- guardian.co.uk, Sunday 15 March 2009 13.09 GMT
Pitched battles broke out between police and demonstrators in Lahore today as the Pakistani opposition's "long march" calling for restoration of an independent judiciary degenerated into ugly clashes.
Police in riot gear confronted a previously peaceful protest near the high court buildings, launching baton charges and firing teargas rounds at thousands of demonstrators, who in turn pelted officers with stones.
Mobs accompanying the convoy of opposition leader Nawaz Sharif smashed the windows of buses parked along the route. Others torched tyres, sending plumes of black smoke into the blue sky over a usually bustling boulevard littered with stones and empty teargas shells.
A spokesman for Sharif's Pakistan Muslim N League party earlier claimed he had been placed under house arrest. But the government denied it had taken such action and Sharif was later able to leave his Lahore home without resistance. Before leaving, he told activists: "The government has turned the country into a police state."
Sharif was intending to join demonstrators at the Mall, the city's main colonial-era thoroughfare, and there were fears his presence could spark further violence. The protesters, a coalition of political parties and civil activists, were demanding the appointment of independent judges and the reinstatement of former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, who was dismissed in 2007 by the then president, Pervez Musharraf.
Last week, police detained hundreds of lawyers and opposition activists and forcibly stopped marchers from travelling out of town, but the clashes in Lahore today were the most violent since the "long march" ‑ which is travelling through Pakistan to Islamabad ‑ set off on Thursday.
Before police charged the crowd, many there had described the atmosphere as jubilant. Lahore is the political base of Sharif and the centre of Pakistan's lawyers movement.
On Monday, the demonstration is due to arrive in Islamabad, the climax of a protest that has shaken a government also struggling to contain Islamist militants and shore up a collapsing economy.
Lawyers and opposition leaders are threatening to maintain a sit-in at the country's parliament until the current president, Asif Ali Zardari, widower of the assassinated ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto, honours a pledge to restore the justices.
Following last year's election, Sharif entered a coalition with Zardari's Pakistan People's party to force Musharraf from power, but he later withdrew from the deal over the issue of the judges. The relationship between the two men deteriorated further last month after the supreme court banned Sharif and his brother Shabhaz, then chief minister of the Punjab, from political office. Sharif's supporters took to the streets, accusing Zardari of engineering the court's decision in order to quell opposition.
With the Taliban growing in strength in tribal areas of Pakistan and using the country to launch attacks in Afghanistan, the political crisis has prompted deep concern in the US. The problems on Pakistan's lawless north-west frontier were graphically illustrated today when suspected militants launched a pre-dawn attack on a transport terminal used to supply Nato troops in Afghanistan and set fire to dozens of containers and military vehicles, according to police. Yesterday, after the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, spoke to both Zardari and Sharif by telephone, the government announced it would file an appeal against a supreme court ruling barring the opposition leader and his brother from standing for parliament. Sharif's party welcomed the move but maintained its demand for a shake-up of the judiciary.
Many observers suspect Zardari fears the judges could challenge a pact signed by Musharraf that quashed long-standing corruption charges against him and Bhutto. For his part, Sharif has been accused of exploiting the lawyers' march for his own benefit in an attempt to force early elections and capitalise on Zardari's low approval ratings.
