Captain's Quarters -

The devil you know, eh Ed?

The warlords are beginning to grow in power and prestige in Pakistan. I've long said that in many ways, Pakistan represents AQ's ultimate goal: an Islamist state with an overwhelmingly Islamist populace with proven nuclear weapons. So far, Pakistan meets the latter two criteria. Only Musharraf is standing between Osama and meeting the third.

Likewise, Iran also meets two of the three, they lack the nukes. Pakistan's nukes + Iran's leaders and army = the end of Israel and the beginning of the real war.

What the Democrats forget, or choose to ignore, is that no matter what Iran does, if Musharraf falls, AQ gets nukes and Israel *will* be destroyed in the second Holocaust.

We can ask all kinds of questions about Musharraf's crazy tightrope act, but in the end he may be the most impotant allied foreign leader we have as far as world stability. If anything happens to him, we go into overtime.

Sudden Death overtime.

I don't find this alliance suprising at all. The Taliban are a creation of Pakistani Intelligence (ISI). It is only natural that they would be allied in a feud with foriegn tribes.

The real danger here is the "Talibanization" of Pakistan which, unlike Iran, already has fully operational nukes.

God bless President Musharraf, and keep him from all harm. We are a heartbeat away from having to face another rogue nation, this time with up-front-and-personal WMD.

As long as its red-on-red fighting, I'm going to sit back and make some popcorn

Rue the day that islam can get it's act together and unite against the infidel. It may be our saving grace that the violence inherent in islam easily turns inward against itself. After all, there's always someone else who is not islamic enough, and along with the infidel, must die.

Oh, and the whole 'tribal' mentality helps in our favor as well.

Take out Al Qaeda first, then work on the Taliban. It may just be easier to deal with our enemies one by one, rather than wholesale.

Aren't fatwas supposed to be restricted to settling questions under Islamic law - e.g. whatever the Koran doesn't specifically cover? And tribes get to use it to say Islam supports us killing our neighbor?

Man, we better hope Islamic countries don't ever get into soccer, or else we'll have suicide bombers at the World Cup, after some mufti out there proclaims that the prophet would have decreed that Manchester United must be defeated in 2008.

Or worse, imagine them suddenly getting into the NFL and proclaiming a fatwa against John Madden for daring to criticize the Oakland Raiders.

Bear with me, I just have to deviate from the serious for a minute.

Frankly, I don't have problems with Uzbecs and Talibans killing each other. I wouldn't even opose to them both being eqivalently armed... Bad me.
But President Musharraf has a problemon his head, this is for sure...

Among all of the myriad fracture lines of Middle Eastern society, if such a thing even exists, Musharref has chosen to align his influence and alliance along the nationalist fault line. Not the tribal or the sectarian or any other division he could have chosen, but the nationalist. He chose to align himself, at least temporarily, with other Pakistanis. Not nice ones and certainly not pure or perfect Pakistanis, but Pakistanis nevertheless.

There is some significance in that decision, I think.

Sounds like the perfect position for Musharraf to be in to me.

He has the support of the U.S.A. to get the AQ's ...........and ...............he has the Wazirri's support on getting AQ's too.

What more can he ask for .......???

CQ's readers are strongly urged to read milblogger Bill Roggio's analysis here:

http://billroggio.com/archives/2007/04/the_talibans_interne.php

In a nutshell: the war raging in Pakistan is between foreign insurgents who believe that all enemies are fair game (including Musharraf) and native warlords who believe, more out of pragmatism than sheer ideology, that challenging Musharraf's authority now only risks incurring the wrath of the Pakistani armed forces... which is precisely what has happened.

In other words, the native tribes are saying: "Don't be stupid. Pakistan has given us safe haven. So long as we don't mess with Musharraf, he won't mess with us. How are we supposed to carry out jihad in Afghanistan if you guys are making trouble for us here in Pakistan?" The opponents, however, are obsessed with "jihad, jihad, JIHAD". Political strategy really doesn't figure into the equation as far as they concerned.

The Pakistani tribes loyal to Musharraf aren't our allies. They want the Taliban to succeed in Afghanistan as much as the next jihadi. They just don't want the jihadis to bring the battle home.

Not yet.

The Taliban and Al Queda are not as joined at the hip as everyone thinks. The Taliban welcomed Bin Laden in the eighties to root out the Russians but there was always mistrust among the foreign Al Queda and native Taliban. What the Taliban liked about Bin Laden was the millions he brought into the country. Likewise with Pakistan even though both are strong radical Islamists I can not see Musharaf letting Al Queda rule Pakistan, too much nationalism on the Pakis part. This has also happened in Anbar Province, the Sunni tribal chiefs welcomed Al Queda types until the chiefs realized Al Queda wanted to call the shots and kill fellow Iraqis! Islamic Jihad is not one huge monolith, but a lot of nationalism,tribal loyalties and the money grab, whether it be oil wealth or the billions in the poppy trade. Saw a report on tv that claimed one reason the Taliban was resurging in Afghanistan was because people were so enraged at how corrupt the Karzid government was there loyalty was shifting to the Taliban even though they did not support the Taliban ideals. They considered the Taliban less corrupt than Karzid. Its a crazy world.