Awkward responses from the US, including at a State Dep't press briefing, re Musharraf's decision to retain his military position along with his presidential duties. From the view of democratic symbolism, certainly not a very positive step, and many are understandably suspicious. The following comment from an Outlook India Online recent thread is not atypical.

Musharraf, like Zia and other khakis who ruled Pakistan; is no better than any other tin pot dictator. He has perfecetd the art of attire according to the occassion. His military dress with all those "tamgas" when talking to Pkaistani public, and hand crafted suits -when abroad, makes for a topic in itself. This man can never be trusted.

Our friends at The Acorn put the matter a bit more elegantly in commenting on Dan Darling's recent Winds of Change.NET report on a conference he attended on Al Qaeda .

Dan does not cover Musharraf’s dealings with Pakistan’s jihadi outfits in detail — if he did, he would have found out that the jihadi groups are just one of the variables Musharraf controls to stay in power. In this context, Musharraf is not actually trying to distinguish between good and bad jihadis (for that distinction is invalid) but manoeuvering to do the barest minimum to keep that other variable (United States) from knocking him down. Pakistan’s military establishment has effective control over all al-Qaeda related jihadi groups as well as on their spiritual leaders, patrons and mentors.

The Waziristan operation was a wild-goose chase — the tribesmen did support al-Qaeda and bin Laden, but only slightly more passionately than millions of their compatriots. The most dangerous jihadi leaders, those who can shed the most light on al-Qaeda and its global operations, remain in Pakistan, free to go about their business as long as they keep their head down.

Osama bin Laden is Musharraf’s golden egg laying gander (to invoke the avian reference again), and the General knows all about that fable. As for those jihadi groups, they cannot even hope to subvert the Pakistani state. Musharraf is far more secure and is in far greater control of the situation that he would like the United States to believe.

And then there's the Pakistani domestic opposition to Musarraf. The circus of Benazir Bhutto's husband's release, rearrest and re-release over the past two days has underlined how tricky the "reconciliation process" may be. The rearrest followed Musharraf's announcement about going back on his promise to relinquish his military leadership post on December 31, which flies in the face of the position Bhutto's group has vigorously supported.

Zardari's re-arrest appeared to dim hopes of reconciliation between former Prime Minister Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party and Musharraf, a key ally of Washington in the war on terror.

However, some analysts said it might have been orchestrated by figures in the military government worried about losing influence should the reconciliation process move forward, rather than by Musharraf himself.

"It's to do with local ambitions and local politics," said newspaper editor and political commentator Najam Sethi. "I don't think Musharraf had a hand in that."

Bhutto herself appears to have taken a rather low-key and non-confrontational approach to the goings-on regarding her husband and re-emphasized the need for dialogue with Musharraf to achieve sustainable reconciliation.

Islamist opposition leaders, on the other hand, have called for nation-wide protests on January 1. From the FT and Reuters:

“Musharraf has become a security risk for the country,” said Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leader of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal ( MMA), the coalition of Islamic parties, speaking before a crowd of about 5,000 supporters who braved heavy rain to attend a protest gathering in Rawalpindi, a suburb of Islamabad. “The military dictatorship is the root of all our evils.”

Mr Ahmed announced a nationwide “black day” on January 1, when a series of protest meetings would be held in different cities. MMA officials said the coalition then planned to hold more frequent protests. Opinion was divided over how big a threat yesterday's announcement was to Gen Musharraf[...]

A focus on Musharraf's presidential role, however, while certainly merited, fails to look at the other side of Musharraf's equation. Syed Saleem Shahzad, bureau chief for AsiaTimesOnline, looks at what's going on within the Pakistani army. His report suggests why Musharraf believes he must retain titular as well as de facto control of the "only organized institution" in Pakistan -- and it's not just to ensure his personal safety from further assassination attempts. Shahzad may share The Acorn's view that Musharraf has more control over things than is conventional wisdom, but it's a control that remains vulnerable and will take quite a bit more time and initiatives by Musharraf to consolidate.

Musharraf has forced Pakistan's military into an abrupt and wrenching U-turn. If Pakistan is to modernize and moderate its internal politics, and become less of a disruptive force externally, remaking Pakistian's military certainly must be at the top of the list of critical tasks. And let's be realistic about the process. It's going to be difficult and often violent. If the military in Turkey was the, frequently brutal, force for secularization and internal modernization, Pakistan's military has been built for leadership in "Muslim renaissance and pan-Islamism" as part of a strategy of "political hegemony" in South-Central Asia.

Shahzad sees it as a matter of "Purging Pakistan's jihadi legacy:"   more »

Ok, the election is done with, I'm already tired of debating how the Democrats should be reaching out to disaffected red staters — though for what it's worth, I think elrod in the Tacitus diaries has a pretty good premise for that, together with Mark Schmitt (see his entry after that too). Best of luck to the party as it rights itself and all that but any hopes that I might personally make some contribution to bridging the red state-blue state divide is pretty well wiped out by the fact that I'm still an elitist godless secular-humanist liberal even when I'm back home in Indiana, so I don't help much with the emerging consensus that we need to do some work on our collective brand image. But that's all beside the point! The point is I want to blog about something else right now, that ended up getting shelved until after the election like so much else.

I took Praktike's recommendation from a week or so ago and watched Frontline's piece on Rumsfeld's War. It really was a fascinating program to watch, and a complex one too since a lot of different threads seem to be at work: the title is somewhat deceptive because there are actually quite a few conflicts surrounding the Secretary of Defense presented within the program, any single one of which could probably merit a whole program of its own.   more »

Major provincial conflicts involving Muslims and majority ethnic or religious groups are hitting the news once again in Asia. This time in China. Martial law has been imposed in a rural portion of the central province of Henan after four days of ethnic clashes.

The fighting was between farmers of the country's ethnic Han majority and the Muslim Hui minority living in neighboring villages, as well as thousands of military police sent in to restore order. It appeared to be among the worst incidents of ethnic violence known to have taken place in China in recent years.

The latest unrest followed a clash this summer in a nearby village in which police fired rubber bullets at farmers protesting land seizures and anti-government rioting two weeks ago in the western city of Chongqing. The Henan fighting served as a stark reminder of the varied tensions tearing at this vast nation as it undergoes rapid social and economic change.

The situation in Thailand is becoming increasingly tense. As David Fulbrook writes in the Asia Times:

Thailand's own September 11 may be moving closer, accelerated by the government's tough but inept policy that is alienating moderate Muslims in the deep south, possibly opening the door to foreign hands. A brutal response by disgruntled Muslims to last week's carnage [the death of 78 Muslims detained in connection with riots] would severely test relations with Buddhist Thailand and Muslim-majority neighbors Indonesia and Malaysia, potentially fracturing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

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Although Senator Kerry deserves to be excoriated for allowing himself to be politically pressured into semi-supporting invasion with a force authorization vote, invading Iraq was nowhere near the political radar screen until Bush gave his disastrous Axis of Evil speech, the speech that set the wrong course for his Presidency and should set your lever-pulling course on Tuesday. The decision to invade and conquer Iraq was and is entirely the property of George W. Bush. It was probably the most disastrous foreign policy decision in our nation's history, and its author should not be given the opportunity to strike again.   more »

Whew! Via AP in Kiev:

Ukrainian prosecutors said Wednesday they had opened a criminal investigation into the alleged poisoning of a leading candidate in presidential elections scheduled for next month.

The candidate, former prime minister Viktor Yushchenko, became sick more than two weeks ago, and his campaign charged that he was poisoned by political opponents.    more »

Nadezhda has often complained that it's difficult to find good war reporting in the establishment press, which tends to focus at a higher level and relate every event to the presidential election.

Luckily, one news organization still has chops: Knight-Ridder's Washington Bureau.

Here's a great example of how it can be done.
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David Fox of Reuters has a story -- with a groan-inducing headline -- about how both Hamid Karzai and his chief electoral rivals, an alliance of Yunus Qanuni, the former education minister, and Defense Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim are trying to wrap themselves in Masood's martyrdom. The latter benefit from their status as Panjshiris who were close to Massood, although Karzai has received the endorsement of Ahmad Zia Masood, the brother of the slain mujahedin commander. Masood has become the John McCain of Afghanistan.

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