Tuesday, November 27, 2007

'Our' dictator gets away with it

By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

".....Musharraf's bungled approach has in fact accelerated what may be the partition of Pakistan - a cataclysmic event that would not be exactly regretted in Washington. Admiral William Fallon, US Central Command chief, has made a typical Bush administration "creative destruction" proposition to Musharraf: let us fight the Taliban in the tribal areas and in the Swat Valley. Musharraf might have been in trouble, but he's certainly not suicidal; that would lead directly to the partition of Pakistan.

Khaled Ahmed of the Friday Times newspaper has been one among many to alert what may happen: Pakistan reduced to basically the Punjab. The NWFP would gladly recover a lot of hydroelectric power. Balochistan would gladly recover a lot of gas - and become a Turkmenistan-style gas republic. And Sindh would gladly profit from its industry and ports.

The partition of Pakistan as we know it is not such a far-fetched scenario because, according to a wealth of Pakistani civil society's opinions, there seems to be no national consensus whatsoever regarding the current mega-crisis. This is above all a crisis of the Pakistani state - which simply cannot be in place any more just based on an idea of Islam.

Washington think-tanks will come up with piles of studies certifying how to profit from the partition of Pakistan......."

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