Civilian rule restored! Congratulations.

Congratulations! Pakistan is officially under complete civilian rule after 8 long years of a military ruler atop a civilian parliament.

Although he claimed he would do it… the moment did come as a surprise. This is an epoch making moment in Pakistan’s chequered political history: A military ruler has successfuly transformed himself into a civilian ruler. Credit should be given to him … despite all the cynicism because this is an unprecedented event for a military dictator. Infact the only military dictator in the history of the Muslim World who took off his uniform was Mustapha Kemal Ataturk in 1927… 80 years ago.

For those of us who are opposed to Musharraf’s rule… this has come as a welcome change. Ofcourse… problems continue… Martial law is still in place but I suspect the constitution will be restored tomorrow. The issue of judges will remain for some time to come, but I am hoping a PPP led government will restore them at some future date.

What is now needed are free and fair elections. These elections must be free, fair and impartial as per the western standards. They should be monitored by international bodies to determine the impartiality of the elections. One thing is certain: elections will go ahead and the opposition will participate with the exception of Imran Khan ofcourse… whose decision of not participating I completely disagree with. But that is another story

Nawaz Sharif’s return… and some election predictions

Nawaz Sharif’s return has thrown the Pakistani political field wide open.  To my mind it is quite clear that the centre right conservative Punjabi vote is being organized against Benazir’s centrist or slightly  left People’s Party.   PPP still is the only truly federal Pakistani party i.e. has dedicated voters in all four provinces of the country…  whereas Nawaz Sharif is at the heart of it a Punjabi politician who can, when he wants to, make alliances with significant ethnic forces (like the ANP) to solidify his power base.

One of two things is bound to happen:

 1.   Reconciliation between Ch. Shujaat and Nawaz Sharif and the reunification of the so called “Pakistan Muslim League” (the Punjabi Jatt Kashmiri Arain Alliance in reality) and its voters.   This will help this alliance carry Punjab and thereby stop Benazir Bhutto from having a free hand in the government.  The way Nawaz Sharif has been brought back is a clear indicator that such an alliance is on the cards.

2.  BB-NS alliance for the restoration of democracy.  Ideal for Pakistan, this is however highly unlikely.  Nawaz Sharif has come back to Pakistan with a clear understanding with Musharraf.  A BB-NS alliance would mean that the “PML” vote would split and PPP would have a clear majority with NS as a small time partner.  The alliance would break up but in the short run has the potential of delivering Pakistan a democratic constitutional set up. 

 The more likely is option 1.  This means the following electorally:

1.  PPP scores between 80 to 100 legislative seats.

2. The reunited PML scores between 80-120 seats.

3.  MMA scores about 20-30 seats.

4. MQM wins 10-15 seats.

5. Ethnic groups and smaller parties 10-20 seats.

A largely hung parliament with Benazir marginalized seems to be the course Musharraf is opting for.  A government – along the same lines as the previous government- will take oath led by PML under Musharraf.   PPP will form the main opposition to the government.

The upshot ofcourse would be the infighting between the so called PML.  The party is deeply divided along caste lines i.e. Jatt v. Arain and Kashmiris.   It is quite possible that there may be a mid-term change in government within the house with the PPP riding in power some time in the next five years.

Musharraf to become a “Civilian” Thursday

1 day ago

ISLAMABAD (AFP) — Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf will take an oath of office as civilian president Thursday after quitting as army chief, his spokesman said, giving the first official schedule for the end of military rule.

Musharraf, who has ruled Pakistan since seizing power in a bloodless coup in 1999, will hang up his army uniform a day before being sworn in for a second five-year presidential term, the military added.

The move would meet a key demand of the international community outraged by his imposition of a state of emergency, but is unlikely to placate opposition leaders at home who are threatening to boycott general elections on January 8.

“President Musharraf will take the oath as a civilian president on the 29th and he will pay farewell visits to various military headquarters on the 27th and 28th,” spokesman Rashid Qureshi told AFP on Monday.

Last week a purged Supreme Court rubber-stamped Musharraf’s victory in an October presidential election, swatting away legal challenges arguing that as a serving officer, he was ineligible to stand.

Top military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad said Musharraf would officially step down as army chief on Wednesday.

Confirmation of the timetable came as former premier Nawaz Sharif, the man whom Musharraf ousted eight years ago, applied to stand in the January vote.

A day after returning from exile to a hero’s welcome, Sharif was showered with rose petals as he filed his nomination papers in a courthouse in the eastern city of Lahore, his political fiefdom.

But he said the elections would only be acceptable if Musharraf lifted the state of emergency and withdrew an order suspending the constitution.

“Martial law and dictatorship are not in the country’s interest,” Sharif told reporters.

“My party will not become part of any coalition government under President Musharraf in future,” he added. “We believe that any government serving under Musharraf will be illegal and undemocratic.”

He said he was in favour of boycotting the elections but did not rule out his participation pending talks with other parties.

Benazir Bhutto, another ex-prime minister, also filed her papers Monday. Both opposition leaders say they had to do so ahead of a midnight deadline even if they later decide to pull out.

“We are concerned that elections will be rigged but we don’t want to leave the field empty,” Bhutto said at her family’s ancestral home in Larkana in rural southern Pakistan.

She reached out to Sharif, saying she was ready to form an alliance “with all moderate political parties.”

Sharif’s return, which came a month after Bhutto also ended her exile, ratchets up the pressure on Musharraf. Each served twice as premier between 1988 and 1999.

If Sharif forms a coalition with Bhutto he could cause major problems for Musharraf and secure defections from the president’s ruling party.

Analysts have questioned whether a Sharif-Bhutto alliance will stand the test of time.

Sharif is a religious conservative who once tried to have himself declared “commander of the faithful”, while the secular Bhutto is seen by the United States — keen to preserve Pakistan’s role in the fight against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban — as pro-Western.

Pakistani troops backed by gunship helicopters on Monday intensified an offensive against pro-Taliban militants who have seized much of the northwestern Swat valley, killing 20 militants including three commanders, officials said.

Pakistan’s attorney general Malik Muhammad Qayyum said earlier that Sharif may be ineligible because he was sentenced to life in jail on corruption and hijacking charges before he was banished in 2000.

He is however unlikely to be arrested, caretaker interior minister Hamid Nawaz Khan said, pointing out that Sharif had returned under a deal with the Saudi government.

The tragedy of Musharraf

By Yasser Latif Hamdani

As I write these lines, Ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is about to attempt another return to Pakistan in about half an hour.   He comes with a new set of hair and a more cosmopolitan modern businessman like attitude, in contrast to his conservative, though very businessman nonetheless, style in the 1990s when he was elected twice as the Prime Minister of Pakistan.  He is seen as a force of democracy coming for the supremacy of constitution and law.

Imagine if Pompey had survived the war with Caesar and returned to Rome? For Pakistan, General Musharraf’s tragedy is even greater than any other dictator’s when one considers the many achievements that the country made under the first half of his rule. When he rode into power in 1999, he had dismantled the democratically elected government of Mr. Nawaz Sharif, which had, through very democratic means, promised to turn Pakistan into a theocracy.  It remains debatable as to whether those who voted Mr. Sharif into power in 1997 had actually wanted Pakistan to be a theocracy,  but it goes without saying that Musharraf’s rise at the time was celebrated  by many people, especially those who wanted to see their country as a modern Muslim state as opposed to an Islamic theocracy.  And for a time it seemed like Musharraf was set to deliver.

For three years at least Musharraf and his technocrat cabinet set about fixing things with reformist zeal.  The regime restored to Non-muslim minorities and women in Pakistan their constitutional status as equal citizens of Pakistan.  This status had taken a hit in the 1980s and the 1990s where populist regimes like that of Mr. Nawaz Sharif had pandered to middle class’ religious conservatism and moved Pakistan towards a more theocratic state structure.  Musharraf set about introducing special affirmative action for depressed groups and tried to bring into mainstream all groups that had been marginalized.  He introduced the women’s seats in the parliament, restored the joint electorate for all Pakistanis as envisaged by the constitution and put into place a grass roots democratic system of devolution.  Women minorities, and citizens from smaller provinces were encouraged to join all services, especially the armed forces.  Consequently Pakistan became only the second Muslim nation to have women as fighter pilots in its Air Force.

By far the greatest achievement of Musharraf’s regime at this time was the effective management of economy and business.   Pakistan saw the rise of telecom, information and media sectors.    Today Pakistan stands as the fastest growing telecom market in the world with one mobile phone subscriber to every two Pakistanis.   In a country that has a large illiteracy rate, every second Pakistani owning a Mobile phone means that the definition of literacy needs to revamped.  Would you consider a person who can use a cell phone effectively as a daily tool of information illiterate?  As Pakistan goes towards WiMax and other technology integrated future, one can safely say that mass illiteracy is a thing of the past in this country. Pakistan’s Economic growth rate stood consistently between 4-8% over the last half a decade.  This has created a new process of enrichment.  A new globally aware class has come into its own, aware, thanks to General Musharraf, of the unconstitutional nature of General Musharraf’s rule and the resources to do something about it.   Add to this the media revolution.  Musharraf, to his credit, encouraged free media in Pakistan.  More than 50 private channels had come up at the last count before some of them were arbitrarily taken off by the regime recently. 

You may ask justifiably if I intend to bury Caesar or praise him.   I am just awestruck by how someone with a golden opportunity of becoming another Ataturk in the Muslim world, managed to bring things to such an impasse that even his finest achievements pale in the shadow of his grave mistakes.  It was almost as if God had given Musharraf an opportunity to lead not just Pakistan but the rest of the Muslim world into a modern, democratic 21^st century and he blew it.

Consider the vista that would have opened up had Musharraf chosen to obey an unfavorable verdict by the Supreme Court and exited with dignity and honor.   Not only would his legacy been intact but he most certainly would have given the enlightened moderates of Pakistan the boost they need for credibility.  It isn’t too much to imagine that Musharraf might have been elected later as a civilian and would have become a true force in Pakistani politics.  Instead he jumped the gun and chose to become a tinpot dictator, and a rather undignified one at that. In doing so he pushed back Pakistan back two decades not one.   Once again Pakistan stands on the brink and once again there are many saviors trying to save it.  All the good work that Musharraf had done earlier is now reduced to rubble and this time the device was detonated from within.    

For Pakistanis – especially those who are reform minded- this is a poignant lesson. Reform in a constitutional democratic process is slow but permanent.   Reform under a dictator maybe quick but is always superficial.

Identity, Ethnicity, Race and Religion: A response to a friend

I disagree with you not for the reasons you imagine me to but because I feel people exist in multiple identities and by taking such absolutist positions as you do or those who oppose you do, people often end up creating more problems than they solve. Kemal Ataturk was you are well aware someone who understood that taking inflexible positions on non-issues meant nothing and that he had a task which had an economic basis. The multi cultural “Islamic” Ottoman Empire had made sure that the Muslims were most backward of the lot having adopted only martial and agricultural pursuits where as Non-Muslim Ottomans had done well.

So Ataturk had his task cut out. And no Muslims/Turks following him were not Turkish racially nor were they all Turkish speaking. He had in his followers Arabs, Kurds, Circassians turkic etc .. they were brought together by Kemal Ataturk on the basis of a sort of a nationalism which had only one unifying base.. which is why after Turkey came into its own, many Non-turkish speaking Muslims were transformed into Turks and many Turkish speaking Non-Muslims became Non-Turks. The greatest achievement of Ataturk was burdening his people with the rigors of modern statehood. Turkification of this sentiment was an afterthought.

Now coming to the issue of ethnicity v. religion etc … I am beginning to think you are confusing ethnicity with race. Ethnicity is a much smaller concept than race which is much larger. Furthermore there are no set patterns of determining ethnicity… but we know ethnicity means particularism of a kind. To the best of my knowledge ethnicity means “group” or “allegiance” or association. Perhaps best translation of the word ethnic pride is the Urdu word “Asbiat” or “Tassub”.. so your assumption that ethnicity neatly translates into race is suspect, though there might be some overlapping between the two sentiments no doubt. Ultimately it is our assumption that people should think like we want them to think is the problem. Since Ethnicity does not neatly follow race or language or religion or group education or a group identity formation, it can be any of these, neither, some and all. This leaves us to what Mr. Benedict Anderson so famously theorised about “imagined identities” and “imagined homelands”. Essentially all identity formation is imagined in one’s head. And since freedom of thought and expression is a basic human right, you may say that a certain imagination does not capture your fancy but that would not void the imagination of someone else who has a diametrically opposite view of identity inter alia ethnicity, nation or even race for that matter. If this simple thing was understoood and accepted, there would ofcourse be nothing to fight about. I am sure you will appreciate that while I have pleaded the converse side of the coin I have not disputed that what you say vis a vis about Indian identity ethnicity etc might actually hold true for you, but on the same lines may I suggest that by conceding the issue about cultural Hinduism and its existence you have yourself accepted my claim that Hinduism and even semitic faiths like Islam and Christianity may have a strong cultural component which may affect identity formation. In the case of Jewish people, we see an imagined identity and the spirit of a resilient and brave people resisting imposition of other identities over many millenia, so much so that there is no disputing that being Jewish is as much an ethnic idea or a national idea or a cultural idea as it is a theological one.

The point my dear friend is that this why we have constitutions in the world (and I hope our battered watered down constitution in Pakistan is restored soon)i.e. to essentially allow people like you and Maulana Fazlurrahman to express their concepts of identity and also stop both you and Maulana Fazlur rahman from imposing your extreme positions on people like me – the true constitutional secularists who believe in state’s neutrality not just towards religions but ideas of identity. Look to me it does not matter if my next door neighbor in Pakistan thinks he is part of one Indian nation, a Pakistani nation, an Islamic Ummah or simple the Islamabadian nation…. as long as he pays his taxes, does not break the law and does not impose his idea of Indianism/Pakistaniat/Islam/Islamabadianism on me.

I hope this clarifies my position on the subject.

Will Musharraf doff his uniform – the 10 billion dollar question!

Yes… the 10 billion dollar ally.  Will he or won’t he?  And to be or not to be is the question yet again.

From the Australian:  Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent | November 23, 2007

PAKISTAN’S Supreme Court last night dismissed the final challenge to President Pervez Musharraf’s re-election, paving the way for him to quit as army chief within days, as cricket legend Imran Khan led opposition calls to boycott the next election following his release from prison.

The court, packed with judges loyal to General Musharraf since he declared a state of emergency on November 3, had already dismissed five other challenges to his victory in a presidential election last month.

“I can confirm that the last petition has been dismissed,” said court spokesman Arshad Munir.

Opposition parties are at loggerheads over whether to boycott the January 8 election and how to meet a Monday deadline to nominate candidates.

After Mian Nawaz Sharif, the popular prime minister deposed by President Pervez Musharraf eight years ago, conceded he had failed to persuade Pakistan People’s Party leader Benazir Bhutto to join the boycott, Mr Khan urged a unified front.

He said he had spoken to Mr Sharif and a senior aide in Ms Bhutto’s party on a joint boycott of the poll. But Mr Khan admitted he would have to reconsider his options if they could not agree.

The former Pakistan cricket captain was released late yesterday from a high-security jail where he had begun a hunger strike.

He was arrested last week and charged under anti-terror laws after emerging from hiding to join a rally against General Musharraf’s emergency rule.

“What we want from all political parties is a total boycott of the election because these are fraudulent elections,” he said.

He added: “There is a strain of thought in some parties that an election campaign could be used to discredit Musharraf, but I think they are making a mistake. Rather than discrediting him by participating in elections, we should boycott them to discredit him.”

Mr Khan is the only member of parliament in the Movement for Justice party he founded.

“This is time to launch a movement against Musharraf because everyone is united against him. All he is trying to do is to cling to power. Musharraf must resign … I am confident Musharraf will have to go,” he said.

The Government yesterday eased the country’s state of emergency by announcing the release of more than 5000 lawyers, opposition party workers and human rights activists, including Mr Khan.

The verdict and the releases allowed General Musharraf to placate international pressure over the crisis in his country.

The Commonwealth yesterday debated whether to suspend Pakistan from the 53-nation grouping. Islamabad urged Commonwealth foreign ministers convening in Uganda to delay a decision on suspending it and to send a delegation to Pakistan.

With many leaders incarcerated since the emergency was declared, most of the opposition parties are in no position to name their candidates for the 1070 seats in the national and provincial assemblies to be contested.

Only the ruling, Musharraf-supporting branch of the Pakistan Muslim League, apparently with prior information about the election date, was in a position to nominate candidates in all seats, analysts said.

While the 5000 people walked free, judges purged from the Supreme Court after refusing to endorse the state of emergency remained under house arrest.

Police padlocked the front gate of deposed chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and surrounded his Islamabad home with barbed wire when he tried to leave it for the first time in more than a fortnight.

The move came after a senior official said all the deposed Supreme Court judges were free to leave their homes in the so-called Judge’s Colony in Islamabad and return to their villages.

Presidential spokesman Rashid Qureshi had said earlier that General Musharraf had pledged to hand over the reins of the 500,000-strong army “immediately” after his election victory was ratified.

Major-General Qureshi did not give a day, but Pakistan’s Attorney-General said General Musharraf would quit the army “by Saturday or Sunday” assuming that the Supreme Court rejected the final challenge.

Additional reporting: AFP

Terrible news…

According to a news agency an infant may have been used to blow up the Benazir Bhutto procession on 18th October, 2007.

 Infant used to bomb Benazir’s rally in Karachi?

Islamabad (PTI): An infant may have been used to carry out the October 18 bombing on former Pakistan premier Benazir Bhutto’s procession in Karachi which left nearly 140 people dead.

The infant was strapped with bombs and a bomber repeatedly tried to get close to Bhutto’s armoured truck and hand over the child to her or any other Pakistan People’s Party leader, the ‘News’ reported on Tuesday quoting sources in the PPP.

“The bomber repeatedly tried to carry the child to the back of Benazir Bhutto’s bulletproof van and hand over the infant either to Bhutto or any other PPP leader on board the truck but something always prevented him from getting close,” the report said.

They also said Bhutto saw the bomber with the infant on the Sharae Faisal avenue a little before the two bombs went off.

Bhutto herself saw the man with the child and “asked him to come closer so that she could hug or kiss the infant”. A guard, however, thought the man was behaving abnormally and did not allow the man to come near the truck, it said.

Bhutto believes the explosion in a police van that was near her truck was caused by the bombs strapped to the infant. The PPP leader is said to have told party workers that she recognises the man who was carrying the infant and has requested several TV channels to provide her with footage of the rally.

The details of the bombing have been gathered for presentation to any foreign investigative agency whom she trusts. “Benazir Bhutto has been demanding that the probe must be conducted by the FBI or the Scotland Yard so that she could provide them with the evidence,” a PPP source said.

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Imran Khan released.

Thank God Imran Khan has been released by the government.  Hopefuly he will end his hunger-strike and pick up from where he left off.

 

Imran Khan released from prison

Imran Khan was detained after attending a protest in Lahore Khan’s reaction The Pakistan opposition politician, Imran Khan, has been released from prison in southern Punjab where he has been held under anti-terrorism laws.The former cricketer was arrested by police last week after attending a protest at Punjab University in Lahore. On Monday, Mr Khan began a hunger strike in protest at his detention. He is demanding the restoration of the constitution and the reinstatement of supreme court judges who were sacked after emergency rule was declared. Mr Khan’s release comes a day after Pakistani authorities freed more than 3,000 people who were detained under emergency regulations imposed by President Pervez Musharraf on 3 November. A spokesman for the interior ministry said many others would be released soon. Unexpected release A senior leader of Mr Khan’s Tehrik-i-Insaf party, Omar Cheema, told the BBC that he had been released from Dera Ghazi Khan jail on Wednesday. The prison’s superintendent, Sheikh Inamur Rehman, later confirmed the release, adding that it had been carried out on the instructions of the provincial government at 1945 local time (1445 GMT). Imran Khan’s sister, Allema, said she was concerned by his health “I personally saw him off at the prison gate,” he told the AFP news agency. The BBC’s Chris Morris had travelled to the prison with three of Mr Khan’s sisters earlier on Wednesday, only hours before his unexpected release. After visiting him inside, Mr Khan’s sister Allema confirmed he had eaten no food since Monday and drunk as little as 100ml of liquid over the past two days. She said her brother appeared rather weak and that they were very concerned by his deteriorating health. “But he chided us for showing weakness and he said we should urge the youth of Pakistan to go on a token hunger strike to press for the restoration of the judiciary,” Ms Khan added. Our correspondent says Mr Khan’s family were as surprised as anyone by his release. When 3,000 detainees were released on Monday, the Pakistani interior ministry said that anyone who had been charged would not be released anytime soon. Mr Khan’s release may therefore be partly because his detention was making waves internationally and causing embarrassment for the government, our correspondent says. While he may not be one of the leading politicians in Pakistan, Mr Khan is a known name around the world, he adds.

The issue at hand

Many Musharraf apologists are trying to present Musharraf as a lesser evil than Pakistan’s politicians.   

Unfortunately the issue is not about whether Musharraf is a good guy or a patriot or whether Benazir Bhutto is corrupt or not… it is about Pakistan and Pakistani people’s aspirations of a constitutional democratic order. A constitutional democratic order cannot be sacrificed for good governance or our own ideas about how the state should be run. Many of Pakistan’s alleged problems i.e. diversity of its people, language (though today 95% Pakistanis speak Urdu fluently), religious and sectarian divide, urban-rural divide, women’s issues, minorities’ rights.. would have gone away long ago, had we just followed the process.

There are some salient points that must be underscored:

1. Civilian constitutional order must be supreme. Military’s role is to man the frontiers and frontiers alone.

2. The fountainhead of power should always be the people.

3. Pakistan’s Military’s interests have NEVER coincided with the interests of the country.

4. A process cannot be judged if it is not allowed to function more than 10 years at a time. If Pakistan’s democracy is allowed to function, it will automatically correct the problems that Pakistan faces i.e. feudals etc.

As for those who still believe that Musharraf is some sort of a fortress against extremism should consider the following:

a. Lal Masjid incident was entirely the doing of the ISI. The extremist Mullah brothers were allies of the ISI and were encouraged to carry out activities in Islamabad so that the spectre of Islamic fundamentalism can be kept alive. In the end the Pakistan Army just decided to do away with them after using them.

b. Imran Khan’s arrest by the police through the good offices of the Jamiat-e-Tulaba shows that the military regime is – as always- in touch with the extremists it made alliances with in the 1980s… and even earlier.

c. The only way to fight terrorism and extremism in Pakistan is through democracy… unfettered and unstinted democracy. As the saying goes .. the solution to a bad democracy is MORE democracy… and even more democracy… and the worst democracy is better than the most benevolent dictatorship…

As for those who actually believe either of the two things below that a) this is a mere Emergency or b) this Emergency was justified by extremist elements in north west allow me to give you the legal position.

1. This is NOT an Emergency. This is a Martial Law. Emergency is IMPOSED under the constitution and is perfectly legitimate. In this case it was the Chief of Army Staff who issued a PCO and SUSPENDED the constitution.
So this is NOT a constitutional emergency but a fascist martial law.

2. If extremism is justifies this action, surely a constitutional emergency under Article 232-236 of the Constitution would have fulfilled that requirement. But Musharraf took an extra-constitutional measure.

Here is why:

A constitutional emergency would have allowed the Supreme Court to function which means that the judges would have thrown dictator Musharraf out for being ineligible to hold the office of the President of Pakistan.

So this has nothing to do with extremists. Any government has the right to impose emergency in grave conditions but that emergency has to be under the Constitution and not outside of it.

Any state- especially one with so many fissures and points of view- is held together by a constitutional legal order. By taking that away, we bring the state to nothing.

We- the citizens of Pakistan- regardless of whether we are patriots or not… regardless of which way our forefathers stood on what issues… regardless of our self image and the identity of our choice… should realize that a constitutional order is the best defence against tyranny… tyranny of the majority, tyranny of the wretched establishment, tyranny of an anti-people military regime.

Pakistan beats India

Pakistan beat India in the final one dayer to bring the tally to a 2-3 loss in the series.  This is significant because India has over the last few years made progress in closing up the gap between Pakistan’s  success rate. Under Imran Khan’s leadership, Pakistan had mounted an unassailable lead over India but recent years have seen defeats, though Pakistan won the last series in India 4-1.

Pakistan’s shock defeat in the final of the T-20 World Cup, a game that Pakistan came very close to winning,  has established India as the better of the two teams in recent times but Pakistan continues to have the superior over all record. 

Pakistan defeats India

 Pace bowler Sohail Tanvir and off-spinner Shoaib Malik bowled Pakistan to a 31-run victory against India in the fifth and final limited-overs international Sunday.

Chasing Pakistan’s 50-over total of 306 for six wickets, India was all out for 275 on the penultimate delivery with Tanvir (4-53) and Malik (3-61) doing the major damage.

India still won the series 3-2, having already secured a series-clinching lead in the fourth one-dayer Thursday.

Left-arm pacer Tanvir demolished India’s top order as he snared Gautam Gambhir (12), Sachin Tendulkar (30) and Virender Sehwag (10).

Malik capped his top-scoring batting display by removing Rohit Sharma (52), skipper Mahendra Dhoni (24) and debutante Praveen Kumar (12) to demolish India’s recovery chances.

After slumping to 62 for four, India’s redemption came through half-centuries from Sharma and Yuvraj Singh (50), but captain Malik claimed wickets at a crucial juncture to ensure victory for Pakistan.

Malik and Mohammad Yousuf’s aggressive knocks had earlier rescued Pakistan from a top-order slump.

Malik hit a smashing 89 and shared a brisk 168-run partnership from the fourth wicket with Yousuf, who posted 74 to bolster Pakistan after Indian paceman Shantakumaran Sreesanth had snared three wickets in the space of 12 runs.

Malik struck two sixes and six boundaries from 82 deliveries, while Yousuf’s knock contained just four boundaries from the same number of deliveries.

Asked to bat first after Indian captain Dhoni won the toss, Pakistan got off to a sound start as Salman Butt (36) and Imran Nazir (20) put on 65 runs for the opening wicket.

Pakistan’s innings suffered a slide after Butt got out, trying to hook a short-pitched delivery from Sreesanth.

Sreesanth (3-52) induced an edge from Yasir Hameed (1) into the gloves of Dhoni and held a return catch from Nazir to leave Pakistan tottering at 77 for three.

Malik and Yousuf then shared the innings-building stand that broke in the 43rd over when Malik was stumped by Dhoni off left-arm spinner Murali Kartik.

Dhoni also effected a stumping, off part-time spinner Yuvraj Singh, to remove Yousuf.

Misbah-ul-Haq played a cameo knock of 22 and Fawad Alam remained unbeaten on a brisk 32 to set India a challenging target.