Writing in theSouth Asian Times Shaheen Sehbai has it all, from the federal, constitutional democracy point of view -- Balochistan Insurgency: Musharraf's Snowball, Spinning Out of Control. A half-dozen more bombings of rail lines, gas pipelines, and microwave relay masts in the past 24 hours, and lots of political figures running for some kind of cover within a nationalist framework and attempting to prevent the Army from suspending the fiction of civil government in half, or all, of the country, and comparing Pervez Musharraf to Yahya Khan, who lost East Pakistan.
Of course, competition with the Army for institutional power isn't without risk for trade unionists or capitalist magnates, who shoot or jail as well as anyone else. But Punjabi Army vs Punjabi Politicians isn't a complete characterization of the actors. When I started the Return of the ... one true King project my mailbox started getting content from the Hizb -- here and here. That is another critique of both Pervez Musharraf and his generals, and their modernist competitors -- the parlimentarians -- one Americans are predisposed to think of as "Islamic Fundamentalist", though it isn't Wahabist.
But those critical frameworks are just paper. In Wazaristan and Baluchistan the criticism transcends paper, though not yet posture. It is getting hotter.
If Pakistan survives Bush's war against Iran, it won't be Pakistan. It will be something closer to North Korea, or Rumania, with an Army that has survived in power against tribal societies, civil society, and religious societies. A "dirty war on every front". It will be more distant from democratic India than at any time since the Partition, and probably doomed, as some Indian analysts think, even without an American War. And it wii have most, perhaps all, of its nuclear weapons arsenel, or control over its nuclear weapons arsenel will have been seized by the US, or India.
If Pakistan does not survive Bush's war against Iran, it won't be Pakistan. Its nuclear weapons arsenel will have ... found its fullest expression, or have vanished, to appear elsewhere, later.
Rhetorical "freedoms" really aren't comenserate with city-sized fireballs, with fallout for the lucky down-wind survivors of the prompt mortality events. Who thinks it will stop there?
Posted by EBW at February 4, 2005 12:28 PM | TrackBackWahabism and Shiite fundamentalism are both dangerous to the "western world". You are right. No nukes is good nukes when it comes to Iran and folks of their ilk. I only wish the Reagan administration had listened to folks and nipped it in the bud in Pakistan. But, no, they were too busy wimping out in Lebanon and invading Grenada.
Posted by: Steve Plonk at February 7, 2005 07:28 AM