Pakistan

The Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Senator Joe Biden, has drawn up an excellent long-term plan for the United States to help Pakistan economically, thereby strengthening the state against Islamist extremism.

Given all this, one might ask whether it was worth getting rid of Mr Musharraf. Although he too pursued an alliance with the US, he was at least personally honest, whereas Mr Zardari is widely known as “Mr Ten Per Cent”, because of his behaviour when his wife was Prime Minister in the 1990s.

This month marks 20 years since al-Qaeda was founded in the Pakistani border city of Peshawar by Osama bin Laden and a handful of veterans of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and the group is more famous and feared than ever. But its grand project – to transform the Muslim world into a militant Islamist caliphate – has been, by any measure, a resounding failure.

Opening the papers in Pakistan this morning, two French maxims came to mind. The first is that “every man has to digest a toad every day before breakfast.” This thought was inspired by the front page news that the next President of Pakistan will most probably be Asif Ali Zardari, widower of the late Benazir Bhutto, and widely known among both Pakistanis and Westerners here as “Mr.

A survey carried out last May for the New America Foundation revealed that 28 per cent of Pakistanis favour a military role in politic, as compared to 45 per cent in August 2007; that 52 per cent regard the US as responsible for the violence in Pakistan; that 74 per cent oppose the "war against terror" in Afghanistan. LINK

...[Ambassador] Haqqani, speaking at the New America Foundation, said that Pakistan's powerful military establishment did not play any political role behind the scenes of Musharraf's resignation. However, he said, military chiefs did refuse to block impeachment moves against Musharraf that had been gaining strength in Pakistan's parliament—a rebuff to Musharraf and a sign that the coup-prone Pakistani military may be accepting a new role for itself.

Ambassador Husain Haqqani will discuss the current situation in Pakistan.

Near the end of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's resignation speech, the former commando's voice quavered, and it seemed he might break down on-screen. The address, broadcast live, had lasted roughly an hour. During the first part, Musharraf rehashed some of his achievements since seizing power in a coup almost nine years ago. These included resuscitating an economy on the verge of bankruptcy and turning Pakistan into a leading ally in the war on terror.

CAMPBELL BROWN: Tonight, a trusted ally in the war on terror is gone. In his place, a nuclear-armed nation some fear may be falling deeper into chaos.

Threatened with impeachment, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf resigned today. To the White House, the former military man was a close partner against al Qaeda and the enemy. But to his people, Musharraf was corrupt.

With Musharraf stepping down, the threat is that extremists will take control of Pakistan, creating a dangerous new threat for the U.S.

This afternoon, not long after Pervez Musharraf announced that he'd had his fill after almost nine years of ruling Pakistan, I wandered across Islamabad, to the headquarters of the Pakistan People's Party. The headquarters, which include a residence and a secretariat, are referred to collectively as the Zardari House, named after Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto's widow. The Zardari House has been the nerve center for the push to oust Musharraf over the past year.