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… meet Iraq. UPDATES, ANALYSIS added below:
It gets uglier before it gets better. Bad neighborhood just got worse. The fact is Pakistan has been at war with itself for a while. Just not hard enough:
KARACHI, Pakistan - A suicide bombing in a crowd welcoming former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto killed at least 123 people Thursday night, shattering her celebratory procession through Pakistan’s biggest city after eight years in exile.
Two explosions went off near a truck carrying Bhutto, but police and officials of her party said she was not injured and was hurried to her house. An Associated Press photo showed a dazed-looking Bhutto being helped away.
…
Bhutto flew home to lead her Pakistan People’s Party in January parliamentary elections, drawing cheers from supporters massed in a sea of the party’s red, green and black flags. The police chief said 150,000 were in the streets, while other onlookers estimated twice that.
The throngs reflected Bhutto’s enduring political clout, but she has made enemies of Islamic militants by taking a pro-U.S. line and negotiating a possible political alliance with Pakistan’s military ruler, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is reaping what it has sown, after decades of allowing madrassas to pump poison into children’s minds, allowing Islamists to dominate its intelligence service, tolerating the Taliban. That’s before you get to today’s massive bombing in Karachi. Who did that? Open question, subject of a lot of rumor and speculation. Islamists the prime but not only suspects.
Here’s Bhutto at the Boston Globe in advance of tonight’s bombing, promising a campaign to advance moderation as well as democracy:
AS I board the plane that takes me home to Pakistan today, I carry with me a manuscript of a book I am writing that will be published shortly. It is a treatise on the reconciliation of the values of Islam and the West, and a prescription for a moderate and modern Islam that marginalizes religious extremists, returns the military from politics to their barracks, treats all citizens and especially women with full and equal rights, selects its leaders by free and fair elections, and provides for transparent, democratic governance that addresses the social and economic needs of the people as its highest priority.
To me this is not just a book but a campaign manifesto, a guide to governing. If the people of Pakistan honor me again with an opportunity to lead, I intend to practice what I preach, to have my actions match my rhetoric and to make Pakistan a positive model to 1 billion Muslims around the world.
For 60 years my nation has lurched between military dictatorships and democracy. The promise that is Pakistan has been stifled by political oppression and economic stagnation. For almost a decade we have been ruled by a military dictatorship. For the last five years we have been challenged by an international terrorism movement that seems unfortunately to have the tribal areas of Pakistan at its very epicenter. These are not ordinary times, and they require extraordinary solutions.
Over the last several months I have negotiated with General Pervez Musharraf to simultaneously ensure a transition to democracy in Pakistan and to mobilize the moderate middle of our society to confront and contain fanatics and extremists. It has been a difficult process, made even more difficult by the resistance of many who now enjoy power in Pakistan to accepting a democratic alternative. But the long discussions have borne some fruit.
…
It is not a perfect agreement, and it certainly is not an end to the process. But it is an important beginning to the transition to democracy, with the goal of bringing reform and political change without the chaos and bloodshed under which extremism and militancy thrive. In the next phase, more confidence-building measures are expected.
As I board the plane to Pakistan, I am fully aware that the supporters of the Taliban and Al Qaeda have publicly threatened my assassination.
Baitullah Mehsud, a Taliban commander, has said that his terrorists will “welcome” me on my return. Everyone understands the meaning of these comments. And I fully understand the men behind Al Qaeda. They have tried to assassinate me twice before. The Pakistan Peoples Party and I represent everything they fear the most - moderation, democracy, equality for women, information, and technology. We represent the future of a modern Pakistan, a future that has no place in it for ignorance, intolerance, and terrorism.
The forces of moderation and democracy must, and will, prevail against extremism and dictatorship. I will not be intimidated. I will step out on the tarmac in Karachi not to complete a journey, but to begin one. Despite threats of death, I will not acquiesce to tyranny, but rather lead the fight against it.
War just got cranked up a notch in Pakistan. Same war as our war, though it was their’s long before we got involved in it, as Pakistan struggled between democracy and dictatorship, moderation and extremism. Big mistake to allow the madrassas to preach hate, to let extremists dominate the intelligence service. You don’t want to see Musharraf and Bhutto, who have to be considered together at this point, lose this one.
Iraq was divided, radicalized, traumatized by the purposeful actions of Saddam Hussein, rendering civil war inevitable upon his exit, with or without us. Pakistan’s woes perhaps can’t be so neatly laid at any one person’s door, though the late dictator Zia ul-Haq, from his overthrow and hanging of Bhutto’s father and Islamization of Pakistani law and government could be a good candidate. Musharraf, in the wake of 9-11, took some steps to purge and limit the influence of Islamists in the security services, but has walked a tightrope with them and with broad Islamist sympathies in the general population. He has cranked up lately against local Islamic extremists with the attack on the Red Mosque, and pressure on Waziristan. Battlelines are now more firmly drawn, as Pakistan faces choices between terrorism and elections, moderation and extremism, and the prospect of extended military rule, however benevolent. Ultimately, Pakistan is involved in a struggle every bit as existential as Iraq’s, every bit as dangerous for the entire region. And Pakistan is only one of a swath of nations involved in a version of that struggle, to include Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Iraq that defy any simple explanation in their causes but have one common element now. Islamic terrorism.
There’s no direct role for America in Pakistan’s war, except to the extent that with the Paks we can go to work on al Qaeda and the Taliban and ease the pressure at that end. Our military role — though it fuels controversy and extremism within Pakistan — remains limited and external. That could change if moderates fail in Pakistan and Pakistan becomes destabilized or dominated by Islamists. At which point Pakistan might not be allowed to possess nukes anymore. Anyone who hasn’t figured out that we have a very long war ahead of us is asleep. Anyone who thinks our disengagement from the region is going to improve any aspect of that situation is dreaming.
UPDATES
Pak Info Minister: Terrorism won’t derail election.
Suicide bomber’s head found. AQ suspicions unconfirmed.
Blame game. If I had to guess, I’d go with AQ with an ISI assist over Musharraf, but Pak politics are particular, and I’m waiting on some better local analysis, evidence, etc.
Bhutto tells the Beeb it was Zia’s cronies.
Bhutto won’t be intimidated.
Topics: Pakistan, al qaeda
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:48 pm on Thursday, October 18, 2007
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October 19th, 2007 at 4:10 am
The enemy has certainly drawn a line in the sand with this terrible slaughter. It says something about what is really going on within Islam; to say that the US is at fault in this war ignores the reality.
October 19th, 2007 at 4:11 am
I’ve known from the getgo that the madrassas would have to be closed and the corrupted imams would have to be dealt with before we could even begin to think about victory. It’s not the Youtube videos that are doing the recruiting, it’s the one on one counseling that comes from the imams that is the most effective.
Which brings us to another thought and it is that the imams need to be segregated from the regular prison population so they can’t do one on one with the inmates. As I understand it prison conversions are in the plan for destroying the west.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
If Bhutto gets in power again, at least one leader of an Islamic nation will be fairly hot.
As opposed to all the other grumpy looking greybearded @$$holes we get to see on the news.
Which is probably why they have to keep their women in virtual slavery.
Sorry, just rambling down the path of typical Western male logic here…
October 19th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
[...] Jules Crittenden notes that Pakistan has been at war with itself for a while, but the press may have just discovered that. [...]