Less Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update?

This is very relieving if true.

Faced with desertions by his political supporters and the neutrality of the Pakistani military, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, an important ally of the United States, is expected to resign in the next few days rather than face impeachment charges, Pakistani politicians and Western diplomats said Thursday.

His departure from office would be likely to unleash new instability in the country as the two main parties in the civilian government jockeyed for the division of power.

Yeah, I don't agree with that. The instability would have come if Musharraf tried to hold on to power despite overwhelming opposition against him. But clearly he didn't have the support of the military he once held (like in the successful 1999 coup), and so this was his only solution.

Significantly, US and British diplomats have been urging Musharraf to quit in recent days, perhaps understanding that there was no chance of him keeping power with all the forces aligned against him.

Anything that avoids a coup or civil war in Pakistan is a good thing. This is an unstable country with nuclear weapons - a constitutional crisis would be extremely worrying. Ultimately, this shows the bankruptcy of US-Pakistan relations in the Bush era. As Joe Biden is fond of saying, we didn't have a Pakistan policy, we had a Musharraf policy, and it stirred resentment among the public and led to this backlash. The US tried to engineer a power-sharing agreement between Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto that left Bhutto dead and Musharraf disgraced. The new coalition government is going to have its struggles, but it will certainly better reflect the will of the Pakistani people more than American interests. And in the end, I would argue that would be a POSITIVE development for the United States. This would be a more honest partner for peace and democracy than a dictator like Musharraf, who was enabling terrorists and extremists in the border region anyway. Our lack of thumbs on the scale will aid us in the fight in Afghanistan, too, which is turning grisly.

SAYDEBAD, Afghanistan -- Not far from here, just off the highway that was once the showpiece of the United States reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, three American soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were ambushed and killed seven weeks ago.

The soldiers -- two of them members of the National Guard from New York -- died as their vehicles were hit by mines and rocket-propelled grenades. At least one was dragged off and chopped to pieces, according to Afghan and Western officials. The body was so badly mutilated that at first the military announced that it had found the remains of two men, not one, in a nearby field.

Horrifying, but the answer is full engagement with Pakistan's new government, promoting an actual semblance of a democracy, instead of holding on for dear life to a double-dealing dictator. A stable Pakistan is the eventual key to a stable Afghanistan where low-level development and an end to the narco-terrorist state can flourish.

This is ultimately good news, though I'm sure the spin in the Western media will be otherwise.