by his own political career, and his own words and actions today, Nawaz Sharif presents a real threat to the recent democratic gains in Pakistan. The world has turned its attention to the fundamentalist threat in Iran. Will it ignore the same threat in Pakistan?

Pakistani journalist Nadeem Paracha, in a superbly referenced post on The Dawn Blog, takes his colleagues in the Pakistani media to task for their self-serving coddling of Islamic extremists.

It is a rather stunning experience watching certain TV talk show hosts, journalists and assorted ‘experts’ continuing to find newer and more bizarre ways to stick to an obviously reactionary and, if I may, paranoid line in this respect, especially at a time when a majority of Pakistanis, including well known religious scholars, have started to freely exhibit anger and bitterness towards phenomenon like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

The question arises, is this a matter of defending an ideology for which these TV and press men are ready to face ridicule? Or is this peculiar attitude about something else?

The danger comes not from a brainwashing of the lower classes – those people who feel the brunt of the Taliban's ways quickly turn against their form of Islamism – but the more educated middle classes who are still insulated from the punishing reality of the Taliban's regime.

It can be safely assumed that since a bulk of the classes that make up the ‘common people’ are the ones who are directly facing and being bludgeoned by the frightening terrorist attacks in the cities, most of them are now rapidly changing their perceptions about the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

The above may also suggest that the ideological divide between Pakistan’s middle-classes and the classes bellow them may have grown - even though, by largely responding affirmably to TV shows based on conspiracy theories and reactionary populist rhetoric, sections of the country’s middle class actually believe they are sympathising with the common people.
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Thus, these televangelists are achieving what the conventional mullah failed to. That is, to make the notion of looking and sounding Islamic acceptable among the so-called educated elite. These evangelists – from Aamir Liaquat to Farhat Hashmi, Zakir Naik, and even Juniad Jamshed - with their brand of dressed-up evangelism are actually the softened versions of the scary, ferocious mullah.

The message remains the same, though: One needs the services of a wise, holy agent to reach the wise, Divine Saviour. Of course, this is something your neighbourhood mullah has also been insisting for years but only looking and sounding a lot cruder.

All hope is not lost with the Pakistani media. There are some who are starting to see the light and speaking out against the extremist forces.

Recently, especially after the fallout of the Swat peace deal, some Urdu columnists and TV hosts have decided to drop out of the closet and take the extremists and their ‘pro-jihad’ colleagues head-on. Two journalists immediately come to mind in this respect: Imtiaz Alam and Hassan Nisar.

Out of the two, Nisar has been a lot more aggressive, becoming an iconoclast of sorts in the spheres of the largely rightist Urdu media.

This is an important development because since the language they are communicating in is Urdu, the much-needed alternative to the largely convoluted quasi-Islamist narrative their colleagues have constructed will now have a better chance of being heard on a much larger scale.

These journalists must be supported. The stakes are too high for us to sit back and let the airwaves be controlled by cynical opportunists who play at mullah at the expense of freedom and Pakistani culture.

Did Nawaz Sharif approve Kargil attacks? Back in 2006, then Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif told the world that he did not know about plans to attack Indian forces in Kargil. In fact, Sharif accused Musharraf of derailing potential peace accords between Pakistan and India.

Through the Kargil operation Musharraf, the then Chief of the Army Staff, had "sabotaged" the understanding reached by him with Vajpayee at Lahore to resolve all Indo-Pak problems including Kashmir, Sharif said.

But new evidence has appeared that suggests Sharif not only knew about the plans, but gave tacit approval for the attacks in Kargil. The evidence comes from PAF Air Commodore (retd) Kaiser Tufail in a recent issue of 'Vayu Aerospace and Defence Review' magazine.

Now based in Lahore, Tufail says the entire operation was planned by Musharraf but had the tacit approval of then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who, after a presentation, said "'General sahib, Bismillah karein'... not withstanding the denials we hear from him every new moon.""

Nawaz Shari has shown himself to be two-faced in the past with his embrace Islamic radicalism. As Nawaz Sharif announces that he plans to run in Pakistani by-elections, it is important that we get to the bottom of this latest Sharif scandal.

That ongoing tensions between Pakistan and India present a serious obstacle to long-term peace and stability in the region is well known. In addition to straining relations between two nuclear powers (Pakistan and India), the dispute over Kashmir resulted in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) supporting Taliban and possibly al Qaeda militants in the region as a "strategic asset" in their struggles with India. This resulted in the blowback we see today, as militants shed any pretense of control by the ISI and began taking over Pakistani villages and declaring Shari'a rule. As such, diplomats and international security experts have been long saying that an important part of a successful strategy in the Af-Pak region is to heal old wounds between Pakistan and India. While this will not come easily, it's good to see that Pakistan President Zardari is making the important move of extending a hand to India:

President Asif Ali Zardari urged India on Monday to resume the process of composite dialogue ‘unconditionally’ to jointly address common problems, including terrorism. Violence and militancy were no solution to political problems, the president said during a meeting with Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, the executive director of Kashmir Centre in Washington. The president said the ‘merchants of war’ promoted violence for settling political disputes, but this had to be resisted through recourse to peaceful indigenous political movements.

Talks with India had begun to reach important breakthroughs, but were derailed following the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last year. This effort by the Pakistani government to extend an invitation to resume the talks, especially as the government shows it is serious about defeating militants at home, is an important step forward. Next week, both Pakistan President Zardari and India PM Manmohan Singh will be in Russia for the Brazil-Russia-India-China (BRIC) Summit. Hopefully the two will meet with one another there and begin the important work of bringing together their two countries in cooperation to strengthen their security and economies.

Nicholas Schmidle asks, Can the U.S. really trust Nawaz Sharif?. Looking at Sharif's past - a messy mix of political strongarming and kowtowing to radical Islamists - and his recent return to the political scene, Schmidle wonders whether or not American politicians are playing with fire by giving Sharif so much attention. But as much as Sharif has been playing coy with the U.S. lately, his actions speak louder than his words. Take, for instance, his recent opposition to the use of drones in fighting the Taliban in Pakistan's tribal regions - one of the most effective tools in the war to date. What does Sharif say? Nawaz Sharif is trying to stop the use of drones in Pakistan:

In a luncheon meeting with EU Ambassadors here, in the context of forthcoming first EU-Pakistan Summit meeting being held in Brussels on 17 June. He said the US drone attacks were causing massive civilian casualties and also violating Pakistan’s sovereignty.

Sharif says that without handicapping the fight against the Taliban, the people will not support the efforts. But what do we see happening today in Pakistan? Pakistani tribesman are taking up arms against the Taliban, supporting government efforts, and cleaning up their own villages.

Nearly 400 tribesmen attacked five villages in the Dhok Darra area locally which are thought to be militant strongholds, the Associated Press news agency quoted district official Atif-ur-Rehman as saying. The citizens' militia had occupied three of the villages since Saturday and was trying to push the Taliban out of two others on Sunday, he said. Some 20 houses of local tribesmen suspected of harbouring Taliban fighters were destroyed, the official said.

Nawaz Sharif is using his demonstrable political machine to drum up support for his own personal vanity. Let us not forget that, as Schmidle remembers,

In May 1998, he tested a nuclear weapon (ignoring pleas from the Clinton White House). Shortly after that, he tried to impose sharia law nationwide, drawing sharp condemnation from women and religious minorities. "We made a nuclear explosion in May," said Sharif, who nearly provoked a war with India a year later. "Now we will make another social explosion with this bill." Sharif was toppled in the October 1999 coup that brought Musharraf to power. A year later, he and his family went into exile in Saudi Arabia. He spent the next seven years shuttling between Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom, scheming a way to return to office--and his home.

Sharif's scheming for his own personal power threatens to undo not only the important-but-fragile progress in Pakistan's efforts to fight its own domestic terrorists.