Vol. 72/No. 9      March 3, 2008

President Pervez Musharraf was resoundingly defeated. The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) won 80 seats; the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), 66; and Musharraf’s party, only 38. Musharraf conceded. Shares rose 3 percent on Pakistan’s main stock market.

In the northwestern part of the country near the Afghanistan border, where Taliban and al-Qaeda forces are active, secular, anti-Taliban parties had won about two-thirds of the vote with half the tally in. The results were an upset for the pro-Taliban coalition that has ruled the North-West Frontier Province.

U.S. State Department spokesman Nicole Thompson said the election was “an important step on the path towards an elected, civilian democracy.”

Democrat Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was in Pakistan for the elections as part of a U.S. Senate delegation. He praised the role of Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in assuring the elections went smoothly and said that Kayani appeared to be a promising partner for the United States, according to the New York Times. Democrats have long criticized the Bush administration for not devoting more military resources to the war in Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan.

Although Musharraf has been a firm U.S. ally in the “war on terror,” Washington increasingly saw his growing isolation as threatening the stability of the Pakistani government and undermining U.S. efforts to eliminate Taliban and al-Qaeda forces.

In an effort to give his regime more legitimacy, Washington encouraged the decision of Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister and leader of the PPP, to return from exile last year, with the goal of entering into a coalition government with Musharraf. On November 25, Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister Musharraf overthrew in 1999 and leader of the PML-N, was also allowed to return from exile. Three days later, Musharraf stepped down as head of the army, passing the torch to General Kayani. A former aide to Bhutto, Kayani used to head Pakistan’s intelligence services. He was trained extensively at U.S. military schools.

Bhutto was assassinated December 27 in Rawalpindi. Pakistani authorities announced February 17 that four suspects arrested said Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, who has links to al-Qaeda, ordered the killing.  
 
Fighting on Afghan border
Pakistani troops appear to be making progress in tackling the Taliban and al-Qaeda bases along the border. On February 11 Mansour Dadullah, head of Taliban fighters in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, was captured by Pakistani troops in southwestern Pakistan. That same day Imad Mughniyeh, chief of operations for Hezbollah in Lebanon, was killed in Damascus, Syria, by a car bomb thought to be planted by Israeli agents.

On February 17 a suicide bomb killed more than 100 people in southern Afghanistan in the largest such attack since the Taliban was overthrown seven years ago. Last year was the highest for U.S. casualties since the war in Afghanistan began.

The United States has the largest proportion—about 15,000—of the 43,000 NATO troops currently fighting in Afghanistan. NATO commander U.S. Gen. Daniel McNeil has called for 7,000 more soldiers. London, which has 7,800 soldiers in the country now, says it will send 600 more in May.

Ottawa says it will pull all its troops out next year unless 1,000 more troops are added by NATO. A February 18 attack on a Canadian convoy in southern Afghanistan killed 37 people. None were NATO troops.  
 
War in Iraq
Meanwhile, Iraq’s parliament passed a bill February 13 to hold provincial elections by October 1. It is asking the United Nations to play the major role in organizing and supervising the voting.

U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates, in a recent trip to Baghdad, told reporters he favors a pause in withdrawing more U.S. troops from Iraq after reductions already planned bring the total number down from 155,000 to 130,000 by late summer. Gates called for “a brief period of consolidation and evaluation” before further withdrawals are made. He made his comments after meeting with Gen. David Petraeus, who has already proposed a pause.  
 
 
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