Saving Pakistan

John Kerry is making sense:

Just back from a visit to Pakistan, Sen. John Kerry says the Obama administration's plan for that volatile country, rolled out last month with great fanfare, "is not a real strategy."

"Pakistan is in a moment of peril," Kerry, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said during a session with USA TODAY reporters and editors. "And I believe there is not in place yet an adequate policy or plan to deal with it." [...]

As an example of how he believes counterinsurgency strategy is lacking, Kerry cited the example of a recent Pakistan army operation in Peshawar.

"The army went in, they expended a lot of energy for us, some lives, and you know, nothing came in underneath it — absolutely nothing. So you're going to wind up with a bunch of folks who are going to hate you.

"If the army's going to take the risk of going in there, for God's sake you have the civil component coming in, so you win something for it," Kerry said.

There's only one group in Pakistan with a bottom-up strategy to gain favor inside local communities, and that's the Taliban. They have exploited the general Pakistani anger at the United States and in particular at the drone attacks, to rally support for their cause. They now operate just miles from the capital in the Swat Valley, and Islamist extremism is certainly on the rise. I don't completely agree with the US intelligence officials quoted in this report that Pakistan is on course to become an Islamist state - there is a significant civil society component in Pakistan, just witness the protests over restoring the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court - but these opinions cannot totally be ignored:

"It's a disaster in the making on the scale of the Iranian revolution," said a U.S. intelligence official with long experience in Pakistan who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.

Pakistan's fragmentation into warlord-run fiefdoms that host al Qaida and other terrorist groups would have grave implications for the security of its nuclear arsenal; for the U.S.-led effort to pacify Afghanistan; and for the security of India, the nearby oil-rich Persian Gulf and Central Asia, the U.S. and its allies.

"Pakistan has 173 million people and 100 nuclear weapons, an army which is bigger than the American army, and the headquarters of al Qaida sitting in two-thirds of the country which the government does not control," said David Kilcullen, a retired Australian army officer, a former State Department adviser and a counterinsurgency consultant to the Obama administration.

"Pakistan isn't Afghanistan, a backward, isolated, landlocked place that outsiders get interested in about once a century," agreed the U.S. intelligence official. "It's a developed state . . . (with) a major Indian Ocean port and ties to the outside world, especially the (Persian) Gulf, that Afghanistan and the Taliban never had."

"The implications of this are disastrous for the U.S.," he added. "The supply lines (from Karachi to U.S. bases) in Kandahar and Kabul from the south and east will be cut, or at least they'll be less secure, and probably sooner rather than later, and that will jeopardize the mission in Afghanistan, especially now that it's getting bigger."

While praising Kerry for saying what everyone refuses to, I can't see many good options for Pakistan. The government won't fight the Taliban and have other interests beyond US national security. The radical elements still collude with the local intelligence services. The drone strikes have both positive and negative effects. And the extremism grows.

It's such a toxic mix that I can't see how you do anything but contain it.

Stop The Anarchy, Stop The Piracy

Obviously, the three shots to the head have not deterred the pirates in the Gulf of Aden from continuing their pillage. They hijacked four more ships on Tuesday and attempted to board another US boat, but failed. They are armed with not just guns but rockets, according to the report from the Liberty Sun.

Obviously the US Navy has superior equipment and skills and can deal with such attacks and hijackings if needed. But it's simply impractical to guard the entire ocean when the problem remains on land, in the lawless region of Somalia where piracy represents the only economic opportunity. Russ Feingold wrote to the President yesterday asking him to address the root causes of this piracy, unlike the Bush Administration, who exacerbated them.

As you know, piracy off the coast of Somalia is a symptom of the state collapse and instability on land; thus, any military actions we take will only be stopgap measures. In recent Congressional testimony, Director of National Intelligence Blair and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Army Lt. General Michael Maples cited lawlessness and economic problems on land for the rise in piracy at sea. The ultimate solution to the problem of piracy, then, is the establishment of a functional government that can enforce the rule of law. During the rule of the Council of Islamic Courts in 2006, there was a notable decline in piracy that can be attributed, in large part, to the rise of a central authority in southern Somalia. Without replicating the repressive rule of the Courts, we must keep in mind that establishing a central governing structure in Somalia is critical to resolving, not just stopping, the problem of piracy [...]

I met with President Sheik Sharif during a trip to the region this past December, just before his election, and met last month with the new government’s Foreign Minister here in Washington D.C. In both meetings we discussed the importance of an inclusive process to unite Somalia and the importance of U.S. support to achieve that goal.

Just as you have personally become engaged in the problem of piracy off Somalia’s coast, it is essential that you personally engage in U.S. efforts to address its origins on land. As a first step, I urge you to call President Sheik Sharif and indicate a clear commitment to work with his government not only on maritime insecurity issues, but also to help establish security and functional, inclusive governance within the country. This should be coordinated with other levels of engagement and complemented by ongoing discussions with our regional and international partners on a comprehensive plan to support this transitional government and stabilize Somalia.

I actually disagree with Feingold in part, and I think he disagrees with himself. President Sheik Sharif is a moderate member of the ICU, and has some manner of legitimacy in the country despite his ties to that "repressive" regime. Anyone with legitimacy is favored over Ethiopian invaders or a puppet transitional government. You have to make peace with the group that can secure it.

Matthew Yglesias has a good piece laying out the historical markers at The Daily Beast. Military action by the Bush Administration has CONTRIBUTED to the rise of piracy in the region, and it should not be replicated. Instead, we need to support, or just leave alone, those who can move the country into some semblance of stable governance. Jeffrey Gettleman has more.

World Report

Been a while since I got into this.

• Iraq: The speaker of the Parliament has been officially ousted in a move that doesn't seem to bother anyone, not even the speaker, who was kind of a loose cannon. But if anything, it's a symbol of the political power plays that have gripped the country for the past six months, leading into provincial elections. The Prime Minister is surely consolidating power, using a narrow amount of goodwill engendered by security gains to muscle his competition for power. Maliki wants a strong central government because he's at the head of it, while the Sunni and Kurdish factions want their own authority and independence.

“Maliki is monopolizing all the political, security and economic decisions,” said Omar Abdul Sattar, a Sunni member of Parliament. He listed political parties that he said were turning against the prime minister, including a powerful Shiite party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, which is fighting Mr. Maliki’s drive to centralize power in Baghdad and pushing to give more to the provinces — where the party has important power bases, particularly in the south. “It’s simply the story of the transformation from a democratic prime minister into a dictator,” he said.

Given Iraq's history with dictatorships, and the fractious nature of ethnic and sectarian divides in the country, this is a natural state of affairs, which is why the hopeful talk of democratic transformation in the heart of the Middle East was always such rubbish. We invaded Iraq to remove a dictator so they could eventually install another one, this time with a more overtly religious cast. Not that Iraq was a threat to the United States beforehand, but it's hard to see how this made our country any safer, especially when factoring in the human and financial costs.

• Israel: I'm very worried that full-scale fighting is about to break out between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Hamas ended its cease-fire last week, and has been lobbing dozens of rockets into Israeli territory. Since Hamas' electoral victory, Israel has sealed off the Gaza strip, turning it into essentially a large prison. Egypt, which has been offering aid and assistance to the Palestinians in Gaza, wants to mediate a truce, but I don't think it's likely. There is a faction in Israel that sees crushing Hamas as part of the road to peace - and that's the LESS hawkish faction! This is going to explode in the next several days. Very worrying.

• Japan: The Pacific Rim nation is mired in another deep recession, as industrial output cratered and deflation appeared imminent. Japan was growing largely on the back of American consumption of their goods the past few years, and so this was inevitable. As America's rise back to prominence is tied to stimulating a home-grown industrial base, it's hard to see how Asian nations like this improve unless we give up and try to return to an unsustainable consumption model again.

• Somalia: The President of the transitional (read: powerless) government is resigning. By next year, I gather that you will see the Islamic Courts Union back in power here. Ethiopia will pull all their forces out in the next few weeks, and there is little to stop the ICU. And so a US-sponsored war will have produced nothing but more bloodshed and the rise of a powerful cadre of pirates, who reduced global economic trade through thievery. It was a shortsighted solution lacking a regional context, and it failed totally.

• Guinea: I'm not going to lie and say that I am perfectly well-versed about Guinea (not to be confused with Guinea-Bissau or Papua New Guinea), but they've had a coup by a military junta, which is the 10,834th of the military-led coups in Africa since, oh, last week. The latest in Guinea followed the death of a longtime dictator, Lansana Conte. The cycle of coups and state-sponsored repression is so commonplace on the continent, that it's hard to find a glimmer of hope. The African Union is simply not a strong enough institution to deter the practice.

• Europe: European leaders are talking about accepting some Guantanamo detainees as a gesture of goodwill toward the new President. Obama is going to have a global honeymoon period where he can really get a lot accomplished, and closing Gitmo should be at the top of that list as pertaining to foreign policy. One possible red flag is the persistence of Robert Gates at the helm of the Defense Department. He is being sued by Guantanamo detainee lawyers for signing a false affidavit that allowed him to sidestep disclosure of torture. That will not help any charm offensive. Pro Publica has a good roundup of the year in Gitmo here.

World Report

Because I'm almost out of here, I'll just mash these together, but they're all important, and would all merit a post of their own.

• So the ruling party in Pakistan chose Benazir Bhutto's widow, Asif Ali Zardari, to be their President. Of course, when Bhutto was Prime Minister, she and Zardari bilked the country for millions upon millions. Zardari doesn't want to reinstate Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the head of the Supreme Court, because Chaudhry might then arrest him. So this is cutting a wedge through the fragile coalition. The former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, wants to slash the Presidential power before Zardari accedes to the position. Sharif's Muslim League also wants Chaudhry back on the bench. Pakistan is a mess, and a mess we can't afford right now.

• While George Bush finally came around on a withdrawal timeline, he's still not all the way where Muqtada al-Sadr needs him to be:

The debate over a deal that would chart the future of U.S. troops in Iraq has reignited the rhetoric coming from Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr, who denounced the plan Friday for not setting a firm date for American withdrawal [...]

Iraq's government spokesman, Ali Dabbagh, reiterated Friday that any departure of U.S. troops was "subject to Iraqi national security" and that the dates were hypothetical. The final departure date "will be jointly set" by Iraq and the United States, he said, downplaying suggestions that the draft was the final deal.

At the weekly prayer service in Sadr's Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City, chants of "No to the agreement!" rang out through loudspeakers positioned along the street. Worshipers responded with applause and repeated the chant as the service ended and people drifted away [...]

At prayer services across the country, Sadrist preachers said any deal struck with the Americans was a blow to Iraq's sovereignty. In Sadr City, listeners agreed.

"Everyone is talking about how it will really serve the interests of the Americans, not the Iraqis," said Mohammed Fadim, whose well-stocked grocery store overlooks the wide avenue where worshipers knelt side by side in prayer. "Everyone knows the U.S. administration. Once they occupy a country, if they want to make an agreement to stay, 80% of the terms will fulfill their interests."

This is bad news. Sadr leads a cultural movement regardless of who holds the guns, and Maliki was pushed to a timeline in the first place because of pressure from the Sadrists. If Sadr turns against a deal pushed by the Parliament, Maliki's team will be crushed in the provincial elections. Just the act of getting this ratified (Maliki is going through the Parliament) could rip the country to shreds. Not good.

• In a neglected corner of the "war on terror," Somalia is going to crap.

Islamic militants said Saturday they had seized control of Somalia's third largest city after three days of fighting that left about 70 people dead and saw thousands flee Kismayo.

The Islamic courts movement, which controlled the capital, Mogadishu, and much of the south for six months in 2006, said it wrested control of the southern port city of Kismayo from clan militias.

The ICU never really stopped fighting, as the US paid little or no attention, despite the fact that Somalia, with almost no real government and extreme poverty, is a hotbed for extremism. This goes down as another failure of Bush-era foreign policy.

• Russia is leaving Georgia. Mostly leaving. Georgia is apparently disputing the checkpoints Russia has set up in Georgian territory. It's a bit dodgy, but to characterize it as the greatest crisis since the Cold War is king of nuts.

World Report

Every so often I look at the world, and make a report. This is that report.

• Zimbabwe is the biggest hell hole on Earth. Inflation is over 100,000% annually. You actually need a wheelbarrow to carry around money. And in a country dependent on international food aid, the ruling party of Robert Mugabe is using food aid as a weapon to force the public to vote for them. "No ZANU Card, No Mealie Meal," as Hilzoy puts it. I'm sickened. Among the many insufferable dictators around the globe, Mugabe may be the worst, and I would have little problem with a humanitarian intervention to force equal distribution of food aid.

• Speaking of dictators and Africa, a leader of the Janjaweed militia is finally admitting what everyone already knew, that he received his orders to rape and murder the Darfurians from the Sudanese government in Khartoum, as well as heavy weaponry. Even though this has been assumed, it's the first time a Janjaweed leader has gone public.

• So desperate to reach any kind of fig leaf of a deal in the Middle East that would signify something resembling a "legacy," the Bush Administration is now talking about allowing Hamas to participate in talks with Israel, using Egypt as an intermediary. This is mainly about negotiating a cease-fire, not some overarching agreement on Palestine. But the softening stance is probably a good thing in the long run.

• Speaking of Bush toning down his arrogant foreign policy, apparently they've discovered that nobody really likes Pervez Musharraf, and are stopping their praise of him, instead trying to cozy up to the opposition parties. Might be a little late for that, but of course we rarely learn out foreign policy lessons.

• So I guess a substantial number of our troops (at least a dozen) have been subject to accidental death by electrocution in Iraq, and Henry Waxman wants to get to the bottom of it. Support the troops, I believe, is the phrase. Man, they must be living in a pit over there, paid for by our tax dollars (funneled to unfeeeling corporations who do shoddy work, that is).

• The Islamists in Somalia, though defeated in last year's war, have not been vanquished, and in fact they beheaded three Somali soldiers, prompting the UN to raise alarms and plead for peace talks. Even the proxy wars Bush fights and wins are never actually won.

• There's some additional news from Tibet, where the authorities have arrested dozens inside the autonomous region and have acknowledged unrest outside the province, in other parts of China. Chinese police have shot Tibetan protesters in Sichuan province, wounding four. So far, the estimate from protests in Lhasa is 13 deaths, which is probably low. Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama sits in exile in India, and relations between India and China may grow strained as a result. It's a bad situation, but pressure must continue to be put on the Chinese government to allow for independence or at least some peaceful solution.

• And finally, Doraemon is a Japanese ambassador. When I went to Bangkok a while ago, we saw this Doraemon piggy bank in the Thai version of a 7-11. The bank was free with a hot dog, and my friend didn't want the hot dog but was willing to pay the price for the bank. The clerk refused to give the bank without the hot dog. It was an amusing cultural misunderstanding that hopefully Doraemon, in his new diplomatic role, will help to prevent.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

Pakistan has seen yet another deadly attack today.

Bombs exploded at a federal police building and in a residential area of the eastern city of Lahore on Tuesday, killing at least 15 people and wounding many more, police said.

The Federal Investigation Agency in downtown Lahore was devastated by a bomb planted near an elevator, said Mirza Mohammed Yasin, an FIA official in the capital, Islamabad. At least a dozen people died, said Mohammed Afzal, a Lahore police official.

Three more died in a second bombing at a house in an upscale residential area, Afzal said. It was not immediately clear who lived there.

The militants engages in these attacks are trying to influence the country in a way they couldn't at the ballot box. It's doubtless that their numbers are being fed by increasing uneasiness and anxiety with the economic situation in the country. As the US recession inevitably goes global, this will become yet another obstacle to global stability, particularly with respect to food and energy prices. We're going to see global poverty spike on a massive scale. Relating specifically to Pakistan, this was more likely the cause of Pervez Musharraf's electoral failure than any widespread yearning for freedom or democracy. People vote with their pocketbooks.

With consumer prices for basic goods hitting new highs in Pakistan, anxieties about the country's economy are also on the rise. After seeing five years of strong gains under the government of President Pervez Musharraf, officials are scaling back expectations for growth in the face of wrenching food and energy shortages.

The crisis has taken a severe toll on Musharraf politically -- public frustration with rising prices helped the opposition win big in parliamentary elections last month. Now those parties, the Pakistan People's Party and a faction of the Pakistan Muslim League led by Nawaz Sharif, must confront the unpleasant task of managing the crisis. Economists here say a surge of foreign investment and export growth are needed.

It's the poor and the middle class being affected. Which has led to this weak position for Musharraf, one that will be exploited by the incoming government, which plans to join forces to reinstate judges over Musharraf's protests. When or if this will happen is another story.

It is up to Mr. Musharraf to convene Parliament. On Friday, at a time when agreement between the two parties seemed somewhat distant, the president said he would call the Parliament in 10 days “if there was peace in the country.”

And again we see the attacks inside Pakistan as something Musharraf needs to survive politically. Could this be why the US government, which is nominally backing Musharraf's continued hold on power, is funding tribal militias who have questionable allegiances?

The outpost's defenders belonged to Pakistan's Frontier Corps, an 85,000-member tribal militia that, according to the latest Pentagon budget, is set to receive up to $75 million in training and equipment this year, the first injection of what could be more than $400 million to be delivered over the next several years. Beyond this, little is known about the plan, the details of which remain classified. As reported by the New York Times, a 40-page secret document called "Plan for Training the Frontier Corps" is currently being circulated at the U.S. Central Command, awaiting final approval by its commander, Admiral William J. Fallon, and other senior defense officials. The use of the Frontier Corps in the fight against Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan augurs a new approach to dealing with rising Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan's tribal region. Like U.S. plans to fund it, the Frontier Corps has largely escaped scrutiny, but there are questions about its allegiances, competence, and suitability to the proposed mission. Support for tribal militias has become a centerpiece of the U.S. strategy in Iraq, one that carries with it inherent risks in terms of inadvertently backing potential enemies in the pursuit of short-term security goals. Supporting the Frontier Corps is similarly dicey.

My feeling is that trying to pursue an "Anbar Awakening" inside the frontier areas is simply, in the short term, pushing the Taliban/militant forces deeper inside Pakistan. Where they plot and carry out more attacks, giving Musharraf more of a reason to crack down and maybe impose martial law again. I could be wrong, but it does seem that Musharraf and the militants are mutually sustaining. In the long term, bolstering the Frontier Corps seems to be to be lunacy, ripe for blowback, and simply horrendous policy.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

After a long series detailing the challenges in Pakistan, McClatchy out and out says that it is the central front in the war on terror.

A new generation of "very battle-hardened" young Islamic militants is destabilizing nuclear-armed Pakistan, and the country's U.S.-backed military is nowhere near ready to conduct major operations against it, senior American intelligence officials said Friday.

The militants have expanded their violent campaign from Pakistan's ungoverned tribal areas to "Pakistan proper" and they killed more people last year than they did in all the years from 2001 to 2006 combined, said the officials, speaking in testimony to Congress and in interviews.

The officials also acknowledged that al Qaida, which cooperates with the homegrown Pakistani militants and with the Taliban, who're battling Afghanistan's U.S.-backed government, is planning more attacks on the West in the haven it's re-established along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

The assessments raise new questions about the wisdom of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq before American-led forces had defeated al Qaida in Afghanistan. Speaking Friday in Germany, Defense Secretary Robert Gates also conceded that European nations critical of the Bush administration's policy in Iraq are reluctant to support its efforts to secure Afghanistan.

Pakistan's government is newly aware of the threats, but despite billions of dollars in U.S. aid, its army remains unable to conduct the sophisticated counter-insurgency campaign that Washington wants, the officials said.

Afghanistan has slipped to the background of the events of the day, but it's not only slipping away, the militants who are fighting effectively there are also growing strong enough to mount an insurgency inside Pakistan. We hitched ourselves to a dictator hungry for his own power and more concerned with making a deal with the Taliban for political expediency than taking them on. And just recently, Pervez Musharraf has brokered another deal that does not only destabilize his own country, but Afghanistan as well.

The announcement of a cease-fire just a few weeks into a determined military operation against one of Pakistan’s most wanted men, the militant leader Baitullah Mehsud, has once again raised questions about the Pakistani government’s commitment to combating militancy in the country’s tribal areas.

Pakistani analysts said they feared that the cease-fire was reminiscent of past deals that allowed the militants to regroup and fortify their stronghold, turning the tribal areas into a veritable ministate for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. United States officials have long voiced reservations that any further deals with the militants would be counterproductive.

Spokesmen for Mr. Mehsud, who Pakistani and American officials say is linked to Al Qaeda and the attack that killed the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, announced the cease-fire last week. The government has not confirmed it, and a military spokesman said military operations against Mr. Mehsud and his followers, estimated in the thousands, were continuing.

But two senior security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists, said a cease-fire was in place.

Why would anyone be surprised by this. Musharraf will hook up with anyone as long as they allow him to control the country with an iron fist.

This is fast going the way of Iraq, an intractable situation where the President's bungling has gotten us into a situation it will be almost impossible for the next President to extricate him or herself from. Why anyone would want that job at this point is beyond me.

Pakistan Update

The crisis in Pakistan has practically shut down the country. Internal unrest has resulted in upwards of 40 deaths, and the government appears to be closing ranks. They have rejected international help in the probe into Benazir Bhutto's assassination, instead going with their official story that her death was the work of Al Qaeda. They declined to do an autopsy on Bhutto's body, yet changed their story on how she died, from a gunshot wound to shrapnel to hitting her head on the sunroof of her vehicle. But on the scene reports tell a different story (including the fact that the police abandoned their posts protecting Bhutto shortly before the attack), new video images have resulted in even more questions:

The new images of the men who appear to have been Ms. Bhutto’s assassins showed one dressed in a sleeveless black waistcoat and rimless sunglasses, and holding aloft what appeared to be a gun. He had a short haircut and wore the kind of attire reminiscent of plainclothes intelligence officials, though Al Qaeda and other militants have also been known to dress attackers in Western-style clothing in order to disguise them.

That man is seen standing in front of another whose head is covered in a shawl in the style of Pashtun men from the Pakistan’s tribal areas, where Al Qaeda has regrouped in the past year. He is described in the newspaper Dawn as the suicide bomber.

Mr. Minallah, the hospital board member, said Ms. Bhutto’s doctors raised the likelihood of a bullet killing her in their report, when they wrote, “Two to three tiny radio-densities underneath fracture segment are observed on both projections.”

The report said the doctors tried for 41 minutes to revive her. It said “the patient was pulseless and was not breathing,” when she arrived at the hospital. “A wound was present on the right temporoparietal region, through which blood was trickling down and whitish material which looked like brain matter was visible in the wound,” it said.

Ms. Bhutto’s colleagues who were in the vehicle with her said the interior was covered in blood, and the doctors wrote that “her clothes were soaked with blood.”

I don't know how you get that bloodied by hitting a sunroof.

The questions of the circumstances of her death are mirrored by questions over the fate of Parliamentary elections. After initially calling for a boycott, opposition parties have vowed to contest them. Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party will be led by Bhutto's husband and her Oxford-matriculating 19 year-old son, which sounds almost like a feudal line of succession. But the real question is when these elections will actually be scheduled.

Parliamentary elections seen as key to restoring democracy are set to be postponed for weeks in the wake of Benazir Bhutto's assassination, Pakistani officials said Monday.

A senior government official said that he expected a six-week delay in the elections now slated for Jan. 8, despite calls from Bhutto's party, other opposition politicians and world leaders for the polls to be held on time. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the information.

Election Commission Secretary Kanwar Dilashad told reporters that a decision on the timing would be announced on Tuesday, but a recommendation "has been sent to the government for a delay." The opposition has accused the commission of favoring President Pervez Musharraf's backers.

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the country's most prominent opposition leader, threatened street protests if the vote was delayed.

"We will agitate," he told The Associated Press in an interview. "We will not accept this postponement."

Holding elections in a week during a time of turmoil is probably unsound, but there are larger questions here. Pakistan does not have an independent judiciary right now. It does not have a free media. Pervez Musharraf is hated within his own country and the suspicions of his complicity in Bhutto's death are growing. Juan Cole is right on here.

6. The US must keep the pressure on Pervez Musharraf to hold free and fair, early elections in Pakistan. The elections probably cannot be held on Jan. 8, as planned, because of the extensive turmoil and destruction of polling stations and ballots during the past few days. But they should not be postponed past March 1. Musharraf's own legitimacy has collapsed, and he is in danger of becoming a Shah of Iran figure, hated by his own people and driven from office. Such a scenario could be very bad for the United States. That is why Joe Biden is right and John McCain is wrong when the latter warns against dumping Musharraf. Why cannot the American Right learn that backing the wrong horse is often worse than not having a horse in the first place?

It's important that we don't posthumously laud Benazir Bhutto as the savior of her country. She stole billions from the Pakistani treasury when she was Prime Minister, and on her watch Pakistani links to the Taliban grew, and A.Q. Khan sold nuclear technology all over the world. And her family is still in control of this political party which is supposedly the last best hope for democracy.

Poor Pakistan. Poor People's Party supporters. Both deserve better than this disgusting, medieval charade.

Benazir's last decision was in the same autocratic mode as its predecessors, an approach that would cost her – tragically – her own life. Had she heeded the advice of some party leaders and not agreed to the Washington-brokered deal with Pervez Musharraf or, even later, decided to boycott his parliamentary election she might still have been alive. Her last gift to the country does not augur well for its future.

How can Western-backed politicians be taken seriously if they treat their party as a fiefdom and their supporters as serfs, while their courtiers abroad mouth sycophantic niceties concerning the young prince and his future.

That most of the PPP inner circle consists of spineless timeservers leading frustrated and melancholy lives is no excuse. All this could be transformed if inner-party democracy was implemented. There is a tiny layer of incorruptible and principled politicians inside the party, but they have been sidelined. Dynastic politics is a sign of weakness, not strength. Benazir was fond of comparing her family to the Kennedys, but chose to ignore that the Democratic Party, despite an addiction to big money, was not the instrument of any one family.

(Dynastic politics as a sign of weakness... Hmm, who were our last three Presidents, and who might be the next one...)

However, blind acceptance of a despot like Musharraf is certainly not the answer. Immediate reinstatement of the Supreme Court and a unity caretaker government to prepare for actual elections that are fair and free ought to be demanded, as well as a legitimate investigation into Bhutto's death. A Musharraf who is weakened or overthrown would have negative consequences for the region. We should probably stay the hell out of this and not try to install some other kingly figure without the consent of the Pakistani people. But the encouragement should be toward an end to despotism. If that happens with Musharraf or without ought to be of no consequence.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

So the Perv is vowing to end the state of emergency in a few weeks, bowing to pressure from the US government and the international community. Is the "emergency" as Musharraf described it over? Of course not. There are still violent attacks in the border region, there are still Islamists taking over these small villages. Nothing has changed as a result of the state of emergency. The only "emergency" was that the Pakistani Supreme Court was about to vote against Musharraf on whether or not he was allowed to run for President while being chief of staff of the Army. Now that the Court has been deposed, Musharraf sworn in, a new Army Chief of Staff in power, the emergency has been lifted.

The question is whether or not the opposition will call him on this.

UPDATE: Interesting article about the Pakistani version of "The Daily Show." Seems like Musharraf is aware of the power of mockery.

Perspective

Quick definition of terms:

Sudan convicting a teacher to 15 days for allowing a teddy bear in her classroom to be called "Mohammed": Regrettable.

Sudan, the same country, enabling the genocide of close to a million Darfurians: Unforgivable and a global tragedy.

Unfortunately, only the first one of these is on the news today.

The Growing Nightmare In Pakistan

Over the weekend, Pervez Musharraf agreed to set elections by January 9, perhaps leading Buah Administration "elections=democracy" officials to nod in agreement and move on to Iran. But this is a meaningless gesture. If Musharraf still has the country under emergency rule, and he hasn't committed to dropping it, I don't see how elections could be fair or free (an election with no Constitution or court system?). And the opposition parties know this, and have vowed to boycott any sham election.

Two of Pakistan’s bigger opposition parties said today they would probably boycott the parliamentary elections due to be held in early January if the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, persisted in holding the vote while still maintaining emergency rule.

However, the leader of the biggest opposition party, Benazir Bhutto, has not yet said whether she would pull her party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, out of the election.

On Sunday, Ms. Bhutto said General Musharraf’s announcement that elections would go ahead in January was a positive though insufficient step. Today she assumed a slightly tougher tone, suggesting her negotiations with General Musharraf had come to an end.

“We cannot work with anyone who has suspended the Constitution, imposed emergency rule and oppressed the judiciary,” she said. “We are saying ‘no’ to any more talks.”

Bhutto is an opportunist. She'd probably go ahead with elections if she thought they had any import. But it's clear that they would elect nothing more than a figurehead.

This is shaping up to be very much like the Iranian situation in 1978-79; an isolated dictator with little control over anything but the military, against a more and more angry populace. This should scare everyone, as it suggests that the anger against the United States and the anger against Musharraf is merging. It is very familiar.

It takes almost no effort to find people who are angry with Pervez Musharraf on the streets of this bustling city. The Pakistani leader's name comes up quickly in casual conversation, yoked with unprintable adjectives and harsh denunciations of the emergency rule he has imposed.

But dig just a little deeper and another target of resentment surfaces: Musharraf's richest, staunchest and most powerful patron, the United States.

"We blame the U.S. directly for keeping us under the rule of the military," said Arfan Ghani, a 54-year-old professor of architecture. Musharraf, who heads Pakistan's army, is just "another dictator," Ghani told an American reporter, "serving the interests of your country."

That makes an environment ripe for Islamic revolution. Very scary.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

It's true that this whole depressing scenario of martial law in Pakistan endangers the whole region by threatening a collaboration between Islamist militants and pro-democracy reformers, as we saw during the Iranian revolution. Pervez Musharraf's main enemy is democracy, as can be seen by his aborting the plan to kill bin Laden after deposing Nawaz Sharif in a coup, and using Islamist parties to forestall any efforts by Sharif or Benazir Bhutto to return to prominence.

Washington is more concerned with Islamic extremism than Musharraf, who as military chief in 1999 sent jihadi fighters into Kashmir to challenge Indian troops. He pays lip service to democracy but views the Constitution as an impediment and elections as a threatening menace. Little wonder that while presenting a secular image to the West, Musharraf has looked to Islamic parties to upend democracy and keep former prime ministers Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif out of politics. Musharraf engineered the unexpected electoral success of Islamic parties in the 2002 elections and helped them form governments in two provinces.

As a price for their cooperation, Islamic parties got protection for their Taliban and extremist allies and a free hand to impose more Islamic laws on Pakistanis. Since 2001, Musharraf has selectively cooperated in the war on terror but resisted cutting all ties with extremists.

Being, well, extremists, the jihadis have not seen this as enough of a concession and began to strike at Musharraf and particularly the Army. Musharraf responded by sacking the judiciary and jailing reformers. He's not even trying to hide it much by claiming that this is being done in the name of fighting extremism. And the danger is what comes next.

Musharraf's interests are no longer those of his military, and the two are now on a collision course. Generals can still end this crisis by going back to the deal Washington brokered with Ms. Bhutto, but only if it does not include Musharraf. Removing Musharraf will send demonstrators home and the Army to its barracks.

The longer Musharraf stays in power the more Pakistan will look like Iran in 1979: an isolated and unpopular ruler hanging on to power only to inflame passions and bring together his Islamic and pro-democracy opposition into a dangerous alliance.

A disastrous outcome in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state with weak institutions and rife with extremist ideologies, violence, and deep ethnic and social divisions, will be far worse than what followed the Iranian revolution.

Our leverage over Pakistan is in the form of foreign aid, which US lobbying groups paid by Musharraf are fighting to protect. We obviously ought to come down on the side of democracy, but even that is hard to figure. Benazir Bhutto may write op-eds in US media and threaten large-scale protests in Islamabad, but it's unclear whether she has a megaphone to the West because of her American education or because she has a legitimate role in a post-Musharraf Pakistan. As Matt Yglesias notes, Bhutto lost to Nawaz Sharif the last time there were legitimate elections in Pakistan. It was Sharif who was deposed. It's Sharif who has been barred from the country. It's unclear whether Bhutto has power or influence inside the country, other than the fact that she says so on CNN. And of course, she was the handpicked successor by the Bush Administration in a unity government with Musharraf, which doesn't inspire confidence.

It's important that the West gets this right, and doesn't leave behind a caretaker government that's ripe for a subsequent takeover They should be pushing for new elections with full access for all participants, including Sharif. The Pakistani people need to decide the future of their democracy.

Happy Islamofascism Awareness Week!

Did you get a tree yet?

That's right, self-promoter David Horowitz has inaugurated a series of events on college campuses to raise awareness of the greatest threat to humankind, evah! Actually, "series of events" is probably a big strong, since barely half of the campuses Horowitz claimed to be holding events actually are:

We contacted those institutions, alerting them to the fact that their name was being used, and wondering what exactly was taking place. … It’s important to note though, after we contacted those institutions, most of those institutions indicated that no such events is taking place on those campus. And many contacted the sponsors and told them, “do not use my institution’s name in your campaign,” including some very renowned universities such as Yale and Princeton.

This is the most embarrassing thing to hit campus since parachute pants.

The truth is that there's almost no evidence of a Islamic jihadist movement within the United States. To the extent that it exists in other countries, it was on the verge of being crushed immediately after 9-11 until we turned attention to Iraq and did nothing but rescusitate it after that. The "awareness" should be on how unseriously the White House took the threat before the attacks, and how much they've done to make America less safe on the global stage after it.

Some of these nutcases actually think that we're going to be forced to convert to Islam en masse, with the country transformed into a giant arm of the caliphate. That's ridiculous, the Cold War was about 50,000 times more dangerous than a group of fanatics in caves. We have made US citizens more vulnerable to attack, by keeping them in the middle of a civil war in Iraq, but the idea that we're about to be taken over by an Islamic theocracy is absurd. It's not going to happen. And we shouldn't let those who profit from fear to demagogue us into another bloody war:

The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality...

Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?

Planet Neocon, Fareed. And you spent some time hanging out there, too, as I remember. But welcome back.

When the relatively moderate Mohammed Khatami was elected president in Iran, American conservatives pointed out that he was just a figurehead. Real power, they said (correctly), especially control of the military and police, was wielded by the unelected "Supreme Leader," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now that Ahmadinejad is president, they claim his finger is on the button. (Oh wait, Iran doesn't have a nuclear button yet and won't for at least three to eight years, according to the CIA, by which point Ahmadinejad may not be president anymore. But these are just facts.)

In a speech last week, Rudy Giuliani said that while the Soviet Union and China could be deterred during the cold war, Iran can't be. The Soviet and Chinese regimes had a "residual rationality," he explained. Hmm. Stalin and Mao—who casually ordered the deaths of millions of their own people, fomented insurgencies and revolutions, and starved whole regions that opposed them—were rational folk. But not Ahmadinejad, who has done what that compares? One of the bizarre twists of the current Iran hysteria is that conservatives have become surprisingly charitable about two of history's greatest mass murderers.

I'm glad some of the elites ar seeing the insanity of those who claim that Iran is about to strike us any minute and that some son of a blacksmith who runs the traffic lights in Tehran is "worse than Hitler":



The only reason Iran has any leverage at all on us is because we have 165,000 Americans stationed in the country next door. The "awareness" should focus on getting us out of there.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

Benazir Bhutto, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, returned to her country after an exile of eight years, and uh, something happened.

A suspected suicide bomber struck Thursday night near a truck carrying former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on her triumphant return to Pakistan after eight years in exile. An official said 108 people were killed and many were wounded although Bhutto escaped unhurt.

Associated Press photographer B.K. Bangash at the scene said he saw between 50 and 60 dead or badly injured people. He said some of the bodies were ripped apart when the blast occurred more than 15 hours into a procession that was carrying Bhutto from the airport to the tomb of Pakistan's founding father, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, where she planned to give a speech [...]

The bombs exploded just after Bhutto's truck had crossed a bridge about halfway from the airport to the tomb. The truck had come to a halt between a mosque and an office block, and those traveling atop it with Bhutto climbed down, with one man jumping off. The blast shattered windows in her vehicle.

Bhutto at least represents the restoration of democracy in Pakistan, and there are several countervailing forces that don't want to see that happen. While the Islamists are a minority in Pakistan, they wield an outsized influence because of events like this. The worry is that the "shock doctrine" will cause Pervez Musharraf to take advantage of the situation:

It could also revive speculation that Musharraf will resort to martial law if the security situation — or his political dominance — are seriously threatened.

If Bhutto were killed I'd be willing to bet money that would happen. It still may. The situation is very fluid in Pakistan.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

We have a real problem on our hands. The jihadists in Waziristan are directly responding to the siege of the Red Mosque in Pakistan by killing dozens in targeted attacks against police and leadership in the region. All that Pakistan can think to do is to try and restore the truce they signed last year. In so doing, they are acknowledging that they cannot fight the jihadists head-on and stop them. This is pretty much the same acknowledgment that the Lebanese government made with regard to Hezbollah. Except Pakistan is a nuclear power, so their belief that they cannot fight Islamists sets up a dangerous scenario where the Islamists can continue to mass forces for an eventual coup attempt, as Hezbollah is trying without as much success (but the Taliban and Al Qaeda remnants appear to be stronger in Waziristan, and have the support of tribal leaders there).

Spencer Ackerman writes:

Largely in response to Musharraf's crackdown on Islamabad's radical Red Mosque, Waziristan jihadis planted a suicide bomber in a police station to kill recruits as they took an entrance exam, targeted an Army convoy with gunmen and roadside bombs, and launched attacks throughout the province. The body count has yet to stabilize. Musharraf is moving thousands of troops in Waziristan that were previously confined to their barracks toward the Afghan border, but, reports Tom Lasseter for McClatchy, "it is not clear, though, whether the build-up is for a large scale operation or simply to add enough troops to maintain stability."

For diametrically opposing reasons, jihadists and secularists want Musharraf gone. (The secularists, of course, don't want to kill him.) How he responds to the collapse of the Waziristan truce will go a long way in determining whether he holds on to power -- and, more importantly, whether al-Qaeda holds on to its latest base of operations.

This is a bombshell, and I'm not trying to make a pun but it's apt. We've paid no attention to this growing problem within Pakistan, we've had a laissez-faire attitude toward it while pushing for all-out war elsewhere in the world, and yet this is the world's biggest danger.

Absolutely and Completely Frightening

It's getting cursory play in the US media, but the siege of the Red Mosque in Pakistan, which for months has been overtaken by radical pro-Taliban Islamists, is cause for a great deal of alarm. Pakistan's status as an "ally" in the war on terror is debatable even in its nominal form; the radical movements in the country are stronger than the so-called "moderate" governmental forces. This public showdown of the two has the distinct possibility of being yet another spark that would cause the ouster of General Musharraf and the possibility of total anarchy in the nuclear-armed nation, which would be instantly the greatest threat to global security. Today, there was another assassination attempt on Musharraf:

Gunman fired on a plane carrying President Gen. Pervez Musharraf today as the government’s siege of a radical mosque in the center of Islamabad continued for a fourth day.

Security officials recovered three large guns from a nearby rooftop in a congested area of Rawalpindi, the site of two previous attempts on Mr. Musharraf’s life.

“Two antiaircraft guns were found which were not fired,” a government statement said. “However, shots were fired from a 7.62 sub-machine gun with telescope.”

There are ongoing negotiations between the student radicals in the mosque and the government, but at least 19 people have died so far, and this incident is fairly unprecedented for Islamabad, which is why I think it may lead to greater violence. There was an amusing moment when one of the chief clerics of the mosque was arrested while trying to leave the scene in a burqa. There's a chance that tensions could dissipate, as many other students are leaving the compound. But anytime there's fighting on the streets in Pakistan, it's a problem, because that country is a house of cards that could fall at any moment.