Friday, July 13, 2007

Musharraf's Gambit

While Pakistanis are trying to sort out just how many people were killed and injured in the Lal Masjid siege, Musharraf is not waiting for the dust to settle after declaring that he would no longer tolerate the Islamists in his country and vowed to eliminate them. He's in the fight for his life.

Musharraf has sent 12,000 troops in to the Warizstan region, which has long been a hotbed of Islamists, Taliban and al Qaeda sympathizers.

Fighting continues around Pakistan as well.

In actuality, this is just the prelude to Musharraf's latest gambit. He had hoped to buy off the Taliban and Islamists by granting them semi autonomy, but the Islamists saw this as a sign of weakness and moved to impose Sharia on Islamabad, the capital, from their base of operations at the Lal Masjid.

Having failed to buy them off, he's realized that he's going to have to fight his way through.

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