......[Musharraf] now faces his toughest 10 days in power as the countdown begins to a visit from George Bush. Unless Musharraf can quell, or at least contain, the dissent before then, the visit looks set to be engulfed by the "rolling campaign" of street protests that Pakistan's religious parties have warned they can deliver. This crisis is no longer just about cartoons. It has become entwined with the desire by Musharraf's Islamist enemies to destabilise him by fanning a much wider uprising against what they see as his traitorous alliance with America.
The Pakistani leader is also the army's chief and still, as far as we know, has the most powerful wings of the military firmly on his side. But Pakistan is also still a hotbed for al-Qa'ida-affiliated extremists and jihadi militants hiding out and training in the wild ungovernable provinces along the border with Afghanistan. Twice, they have tried to blow up the President.
The Taliban, who fled here after being driven from Kabul, have not gone away either. Musharraf's removal, by elements who believe he is not Islamic enough, could open the way for dramatic regional instability, the threat of jihadists getting hold of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, or provoking a nuclear war with and India, and what Bush himself once warned would be "the worst form of Islamist militancy" in South Asia.
.......................
That the Danish cartoons are seen as evidence of an "orchestrated" attempt to humiliate Muslims might explain why protests have widened beyond Scandinavian targets. But senior Pakistani intelligence sources interviewed by The Independent in Islamabad are emphatic that a handful of extremist Islamist groups Musharraf proscribed after 9/11, and suspected of trying to assassinate him (perhaps with the complicity of sympathisers in the army) on at least two occasions, are manoeuvring behind the issue in Pakistan. Their aim is to bait the government into a clampdown that will radicalise opinion further.
...............................
The struggle between Musharraf, a liberal whiskey-drinking Muslim, and the forces of radical Islam, has been simmering since he seized power in a coup in 1999 and began promoting a modernising agenda. According to this vision, which carries the Orwellian name "Enlightened Moderation", Pakistan, a society so religiously conservative that a mixed-sex marathon last month caused uproar, would be transformed into a tolerant progressive state. It would still be an Islamic republic--the government ministry currently trying to rein in the madrassas (religious schools), for example, is also in charge of organising pilgrimages to Mecca, and the national airline plays taped prayers alongside safety announcements before takeoff--but a moderate one.
But if nudging Pakistan into the 21st century while avoiding the fate of the Shah of Iran was already a challenge before 9/11, Musharraf's partnership with Bush's "war on terror" has made the balancing act almost impossible. The agenda to transform Pakistani society is now seen by Musharraf's critics as complicity in a greater American plot to extend secularism. Six years after Musharraf came to power Pakistan appears as fragile, radicalised, and unmodernised as ever.
..........................
Last month's air strike by the US on a Pakistani border village, a failed attempt by the CIA to take out al-Qa'ida's top men, radicalised opinion against the Americans. Aimed at Osama Bin Laden's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the missile killed more than a dozen villagers. The country is now awash with the rumour that Musharraf had advance knowledge of the air strike.
A violent separatist struggle, meanwhile, is under way by tribal chiefs and their private armies in Baluchistan, which has been wracked by shootings and small-scale bombings, and suspicions hover that India is encouraging the separatists in revenge for the Pakistan's covert backing for jihadist militants in Kashmir.
Musharraf, meanwhile, has 70,000 troops hunting terrorists in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, a vast region where Pakistani law does not even apply, but the price, in terms of casualties and domestic opinion, is high. Intelligence sources say up to 50 Taliban members were recently captured, but Pakistan has been unable to take credit because the domestic political fallout would be so damaging. And despite a tentative "peace process," the spectre of war with India over Kashmir remains real. Officially Pakistan has ceased sponsoring militants to carry out attacks on India, but these groups have probably affiliated to al-Qa'ida.
These pressures have left Musharraf little space, or willingness, to address a fundamental contradiction about his position. He seized power illegally vowing to restore "true democracy", but six years on is still reneging on his promise to "doff the uniform"--return Pakistan to civilian rule at least before elections in 2007....Musharraf's failure to grow a democratic political culture means more turbulence is guaranteed if he were to be swept from power. As one Islamabad insider put it: "There is no Plan B."
Wow, what a story!
I hate that. Do you read any of them?
I cringe with embarrassment at how clueless our politicians sound when they talk Indian or Pakistani politics in the media. I think I will remember forever watching Colin Powell stumblingly explain to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a few years back why we were going to "take no position" on the "purely internal affairs" over in Gujarat...ugh. I actually had to turn it off, not just because I was aghast at the stance, but because it was so pitifully obvious that no one in the room really understood, or much cared to, what was happening. Oh well, at least Advani's not the man on the other side of the negotiations table anymore...not that he would have considered his counterparts much better I suppose.
It's on my desk, I swear! One of these evenings, I'm gonna bite the bullet, switch off the blue crack and read that instead...
