Pakistan News And Discussion-12

[ramana]

A couple of quotes from the Atlantic Monthly article
"After Musharraf"

After Musharraf

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Last November, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., brought together more than two dozen former high-level United States government officials to take part in a half-day exercise on the future of Pakistan.</b> In the room were former assistant secretaries of state and career ambassadors, as well as former senior officials from the Pentagon, the CIA, the Treasury, and USAID; it was a veritable who’s who of Washington’s Pakistan experts. <b>The sponsors presented an escalating series of fictional crises</b>—growing violence along the Pakistani-Afghan border, mass protests against the government by radical Islamists, the arrest of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto shortly after her return from exile—and asked participants how they would respond to rising chaos in the nuclear-armed state.

<b>The exercise culminated with this scenario:</b> In the aftermath of Pakistan’s national elections in late 2007, Taliban forces attempt to assassinate Afghan President Hamid Karzai, then retreat to a hideout in western Pakistan. U.S. forces pursue them, and an American soldier is taken captive in South Waziristan, a tribal region in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. As the kidnappers post video images of the hostage on the Internet, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf orders his army to attack the Taliban compound. The assault frees the American soldier, but leaves hundreds of militants, Pakistani troops, and civilians dead or wounded. Antigovernment riots spread across the country, peaking in a confrontation between civilians and Pakistani forces in Lahore that leaves a dozen people dead. That evening, in what looks like a coup attempt, troops surround the houses of both Musharraf and Shaukat Aziz, the prime minister. <b>Hours later, the U.S. ambassador receives a call from a previously unknown Pakistani two-star general,</b> “raising serious concerns,” according to the scenario playbook, “over whether the chain of command in Pakistan has remained intact.”<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->


And

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The groups were unable to resolve critical questions with confidence. <b>Though most agreed that the military would continue running the show, as it has for 33 of the last 60 years, there was widespread concern over whether the new army brass would likely be pro-American, anti-American, or something in between.</b> There was also <b>no consensus on whether the military—with Musharraf out of the picture—could hold the country.</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The nightmare scenario for U.S. policy makers—and one reason they remain heavily invested in Musharraf—is an Islamic revolution in Pakistan. A tide of anti-American sentiment, some analysts fear, could bring to power Islamists, who would give free rein to the Taliban, spread nuclear technology to rogue states and terrorist groups, and support the mujahideen in Kashmir. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

The belief here is that the Pakistani society is still an armed camp(kabila) still needing force to keep it together. The armed guards wont let any on ein or out. I had written this vision of the Pak society in one of my previous posts.

My thesis is that remove the armed guards and let the people develop roots and settle tdown. They must be tired after the long journey over the last millenium. Let them drop Urdu and adopt the regional languages_Punjabi, Sindhi, Balochi and Pashtu with English for globalization.


These are all winners and losers type of scenarios. And force the gameplayers to try to support the RATS no matter what happens. The US has not gamed any evolutionary scenarios.

India has faced a fundamentalist foe in West Pakistan through the millenia. A fundementalist takeover of TSP is a scenario that India can handle as it has to come to grips with the reality of the problem of Pakistan. This soft roll of the dice by the West where a Janus faced RATS are in charge with the West backing them is the fundamental problem for India.