Pakistan Protest Drama Unfolds Online

November 7, 2007, 4:11 pm

Source: New York Times Website

As emergency rule was declared in Pakistan on Saturday, Awab Alvi handed over his blog, Teeth Maestro, to an outsider, and he urged fellow Pakistani bloggers to do the same. “We cannot risk it here,” he wrote, referring to the government’s curbs on the media.

Since then, his blog has grown into a hive of information for the resistance, from protest information and live coverage to messages from important figures in the opposition.

The brother of Nawaz Sharif, an exiled opposition leader, stressed peaceful resistance “at all costs” in one message. Other posts advertised a petition to “condemn the Musharraf crackdown” and reported on a protest at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

All of that seemed to be building up to a video of Imran Khan, an opposition politician and former cricket star who reportedly eluded house arrest on Sunday. The video, “recorded from an undisclosed location” and posted on YouTube, urged protesters to persevere against government forces.

“If we don’t resist, it will take Pakistan on the path of destruction,” he said.

Indeed, the history-in-the-making atmosphere is everywhere on Pakistani blogs, with a new blog called Emergency Times striking several revolutionary notes on Tuesday:

“It has begun.

The protest yesterday at [Lahore University of Management Sciences] will go down as the dawn of a new era in this country’s history. It will, God Willing, mark the end of the debilitating cynicism and social apathy that has afflicted the people of this country and led to the crossroads we find ourselves at today.”

As the words build online, the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto seems to be seizing the moment on the ground. Her call today for a huge protest march on Friday was the strongest sign yet that Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the country’s president and army chief, will face a major challenge to his rule in the streets of Pakistan. Whether that challenge is actually mounted in such a volatile situation remains to be seen — via reports and images from major news organizations like The New York Times and on blogs like Teeth Maestro, and others gathered by Global Voices.