A day late, but still you should read this: Musharraf to US: "Put up or Shut up."

Musharraf to US: "Put up or Shut up."

By: Bernard Chazelle

Not having Bill Kristol's crystal ball, I won't attempt to predict what will happen to our friendly dictator Musharraf. But this much is clear: the US has once again put itself in a lose-lose situation. Here is why:

1. It took two years for the Bush administration to engineer the Musharraf-Bhutto power-sharing agreement and one week for Musharraf to kill it. Benazir Bhutto is now thoroughly discredited: unable or unwilling to mount massive protests, she is viewed as a tepid triangulator with the heart of a kleptocrat - her husband was not named "Mr 10 percent" for nothing. The Army hates her and even her supporters are having second thoughts.

2. In Pakistan, what the Army wants, the Army gets. As Tony Karon reminds us, the military owns a third of the economy. The only serious threat to Musharraf's power might come from some disgruntled general (like the deputy head of the Armed Forces, Ashfaq Kiyani, who enjoys strong US support). Musharraf's coziness with the US has not endeared him to all corners of the Armed Forces. But the military chain of command is disciplined and the likelihood of an internal coup is slim.

3. Support for US policy is nonexistent among the people and increasingly thin among military leaders. There are two reasons for the latter: one is that the US has denied its old ally, Pakistan, the nuclear deal it has offered (unsuccessfully so far) to its new ally, India. The other is that the US is pushing the Pakistani army to fight a war that it is losing - and losing badly - not just in the tribal belt but in Pakistan proper. While Musharraf was busy rounding up lawyers in Islamabad, he was releasing top Taliban leaders from jail, including Mullah Omar's third in command. Why? Because 250 Pakistani troops had been captured by tribal militants without firing a single shot. No one in Pakistan wants - or knows how - to fight Bush's "war on terror." Fighting is supposed to take place on the other side of the country: For many Pakistani, it is obvious that Bush read the map upside down.

4. Lord Bush of Khyber has nowhere to go. His Bhutto gamble has failed and he has liittle leverage left over Islamabad. Musharraf, on the other hand, can at any time instruct his troops to leave the tribal militants alone and expose the utter disaster that has been Bush's Pakistan policy. Or he can launch a new offensive to please Washington. He gets to call the shots. Musharraf's cockiness after talking to Negroponte, "Washington is 200 per cent behind me," suggests he knows who is the pro in the room and who is the amateur.

Our friendly dictator still has a few tricks up his sleeves. So who knows what happens next? Just two things you can count on not changing any time soon: Pakistan's enduring sorrow and Kristol's bovine smirk.