Word: musharraf
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...wrap up this year. Pakistan has a great tourism website. And the country even decided to make last year "Destination Pakistan 2007." But there's the rub. Last year was one of the most troubled in Pakistan's history. Terrorist attacks became a weekly, sometimes daily, occurrence. President Pervez Musharraf threw out the Supreme Court Chief Justice triggering massive street protests. The Swat Valley, a picturesque tourist spot renowned for its skiing and trout fishing, is now, as my colleague Aryn Baker so vividly described just two months ago, Taliban Central. And to end the year, the leading opposition figure...
...that is indeed the plan, it has backfired spectacularly. The extremists have spread out from the border region, attacking government buildings in Pakistan's cities. More recently, al-Qaeda-linked groups have launched suicide attacks against military and civilian targets. Such attacks have undermined Musharraf, who had long portrayed himself as the one man capable of keeping Pakistan stable and safe from extremism. But instead of coming down harder on extremists, he suspended Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who threatened to derail Musharraf's bid for a second term as President on constitutional grounds. Within weeks, a nationwide...
...Doomed Deal Desperate to shore up Musharraf, the Bush Administration blessed an unlikely plan: bring back Bhutto. Educated at Radcliffe and Oxford, with friends studded throughout the media and government élites of both the U.S. and Britain, the first-ever female leader of a modern Islamic state had left Pakistan just before Musharraf came to power in 1999. She later called it self-imposed exile, but it was also a way to avoid corruption charges Musharraf was pursuing against her. Eight years on, a Bhutto-Musharraf deal seemed to have something for everybody. She would return, contest elections...
...most such attempts to meddle in Pakistan from the outside, the plan looked better on paper than in the dusty streets of Karachi and Lahore. On Nov. 3, just two weeks after Bhutto had returned home - and survived a double suicide bombing in Karachi that killed some 140 people - Musharraf declared a state of emergency, suspending the constitution and sending his troops into the streets to bludgeon protesters. Bhutto was placed under house arrest but vowed to stand in parliamentary elections set for Jan. 8. When allowed to leave her home, she campaigned with gusto. But as she left...
...will in all likelihood go to Makhdoom Amin Fahim, Bhutto's longtime deputy. Zardari and Fahim must now decide how to respond to a call by Nawaz Sharif - an old political foe of Bhutto who was Prime Minister on two separate occasions in the 1990s - for an anti-Musharraf coalition. An alliance between Sharif and the PPP would leave Musharraf vulnerable. He had a deal with Bhutto; he did not have one with Sharif, who was Prime Minister at the time of Musharraf's coup in 1999. Musharraf's successor as army chief, General Ashfaq Kiyani, has kept...