The US is definitely content with the resignation of Musharaf as President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, a country where Washington will now have to lose or win its lame war on terror. Why is the US content? The fact that Musharaf was slow at executing Washington’s orders to ‘eliminate’ Islamic militancy in his country became a turning point in the otherwise ‘brotherly’ relationship between Pakistan and the US.

This resistance by Musharaf, also known as Busharaf by many, was simply due to the knots that tied Musharaf to the presidency. He came to power in 1999 after a bloodless coup, overthrowing a thriving but corrupt democratic government headed by Nawaz Sharif. He quickly became the darling of the Army and of some of the Islamic groups – despite showing off his dogs – and being known for his drinking habits. He was well received by a majority of the Pakistani people who saw Sharif as the embodiment of a corrupt regime that did not move things fast enough for the people.

Musharaf is an ego centric politician who knows that he carries weight in his country and in America. This lead to the greed and the thirst to clinch to power that turned Musharaf into a personality suffering from narcissism. He thought that Pakistan will not survive without him and professed his beliefs that ‘Pakistan is Me’ and ‘I am Pakistan’ in reminiscence of the old French saying ‘L’etat C’est Moi’.

Now that he has left, Pakistan is still standing but it is no better than it was before Musharaf took power illegally in 1999. It has indeed deteriorated since it became the pawn in Washington’s deadly game of hunting down Muslim Militants and Mujahideen fighters who are politically and fundamentally anti-American.

The Washington elite had earlier this year sent in Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of a beloved but former President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who ended up hanged for corruption and for other wrong doings in the 1970’s. Benazir was to replace Musharaf at the presidency in Pakistan and this would have helped the cause of the US in the country and in the region in the midst of the rising crisis in Afghanistan.

The Americans had understood that they had miscalculated the power of the Talibans and had entered Iraq only to their detriment and in response to their own ‘empirical’ egoism. Iraq has damaged the US enough but it is Afghanistan that was the real game player that the US should have handled with care and more military actions than Iraq. Opening a new war zone in Iraq was more to the advantage of Iran and Mujahideen fighters who were waiting for an opportunity to see relief in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan was an easy, far too easy battle for the US in 2001. It was helped largely by groups that opposed the Taliban composed mostly of the little army of the Northern Alliance reinforced by the military might of drug dealers and war lords from both Afghan and Tajik origins. The amalgam of anti-Taliban forces helped the US pierce through the Taliban ranks and conquer Afghanistan after a rather one sided battle. The ease of the victory over the Taliban reinforced the egoism of the Americans and the British governments and made believe Iraq would be a similar success story.

The apparent clam that followed the American success in Afghanistan with the Taliban being all but beaten and gone or diminished into a mini-force, the Americans brought in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) forces to have a training ground for its soldiers. It then attacked Iraq with Musharaf looking from the distance, approving of the Iraqi incursions by the Americans but happy that Afghanistan was not a pressure cooker ready to explode under his wide opened eyes.

It was too rosy for Musharaf who had discounted his own Intelligentsia which had other plans than seeing Afghanistan fall into slumber and become another ‘occupied’ Muslim territory.  The ISI was supporting the Taliban to regroup, feeding it intelligentsia on when to attack and how to carry out the attacks in Afghanistan. The ISI is indeed infiltrated by western intelligentsia but the western spies were being fed with the wrong information in order to keep the US away from Afghanistan and from Pakistan’s politics. The ISI succeeded largely and is today blamed for the resurgence of the Taliban and what the west calls Islamic extremists and militancy in Pakistan.

Musharaf another pawn in US wars

The Americans were largely successful in 2001 due to the Pakistani silence on the American decision to attack Afghanistan. The ISI knew that the Americans would not be able to control the country fully and that it would have a free hand in molding the future of Afghanistan. The other success rate of the US in the 2001 war was its association with a ramshackle group of warriors and fighters. Dealing with drugs dealers, growers and war lords amid other criminals to win a war against the Taliban had taught the US something: That you cannot trust the Mafia.

Today the mafia is rallying some of its forces to re-join a resurging Taliban force and attack US and Nato forces in Afghanistan. The US generals however failed to understand that the mafia is on your side only when you are on their side. The Afghanistan mafia was very reliable to the Americans in carrying out ‘CIA’ ops and helping CIA spies enter Afghanistan before and during the war in 2001. The relationship between the Afghan drug and trafficking mafia with the Americans turned sour and deadly after the Americans started to target the opium dealers and growers.

This started to cut off the profits and ruin the business of the war lords and of the gangsters who were running a quarter of the country while the Taliban was slowly creeping into the control of half of Afghanistan. Musharaf was bemused by the Taliban situation, hoping that the country would fall into Pakistan’s lap and would become the ultimate Pakistani prize once it become a left-over of the US war on terrorism.

The intel services of Pakistan was active in helping the Taliban in Pakistan and in Afghanistan in their rise. The Taliban would never have done its conquest of large parts of Afghanistan had the US been there firmly to prevent them from reappearing. Yet the ISI was clever enough to let the Americans and the CIA indeed believe that it was in absolute control of the situation in Pakistan and that the Taliban was at a lost, broken down for good. However, the aim of the ISI was to reduce the pressure that a strong Afghanistan government would have created against the Taliban. This would have resulted in the Taliban spilling into vast areas of Pakistan, uncontrolled, and would have destabilized Pakistan.

Eventually, the Taliban grew smarter and not only recaptured large areas of its own territory left in 2001 in Afghanistan but also affirming its authority in the Pakistani North West Frontier Territory where most of its support came from well before its capture of Afghanistan after the Soviet defeat. Today the Taliban is effectively controlling – thanks to the ISI – a large section of the Northern Frontier of Pakistan and the south-eastern regions of Afghanistan. The US wanted to bring the war to the Afghans in these regions but Musharaf was very reluctant for two reasons. The backlash of the Lal Masjid massacre had made him trapped into his own shoes in his presidential palace and the possibility of an impeachment in the event he allows US troops on Pakistani land.

The impeachment efforts came after the relentless killing of civilians – from cruise missiles and stealth bombers – of the US army and this tarnished Musharaf’s image even further among the newly formed coalition government in the Parliament. Incidentally it is the party of bereaved Benazir that initiated the move to impeach Musharaf and this was done with the complacency of the Bush regime in Washington.

The aim of removing Musharaf is primarily to give the US a larger control of the military in the country and to allow its troops to enter the country and deal with insurgents and the Taliban in the North West Provinces and Waziristan. It is also part of the ongoing efforts by Washington to overrun the Taliban in Afghanistan. The question is how will the US succeed with Musharaf out of the picture?

The answer is as quick as that. The coronation of Benazir’s husband Mirza as President of Pakistan! This is the reason why the US nodded in approval for the removal of Musharaf and accepted his resignation without much ado. And this coronation of a new president will be the arch bearer for the US in its flinching war against Islamic mujahideen who are today the major cause of concern for the Americans. The Mujahideen were responsible, largely enough , for the 30,000 wounded US soldiers in Iraq and the 5000 US deaths in the home country of Saddam Hussein.

The Mujahideen are also responsible for at least 1000 American deaths and numerous more wounded in Afghanistan. They have to be stopped at all cost by Washington – this is the thinking that we can get from the White House. If Washington fails to deal a severe blow to the Mujahideen and the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Republican party will lose everything in the upcoming crucial Senatorial, Gubernatorial and Presidential elections in the US in November 2008.

Musharaf now not important anymore to be used as a scapegoat for the US to advance its cause against islam, he is chunked away and his high and mighty image is destroyed by a rogue Parliament that would have impeached and possibly jailed him if he did not resign willingly. This is the end of an era, the end of Musharaf.