Growing Storm in Pakistan

Here's the story: For better or worse, back in 1999 the Pakistani the top general Pervez Musharraf took out the elected President Nawaz Sharif in a coup. Musharraf has been saying uncle to us ever since and he's been increasingly facing opposition from Islamic extremists and those who remain supporters of Sharif. In a new move the courts have allowed Sharif to return and compete politically with Musharraf. Presidential elections are supposed to happen in October and Parliamentary elections happen before years end. My guess is that Sharif has no love for the US at this point, and a Pakistani revolution hinges on how tightly Musharraf currently controls his own military.

So at what point do we decide to actually support the will of the people once they have spoken via democratic process? Can we be successful while being hypocritical opportunists? Will that approach eventually be our undoing?

nytimes.com:

Pakistan’s increasingly assertive Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a political rival to Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, can return from exile, throwing Pakistan’s politics into turmoil and threatening American strategy of support for the president.

The court’s decision dealt a blow to General Musharraf by allowing the rival, Nawaz Sharif, whom he ousted as prime minister in a 1999 military coup, to run for election here this fall. It may also encourage another former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, who has also been living in exile, to try to return.

The prospect of Mr. Sharif’s return presents the most direct challenge yet to General Musharraf, who flirted with imposing emergency rule this month.

For the Bush administration, which has backed General Musharraf as a crucial ally in a terrorism hot spot, Mr. Sharif’s re-entry into politics would overturn its plan to prod the general to share power with Ms. Bhutto as a way of keeping him in power, foreign policy analysts said.

Comments

[Zen]

It's the nukes I worry about.

[Zen]

Am I seeing things, or is that Al Gore on that green poster?!

[Curious Stranger]

That's Nawaz Sharif, who looks creepily like Al Gore

http://www.pmln.org.pk/leader_info.php

[Klayton Elliot Kendall]

The U.S. has never supported the democratic process anywhere as far as I can tell, and I doubt it will begin to do so with Pakistan, especially because of Pakistan's nukes and its strategic location bordering India, China, and Afghanistan. That doesn't mean that we'll protect Musharraf, though. The economic health of the U.S. basically demands that we go to war with every country in the Muslim world. Pakistan would be an easy target to justify politically, much easier than Syria or Iran. I can easily see President Hillary making a case for it in 2010.