Divided They Fall - Lost Resolve
In Pakistan, a country believing itself halfway between finding and losing its essential self as an emerging political-social-economic entity capable of bridging the gap between Islamism and reform, the world watches as its politics unravel, leaving the country ever more vulnerable to the predations of the Islamist terrorists at the service of fundamental Islam.President Pervez Musharraf has been sidelined, made redundant by the reality of his isolation, with the uncertainty of whether the recently formed coalition of the Pakistan Peoples Party under the leadership of Asif Ali Zardari, holding the prime position for Benazir Bhutto's son-and-heir, and the Pakistan Muslim League, led by Nawaz Sharif, former prime minister who ousted Benazir Bhutto, will decide to dismiss Musharraf.
But how long will this tentative, tenuous, troubling alliance last? How long will the late Benazir Bhutto's husband be able to stand side by side with a hated enemy, one responsible for having him indicted for fraud and theft and because of whom he spent seven long years in prison? Besides which the Pakistan Peoples Party is a secular, democratic party, and the Pakistan Muslim League is an Islamist party.
But because they appear incapable of resolutely braving the reality of facing the political crisis within their new parliament, uncertain whether or not to retain General Musharraf, and facing a growing threat from Islamic radicals, pro-Taliban militias are increasingly threatening Pakistan's feeble balance. Ali Zardari isn't convinced President Musharraf should go immediately, he's more concerned with facing up to and eradicating the terrorist threat.
Suicide bombs set off outside Pakistan's Navy War College have increased the chaos of the current political vacuum. A tenuous situation that seems to be encouraging the terrorists. So far over five hundred Pakistanis have been killed in terrorist violence in the first few months of this year. Pakistan has seen more than one suicide-bomb attack a week since 2007. Radical Islamists and Taliban militias continue to target the country's security forces.
The North West Frontier Province is a hotbed of tribal insurgency. Yet their leaders agree from time to time to enlist their own militias in tandem with Pakistan's armed forces to drive out the extremists and "foreigners" from their region. The last time General Musharraf triumphantly presented his U.S. allies with just such an arrangement it was received with dismay, and soon collapsed under its own weight of recidivism.
It seems a choice of one's own home-bred fundamentalist Islamists insistent on turning Pakistan into a fully Islamic state with sharia law - as opposed to the democratic proclivities of most urban Pakistanis - and on the other hand, the al-Qaeda and Taliban militants whose own brand of jihadist Islamism is largely rejected by those same tribal leaders as "foreign elements".
It's become a free-for-all of alliances and revenge in the northwest. Tribal leaders who have agreed once again to join forces with the government of Pakistan have been targeted and killed by those who have allied themselves with pro-Taliban radicals - now Pakistan has its own home-grown Taliban, to further complicate its ongoing problems. The country's war on terror has become a rear-guard action.
Complicating the situation of President Musharraf and the still-uncertain determination of his position in Pakistan's National Assembly, is the statement recently issued by Pakistan's new army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. Who repeated his, and the army's fealty to their former general, President Musharraf, and in the same breath stating a policy of democratic non-interference in the political process.
None of this insecurity is helped by the fact that this Muslim country is the only one with the possession of nuclear weaponry. More troubling yet is its relationship with its neighbours, Afghanistan, and India. That Pakistan's numerous madrasas and its tribal border villages gave birth to and give succor to al-Qaeda, its affiliates and the Taliban, has aggravated the fragile situation in Afghanistan.
The added and extremely troubling fact that Pakistan and India remain at bitter loggerheads over Kashmir, each insisting sovereignty over Kashmir, is another irritant. President Musharraf was able to reach a temporary accord with India, but Pakistan has also been responsible for encouraging Islamist terrorists within Kashmir to wreak terror in favour of their cause.
And the fact that a senior Pakistani newspaper editor, Majeed Nizami, in discussing on the Waqt television channel Kashmir's importance to Pakistan, terming it "the jugular vein" of his country as its source of potable water, and insisting that Pakistan need not hesitate to use nuclear weapons to take it from India, is downright incendiary.
This is most certainly a country teetering on the brink of something.
Labels: Political Realities, Terrorism, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, March 13, 2008
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