Pakistan: What's Next?

With the assasination last week of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, there is much handwringing as to what should be done next.

As to who killed Bhutto, the answer lies in another question: who has the most to gain from the death of Bhutto?

There are surely Islamic anarchists that delight in the downfall of the powerful, and Al Queda may be involved. I'm however not all that trusting of reports of intelligence intercepts that claim to prove that. Their motivation for assassinating someone who at the very minimum would be a thorn in the side of the existing regime as well as the United States seems shaky at best.

A stronger motivation is someone who is aligned with Pervez Musharraf in some way, as a way to re-ignite and justify Parkistan's state of seige. It could be someone within the military, the intelligence, a free lancer, or someone friendly to the existing government, perhaps from the United State's CIA or Britain's MI5. But I think it is unlikely that foreign intelligence was involved, as history has demonstrated that such actions randomize events and diminish the control they want to have on the unfolding of events.

Those within the Pakistan Muslim League and even Bhutto's own party the Pakistan People's Party might have their own byzantium motivations. Much less likely, the assasin might simply be an Oswald-like kook wanting to carve his name into history.

What the United States should do relative to this situation is nothing, although there is much temptation to meddle because of its importance as a nuclear power in proximity to other nuclear powers. Any interference in Pakistani politics could backfire horrendously. Our hope is that elections will confer legitimacy to the government, and a legimitately democratic government will be a friendly government to US interests. But this theory, or what I call the democratic fallacy, is disproven by regimes that are unfriendly to the US but still enjoy broad popular domestic support, such as Russia, Cuba, and Iran. It is not elections that confer legitimacy but security and stability. Accordingly, I think elections are going to be a sideshow, perhaps even an irrelevancy.

What will happen in my view is that the Mush-Bush regime will work out a modus vivendi with antagonsitic tribal leaders, including those who have terrorist ties, to establish in particular a secure Afghanistan-Pakisitan border and to prevent civil unrest from metasizing into political chaos that could compromsie control of Pakistan's nculear weapons. The upshot, I believe, is that there will be a low grade border war that continues indefinitely as well as a military dictatorship that continues indefinitely.