By Peter Preston (THE GUARDIAN, 08/05/06):
Are you sitting uncomfortably as the bad news pours in from Basra and points east? That's the trouble with "failed states". They keep on failing. Just scan the top 10 in the global basket-case championship, as nominated last week by the learned American journal Foreign Policy. Iraq is there, of course, along with Somalia, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Chad, Haiti and our old friend Afghanistan. Wait a minute, that's only nine.
The extra failed state on the list - and, at number nine, its fastest riser - is axiomatically Islamic, chronically violent, a terrorist training ground prone to stumble into wars with its neighbours, and run by an increasingly beleaguered man in uniform. And it already has the bomb - tested and ready to blast. Stop posturing over Tehran for a moment, can't you? Welcome to Pakistan.
Too alarmist? Well, the state department came fast out of the traps claiming to see success, not failure. General Musharraf is a fine, stable chap to do business with. But always listen hardest to the people out there on the ground - and writing outraged editorials for serious local papers like Dawn. How dare these US policy wonks slander us so?
Of course Pakistan is trapped in "religious nationalism" and perennial conflicts, they admit; of course 40% of its biggest province has no proper policing system; of course 27,000 square miles of tribal territory operates its own revenge code for crimes - and 850 miles of border in the south is acknowledged dacoit land. Of course more than half of Pakistan is without proper writ of the law. But this isn't new. It's old chaos as usual. How dare outsiders see failure?
And that - remember - is the case for the defence, a beating of patriotic drums. It just leaves out a few difficult things. It forgets that 2007 is election year and that visiting administration officials such as Richard Boucher "want to see Pakistan a more democratic society" - echoing your own insistence on "free, fair elections", Ms Rice. It forgets that (in the words of the American who ran the CIA's anti-al-Qaida unit) pushing the general "to do the US's dirty work against his country's national interest" could see him toppled. When America drove him to send troops into tribal no man's land, writes Michael Schueur, "it created a heaven-sent environment for Pakistan's enemies to fuel the Pashtun fire against the army".
Ask yourselves: why has Musharraf suddenly begun to try to distance himself from Big Brother Washington? Because he thinks he must. Because crass incidents - such as January's botched US air raid that killed 18 innocent villagers - back him into a desperate corner. And, perhaps, because he senses he's becoming dispensable.
Some other US thinktank findings got big play in Pakistan the other day: those Stratfor commentaries that said the general's "usefulness to the US was fast becoming negligible". Apparently Washington now "believes it does not need Musharraf at the helm to continue to prosecute its struggle against militant Islam"... and, moreover, "likely feels Musharraf is no longer able to keep domestic affairs in order".
The big question is whether any of you are thinking clearly enough - or at all. You're keen on democracy, because that's policy. But you're not always keen on its results, because that's Hamas. You've propped up Musharraf because he could help you catch Osama. But he hasn't. And now, surely, he's sinking. Just listen to those tame friends in parliament trying to re-elect him early for another five years so they can use their existing majority to let him hang on. It doesn't say much for their prospects at the polls. It's another great warning sign.
The point about Pakistan - as even Dawn admits - is "its inability to sustain a democratic functional order". That means the politicians like Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif come and go. But it also makes the army the continuing power broker: hugely influential and expensive, determined to keep its privileges and clout whatever happens. That's why the general is president now. It is also why he could be out on his ear.
Who helped invent the Taliban, for paradise's sake? Who fears India's increasing influence in Kabul and resents the way America cuddles closer to New Delhi? Whose sabres rattle loudest in Kashmir? There are no each-way bets on men in braid. There is no substitute for freedom relentlessly championed. You want the big picture seen clear, you say? Then this - in success or failure - is it.