What's the latest from Pakistan?
After Benazir Bhutto, the leading candidate to be elected prime minister of Pakistan, was assassinated on Dec. 27, I and many other distant worry warts were concerned Pakistan could devolve into civil war.
The United States had brokered Bhutto's return to Pakistan from exile with the hope that Bhutto could ally with the country's dictator, President Pervez Musharraf, to take on the country's violent extremists. The plan died with Bhutto.
The prospect of a devolving Pakistan was pretty horrifying because, honestly, how much worse could the place get?
Though ostensibly an American ally in the War On Terror™, Pakistan was a military dictatorship.
It incubated and fed the Taliban before and after 9/11. It's where Osama bin Laden has comfortably tinkered with GarageBand and iMovie for the past seven years. It supports terrorists whose attacks against India over the disputed Kashmir region have repeatedly brought the two nations to the brink of nuclear war.
The country sold nuclear weapons technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea — which North Korea was able to use to develop actual, working nuclear weapons, and Iran is currently using to make its own nuclear fuel (though not necessarily for a weapon, according to U.S. intelligence).
With the exception of punching our moms and molesting our dogs, Pakistan has done pretty much everything a nation has to do to get on America's official poop list. Objectively, Pakistan has certainly done worse by the United States than Iraq or Iran ever did.
The parliamentary election Bhutto was campaigning for when she was assassinated went ahead in February. The two main parties opposed to Musharraf won a majority. Since then, the outside world has been watching to see how the new power balance in Pakistan would change the way the country handled extremism at home and abroad. So far, the signs are not good.
Pakistan's new government has recently renewed peace talks with extremists who live in the rural, mountainous areas along the country's border with Afghanistan. The reason we care how Pakistan handles its internal unrest is that these regions are a staging ground for Taliban and al-Qaeda activity.
When Pakistani forces back away from fighting rebellious tribes in their country, Taliban and al-Qaeda activity accelerates in neighboring Afghanistan. It happened last time there was a truce, and according to Gen. Dan McNeill, the departing NATO commander in Afghanistan, it's happening again this spring.
The New York Times reports that Taliban attacks in eastern Afghanistan, the part of the country that borders Pakistan, were up 50 percent in April. The United States and its Afghan allies drove the Taliban from power in late 2001, but Taliban activity in Afghanistan has climbed every year since 2003 — the year the bulk of the U.S. military's resources were diverted to Iraq.
In other grim Pakistan-related news, the man most directly responsible for Pakistan's Wal-Marting of nuclear weapons technology to America's enemies was recently released from mansion arrest.
A.Q. Khan, a national hero in Pakistan for building the country's nukes, was allowed to leave his house recently to go visit his sick, elderly brother. The Pakistani government announced the visit to the press, but kept dates, times and locations secret for Khan's safety. Mull those last three words — for Khan's safety. The Pakistani government has never allowed the United States, or any world investigative organization, to ask Khan about what he sold and to whom. But it is mindful of Khan's safety.
The next big event to keep an eye on in Pakistan is whether President Pervez "The Perv" Musharraf steps down.
Right now, the parliament elected in February is mulling whether to restore to office the federal judges Musharraf ousted last year during a martial law crackdown. If the judges are restored, they will likely invalidate the blatantly bogus election Musharraf held last year to extend his rule. As an interim step, the parliament might leave Musharraf in place but strip the office of powers.
The Perv is no pushover. He took power in a military coup in 1999 and has shown himself perfectly willing to use the military to beat down any civilian opposition. If parliament pushes and the Perv pushes back, that civil war everyone was afraid of could happen.
This article appears in Jun 4-10, 2008.