Whenever a country ends up in a conflict between two extremist elements, one of them will win – and the middle of the road population will be stuck with the winner.

This can all be directly laid at the feet of George Bush. It was a mistake to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan – who were irrelevant to the task of getting bin Laden or dealing with Al Qaeda. What that accomplished was to drive the Taliban into Pakistan where they were then able to radicalize and gain influence over the local tribes.

This led to conflict with the government. This led to Musharraf being forced to try to retain his power. This led to conflict with the democratic forces in Pakistan. This led to the US attempting to restore Bhutto to put a democratic face on the dictatorship. This, of course, threatened Musharraf’s hold on power even more – which led to this latest coup.

And that in turn will destabilize the situation even more.

Meanwhile, nothing is being done – and it is not sure whether anything can be done – about the Islamists. As someone pointed out, the US has no policy about “Islamism”, as opposed to “Jihadism”, so the US has no means of reacting to the rise of Islamism in strategic countries.

I predict that Pakistan’s central government will either collapse into civil war or be taken over by Islamists within the next two to five years.

The entire region is engulfed by turmoil that I can’t recall in my lifetime.

It will only take a small spark to light this lake of fire.

Then we’ll see the rapid succession of actions that are recoiled and waiting to spring into action.

Heckuva job. Heckuva job.

-GSD

I believe the above quote is one of the truest statements I have read recently.

If you change it like this….

“In places like ____ where the veneer of Tom Friedman’s flat world is mighty thin, meddling in the local social order carries a high risk of de-stabilizing society and releasing forces that we have no ability to manage.”

Just fill in the blank of any nation you choose and you will always get the same results.

Unfortunately Empire builders throughout history never learned this lesson and so history which always repeats it self continues on,,,same old death and destruction, just a new empire.

I don’t have satellite TV any longer but I can watch Mosaic on Link TV here

http://www.linktv.org/mosaic/streamsArchive/

It really is too bad that it is almost impossible to receive Al Jazeera English in the United States (what are they afraid of?). Although it is completely different from the Arabic channel, it would definitely be worthwhile as an information source.

“It was Benazier Bhutto’s goverment that unleashed the Taliban, backed by the Pakistan army commando units, in an attempt to take Kabul. The United States, fearful of Iranian influence in the region, had backed the decision.”

“One of the most virulent of the [Islamic] groups is a creation of the ISI. Its political wing, Ahle-Hadis, wants the Saudi mode implanted in Pakistan, but without the monarchy…The armed wing, Lashkar-i-Tayyaba could not exist without the patronage of the army.”

“Many people in Pakistan had assumed that Musharraf would disarm the Islamists and restore a semblance of law and order in the cities. [However] if, as is widely agreed, between 25 and 30 percent of the army are Islamists, its reluctance to act against the jihadis is understandable: it is nervous of provoking a civil war. Musharraf has a serious problem.”

From The Clash of Fundamentalisms, Tariq Ali, Verso, London, 2002.

posted by Nur-al-Cubicle”

Interesting perspective. We basically used them to embolden a buffer state. Emerging from the spine of our little regional monster, made to outmonster Iran and Russia nearby…
we helped to develop the infrastructure bones that would flesh out a hard line coup.

Now that coup is reaping its own Karma.

Which hard line element takes over?
The same one protecting AQ Khan.

BBC World News America

This is a new newshour, offered for American audiences, produced by BBC World News. It began on October 1. Today’s hour included at least 15-20 minutes on the crisis in Pakistan, and a lot of footage I’ve not seen on any American cable news. There were far more interviews of various Pakistani officials, and tough but fair questioning.

It also includes a great deal of world news from countries and regions about which we Americans ever hear very little.

Since it is for American consumption, it also includes American news stories, which are done more thoughtfully and objectively than one can say about most U.S. television news.

There’s a current series on how families live around the world. Today’s story was about a family in China whose father only sees his wife and children once or twice a year because he works off in Shanghai as a laborer, earning $250/month so that his children can get an education and not have to be a laborer all their lives as he has to be. His wife runs the little farm six hours away in the countryside. Future family stories will feature a family in a desert region of Jordan and a family in the Midwest of the U.S.