Pakistan's 'jihadi option' threatens regional peace

[varun]

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/060716/1/424gb.html

..."Musharraf and his government have not totally abandoned the jihadi option," Samina Ahmed, South Asia project director for the International Crisis Group, told AFP...

...Musharraf pledged to crack down on madrassas and expel foreign students after claims that some the July 7, 2005 London bombers studied in them. But most of the foreigners remain and almost no madrassas have been closed.

Others are more sceptical about whether Pakistan really wants to lose its influence on the jihadi groups, seeing the ongoing insurgency in Kashmir as a means of keeping pressure on New Delhi to pursue the peace process.

Pakistan's enemies -- and also its friends -- have long been suspicious about whether its powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has dropped its backing for several of the militant organisations...

[mmonk]

1. Like financing Atta.

[Igel]

2. Musharraf's in a tough spot.

I'm not sure he approves of what he's forced to do. But he's very close to having a few civil wars in his country: one ethnic, one sectarian, and one that merges the two in a hellish way.

He's exerted more military control over the NWFP than any previous Pakistani leader, and it hasn't gone well. He's tried to exert control over the educational establishment, and that's gone even less well. The advocates of the local brand of the religion of peace staged near riots when "religion" was removed as a line in the Pakistani passport; they went bonkers when it was plan to merely downplay the teaching of the jihadi verses of the Qur'an (the religious minorities must love having to study the Qur'an, esp. the parts saying how wonderful Islam is and how corrupt the other religions are and how perverse their adherents).

The ISI is still only partially under his control. It's the Iraq problem: for a military dictator, Musharraf is a milquetoast. And when everybody puts their sectarian or tribal interests above any kind of compromise, or when compromises and agreements are mere cover for advancing your cause, there is no social compact worth spit. You get order with a real dictator; you get varying degrees of chaos otherwise.