Musharraf’s Desperation

The current crisis in Pakistan is telling for how ineffectual the United States has been in exerting pressure on its "allies" in the war on terror. There is nothing at all surprising about a military dictator and coupist like General Musharraf declaring a state of emergency rule, which has turned his country overnight into a nuclear-armed Venezuela. (Despite squashing democracy, he had previously allowed dissent and criticism of his regime; there was also a constitution for him to suspend.)

Musharraf's real note of desperation was actually struck over a year ago when he, along with nervous American consent, signed the Waziristan Accords. This shameful pact recognized a kind Anbar Awakening in reverse: it ceded the so-called Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) near the border of Afghanistan to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The U.S., which has repeatedly offered to send ground soldiers in to help police and clear the mountainous terrain of Waziristan, is relegated to dropping bombs on it, acts which do little but rile tribal sympathies for Osama bin Laden and make for embarrassing media events. According to Daveed Gartenstein-Ross of The Weekly Standard:

Emblematic of the latter is an October 30, 2006, strike against a madrassa in a Bajaur village that allegedly served as an al Qaeda training camp. While Zawahiri may have been the strike's target, the madrassa was affiliated with another key al Qaeda confederate, Faqir Mohammed, who had contracted a strategic marriage with a woman from the local Mamoond tribe. A U.S. Predator strike destroyed the school, but it hardly slowed down Mohammed, who gave an interview with NBC at the scene of the wreckage and later spoke at the funeral for the victims.

Why are we allowing this to continue?  Because Musharraf claims (not without some justification) that the enemy within his own government is more perilous than the one without. (Leave aside for now the fact that the Taliban have already violated the FATA agreement by killing Pakistani forces outside of the designated tribal areas.) Indeed, Pakistan's Gen. Hamid Gul and Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg are openly flirtatious with the Bin Ladenist element, and there is every chance if that Musharraf falls they, not Benzair Bhutto, stand to benefit. The country would then become what Iran hopes to be in five years.

But now we get photos of Pakistan's professional class taking to the streets to defy an authoritarian the U.S. has supported to the hilt and with absolutely no evidence that doing so has been in its national interest. Condoleeza Rice sheepishly admits to being "disappointed" with Musharraf's crackdown on civil liberties, which is nice, even if it means that her boss's policy of democracy promotion doesn't always work out the way he planned it. 

It all has me nostalgic for the salad days of 2004, when every liberal thought Pakistan's security apparatus, the ISI, was coordinating its arrests of Al Qaeda personnel to maximize Bush's electoral profile. Bin Laden was to have been paraded out in a cage at the climax of GOP festivities at Madison Square Garden. If only…