Why are people trying so hard to kill Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf?

Maybe he owes some money to the wrong people. Betting on cricket can be very tricky. Maybe he knocked up some chick and now her brother's defending the family honor. Maybe he was in a club and some guy got mad at him because he was bringin' the bling a little too loudly and then someone from Musharraf's posse pulled out a gun and shot into a crowd and Musharraf hopped in an Escalade with J. Lo. to get away but now the guy who got mad in the first place is trying to kill him because he was dissed.

Or maybe he's just an unpopular dictator who many people in Pakistan want dead because that's the only way to get rid of him.

On Dec. 14 and 25, bombs exploded near Musharraf's motorcade. The Christmas bombing happened just 200 yards (that's only nine cricket pitches!) away from the first. Musharraf is very lucky to be alive right now. A few seconds in either direction, and this column would have been answering the question, "Who is the new leader of Pakistan?"

According to the most recent reports, the Christmas day attackers had smarts enough to ignore Musharraf's decoy motorcade and drive their car bombs into his real motorcade. This likely indicates one of three things. The bombers or their co-conspirators may have been able to listen in on Musharraf's security team's communications. Even worse for Musharraf, perhaps someone who he thinks supports him may be in cahoots with the assassins. Or maybe he just needs a more realistic looking decoy motorcade.

Both of the attacks happened in Rawalpindi, home to Pakistan's military. Rawalpindi was previously thought to be a pretty secure place for a general-turned-President to be riding around in a motorcade. Musharraf should expect to be as safe in Rawalpindi as Bush should be on his Texas ranch. This has fuelled speculation that the assassinations are in cahoots with elements of Pakistan's military.

Elements of Pakistan's military are certainly pissed off at Musharraf right now. Musharraf recently announced a big shift in Pakistan's policy on Kashmir, the disputed province that straddles its border with India. Kashmir has caused three big wars between India and Pakistan, many small military engagements, and scary nuclear brinksmanship ever since Pakistan announced that it had nukes in 1998. Musharraf's big shift on Kashmir was that he dropped the long-standing demand to have Kashmir determine what country it wants to be part of via a plebiscite. Kashmir and Pakistan are Muslim. India's majority is Hindu. India opposes a plebiscite because it thinks that allowing it would guarantee losing Kashmir.

Let's pause to reflect on that for a second. India is a democracy that doesn't want a plebiscite. Pakistan is a dictatorship that for decades has demanded that Kashmir's citizens should decide its fate. Cute, huh? By dropping the demand, Musharraf is to an extent giving up on a cause to which thousands of his fellow military men have given their lives. He's also infuriating the Islamic militants that Pakistan has used to wage a terror war over Kashmir against India by cracking down on them. Pakistani officials have indicated that at least one of Musharraf's would-be assassins lived in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

Then of course there are the Pashtun tribes that Musharraf has cracked down on as part of his support for the U.S. War On Terror. Pakistani Pashtuns are long used to living without much interference from Pakistan's central government. Not only is Musharraf pissing them off by trying to reign them in, he's also pissing them off by helping us fight the Taliban, their fellow Pashtuns in neighboring Afghanistan.

Another possibility is that the bombers were al Qaeda. A few months ago, A.Q.'s No. 2 man declared that it's the duty of Muslims to overthrow Musharraf. Coordinated suicide car bombings, of the sort that nearly got Musharraf, certainly fit A.Q.'s M.O.

Who knows though? Maybe it was India. Maybe it was someone from one of Pakistan's countless frustrated non-Islamic militant political parties. Maybe it was Castro, the Mafia and the C.I.A. Being Pervez Musharraf just isn't very safe nowadays.

Contact Andisheh Nouraee via e-mail at andisheh@creativeloafing.com.

This article appears in Jan 1-7, 2004.