"You Have to Be with the Democratic Forces"

There are a couple of things in today's NYT article about the big news from Pakistan (Musharraf is expected to resign soon) that need to be highlighted.

First is this:

The continued support of Mr. Musharraf by the Bush administration, anchored by the personal relationship between President Bush and Mr. Musharraf, has infuriated the four-month-old civilian coalition, which routed the president’s party in February elections. “Now the reaction from the American friends is positive,” Mr. Khan said.

While Mr. Bush has kept up his relations with Mr. Musharraf -- including regular telephone conversations -- the administration has also been trying to build its relations with the new Pakistani government, as it demands greater action against militants based in this country.

Mr. Khan, is Nisar Ali Khan, a senior official in the religious, conservative paraty, the Pakistan Muslim League-N. The PML-N is the minority party in the parliamentary coalition that has powered the effort to get rid of Musharraf. I think it's a good sign that despite Bush's reactionary policy of sticking by Musharraf for the last 10 months, the PML-N isn't bashing the U.S., and in fact, sounded a positive note.

Bush actually met with Pakistan's prime minister a few weeks ago in Washington, Yousaf Raza Gillani, who leads the majority party in the coalition, the Pakistan People's Party. Despite the coalition, the liberal PPP are bitter rivals with the PML-N. In that context, Khan's upbeat quote says to me that the PML-N are grown ups and recognize that the political game is on, and they want to be in the mix and build a relationship with the U.S.

Let's not blow it. There is an opportunity here. The media has been beating the war drum on Pakistan, but this proves we've got better options.

Indeed, the more important snippet from today's article was this:

Mr. Sherpao represents a parliamentary constituency in the North West Frontier Province on the edge of the tribal area where the Taliban are winning control in village after village with little opposition from the military or government forces.

After consulting “with every friend” in his area “not a single person was in favor of Musharraf,” Mr. Sherpao said.

“With one voice they said: ‘This is the time you have to be with the democratic forces.’“

I cannot stress enough how this renewed push for democracy in Pakistan, which has blossomed in the last year, represents a viable, popular antidote to the Taliban and Qaeda who are (symbolically and literally) banished away in the hinterlands. While Al Qaeda and the Taliban plot in their tree house, let's work with the majority of the country who want democracy not sharia.

The Best Offense...

The NYT filed this scary report today:

Al Qaeda’s success in forging close ties to Pakistani militant groups has given it an increasingly secure haven in the mountainous tribal areas of Pakistan, the American government’s senior terrorism analyst said Tuesday.

Al Qaeda is more capable of attacking inside the United States than it was last year, and its cadre of senior leaders has recruited and trained “dozens” of militants capable of blending into Western society to carry out attacks, the analyst said.

The news is not surprising—the NYT has made the threat in Western Pakistan its top Middle East story for months now. And while this report seems to confirm what they've been writing, that Al Qaeda has reestablished a credible threat to the United States in the hinterlands of Pakistan, I stand by the series of posts I've put up here lately that the best strategy for dealing with the Qeada threat is defense.

There are four plays to this defensive strategy:

1) Support the emerging democratically elected, parliamentary coalition in Islamabad.

2) Continue spook work to monitor Qaeda plots—which will be easier if the terrorism analyst is right and Al Qaeda goes operable in the U.S. According to my military source, PEQ-2A: "If AQ 'goes western' with their operatives, then they have also unwittingly opened the door for us to penetrate the organization and destroy it from within. While you could easily argue that having western looking operatives allows them to blend in better with 'us' — that conduit works both ways. Once we have penetrated the organization—then it's through. Potentially, this is the mistake we have been waiting for them to make."

3) Keep a military presence in Afghanistan that draws Qaeda out into battles on Afghani turf.

4) Do targeted strikes against Qaeda and Taliban sites in Western Pakistan when the opportunities come up.

These are all wise alternatives to destabilizing Pakistan with a full-on offensive—an option that is likely to sink the emerging government and feed Qaeda's M.O. Qaeda wants the U.S. to fight on their turf and their terms. Yawn.

Lebanon's Radicals? Not Hezbollah

One of the earliest posts on this blog was a profile of the radical Lebanese Sunni group, Fatah al-Islam.

(I occasionally profile people and groups who seem to be underrated players in the weird Middle East equation.)

Fatah al-Islam is noteworthy because they are a militant challenge to both the Westernish governing faction and Hezbollah, the powerful opposition party.

In June, I wrote:

Today's news that Fatah al-Islam took credit for a deadly bomb blast that killed a government troop in Northern Lebanon last week (Al Jazeera has the story) is a scary reminder about this newish and hot-headed militant faction. While Hezbollah, the Shiite militants backed by Iran and Syria, has everybody tweaked out, it's actually Fatah al-Islam that's willing to upset the urgent political compromise that cooled sectarian violence and political tensions in Lebanon last month. (Hezbollah, in fact, is invested in the political truce.)

According to this breaking report, Fatah al-Islam appears to have struck again this afternoon:

The Tripoli bombing was the deadliest single attack in Lebanon in more than three years. It left a scene of carnage at rush hour in this northern city’s crowded commercial center, at a bus stop where Army soldiers were known to catch buses to their posts farther south every morning.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but some Lebanese political figures said they believed the bombing may have been revenge for the Army’s role in Nahr al Bared, the Palestinian refugee camp. The Islamist group that fought the Army there, Fatah al Islam, has claimed several small attacks on soldiers since then, including one that killed a soldier near Tripoli on May 31.

Post-Misstep Policy: Pakistan

There's some big (and good) news out of Pakistan today: The leader of the Pakistan People's Party, Asif Ali Zardari, and the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, Nawaz Sharif, emerged from days of backroom meetings and held a press conference announcing their joint call to impeach intransigent Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

It's not so much that getting rid of Musharraf is good news (which it is, but it's also inevitable and obvious and overdue). It's that the joint announcement repairs the parliamentary coalition that, in my opinion is the obvious—although, apparently invisible to media pundits and NATO generals and U.S. Presidential candidates—solution to the Al Qaeda/Taliban "crisis" in Pakistan.

The liberal PPP is the majority party in the parliamentary coalition elected in February. (Yousaf Raza Gillani, who just visited the U.S. and played into the NYT "crisis" storyline, is the PPP Prime Minister. Zardari is the more powerful PPP chairman).

Sharif's conservative, religious PML-N is the minority partner in the parliamentary coalition.

Sharif's PML-N was starting to call the shots and gain steam as the more popular party this summer and spring when they got behind the popular lawyer's movement to reinstate Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudry. President Musharraf had ousted Chaudry along with several other Supreme Court judges last November, after Justice Chaudry called Musharraf's Presidency illegal. Both the PPP and the PML-N had pledged to reinstate the judges when they formed their coalition after the Feburary elections, but Zardari's PPP backed away from the pledge. (The PPP, former leader Benazir Bhutto's party, is Westernish and is wary of alienating the Bush administration, which has strongly and block-headedly backed Musharraf.)

Also: Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, feared the reinstatement of Chief Justice Chaudhry because Chaudry was/is likely to go after Zardari on previous corruption charges.

However, the main issue is Musharraf. The PPP/PML-N coalition had also promised to get rid of him. (Reinstating Chaudry was seen as the way to get rid of Musharraf.) By calling directly for Musharraf's impeachment today, Zardari has sidestepped the Chaudry issue for now and has put his party back in sync with popular opinion.

With the dissident PML-N having a monopoly on the populist anti-Musharraf movement, the status quo government was losing legitimacy and further destabilizing Pakistan. The PML-N had left the governing coaltion back in May over the Chaudry issue. With the PML-N leaving the governing coalition and gaining steam as popular agitators, Pakistan's fragile democracy was at risk. And certainly, the PPP's legitimacy was at risk. Aitzaz Ashan, the popular leader of "the Lawyers' Movement"—the movement to reinstate Chaudry and other anti-Musharaff Supreme Court judges—is a prominent PPP member who was starting to become more aligned with the PML-N thanks to the PML-N's correct reading of the crisis: Sharif joined Ashan and the Lawyers' Movement out in the streets in June. Zardari did not.

The PPP's decision today could reverse their missteps. This is good news. Zardari's sense to shore up the coalition by biting the bullet and getting on the right side of history and going after Musharraf is a boon for stability and democracy—which is the antidote to the reemergence of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Western Pakistan that's fueling so much war-beat media coverage in the U.S. and causing so much hand wringing for NATO. Let's hope the U.S. reverses its missteps and has the sense to get on the right side of history now as well.

With a working, popular parliamentary coalition, the ability for the U.S. to maneuver and make bold decisions about confronting Qaeda in Western Pakistan along the Afghani border becomes easier. The bold decision? Cool it with all the war talk and get behind the PPP/PML-N coalition and help build democracy in Pakistan. And watch Al Qaeda recede further and further into the hills, metaphorically and literally.