All I know is that secular military leaders are much more rational than religious leaders.
not really.
only that they've got plenty of nukes.
and a wonderfully educated elite that provides many of my favorite colleagues in my discipline.
but, hey, they're all islamofascists, so big deal.
on the other hand, bush may have looked into musharaff's soul, in which case it will all work out okay.
They've got an intelligence bureau that hates hates hates India and loves loves loves the Taliban. Also, a nuke.
The US has always favored Pakistan over India, since the 50s. Military aid, opposition to Nehru's "nonaligned nations" approach, and so on.
Galbraith and others wanted to change this, without much success. The various coups often had US support, although it's hard to see what we'd have done differently in any case. During the Russian-Afghan war we got much closer to them, and their aircraft often engaged the Soviets, often over Afghanistan. Our current deep involvement seems to date from that time, when we backed Islamic resistance to the Russians.
This, via Sausagely, may be informative.
ok, silver lining mode:
I'm glad the Bush administration is actually capable of being embarrassed by this. The pure neo-cons, the paul wolfowitzes and elliot abrams', have never been ashamed to support dictatorial strong men. Witness their Latin American policy in the 80s, or their desire to appoint Chalabi dictator of Iraq. Bush and Condi have always favored nominal democracy, and as a result, look bad here.
The have the Bombs and terraists. Two wrongs make a right.
They're allied with China. This port is supposed to be a really big deal.
Only that this has clearly been coming since the invasion of Afghanistan and is about the least surprising news of the decade.
One assassination away from Osama having the Bomb.
Because Pakistan will immediately fall into the hands of Al Qaeda if Musharaff is killed? Pakistan consists of two factions, Al Qaeda and Musharaff?
9. Then outsource the intervention to China. We are a bit over-booked these days.
Thanks for the link, Michael. And Bhutto? Her position with respect to these alignments (and future prospects if any)?
I think the Bhuttos (the father and later the daughter) were the first to pursue that sort of thing with China. I don't remember the specifics though.
Vanderwheel's link tells us that Waziristan is rich in uranium. Sounds like a soundbite in the making.
One thing I thought about right before the war was how various other powers would capitalize while the US was tied down in Iraq. I never followed that up, but that link and Slol's are a good update. Apparently Pakistan is now torn between the US, China, and the fundamentalists (more Taliban than al Qaeda), with the fundamentalists having the most local support.
Between the 9/11 attack and the Iraq War isolated rational elements in the US foreign policy community were also looking at pre-2001 links between Pakistani intelligence (ISI) and the Taliban and also links between Saudi intelligence (including Turki al-Faisal, now Ambassador to Britain) and Osama. The only people talking about this any more are "kill 'em all" wackos who see Iraq as the first step in a comprehensive plan to topple ever single Muslim government in the world.
In part the official Pakistani and Saudi links to the Taliban and al-Qaeda are just ordinary facts of international politics we have to deal with (and not horrible shockers) but they certainly call the rationale for the Iraq war and the Iran war, into question, since neither of those countries have been anywhere near as closely-connected to anti-US terrorism as our two allies are.
Seemingly the U.S. is too dependent on the Saudis and the Pakistanis now to push either of them very hard, as the first link says, especially since neither government is really popular.
The Saudi cover story has never been closely examined. I put up a lot of mostly-mainstream documentation of the Saudi angle in 2004, but it never went anywhere. I believe that some electronic newspaper archives have been purged.
Note the longer article linked within the link at 6.
Anyone know anything about New Zealand? Other than that it used to be much less scary than Australia?
No insight into New Zealand, but their police cars look like toys.
Here's an interesting piece for a Guardian blog-article-hybrid which presents the Musharraf mini-coup in context that reassures me quite a bit.
Is Musharraf the best of bad options? Not for US interests, but for Pakistani interests? Well, who are we to say he isn't?
Bush will pull the same shit in late Oct 08 that Musharraf just did.
Is Musharraf the best of bad options? Not for US interests, but for Pakistani interests? Well, who are we to say he isn't?
This is the wrong question. Musharraf is incredibly unpopular in Pakistan, and this move will make him even more so. It's only a matter of time before one of those not-so-infrequent assassination attempts is successful. Given that Musharraf's rule is unsustainable - whether he realizes it or not - the question to ask is, what's the best possible successor government, and what's the best way to transition to it? Because I'm pretty sure the path that Pakistan's on now - "pro-Taliban religious extremists take control through bloody coup" - isn't going to be good for anyone.
The terror raids are a joke -- Tama Iti's an incompetent fool, the police appear to have jumped at the slightest provocation, and the protesting class are having a field day.
Basically, Iti's lot are criminals, but not really a serious prospect of pulling off a terroristic attack; the cops have a bit of power lust but we're still a sight better off than you are for civil liberties.
Prediction: any faction tainted by association with the US is doomed in Pakistani politics.
Think of India pre-partition as a mirror of Britain. Basically, in 1947 India got all the vague but essentially harmless civilian bits of 1947 Britain - Fabian socialism, inefficient industry, large universities, large civil service, smart scientists - and Pakistan got all the worrying bits - manic right-wing unconventional-war types and paranoid counterintelligence officers.