Rattled by a know-all
exiled elitist (Benazir Bhutto)
imposed on him by a scheming Washington,
the hapless "Mush" - as he is referred to
by middle-class Pakistanis
- decided not only to sing his own version
of My Way but to follow his own timing
Bush: "[Musharraf] truly is somebody who believes in democracy"
Amid the current vacuum the Pakistani blogosphere
remains awash in doomsday scenarios
- from Washington betting on the neo-Taliban
to close in on Islamabad so they can take over
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal to Musharraf offering
Bush a helping "military base" hand in an attack on Iran
From an American strike to take out the ISI
to the American-sponsored partition of Pakistan
A Geopolitical Soap Opera
Future historians will review the Pakistan of November 2007 as a classic of soap opera geopolitics.
The embrace of Bush & Mush endures
Pakistanis are left to watch their country burn,
and contemplate the worst-case scenario of partition [Original]
The main plot screams "revenge". Rattled by a know-all exiled elitist (Benazir Bhutto) imposed on him by a scheming Washington, the hapless "Mush" - as President [soon to be ex-]General Pervez Musharraf is informally referred to by middle-class Pakistanis - decided not only to sing his own version of My Way but to follow his own timing.
In a little over three weeks, Musharraf proclaimed his own "surge" (aka emergency rule); sacked the Supreme Court; rounded up the usual suspects (journalists, lawyers, students, human-rights activists); kept at least 2,000 of them in custody (according to the Interior Ministry).
He got a puppet court to legitimize his way towards "re-election"; amended the constitution through executive order; hung up his uniform; and will become the next (civilian) president of Pakistan, with General Ashfaq Kiani replacing him as head of the army.
Meanwhile, Pakistani civil society - from lawyers to university students - has to be commended for showing former prime minister Bhutto the (new) writing on the wall.
They exposed the utmost fallacy of Musharraf-Bhutto back-room deals forced on Pakistani public opinion for which Bhutto, the worldwide media darling (stylish, Oxford English-fluent, well-connected), would never qualify as a credible third-time-lucky prime minister.
Chances are she would repeat her abysmal human-rights record and controversy - Bhutto's husband was known as "Mr 10%".
"Bhutto Is a a "Kleptocrat in a Hermes Scarf"
Peripheral characters in this soap opera can be even tastier than Bhutto and Musharraf. Take former star cricketer and opposition leader Imran Khan, who was arrested by hardcore fundamentalist Jama'at-e-Islami (JI) students at the University of Punjab campus in Lahore and then handed over to Musharraf's police.
The JI was also against Musharraf's emergency - it wanted at least the restoration of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Iftikhar Chaudhry plus free and fair elections.
But the JI cannot stand a secularist like Khan, who among other sins had been gloriously married to British blonde glamour girl Jemima Goldsmith. Jemima, who knows one or two things about upper-class serial plotters, has coined the ultimate branding of Bhutto as "a kleptocrat in an Hermes scarf".
Bhutto: Godmother of the Taliban
All this time the US corporate media conveniently shelved the fact it was Bhutto, in her first term as premier, who enshrined the invention of the Taliban by General Nasirullah Babar.
She then formally recognized the Afghan regime alongside other bastions of democracy such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (the Bill Clinton administration, of course, was staunchly pro-Taliban all through the latter half of the 1990s).
Any doubts about Bhutto should be cleared with her niece, the lovely Fatima Bhutto, a Karachi-based poet and writer.
Fatima is the daughter of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, killed in front of the family house in 1996 in Karachi when Benazir was premier.
Not only Fatima remains loyal to her father's memory, she accuses her aunt outright of posing as savior of democracy in Pakistan, charging that her collaboration with Musharraf is so blatant "that people now brand her party – the PPP - the "Pervez People's Party".
Musharraf is not referred to in Pakistan as "Busharraf" for nothing. Blowback for Bush hailing Musharraf as a dependable "war on terror" attack dog already is and will continue to be as inevitable as gun-running in the tribal areas.
Every well-informed Pakistani knows of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)-Taliban dangerous liaisons on both sides of the border (as much as any tribal would say there is no border to speak of; it's all part of Pashtunistan).
And they know what really matters for Washington is the "war on terror" - and Musharraf and/or the next military dictatorship will keep being financed to the tune of US$1 billion a year no matter what.
And people know the Pakistani army, martial law or Bush administration largesse notwithstanding, always plays by its and not the US-issued rules of the "war on terror".
Doomsday Scenarios
Amid the current vacuum the Pakistani blogosphere remains awash in doomsday scenarios - from Washington betting on the neo-Taliban to close in on Islamabad so they can take over Pakistan's nuclear arsenal to Musharraf offering Bush a helping "military base" hand in an attack on Iran.
From an American strike to take out the ISI to the American-sponsored emergence of an independent Balochistan and an independent Pashtunistan.
For the moment, it's enlightening to keep track of what's happening on the ground while Musharraf was proceeding with his "let's jail all the lawyers" scheme.
The Taliban already control large parts of Afghanistan and Kabul itself could fall in the next spring offensive. Pashtunistan is back with a vengeance.
The neo-Taliban have established a de facto Islamic emirate in North Waziristan, with Mirali as its capital; this is the home base of fabled Afghan jihad commander Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin.
The emir is none other than Mullah Omar (remember him - the uber-Taliban who escaped American bombing in 2001 on the back of a motorcycle?).
Both Haqqanis run the day-to-day operations. The emirate's tentacles are up and running in all seven tribal agencies.
This is in practice an embryo Pashtunistan - with Pashtuns from both Pakistan and Afghanistan plus fighters from Uzbekistan and a lot of "Chechens" (that's how the tribals call anyone from the former Soviet republics).
From its Waziristan base the emirate has comfortably launched an offensive in the formerly quiet Swat Valley - not to mention a strong presence in the very center of Peshawar.
Taliban FM stations rapping on jihad are all the rage in the tribal areas.
The Taliban have taken over police stations, erected their own white flags, and their leader Maulana Fazlullah has literally taken over the Swat Valley, appointing his own "governors" and setting up Islamic courts.
This boiling cauldron is a direct consequence of Bush's self-proclaimed "freedom agenda" presupposing dictator Musharraf as an ally in the "war on terror".
The Pakistani army and police have refused to fight the "enemy within" as established by a US-controlled dictator.
When Bush ordered Musharraf to do the "war on terror" shuffle "our" dictator arrested the usual Arab and Uzbek suspects but left the Taliban unmolested.
When Pentagon ire reached fever pitch, Musharraf blamed the Pashtuns as a whole for supporting the Taliban.
Then he cut a deal – ie bribed - tribal leaders in South Waziristan to turn the heat on the Taliban. They pocketed the bribe and did nothing.
Virtually all Taliban are Pashtuns but not every Pashtun is a Taliban. Many a Pashtun can't stand forced Talibanization.
Musharraf sending the army to smash Pashtun tribals has not and will not accomplish anything.
Only true democracy will. But the Pakistani army – Musharraf, Kiani, whoever - is not interested in democracy, only in perpetuating their power and privilege.
The Break-Up of Pakistan
Musharraf's bungled approach has in fact accelerated what may be the partition of Pakistan - a cataclysmic event that would not be exactly regretted in Washington.
Admiral William Fallon, US Central Command chief, has made a typical Bush administration "creative destruction" proposition to Musharraf:
Let us fight the Taliban in the tribal areas and in the Swat Valley. Musharraf might have been in trouble, but he's certainly not suicidal; that would lead directly to the partition of Pakistan.
Khaled Ahmed of the Friday Times newspaper has been one among many to alert what may happen: Pakistan reduced to basically the Punjab.
The NWFP would gladly recover a lot of hydroelectric power. Balochistan would gladly recover a lot of gas - and become a Turkmenistan-style gas republic. And Sindh would gladly profit from its industry and ports.
The partition of Pakistan as we know it is not such a far-fetched scenario because, according to a wealth of Pakistani civil society's opinions, there seems to be no national consensus whatsoever regarding the current mega-crisis.
This is above all a crisis of the Pakistani state - which simply cannot be in place any more just based on an idea of Islam.
Washington think-tanks will come up with piles of studies certifying how to profit from the partition of Pakistan.
For the moment, there are just the pedestrian imperatives of the Pentagon frantically seeking alternative routes to its transport axis (75% of supplies, 40% of oil) to Afghanistan via Pakistan.
It's a safe bet to say absolutely none of the neighbors - Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Iran - are remotely interested.
In his 2005 inaugural address, Bush solemnly declared to all freedom-loving peoples in the world the US would "not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors".
As the Bush-Musharraf embrace is still on, Pakistanis have the right to attribute their sorrow to the fact their nation has been mercilessly squeezed in between.