Psst, We Don't Need Musharraf

Why does the West prop up Musharraf? Well, we're told that he's the only thing keeping al Qaeda from having a nuclear weapon. But is he? It appears not if you look at Juan Cole's breakdown of Pakistan's election:

"Bottom line, the Pakistani public has demonstrated a dislike of extremism, including religious extremism, awarding a plurality of seats in the national legislature to secular parties and the rest to right-of-center parties, but roundly rejecting the fundamentalists."

If the election results are any indication, neither Pakistanis nor the West need Musharraf.

Benazir Bhutto: A Complicated Legacy

The type of press that Benazir Bhutto will probably get over the next few days will probably tout her as a model of moderation and liberalism in the Muslim world. Certainly being a women and being relatively young when she came to power means that some of this is not without merit. Also, she appears to have stood up to bin Laden before any Westerners knew who he was.

There was another Benazir Bhutto though, one that appeared to be massively corrupt. In addition, it's no secret that her family owed its prominence to the continuation of feudalism in Pakistan. She may not have been a religious fanatic, she may not have been a military dictator yet she was surely not without her faults. If the West was pinning a great deal on Bhutto's chances at being elected, even without the tragic events of this day, there surely would have been problems. The challenges facing Pakistan were never solvable by any one person, be it Musharraf or Bhutto.

Chavez and the Referendum

I have to admit that I was not following this event closely and, depending on where you got your information, it was either a set of very sensible reforms or mad grab at power. That said, Chavez has once again shown that he respects the democratic process as well as the rule of law. Musharraf didn't ask before seizing undemocratic powers, Putin seems to have rigged the most recent vote in Russia, and a host of US clients in the Middle East would be terrified by free and fair elections.

Yet if you watch what comes out of Washington and sympathetic press organs, Chavez is constantly cast in a much worse light than any of the others I mentioned. The way that Bush defends Musharraf in particular makes me think that Pervez is his abusive husband - it's sad because no one believes but you get the sense that Bush clings to his fantasy of Musharraf the democratic leader. My instincts these days leave me very suspicious at any increase in centralized executive powers, but I feel confident that if Venezuela does give Chavez more power, it will be a fair, democratic decision.

Another Former PM Returns to Pakistan

I'm not sure what makes Nawaz Sharif think that he will succeed with Musharraf where Bhutto failed, but he has returned to Pakistan. To me it now appears that Musharraf has two fomer prime minister he can now ignore.

Lately one or two have fully paid their due...

...for working for the clampdown.

Iraq-invadin', climate change denin' John Howard is done down under. And for those who don't see a way to defeat Harper here any time soon, it should be noted that the CBC reports:

"The win marked a humiliating end to the career of outgoing Prime Minister John Howard, who became Australia's second-longest serving leader - and who had appeared almost unassailable as little as a year ago."

As recently as earlier this year, people like Mark Steyn loved to speak of the "anglosphere" as a cohesive unit - to them it must have seemed that now that a Conservative was running Canada it could join the US, UK, and Australia (though curiously New Zealand never gets mentioned) in making the world safe, for democracy or at least whatever the hell Bush thinks it is that Musharraf is doing in Pakistan.

Today one wonders if there was ever such a cohesive thing as a unified anglosphere as conservatives might have imagined it - rather than just coinciding right-wing governments.

Suspended from the Commonwealth

I'm not sure if Musharraf will rethink his dictatorial rule now that Pakistan is suspended from the Commonwealth. Truth be known, I'm not even sure what membership in the Commonwealth gets you anymore. Vijay Sappani has a much better idea here.

In the meantime, I would love to have Musharraf's publicist. The meme that he is all that stands between Pakistan's nukes and the Taliban is still very potent. You can explain that the extremists really are not as popular in Pakistan as the media would have you believe, but for some people Musharraf remains the sine qua non of peace and security in his country.

Who Musharraf claims to be

Haroon Siddiqui quotes Tariq Ali on the image of Musharraf that most of the West has:

'Our public discourse has it that "all that stops a jihadi finger finding the nuclear trigger is (Pervez) Musharraf," writes Tariq Ali, the Pakistan-born British author.'

This is of course not news and it is also a gross mis-characterization of the situation in Pakistan. Nonetheless the perception of Musharraf as the last sane man ruling a nation of jihadis persists.

No Lawyer Jokes This Month

At least not in Pakistan:

"Hundreds of lawyers took to the streets of Islamabad on the fourth consecutive day of the state of emergency to protest against Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf. Observed by the cameras of the international press the police kept a low profile, but behind the scenes thousands of lawyers, journalists, activists and citizens have been arrested or placed under house arrest all over the country."

Your Friendly Neighbourhood Dictator?

Musharraf's Pakistan is going from bad to worse. This is a situation that never really had good options - I'd like to see a democratic Pakistan but there I'm not sure that the West has a credible way to pressure Musharraf. This recent chaos though seems to have everything to do with Musharraf's general disdain for an independent judiciary. Given that we've allowed Musharraf a fairly free reign over the past few years, I suppose it's no surprise that he feels that he can switch on martial law like it was a lightbulb.

If anyone has a better idea, I'd love to read it.

Doing Better than Musharraf

Juan Cole's group blog has an interesting bit by Manan Ahmed on Pakistan. Conventional wisdom has it that the two choices for that country are Musharraf or some kind of Talibanesque regime (but with nukes!) Money quote:

"Instead of reducing this sprawling, diverse, multi-denominational and multi-cultural nation to nothing more than a caricature of its madrasas and tribal chieftans, US policy must explicitly support immediate and full democracy in Pakistan. As we continue to insist on a flat, binary world of those with us or against us; as we continue to distrust those masses populating the streets of Pakistan; as we continue to believe that the only outcome to an election in Pakistan will be power for the extremists, we ignore the birth of a real and pure movement for democracy – and we ignore it at our peril."

If there's one lesson that the West really, really, really ought to have learned since the invasion of Iraq is that seeing the world as good-vs-evil isn't "moral clarity" as much is it is dangerous oversimplification. Whatever policy we take on Pakistan (and I'm still skeptical about all of the available options) we ought to do it with our eyes open.

How do you solve a problem like Pervez?

Or is Pervez Musharraf actually a problem? I had previously commented that Musharraf had been ineffective in dealing with North Waziristan. It does appear though that he's waging some sort of counter-insurgency there - perhaps it's just not going all that well. Will North Waziristan remain a small wedge of the world impenetrable to anything but its own tribal codes and hierarchies? I'm sure the West could invade it and occupy it but like Afghanistan I'm sure that the West would have much more difficulty changing it. Is it conceivably a semi-permanent hideout for al Qaeda's top brass?

Chasing the Taliban in Pakistan (and why it won't work)

Eric Margolis has a piece on the prospect of the US invading the northwestern frontier region of Pakistan in order to capture or kill senior al Qaeda/Taliban. It probably will be a failure if they try it. Margolis writes of this "lawless" region:

"But there is law: the traditional Pashtun tribal code, Pashtunwali, that strictly governs behavior and personal honor. Protecting guests was sacred. I was captivated by this majestic mountain region and wrote of it extensively in my book, `War at the Top of the World.’"

He then goes on to outline some disastrous consequences if an attempt was made to go into northwestern Pakistan and to be honest, I'd say that they seem probable. If nothing else, the above quote makes it unlikely that even a Pashtun tribal group that didn't particularly like bin Laden would turn him over to anyone.

The problem remains though that Musharraf is doing relatively little about the situation either. Michael Scheuer remarked on CBC's The Current that Musharraf really had no incentive to upset the sizable Pashtun population in Pakistan. Given that things have been going poorly for Musharraf lately anyway, I suspect that he doesn't want to do the Pakistani politics equivalent of hitting a hornets' nest with a baseball bat.

It now appears that the regrouping al Qaeda is positioned in a region that the US cannot enter (without risking Pakistan's stability - and nuclear arsenal) and that Pakistan's leaders will not enter. If the pressure had been kept on the al Qaeda leadership, one wonders if we would have ended up here.

Innovative New Strategy for The Middle East!

That's right kids, the new strategy is to find a strong man and prop him up. According to this post the only thing is that the strong man should be more like a Musharraf than a Saddam Hussein. Minor detail, right?