Musharraf's failure

From The Australian, by Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor November 05, 2007 [my emphasis added - SL]:

....Long-term, the only path to stability in Pakistan is civilian rule, democracy, economic development and the growth of civil society. Short-term, the ally in the war on terror is Musharraf and the military, and they are needed to confront the many jihadi terrorists who call Pakistan home.

But Musharraf's latest coup calls into question his effectiveness as an ally in the war on terror, and the long-term damage he is doing to Pakistan.

...Musharraf himself has a history of supporting terrorism, especially across India's borders. The Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence created the Taliban. As with so many dictators who have tried to mobilise extremists for their own political ends, Musharraf is in danger of being eaten alive by his own creations.

....It was highly significant that in Musharraf's rambling address to the nation declaring martial law, he singled out two forces as destabilising his country. The first was Islamist extremists, the second was the Supreme Court.....The tragedy of this is that it shows Musharraf's dictatorship destroying the very institutions - the courts and the rule of law - central to any return to normality by Pakistan.

Musharraf risks creating the same kind of alignment of forces against him as the shah did in Iran before 1979 - a most unnatural alliance of political liberals and Islamist extremists. Iran's liberals did not think they were campaigning for the rule of the ayatollahs, yet the shah had alienated everybody and the liberals were in a de facto alliance with the Islamists. Once the shah was gone, the liberals, of course, were no match for the Islamists.

This is the hard part of Musharraf's threat to the West. Bad as Musharraf is, he remains preferable to an extremist Islamist government of a nation with 160million people and dozens of nuclear weapons.

It is difficult to see where US policy can go from here. Washington has given Musharraf support because of his help in toppling the Taliban he helped install in Afghanistan, and for broader support in the war on terror. It has urged Musharraf to go down a path of reform leading to free elections in January, which were expected to result in Benazir Bhutto becoming prime minister.
Musharraf and Bhutto hate each other - the military executed her father - but stranger alliances have worked in history.

Now there is no future path for Pakistan.

Within Pakistan, there is something like chaos. Extremist madrassas remain completely unreformed. Terrorist groups such as Lashkar-e-Toiba operate under the thin disguise of name changes. Suicide bombers have killed 150 people in Karachi in recent weeks. The Pakistani army is fighting fierce battles with tribal groups in the lawless Northwest Frontier Province, and is simultaneously fighting and co-operating with elements of the Taliban, and, perhaps, al-Qa'ida itself.

This is intolerable to Western nations whose troops are being killed in Afghanistan. The reason the security situation has gone backwards in Afghanistan is because the coalition's enemies can find safe haven in Pakistan.

John Howard has had a special relationship with Musharraf. Australia must contribute to a new Western policy that moves beyond Musharraf, that recognises the need for stability in the short term, but that opens up a political path towards democracy for Pakistani society.