Deadly Dominoes

As goes one troubled, terror-fraught country, there goes the next. Tumbling, one following the other in a display of inchoate surrender to the final authority of Islamist fundamentalists intent on up-ending all the democratically-inspired advances that weak economies and fragile political systems have managed to present to their people, groaning under the burden of underprivilege, wavering on the edge of intolerant Islamism.

Pakistan is a populous country whose demographics are inclusive of liberal, western thinkers, restive fundamentalist warlords, plaintively democracy-resistant Muslim faithful, and corruption-ridden bureaucratic functionaries, civil servants and high-placed armed forces personnel all espousing their own agendas for self-enrichment to the detriment of the huge and political-weary electorate.

Moreover, Pakistanis in general, while fighting their own internal dissent and the very real threat feared by the more progressive among them of an Islamist coup following a civil war, want no part in the current government's tenuous alliance with the interests of the West. There is a broad agreement among Pakistans that their government should not be assisting in the global war on terror.

Even while their own country presents as the originator, the template, the breeding ground for virulent fundamentalism expressing itself in the call to global Islamist jihad. While the government of Pervez Musharraf is nominally aligned with Western interests, it has seen fit, like its predecessors, to placate the tribal areas supporting the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as long as attacks on Pakistan are forestalled.

Pakistan's military and its government is itself well riddled through with jihadist sympathizers and adherents, and the tender balance is a difficult one to maintain, so the party of Mr. Musharraf is in a tight place, refusing outright to allow foreign troops to enter the troubled border region for fear of an uncontainable backlash. Regardless, support for the PML-Q is at the vanishing point.

And, according to Tahir Amin, professor of international relations at Islamabad's Quaid-a-Azam University, "The more that the U.S. and western powers insist on retaining Pervez Musharraf as president, the crisis in our political system will continue." That's a really hard place to be in; without Musharraf in place the limited alliance will fail.

And as goes Pakistan, so goes Afghanistan; the spread and the ascendancy of fundamentalist Islam will be unstoppable, and so much for the UN-NATO presence in Afghanistan; a fruitless and certain-to-failure effort gone awry. The promised 'free and fair' elections don't look as though they'll become reality in this desperate political landscape.

The admonition that "You are playing with the peace of the world" expressed by a weak and vexed President Musharraf, cannot fall on deaf ears, yet is does, since his own people want to be rid of him and certainly will not vote to further his aspirations to remain in charge of the country. With his absence, it's certain the Pakistan army will no longer respond to U.S. urging to pursue the border presence of Taliban and al-Qaeda.

All the rioting, kidnapping and suicide bombings taking place in the country, in the months leading up to the election - inclusive of the assassination of Mr. Musharraf's leading political opponent - hasn't endeared him any more to the electorate. Much less the certain knowledge that he has designed an election that has been rigged to favour him.

Pakistan knows what it faces. It does not, however, know how to face up to its own rescue. "The future of Afghanistan lies with Pakistan and the security of Pakistan affects the security of the United States." So claimed Mohsin Raza Khan, director of ARY News, Pakistan's second most-watched newscast.

There is a real and growing awareness that if Monday's ballot results in riots the opportunity for that to ripen into an outright civil war might very well further destabilize the country toward complete collapse. And that, domino-effect-wise, would most certainly "affect the whole world".