Whiplash Musharraf Rides Again

The latest entrant into the Whiplash series is Pervez Musharraf, whose dithering in dealing with the Islamists is punctuated by vacillating between crackdowns and appeasement.

Today, he's going with appeasement.

More than 3,000 people jailed under emergency rule have been released, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday, the latest sign that President Gen. Pervez Musharraf was rolling back some of the harsher measures taken against his opponents.

The only thing his enemies know is that Musharraf cannot take definitive actions against the Islamists because he will inevitably return to the appeasement direction. Therefore, they take comfort in knowing that they can outlast Musharraf and have a chance some time into the future.

The Islamists are playing a long game - not in weeks or months, but in terms of years and decades. They are willing to wait out their enemies.