No matter how you look at this one, it’s not good. Via the AP:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistan’s deposed chief justice called on lawyers nationwide to defy police and protest President Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s imposition of emergency rule, while the Cabinet debated whether to delay parliamentary elections by as much as three months, a minister said.

In the lawless northwest, Islamic militants seized a town from outnumbered security forces who surrendered without a fight.

Musharraf, who took power in a 1999 coup, said over the weekend he was declaring a state of emergency to respond to a growing Islamic militant threat. He suspended the constitution, put a stranglehold on the media and granted sweeping powers to authorities to crush dissent. Thousands of people have been rounded up and thrown in jail.

In the Swat valley near the Afghan border — a focus of a wave of militant violence — about two dozen police officers and several troops offered no resistance to militants who seized three police stations and a military post in and around the town of Matta.

“We didn’t harm the police and soldiers and allowed them to go to their homes as they didn’t fight our mujahideen,” said Sirajuddin, a spokesman for Maulana Fazlullah, a firebrand cleric whose armed followers are battling security forces.

He said the militants had hoisted their black and white flags over the captured posts. A police official in Swat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of his job, confirmed the surrender.

In Islamabad, the ousted chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, called for mass protest against the government.

Just another crumbling government in the land of Islam? Just another third-world hell-hole falling apart due to corruption and internal neglect? Just another military coup leader getting his? Probably all that and more — a lot more. Pakistan, the Brits’ big foul-up of post WWII attempts to fix the mess they made of India, is armed to their nuclear teeth to thwart India’s own nuke arsenal, and that is what’s really at stake in this current crisis. The thought of a radical Islamic takeover of a government that has dozens of nuclear weapons must have the White House and the leaders in Tel Aviv hammerin’ down Nytol by the bottle. And then there’s that little inconsistency of policy about our supporting Musharraf’s military-controlled government while our troops are fighting and dying just across the border to enable democracies to flourish in Iraq and Afghanistan.

President Bush urged Gen. Pervez Musharraf to hold elections as the crisis caused by the Pakistani leader’s declaration of a state of emergency continued into its fourth day. Although some congressional lawmakers explored ways of cutting aid to the Musharraf regime to protest the suspension of the country’s constitution, observers agreed such a move would be unlikely to succeed. In addition, the media are taking President Bush, who has relied on Musharraf in the war on terrorism, to task for the contradiction between the Pakistani general’s actions and Bush’s effort to promote democracy in the Muslim world.

Meanwhile, in an Orwellian-style moment, the Dems get frisky while the Repubs council restraint.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., warned against being too soft.

“Pakistan will only be a reliable and capable ally against terrorism when its government is not seen as an enemy by its own people,” she said.

But Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, warned against being too hasty with rebukes. “As politics in Pakistan continue evolving, we should not rush to abandon Musharraf but work with him to get Pakistan back on the path toward democracy,” he said.

The gist of Duncan Hunter’s statement was echoed by John Bolton yesterday on Hugh Hewitt’s show:

HH: What ought to be the reaction of the United States to Musharraf’s declaration of military rule?

JB: Well, I don’t think it’s anything we should celebrate, of course, but I think we have to be practical about this. This is a regime in control of a number of nuclear weapons, it’s a regime we need to fight the remainder of al Qaeda and Taliban along its border with Afghanistan. And I don’t think we ought to be pushing Musharraf out the door, or necessarily in a direction of coalitions with the likes of Benazir Bhutto, if he thinks it would weaken his position, because the alternative is not a nice Jeffersonian democratic government. The alternative to Musharraf right now is an Islamo-fascist government in control of nuclear weapons, and that’s definitely something to fear.

HH: Is there a danger that Musharraf could become Bush’s Shah or his Diem?

JB: Well, I think that’s entirely possible, and I think part of the reason is the State Department was pushing Benazir Bhutto on him, and I think it was a very foolish strategy, because you can’t say take on some of the democratic opposition and not take on the rest of it. This trying to read internal Pakistani politics is hard for the Pakistanis, let alone for people at the State Department.

Over at the Center For Contemporary Conflict one finds this 2003 estimate of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons capabilities:

Adding together its possible plutonium and HEU inventories, Pakistan could have enough fissile material to produce between 35 and 95 weapons, with 60 as the median estimate.

Four years later, who knows how many more? What this brings to mind is the importance of how the Presidential primary candidates of both parties answer the question, “What will your administration do to combat the advance of radical Islamic terror?” With the drug traffickers to our south having smuggling strategies like this, and with petrodollars flowing freely to terrorist groups, the possibilities are truly “terrifying”. Kinda the point, huh? Makes the answer to that question asked above a bit more important than views on single-payer health care — at least it does in my book.

Meanwhile, the Brits get their panties in a snit over their own interpretation of WWIII and decide to go to war with the sun. I say, good luck ol’ chaps, tallyho! BTW — take ol’ Big Al with ya!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 10:27 am and is filed under A Post 9/11 World, Al Queda Plans & Tactics, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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