http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7366305.stm
'...[Pakistans] most feared militant commander, Baitullah Mehsud, has called a truce with the government amid reports of an impending peace deal.'
Thats almost certainly the guy who had Benazir Bhutto murdered by the way.
'In the past, when President Pervez Musharraf was the dominant political force, his governments signed a number of peace agreements with the militants but they only helped them to regroup and to carve out a sanctuary in Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal areas, along the border with Afghanistan.'
Meanwhile, large-scale military operations in Iraq are drawing to a close and the Taleban in many parts of Afghanistan are an endangered species, desperate and resorting to assassinations and suicide bombings because there is just no possibility for conventional military operations. What does that mean? It means its a very bad time to start cosying up to the head-hacker brigades. Just like Morocco used to be the hideout for the Barbary pirates, Pakistan is the home for all the worlds most violent and deranged jihadis, the clearing house for jihadis on their way to other battlefields and the most likely place on earth for jihadis to get their training. How the dufi in the Pakistani government think thats going to escape the attention of the US and its allies is a seriously interesting question.
The short (indeed only) answer is, it isn't. The Pakistani side of the North West Frontier is the focal point now for international terrorism; and therefore the United States. The Saudi's may be stumping up most of the money, but the guys who know how to blow stuff up and make jihadi videos are mainly up in those mountains. Local powers India and China are just as keen to see the US destroy the camps and hunt down the occupants as the US itself, as both have islamists operating in their borders, and don't want to see technology and skills transferred to them. So if the Pakistani government decide to line up with Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taleban they are walking into a world of hurt. They will be isolated and not even their nuclear arsenal will protect them- especially as that is what they will be deprived of first.
So what is their gambit? Do they have one? Or do they think that they are out of the woods already?
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