Pervez Musharraf steps down
As he faced the imminent impeachment, President Musharraf of Pakistan today resigned citing the best interest of the Pakistani nation. He is replaced by Mohd. Soomro – his loyalist.
Nawaz Sharif and some others are obviously aiming for his blood to avenge the throwing out that happened when Musharraf came in (Oct 1999).
I wonder where is Pakistan headed now. The current crop of these politicians are not only weak and corrupt but cannot withstand the onslaught of the Army. Hence, echoing a friend’s sentiments, I would say that we will see a coup very soon. I will be shocked if any party can even finish half its term. No political party in Pakistan has ever completed a full term anyways.
Musharraf brought to Pakistan a realistic and pragmatic (although insincere) look at the world polity. His undoing was that he wanted to preserve his country as well as keep its terror infrastructure intact. He, very skillfully handled the pressure on Taliban and ISI and others to give out nothing to the US. Sheikh Sayeed, the Daniel Pearl mastermind and one who had wired $100k to Mohd. Atta (9-11 terrorist), has been kept out of reach as was the mastermind of the largest Nuke bazaar – AQ Khan. Nawaz Sharif or Zaradari would not have had the guts to do it. And if they were at the helm and had not saved these entities, a coup was imminent.
The worst case scenario that I see in the next 5 years is that there will be a coup after failure and US will come up with a good excuse to eliminate the nukes from Pakistan. People of Pakistan are very unhappy, but after Musharraf, I see the country descending into Iraq like situation – a free for all! That will have terrrible ramifications for India as well!
I just hope the Indian government is smart enough to cut out the negative effects of the total unstability that Pakistan is seeing and will see for years to come. Basically India’s success is when Pakistan’s economy is good – for then people will be busy becoming better economically and go less and less towards terrorism.