Earlier today, Tim Blair laughingly reported on a senior Pakistani shi’ite cleric falling victim to a suicide bomber – presumably fielded by his sectarian rivals. The manner of this man’s demise carries a strong element of poetic justice, considering he allegedly supported Hamas and Hezbollah – both terrorist groups not unfamiliar with “martyrdom operations”. However, I do not feel as jolly about this cleric’s death as many of the commenters on the linked Blair thread. Certainly, when a prominent Hamas and Hezbollah supporter gets his comeuppance in the so-very-appropriate form of a zealot with a bomb strapped to his gut, one could be forgiven for revelling in schadenfreude. Trouble is, such an event is precisely the sort of thing that could trigger a large-scale Islamist movement that overthrows Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf, or adds further impetus to ongoing efforts to assassinate him.
The Economist’s recent article on Pakistan is a timely reminder that the West’s current alliance with that nation is conditional in the extreme – and almost wholly reliant on Musharraf – whose death could not come soon enough for a large number of people he rules over. If he is assassinated, the General’s successor might well be cut from a far more fundamentalist cloth. If this circumstance arises, a nuclear-armed Pakistan becomes an even more alarming prospect; raising the stakes over Kashmir and making nuclear weapons proliferation more likely. The risk of a nuclear weapon being detonated in a Western city is proportionate to the greenness of Musharraf’s replacement.
If the Pakistani leadership was to fall into fundamentalist hands, this would represent a massive setback in the global struggle against international Islamic terrorism. The mission in Afghanistan would be deeply complicated, for a start. Then there’s the problem of Pakistan becoming an even greater hub for Islamofascists. I will stop there; the list of conceivable heinous consequences could fill many pages. Unfortunately, “our boy” in Islamabad has made a lot of bitter enemies during his rule, and – according to the Economist article linked above – has also governed in a way that makes a post-Musharraf Pakistan a very ugly prospect indeed. Musharraf’s removal or death would likely be catastrophic to the interests of those nations struggling against Islamofascism.
Certainly, the Pakistani cleric copped it most aptly. However, any gloating at the nature of his death may well be overshadowed by wider consequences relating to it.
I am surprised by that opinion. I would think everyone can see that things will get much much worse.
Which opinion, precisely?
I think that the pro-Western governments in Pakistan have allowed the Islamist to grow by shielding them from their own excesses. Islamist can engage in terrorism and general agitation because they don’t have the responsibility to rule.
In the end, it is the people of Pakistan that will have to choose the path they follow. I fear that they will first have learn the folly of extremism before any real progress can be made. It’s probably better to lance the boil and get it over with.
The opinion that a Musharraf fall is necessarely a bad thing. I think disruption is one good weapon and if Pakistan (i dont wish them any ill but when many troubles came from there…)starts to fight between themselves there are more resources being spent by jiahdists.
Pakistan has always been an ally in name only, bought as a buffer to the former SU and a hostile India. Now the former is gone, and the latter is becoming a reliable partner both economically and militarily. It is not necessary to point out that the attacks by Islamic extemists against India have made it a natural ally of the US in the wider war, and a much more dependeble one than Pak could ever be.
Chaos in Pak, or Iran, or the ME in general is much to be preferred to the supposed “stability” brought about by repressive regimes and lunatic mullahs having protected bases from which to fulminate and plot attacks against vulnerable targets, of which there are no end of possiblilities in more open, democratic societies.
It is not the maintenence of these repressive structures that concern us, but their dismantling. Any subsequent discomfort to the populations would be a very good object lesson in the dangers of getting us p’d off enough to focus on them. I’m afraid the various hostile factions in the world need that reminder every now and then.