Musharraf on the ropes.

Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf just had his choices limited.

Though there is no decisive victor either at the centre or in any of the four provinces, slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) on Tuesday emerged as the single largest party in the national elections.

PPP secured 86 seats in the 272-member National Assembly but needs at least 50 more to form the government. Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) took the second spot with 66 seats while the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) backed by President Pervez Musharraf trailed third with 49 seats.

Which puts Musharraf in a very sticky position. He had previously promised to step down from his position as president if his party did not win at the polls.

He may have no choice.

According to PML-N senior vice-president Makhdoom Javed Hashmi, they would extend "conditional support to PPP in forming the government". He said they would go ahead to cooperate with the PPP if their demands were accepted.

"We want immediate restoration of the Supreme Court and high court judges," he said, giving his first demand about judges who were sacked on Nov 3 last year when Musharraf imposed emergency. Seven Supreme Court and 34 high court judges were sacked for not showing allegiance to Musharraf.

He added that the PPP would have to agree to give independence to the media and move a no-trust against President Musharraf.

"Justice Iftikhar will have to come and Musharraf will have to go," Hashmi told IANS, referring to sacked Supreme Court chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, who is under house arrest since Nov 3 when he was removed from his position.

All of that could be moot if Musharraf decides to play a different card. None of the newly elected leaders can become prime minister until they are sworn in to parliament. Even after that, Musharraf has the constitutional power to dissolve the Pakistani parliament before it has the ability to forward a motion of no-trust or commence impeachment proceedings.

If Musharraf re-instates the judges and justices that he dismissed last November, as demanded by both the PPP and Nawaz Sharif, resuming positions on the bench could see them declare Musharraf's election as president illegal.

Musharraf has another problem: General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Pakistani army Chief of Staff. Kayani made it clear through both actions and words that he would not permit the army to become involved in either rigging the vote or intimidating the electorate. In fact, last month he ordered army officers to remove themselves from political functions.

If Musharraf tries to work around the election results and welshes on his promise to step down he could be faced with Kayani taking more direct action to remove him.

Another turn-around in Pakistan is that the Federally Administered Tribal Areas on the border with Afghanistan have lost their fundamentalist Muslim influence in parliament. Mutahidda Majlis-e-Amal, which was intent on turning Pakistan into a theocracy, lost 75 seats, leaving them with only 3. While there have been some who hail this as a resounding defeat for the MMA, the truth is they actually boycotted the elections. The MMA threatened women away from the polls resulting in a voter turnout of around 30 percent.

While there has been some suggestion that the decimation of the MMA in the North West Frontier Province and Balochistan means they no longer have control in those areas. That is not likely to be the outcome. While they no longer have representation in parliament, the ultra-religious groups that make up the MMA will continue to exercise control over the tribal areas. With a means of dialogue, however ineffective, now eliminated, the tribal areas will likely become a greater, not a lesser, problem. Areas like Waziristan, which already presented a major problem to Pakistan's security, could spread a major civil war across the whole FATA and include Balochistan and the NWFP.

The only sure result from Pakistan's elections is that US Vice-President Dick Cheney is kicking puppies and chewing the heads off kittens.

Pakistan People's Party feeding a democratic deficit

Tariq Ali, writing in the Independent lays out the problem that has become evident in the selection of a successor in the aftermath of Benazir Bhutto's assassination. As much as Bhutto was prepared to expose the rigging of Pakistani elections, her own Pakistani People's Party is no shining light of democratic process.

A triumvirate consisting of her husband, Asif Zardari (one of the most venal and discredited politicians in the country and still facing corruption charges in three European courts) and two ciphers will run the party till Benazir's 19-year-old son, Bilawal, comes of age. He will then become chairperson-for-life and, no doubt, pass it on to his children. The fact that this is now official does not make it any less grotesque. The Pakistan People's Party is being treated as a family heirloom, a property to be disposed of at the will of its leader.

Nothing more, nothing less. 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.

Tariq Ali's column goes on to describe the fetid corruption and rot in the inner workings of the PPP. The few principled politicians are outnumbered by shiftless sycophants.

Bhutto herself named her own successor in her Will. A 19-year old, not yet old enough to hold office, whose only qualification is that he is of her bloodline. The appointment of her widower and two others to govern in her name would be nothing short of scandalous anywhere else.

As it should be in Pakistan.

Lacking an inner-democracy, the PPP has put its own faith in an aristocracy on display. Name, not competence, decides who would lead a democratic Pakistan. Even less than two weeks before the scheduled election date, a political party that actually believed in democracy would have been able to draft a consensus candidate. Not a bloodline heir.

The US-brokered deal to create a power sharing arrangement between Benazir Bhutto and Pervez Musharraf had the appearance of a sham from the beginning. The Bush administration supported Musharraf and his military-led government. It was only the unraveling of Musharraf's hold on power that spurred the sudden call for elections and the inclusion of Bhutto.
The Bush administration has no real interest in a Pakistani democracy. They've dealt with the military with some marked success. Cheney has shutout any criticism of Musharraf within the adminstration and the actions of Musharraf over the past few months have attracted only mild criticism.

In early December US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher:

"It's not going to be a perfect election," he said. He was asked if Pakistan could have a free election if Musharraf lifted the state of emergency as promised.

Which is as much as telling Musharraf that it doesn't have to be a perfect election. In fact, since there is no qualification to what would constitute a "perfect" election, Musharraf now possesses incredible latitude to corrupt a vote, and he can hold out Boucher's statement as a permission slip directly issued by the Bush administration. Because what the Bush administration wants is the illusion of an election. Pretend democracy will do fine - it worked for them.

And now, even if there is an election and the Pakistan People's Party wins, Pakistan will end up with a titular prime minister named Biliwal Bhutto Zardari, and an unelected political triumvirate.

Shades of royal ascension. Except that Pakistan is in such a mess that it cannot afford an Edward VI nor what would naturally follow such a ridiculous idea.

The accusation escalation

On Friday the government of Pakistan was holding out a transcript of an intercepted telephone conversation between Baitullah Mehsud, head of Tehrik-i-Taliban, an alleged ally of al-Qaeda, as evidence supporting the Musharraf government's claim that al-Qaeda was responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

“We have an intercept from this morning in which he congratulated his people for carrying out this act,” Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said in a briefing to reporters.

“We have irrefutable evidence that Al Qaeda and its networks are trying to destabilize the government,” he added. “They have been systematically attacking our government, and now a political icon.” Ms. Bhutto, he said, was on the hit list of Al Qaeda and other terrorists.

Which left anybody with even a minor grasp on reality unimpressed.

Then today, Mehsud comes partially out of the woodwork with a statement denying responsibility.

Alleged Al-Qaeda leader Baitullah Mehsud denied any involvement in Benazir Bhutto's death after the Pakistan government blamed him for the killing, his spokesman told AFP on Saturday.

"He had no involvement in this attack," spokesman Maulana Omar said in a telephone call. "This is a conspiracy of the government, army and intelligence agencies."

The spokesman said he was calling from Pakistan's Waziristan area, a lawless tribal region where Pakistani government forces have been battling Islamist militants. "It is against tribal tradition and custom to attack a woman," Omar said.

The twist here is that militant groups are normally quick to claim responsibility for acts like assassinations since it elevates them among others of their ilk. Mehsud is already wanted by the Musharraf government. He would have little to lose by taking responsibility for killing Bhutto.

The comment by Omar that it is against tribal tradition and custom to attack a woman doesn't hold much water. Such groups have deviated from that tribal custom in the past.

The actual cause of death is now in dispute. The version issued by the Pakistani government:

Saying he wanted to dispel erroneous reports that Ms. Bhutto had died from gunfire, Brigadier Cheema gave an exhaustive description of the episode and showed a video on which Ms. Bhutto could be seen waving at the crowd from the sunroof of her car as she left a political rally in Rawalpindi. But the camera lost focus in the pandemonium after it recorded the sound of three gunshots.

Ms. Bhutto tried to duck down into the car just as the suicide bomber detonated his explosives, and the force of the blast caused her to strike her head, he said. “One of the levers of the sunroof hit her on the right side, which caused a fracture, and that is what caused her death,” Brigadier Cheema said. He said shrapnel from the blast hit the left side of the car, but her injury was on the right side of her head. The lever on the car showed traces of blood, he said.

“There was no bullet that hit Mohtarma Bhutto, there was no splinter that hit Mohtarma Bhutto, and there was no pellet that hit her,” he said, referring to Ms. Bhutto with a term of respect. It remained unclear if the suicide bomber had fired the shots or if a second person had, he said.

I suppose there were several places in the car that showed traces of blood. As for the location of the injury, that is now in dispute.

Benazir Bhutto was shot in the head, a close aide who prepared her body for burial said on Saturday, dismissing as "ludicrous" a government theory that she died after hitting her head on a sunroof during the suicide attack.

[...]

"She has a bullet wound at the back of her head on the left side. It came out the other. That was a very large wound, and she bled profusely through that," said Ms. Rehman, who suffered a severe whiplash and leg injuries as the blast threw her out of her car.

"She was even bleeding while we were bathing her for the burial," she added. "The government is now trying to say she concussed herself, which is ludicrous. It is really dangerous nonsense."

The problem now is the investigation. Musharraf has initiated two investigations: one judicial and the other by the intelligence service. The hitch, of course, is that under Musharraf's military dictatorship judges had to swear loyalty to Musharraf or be removed from the bench. The intelligence service investigation is easily dismissed before it even starts. Pakistani intelligence, in the eyes of most of the world, is one of the suspects.

There is no chance for a credible investigation by the Pakistani government under Musharraf. Unless the international community offers to step in, and Pakistan allows it, Benzir Bhutto's assassination will be mired in mystery and endless accusations.

So who exactly benefits from Bhutto's assassination. A lot of people from the look of it.

Newshoggers is keeping up with information surrounding the Bhutto assassination. It is worth a check back from time to time, including something of a friendly debate going on between Cernig and Shamanic as to the possible involvement of Pervez Musharraf.

Two points of interest here. Insiders close to Bhutto are suggesting that Musharraf was either directly or indirectly involved.

A longtime adviser and close friend of assassinated Pakistani ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto places blame for Bhutto's death squarely on the shoulders of U.S.-supported dictator Pervez Musharraf.

After an October attack on Bhutto's life in Karachi, the ex-prime minister warned "certain individuals in the security establishment [about the threat] and nothing was done," says Husain Haqqani, a confidante of Bhutto's for decades. "There is only one possibility: the security establishment and Musharraf are complicit, either by negligence or design. That is the most important thing. She's not the first political leader killed, since Musharraf took power, by the security forces."

Haqqani notes that Bhutto died of a gunshot wound to the neck. "It's like a hit, not a regular suicide bombing," he says. "It's quite clear that someone who considers himself Pakistan's Godfather has a very different attitude toward human life than you and I do."

The thing is, a lot of political opposition in Pakistan has been eliminated through either execution or "mysterious" deaths. Knocking off the opposition is not uncommon.

However, now we have al-Qaeda claiming responsibility.

While al Qaeda is considered by the U.S. to be a likely suspect in the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Banazir Bhutto, U.S. intelligence officials say they cannot confirm an initial claim of responsibility for the attack, supposedly from an al Qaeda leader in Afghanistan.

An obscure Italian Web site said Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, al Qaeda's commander in Afghanistan, told its reporter in a phone call, "We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahedeen."

It said the decision to assassinate Bhutto was made by al Qaeda's No. 2 leader, Ayman al Zawahri in October. Before joining Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, Zawahri was imprisoned in Egypt for his role in the assassination of then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

That will certainly get some quarters all riled and jumping in with pointing fingers, but there is something else.

U.S. officials monitoring Internet chat rooms known to be used by Islamic militants say several claims of responsibility have been posted, although such postings are notoriously unreliable.

Which makes the al-Qaeda claim a little less significant but not fully discountable.

One thing is slightly puzzling. Given the tenuous situation in Pakistan over the past few months, and given the October attempt on Bhutto's life, for which al Qaeda claimed credit, it would seem that US intelligence would be paying close attention to any activity involving extremist groups.

I'll go one further. It is not in the interest of the Bush administration not to have had al Qaeda carry this assassination off. Yet, US intelligence is issuing a very cautious "maybe" but "we can't confirm it".

There are two points that arise from that.

The US intelligence community is hoisting a middle finger to Cheney once again. As they did with the NIE on Iran, they are steadfastly maintaining their independence by not immediately giving Cheney the words he would like to hear. Cheney is a solid Musharraf supporter. By not immediately confirming al Qaeda's claim, Musharraf lives under a veil of suspicion.

The second point is that there is obvious skepticism among intelligence analysts. Even if al Qaeda's claim is genuine, there is also the possibility of conspiratorial involvement of other parties, particularly the ISI. Musharraf may or may not have had direct involvement, but given the renewed independence of US intelligence agencies and their recent working out from under the thumb of Dick Cheney, they're not going to be pressured into any easy answer. If they believed al Qaeda's claim they could easily have come out and confirmed it. This is only speculation but what's going on now suggests they have different information.

The move to watch is whether Musharraf cancels elections.

The "Silver Bullet" is assassinated.

You can expect the death today of Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto to forever be labeled one which occurred under "mysterious circumstances". Via Buckdog:

Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto was killed Thursday in an apparent suicide attack at a campaign rally in which at least 20 others died.

There are a multitude of possibilities here as to who would best benefit from Bhutto's assassination, but among the leading suspects, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency will stand out.

Questions were immediately raised about how a suicide bomber could get so close to Bhutto after previous attacks.

Many observers were left to speculate whether the government of President Pervez Musharraf or Pakistan's security forces were involved in the attack, said Tariq Amin-Khan, an assistant professor of politics and public administration at Toronto's Ryerson University.

"Security has been very lax," Amin-Khan told CBC News in a telephone interview from Karachi. "One could fault the government for what it has not done."

Musharraf himself has been the target of numerous attacks blamed on Islamist militants, who have reported ties with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

"I find it difficult to believe that Musharraf would be directly involved, but you can't put it past the security service agencies," Amin-Khan said.

Bhutto's security adviser also said the government had ignored requests for beefed-up security, including bomb-jammers, which can thwart signals sent to detonate explosives.

All news reports are speculating that there will be extensive rioting across Pakistan.

I think that's probably understating the problem.

Expect a return to a state of emergency followed by a full-blown civil war.

Musharraf is going to pull another fast one

Pakistan's military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf has promised an early January election, restoring Pakistan to democratic civilian rule. Sort of.

Pakistan was set on a course for troubled elections yesterday after President Pervez Musharraf promised polls by early January but said they may be held under emergency rule.

In his first press conference since he suspended the constitution and assumed sweeping powers eight days ago, Musharraf said a general election would take place by January 9. But he refused to give a date for lifting emergency rule, under which thousands of opponents have been detained and some beaten, and suggested it would remain in place until polling day.

"It will ensure absolutely fair and transparent elections," he said.

Yeah, that'll work. Here's a list of rights which are suspended under Musharraf's "emergency rule".

• Protection of life and liberty.

The right to free movement.

The right of detainees to be informed of their offense and given access to lawyers.

Protection of property rights.

The right to assemble in public.

The right to free speech.

Equal rights for all citizens before law and equal legal protection.

Media coverage of suicide bombings and militant activity is curtailed by new rules. Broadcasters also face a three-year jail term if they "ridicule" members of the government or armed forces.

Yup! You can really have an open election campaign with rules like those. This is the guy the Bush administration just can't help themselves from heaping praise upon.

Bhutto's House Arrest lasts for one day as Pakistan moves closer to civil war

General Pervez Musharraf may well be reaching the end of the tether. He placed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto under house arrest early Friday to prevent her participation in a protest opposing the emergency measures (read: martial law) imposed when he virtually sacked the Pakistani Supreme Court and made any form of dissent unlawful.

That house arrest ended in less than 24 hours, but it creates a new problem. Bhutto and Musharraf were expected, particularly by the Bush administration, to enter into a power sharing arrangement until a president could be elected democratically. What the Bush crowd does not seem to fathom is that Bhutto and Musharraf despise each other.

No matter, you can imagine the screaming that was done into the ear of Musharraf over the phone by the US State department. They consider Bhutto, for reasons they will not explain, to be the best hope for leading Pakistan out of a dictatorship and into democratically elected leadership.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf placed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto under house arrest for a single day Friday — surrounding her villa with barbed wire — and rounded up thousands of her supporters to block a mass rally against his emergency rule.

The crackdown dimmed hopes the two pro-U.S. leaders could ever form an alliance. A top American official voiced fears it would obstruct the fight against Islamic extremism — a threat underlined by a suicide bombing in northwest Pakistan that targeted a Cabinet minister, who escaped unharmed.

The U.S. called for the restrictions to be lifted. Hours later, the acting deputy commissioner for Islamabad, Aamir Ali Ahmed, said that they had ended, but her villa remained surrounded by police.

Party members said she would try to leave Saturday morning.

"We'll see tomorrow," said Makhdoom Shah Qureshi, a senior official from Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party as he left a midnight meeting at her home. "You can see for yourself the barriers are still up, the police are still here."

Bhutto twice tried to escape in her car during the day, telling police who surrounded her villa: "Do not raise hands on women. You are Muslims. This is un-Islamic." They responded by blocking her way with an armored vehicle. In nearby Rawalpindi, the city where she had hoped to stage the rally, police tear gassed hundreds of supporters who staged wildcat protests and hurled stones. More than 100 were arrested.

Lovely.

The Bush administration's affinity for Bhutto is a little baffling. She is viewed as some form of silver bullet to cure Pakistan's problems. Granted she is pro-US, but she exudes an aroma not unlike that of Ahmed Chalabi did when he was making all kinds of promises about delivering Iraq to Cheney. Even though she now condemns the group, the Taliban in Afghanistan was strongly supported by Bhutto when she was prime minister including the provision of financial and military support.

In the meantime, Pakistan continues to boil over. The situation isn't just unpleasant either. It's extremely dangerous. This is a country where a combination of three factors should have everyone in pucker factor maximum: The spread of al Qaeda, an internal insurgency and the presence of nuclear weapons.

While some give credit to Musharraf for holding Pakistan together, the truth is he has never gained control of the country. Tribal Waziristan remains in the hands of the Taliban and al Qaeda and from there they have moved into the Swat Valley.

Pakistan has suffered from army involvement in political decisions from its inception and the ISI, the largest of Pakistan's intelligence services operates as a state-within-a-state, out of Musharraf's control.

Added to the Waziristan problem is a home-grown insurgency taking place in Balochistan. Ethnically different than other regions of Pakistan, Balochistan borders Iran, Afghanistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas to the north which harbour training areas for the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Elsewhere in Pakistan there now exists a blurred line between political and criminal violence. The same groups which carry arms for political parties (firearms are readily available) are also engaged in criminal activity. When a suicide bomber attacked the Bhutto arrival caravan in Karachi there was a flurry of discussion about the linkage of the city government to organized crime. To further illuminate the direction Pakistan has taken, Nawaz Sharif, the man ousted by Musharraf, pointed out on national television that there was no such thing as a suicide bomber in Pakistan prior to the 1999 dictatorship of Pervez Musharraf.

Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is another problem, and it is more complex than many realize. Relying on highly enriched uranium (HEU), Pakistan has created enough fissile material for upwards of 100 nuclear warheads. There has also been some plutonium enrichment which would provide for up to five warheads. Despite the claim that none of the weapons are assembled and components are stored in separate locations, that has never been verified.

Musharraf claimed that the nuclear arsenal had been relocated after 11 September 2001, but there was an unstable faction within the Musharraf regime which caused considerable concern. Musharraf fired his director-general of intelligence, Mahmoud Ahmad, shortly after 9/11 when Ahmad opposed the US invasion of Afghanistan. It was later revealed that Ahmad had provided $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker before the 9/11 attacks.

Pakistan was involved in dangerous nuclear proliferation when Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan was discovered to have provided assistance in the development of North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Musharraf claimed that neither the government nor the army were involved and had no knowledge of Khan's activities. That underscores a problem. Either Musharraf was lying and Pakistan is proliferating nuclear weapons or Musharraf was telling the truth and demonstrated that he cannot keep Pakistan's nuclear program secure. Further investigation revealed that Khan had been running a nuclear marketplace supposedly under the nose of an otherwise unaware Musharraf.

Now, just imagine this basket-case of a country embroiled in a full-blown civil war.

Bush blusters on and no one questions his words.

George is outdoing himself now.

"We expect there to be elections as soon as possible and that the president should remove his military uniform," Bush said in the Oval Office of the White House.

Well, yeah, because presidents wearing military uniforms does send something of a bad signal.

"Our hope is that he will restore democracy as quickly as possible," Bush said.

Restore?!

Jeebus H. Christ on a popsicle stick! Pakistan has been governed by a dictator since the 12th of October 1999 and Bush is just getting around to suggesting that Musharraf restore democracy?

And, what's to restore? Pakistan has a limited exposure to democracy and during those brief times that the people of Pakistan actually did choose their government corruption charges flew fast and furious around the leaders of the time, including the much touted Benazir Bhutto.

Nawaz Sharif, who was elected in 1997, immediately set about consolidating power and changed the constitution by removing the checks and balances which limited the role of the prime minister.

Sound familiar?

It was with the concurrence of the United States that Musharraf took over the government and had Sharif exiled to Saudi Arabia with a guarantee that he would not be involved in Pakistani politics for five years.

Musharraf then manipulated the National Assembly in a vote which legitimized his 1999 coup.

But Bush would not say what the ramifications would be if Musharraf didn't heed the president's words.

"It's a hypothetical," he said. "I certainly hope he does take my advice."

There's a prize statement. Coming from a person who has managed to turn South Asia and the Middle East into a chaotic nightmare, any advice should be weighed against the record.

But Bush, who considers Pakistan a key ally in Washington's war on terror, praised Musharraf for being a strong fighter against extremists and radicals.

Heh. Apparently Bush missed one briefing book somewhere along the line. The extremists in Pakistan have grown stronger since September 11, 2001; not weaker. There are security leaks in the Pakistani military which are reported to be feeding information to al Qaeda lodged in their safe haven in North Waziristan and the ISI (the largest of 3 Pakistani intelligence services) appears to operating without oversight and beyond the reach of Musharraf.

And who are the extremists Bush is so happy that Musharraf is fighting?

"This police brutality against peaceful lawyers shows how the government of a dictator wants to silence those who are against dictatorship," said Sarfraz Cheema, a senior lawyer at the rally. "We don't accept the proclamation of emergency."

Yeah. It's easy to understand why George W. Bush would consider lawyers dangerous. Adherence to the rule of law is not a strong point of the Bush administration. In truth, Musharraf's little state of emergency isn't having any effect against extremists and radicals. Instead, those being rounded up and placed under arrest are mainstream politicians and human rights activists.

The truth is, the Bush administration is interested in one thing.

"What is at stake for the US is, in US perception at least, the stability of the country but perceived essentially as a prerequisite for the continuation of counter terrorism operations," Frederic Grare, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace specialising in Pakistan, said recently.

But he added that while the US had considered General Musharraf its best asset in that struggle in Pakistan, in fact he had not delivered what he had promised Washington.

The Bush administration, lacking any depth of knowledge regarding Pakistan, might do well to consult Fredric Grare, one of the foremost experts on the region.

Oh right. He's French.

Cheney owns Pakistan's problem

At about this point it's worth looking at an aspect of the situation in Pakistan and how a lot of the problem emanates from the halls of the Bush administration. It would be easy to pull out one of the news or opinion columns from after Musharraf's imposition of emergency powers, but this one goes back to June 2007.

It is also worth keeping in mind that George W. Bush himself is well over his head when it comes to anything akin to foreign policy, planning, geopolitics and the like. In fact, he's over his head when he gets out of bed. It's also worth remembering that Bush has no background in anything resembling foreign relations and that when asked, back before the 2000 US federal election, Bush was unable to answer a question as to the name of the president of Pakistan. He didn't know much then and he doesn't know much now.

It's also worth noting that in every instance where there has been a problem in South Asia, Dick Cheney has been deeply involved. There have also been indications that the US State Department has allowed all the expertise they once had on Pakistan to atrophy. This was the warning provided by Ahmed Rashid, June 17, 2007:

Pakistan is on the brink of disaster, and the Bush administration is continuing to back the man who dragged it there. As President Pervez Musharraf fights off the most serious challenge to his eight-year dictatorship, the United States is supporting him to the hilt. The message to the Pakistani public is clear: To the Bush White House, the war on terrorism tops everything, and that includes democracy.

That warning was issued after the March 9th dismissal by Musharraf of the chief justice of Pakistan's supreme court, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry resulted in Pakistanis starting an uprising against the rule of Prevez Musharraf.

Thousands of lawyers nationwide, looking like penguins in their courtroom black suits and white shirts, braved police batons and the heat to lead marches. They were joined by women's groups, journalists and the opposition. For the first time in two decades, Pakistan's civil society has taken to the streets.

And it all goes back to the deal that was made by the United States with Pakistan suggesting they were an ally in the bumper-sticker called the "Global War on Terror".

The roots of the crisis go back to the blind bargain Washington made after 9/11 with the regime that had heretofore been the Taliban's main patron: ignoring Musharraf's despotism in return for his promises to crack down on al-Qaeda and cut the Taliban loose. Today, despite $10 billion in U.S. aid to Pakistan since 2001, that bargain is in tatters; the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and al-Qaeda's senior leadership has set up another haven inside Pakistan's chaotic border regions.

Then we get to the rub, because in June we knew that the US was completely deficit in working knowledge of the region. The Bush administration had allowed its South Asia knowledge base to wither.

The problem is exacerbated by a dramatic drop-off in U.S. expertise on Pakistan. Retired American officials say that, for the first time in U.S. history, nobody with serious Pakistan experience is working in the South Asia bureau of the State Department, on State's policy planning staff, on the National Security Council staff or even in Vice President Cheney's office. Anne W. Patterson, the new U.S. ambassador to Islamabad, is an expert on Latin American "drugs and thugs"; Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, is a former department spokesman who served three tours in Hong Kong and China but never was posted in South Asia. "They know nothing of Pakistan," a former senior U.S. diplomat said.

And now, the kicker.

Pakistan policy is essentially being run from Cheney's office. The vice president, they say, is close to Musharraf and refuses to brook any U.S. criticism of him. This all fits; in recent months, I'm told, Pakistani opposition politicians visiting Washington have been ushered in to meet Cheney's aides, rather than taken to the State Department.

No one in Foggy Bottom seems willing to question Cheney's decisions. Boucher, for one, has largely limited his remarks on the crisis to expressions of support for Musharraf. Current and retired U.S. diplomats tell me that throughout the previous year, Boucher refused to let the State Department even consider alternative policies if Musharraf were threatened with being ousted, even though 2007 is an election year in Pakistan. Last winter, Boucher reportedly limited the scope of a U.S. government seminar on Pakistan for fear that it might send a signal that U.S. support for Musharraf was declining. Likewise, I'm told, he has refused to meet with leading opposition figures such as former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, whom Musharraf has exiled.

[...]

With Cheney in charge and Rice in eclipse, rumblings of alarm can be heard at the Defense Department and the CIA. While neither agency is usually directly concerned with decision-making on Pakistan, both boast officers with far greater expertise than the White House and State Department crew. These officers, many of whom have served in Islamabad or Kabul, understand the double game that Musharraf has played -- helping the United States go after al-Qaeda while letting his intelligence services help the Taliban claw their way back in Afghanistan. The Pentagon and the CIA have been privately expressing concern about the lack of an alternative to blind support for Musharraf. Ironically, both departments have historically supported military rulers in Pakistan. They seem to have learned their lesson.

Once again, the hand of Dick Cheney is found stuck in the middle of a fiasco pie. Instead of promoting scholarship and sound planning at the State Department, Cheney runs the show based on his personal knowledge. He has clearly rejected the expertise of the CIA - again.

Once again, a monumental failure in foreign affairs falls squarely in the laps of Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice. This time, however, they are playing footsie from their offices with a nuclear power. An unstable nuclear power.

While they gazed in the mirror and admired their new shoes...

Ready?

I agree with Cernig. Musharraf took the action he took as a means to prevent a power sharing arrangement with Benazir Bhutto. By engineering a situation which brought about martial law and removing the Pakistani Supreme Court from the bench (installing a loyalist in place), Musharraf has effectively shut down any chance for any democracy in Pakistan.

There is every reason to believe, despite the rhetoric falling out of the mouth of Condoleeza Rice, that democracy was less than attractive to the White House. Musharraf, for all his difficulty, remains at the head of a mostly secular administration. Open the door to democracy in Pakistan and the door opens to possible radical Islamic control. One of the worst possible situations they could imagine would be something similar to the January 2006 Hamas victory in democratic elections in the Palestinian Authority. That was bad enough, but to repeat that in Pakistan, replete with nuclear weapons would be viewed as disasterous.

At least one source feels Musharraf acted with the concurrence of the Bush administration.

A former Indian Intelligence Bureau chief said General Musharraf would have taken permission from the United States before imposing emergency in Pakistan.

Speaking to rediff.com, Ajit Doval said the mute reaction of the United States clearly showed the US could have given permission.

That's entirely possible, however that suggests that the Bush administration actually has a handle on what is happening in Pakistan. Given the poor diplomatic performance of the Bush administration on just about any issue, I think they're standing there holding their crotches waiting for a stall to become available. And I'm not the only one.

Stephen P. Cohen of the Brooking Institution is the director of that group's South Asia program and had this to say.

Cohen when informed that the Bush Administration was essentially scrambling to get a fix on the situation in Pakistan, said it was largely due to its not having a coherent policy on Pakistan or a well-developed and permanent team of experts on Pakistan within the Administration.

"It was always a top-down policy and we dealt with Musharraf and assumed that he would deal with Pakistan," he said. "And from day one, the US government mis-estimated his ability to control events in Pakistan," he added, and argued, "Frankly, I haven't seen much in the way of intelligence analysis of Pakistan. We don't have that much expertise in this country because policy was all made on an eyeball to eyeball basis by the President and Musharraf and that's one of the prices you pay when you have highly personalised diplomacy."

The Bush administration, cheering for the return of Benazir Bhutto, demonstrating its elementary-school understanding of foreign affairs, was possessed of the belief that Benazir would be the silver bullet which caused a democratization of Pakistan. It probably never crossed their minds that Bhutto and Musharraf cannot stand each other.

So, either way, we have another fiasco erupting from the mis-estimation of Condoleeza Rice and the lack of depth in the Bush administration.

So unclear and unaware were they that Admiral William Fallon, Commander of U.S. Central Command, in Pakistan to offer troops to assist the Pakistani army in the Afghan border region and to warn against the imposition of martial law, was not even out of the country when Musharraf issued the constitutional order declaring a state of emergency.

Unless Fallon was carrying a different message we haven't heard about yet.

In any case, Musharraf is going to need more than the imposition of martial law to regain control of Pakistan. And if he converts himself to a pure military dictator Pakistan will probably spin right out of control.

Pakistan now under martial law

Umm, Ms. Rice? Over there. Apparently Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf didn't listen to you. He did it anyway.

The Pakistani leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, declared a state of emergency on Saturday night, suspending the country’s Constitution, blacking out all independent television news reports and filling the streets of the capital with police officers and soldiers.

Not that this is unexpected. Musharraf has been threatened from several quarters as to the legitimacy of his presidency - which he first acquired by doing what he just did now. (Does this mean that he just pulled off a coup d'etat on himself?)

The move appeared to be an effort by General Musharraf to reassert his fading power in the face of growing opposition from the country’s Supreme Court, civilian political parties and hard-line Islamists. Pakistan’s Supreme Court was expected to rule within days on the legality of General Musharraf’s re-election last month as the country’s president, which opposition groups have said was improper.

Keep very much in mind that this is a country which, as unstable as it now appears, has nuclear weapons.

The emergency declaration was in direct defiance of repeated calls this week from senior American officials, including Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, not to do so. A day earlier, the senior American military commander in the Middle East, Admiral William J. Fallon, told General Musharraf and his top generals in a meeting here that declaring emergency rule would jeopardize the extensive American financial support for the Pakistani military.

Not that Musharraf appears to have much interest in either the Pakistan constitution or that country's supreme judiciary, but this is germane:

Analysts said the emergency-rule decree in effect was the declaring of martial law, because there were no constitutional provisions allowing for such an order. “This is the imposition of real military rule, because there is no Constitution and Pakistan is being run under provisional constitutional order issued by Musharraf as the army chief, not as the president of Pakistan,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, an expert on Pakistani military affairs.

Whatcha gonna do now, George, Dick and Condi? You've been propping this little tin-pot prick up for longer than was healthy.