Rajan Menon on Pakistan

Outlines four possible scenarios:

1)Musharraf stays in and continues to lose legitimacy
2)Another general leads a coup
3)Civil war (State and violent hardline Islamists)
4)Musharraf-Bhutto Alliance.

None are good. And none make clear how to defeat the extremist elements and destroy their sanctuary, stop cross-border raids into Afghanistan.

clipped from newamerica.net A fourth possibility is a compact between Musharraf and the opposition political parties. The result would be an interim national unity government that schedules elections that would be held under terms acceptable to all sides and monitored by international observers to verify their fairness. Regrettably, Musharraf has spurned the moderate opposition parties rather than reaching out to them. For all their faults -- which include running inept and corrupt governments -- Pakistan’s democrats, whether secularists or moderate Muslims, regard the extremists as a dire threat (as does the majority of the public, despite its opposition to Musharraf’s participation in the White House’s "war on terror"). But the only plausible outcomes for Pakistan in its present state are bad, terrible, and uncertain ones. If anyone has a plan for a better result, it’s a good time to present it.