What is up with Pakistan?
Unless you’ve been actively avoiding any news sources the last day or so (which is entirely possible considering how nice it has been in Buffalo), you’ve heard of the National Intelligence Estimate that was released on the 17th. And if you haven’t, go , read it yourself. It’s not even two full pages long and I always encourage primary source reading when every pundit out there is making his/her own laundry list of what this document actually means.
One thing people seem particularly focused on is what this document has to say about Pakistan:
“We assess the group [al-Qa'ida] has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safehaven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership”
What has Musharraf been doing all this time? Well as articles from the NY Times and the BBC have pointed out, General Musharraf has been facing opposition in his own country as to how he has been handling extremists and his relationship with the West. Some have accused his policies under the recent cease-fire with tribal leaders to be the reason extremist networks have been able to rebuild in the northern areas of the countries, while others have accused his heavy military hand of driving more and more people to extremism. Either way, he is no longer popular at home or abroad. According to Ahmed Rashid’s article (BBC), “General Musharraf is faced with a middle-class movement of lawyers and professionals who are fed up with military rule and a burgeoning political opposition movement that held its biggest get together ever in London recently.”
After the siege of the Red Mosque last week, many international news programs/prints such the International Herald Tribune, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and NPR (hey, the more sources to look at, the better) were focused on trying to figure out whether the fight signaled a broader sustainable confrontation with Islamist radicals, or “whether it was a one-time imperative prompted by the truculence of the militants inside the mosque.” The answer so far has leaned towards a broader crack-down which has led to increased violence in kind to Pakistani troops. Musharraf’s rhetoric has been stepped-up and his foreign office spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam has already come out stating that the National Intelligence Estimate contained “some unsubstantiated assertions,” referring to the quote from the report above. Can’t say whether this increase in effort is going to mean anything substantial as Musharraf has seemed to waiver back and forth depending on whose support he needs. One thing seems a bit more certain: it doesn’t look like he will be able to keep up this charade for long, whether it’s at the hands of the extremists or pressure/loss of aid from the U.S.