But does he really think that he is irreplacable?

Having watched Musharraf speak in English with interviewers and in press conferences, my read is quite different.

Musharraf is saying that he could be replaced. And not by someone who’d make the effort to cooperate with the Coalition.

He speaks the truth to the extent that he operates in a more dangerous political landscape than we can imagine in our own mild land. He is on the frontlines, literally, even as he sits in his presidential office in Islmadad. Consider that his country shares a 1000km border with Iran (as well as complicated boundaries in the Arabian Sea), 2500km border with Afghanistan (which in the south includes a vast tri-country area with Iran), a mountainous and porous 500km border with China (and a nearby border with Tajikistan which itself shares a 1200km border with northern Afghanistan), as well as the famously militarized and politically unstable frontier with India.

One cannot fault the Pakistan President for impressing upon an Western audience the centrality of his country, and his government, and his control of that government’s various tentacles (official and unofficial).

Pakistan is an Islamic Republic. Almost all of its population is Muslim, although it is also an increasingly secularized and modernized population despite the reactionary politics of the major oppositon parties. The ultra extremists we are familair with via the pictures and the video of raucus street demonstrations.

Musharraf will see more of that stuff than we ever will here. He faces an legislative election campaign in 2007 in which his party may get shellacked, if things do not go well for the Taliban supporters along his western frontier.

Musharraf knows about military coups, as well, and he knows how to be as ruthless as the next ambitious up-and-comer. Note that he did make a distinction between Pakistan as an ally and the ISI as an ally.

In his brittle way he has pointed out that he, Musharraf, has done as much as can be expected, for now, and that as President he does not control all that happens within his country, or within his own government. Pakistan has democratic features but parts of the country are far more free-ranging than the Old West of American history.

So, yes, Pakistan is central and is the main ally that America has in the Afghanistan theatre. And, yes, if both the Pakistan government (and its military) AND the ISI are aligned against the Coalition, our cause there will be deeply undermined. There would be no neutrality. Today Musharraf is neutral-but-leaning-toward-the-West. If he goes, and he would be replaced by another regime that would probably not bother about the appearance of neutrality as far as the Taliban is concerned.

What he is trying to do is please too many factions and too many allies and too many internal forces. It is really quite remarkable that he has remained standing — with large scale support in the past referendum that extended his presidency by 5 years. This is owed as much to his being the least worst alternative in domestic politics as it is owed to his personal political base and its reach into various segments of Pakistan society. He rules from above, barely, and he governs via a matrix of thin pathways between the seemingly irreconciable factions across Pakistan. He is there, for now, because these factions prefer him to the alternatives.

In sum, he is pointing out that we, the Coaliton, have our eggs in one basket. And without being too explicit, although he’d probably like to state the obvious in unkind terms, his country is a basketcase, politically.

I read much frustration in his various interviews and press conferences. Too much is expected of him and he thinks we are nuts to keep pressing him for yet more.

He may be wrong. He might be able to do more. For now he is focussed on trying to disentengle large militias from al-Qaeda’s influence. If can weaken those ties, even stop them from growing further, he will have helped far more than many of his Western critiques might understand, today. On the other hand, we probably do need him to do more — given the crazy politics in our own country and the numbskill impatience that demands exit strategies and instant results.

Musharraf faces a more raw and violent political struggle in his country, but I think as supporters of the GWOT, most of us can at least empathize with Musharraf vis-a-vis our own exaberated experience with the Blame-America-First nutters and the Withdraw-Redeploy obstructionists in our own little piece of heaven on earth.

F. Rottles on October 2, 2006 at 2:00 AM