Bhutto had recently returned to Pakistan to challenge (or perhaps ally) with current President Pervez Musharraf.  Elections for Parliament were two weeks away, and she had been busy on the campaign trail.

This is yet another blow for stability for the crippled South Asian country, another page of history written in blood.

Pakistan’s torrid young history reflects a great deal of power struggle and conflict.  It has been the center of intrigue, both internal and foreign.  On the road to Afghanistan, connecting India and China, its leaders have allowed the country to be used for the interests of the powerful.  Its people have suffered, and its leaders have died.  So the sad story is written, and will continue, until the country changes or one day explodes.

Using his emergency powers, Musharraf sacked his chief political rival, the Chief Justice of the Pakistani Supreme Court, and replaced him with a loyalist. The Supreme Court was in the process of deciding whether Musharraf’s election last month for another five years in office was valid.

It is unclear what Musharraf’s plans are, and there is no news whether he intends to permit parliamentary elections in January.

Born from the blood of the Partition of India, stability for Pakistan has been elusive. The country’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, died soon after the country was formed, and Pakistan has lurched from dictatorship to dictatorship ever since. While its estranged sibling India has had a great deal of success with parliamentary democracy, Pakistan has been held rival to the competing interests of small factional elites, who have fought for control of the country to the detriment of the common Pakistani.

This instability and military domination made it a prime candidate for American involvement, and Pakistan has enjoyed close relations with the United States for some time. As a chief ally on the “war on terror,” Musharraf has been walking a tightrope between the needs of America and the violent reactions engendered by Western interference — especially Muslim extremism. Pakistan’s frontier areas — places like Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province — are largely autonomous, as any meddling from Musharraf would lead to a bloodbath between tribal forces and the Pakistani government.

Pakistan, as well, is the only predominantly Muslim country with nuclear weapons. This element alone magnifies the country’s instability by many orders of magnitude.

The fate of the country is now in the hands of Musharraf. Historically speaking, Western interference in South Asia — the colonization of India, followed by its partition — has led directly to this crisis. It may be odd to think of a problem in terms of centuries, but it would be fictitious to pretend that the troubles of the Pakistani state had any other source. Now, that meddling has created a dictator who must fend of Muslim extremists while attempting to guard a nuclear arsenal.

In the meantime, America occupies Iraq and threatens Iran. It seems there are important lessons that some countries have yet to learn about involving themselves in the affairs of others.  The seeds of the current crisis in Pakistan were planted 60 years ago.  What seeds is America planting in the bloody Iraqi sands right now?

THE US has indicated for the first time that it might be willing to back plans by elite echelons of the military in Islamabad to oust Pervez Musharraf from power, as the Pakistani President was beset by major new difficulties over his attempts to sack the country’s chief justice.

Reports yesterday quoting highly placed US diplomatic and intelligence officials – previously rusted on to the view that General Musharraf was an indispensable Western ally in the battle against terrorism – outlined a succession plan to replace him.US officials told The New York Times the plan would see the Vice-Chief of the Army, Ahsan Saleem Hyat, take over from General Musharraf as head of the military and former banker Mohammedmian Soomro installed as president, with General Hyat wielding most of the power.

In naming these countries as enemies, President Bush gave them an incentive to take every opportunity to defy the will of the United States.

Four years later, the results of this policy are too horrendous to hide. The American military finds itself bogged down in Iraq; meanwhile, North Korea tests a nuclear weapon, and Iran looks set to pursue its own nuclear program.

This is the fate of all empires: it declares every potential opponent an enemy, and in doing so, ultimately finds itself surrounded by nations that bear nothing but ill-will towards it.

In the case of America, the invasion of Iraq has proved to be the most disastrous event in the history of the republic. We named three countries as enemies, attempted to take over one, failed miserably, and now find ourselves completely vulnerable to the ambitions of the two remaining countries.

The ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu, writing 2500 years ago, observed that the art of war was a “way of deception”: to be obvious in one’s attack would allow the enemy to prepare for the invasion. This is why North Korea and Iran seek nuclear capabilities — because they know that America will not be able to attack them with a nuclear deterrent. North Korea’s bargaining position against the United States is stronger with the atomic bomb than it has ever been in history.

General Sun’s writings also contain a stark warning for the empire which insists on never-ending war:

In War,

Victory should be

Swift.

If victory is slow,

Men tire,

Morale sags.

Sieges

Exhaust strength;

Protacted campaings

Strain the public treasury.

No nation has ever benefited

From a protacted war.

The United States will be no exception to these ancient rules.

There appears to be no motive for the attack, and no individual or group has claimed responsibility. The original prime suspects — Lashkar-e-Toiba and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Muslim separatist groups based in Kashmir — have denied any involvement. A spokesman purporting to be from Lashkar-e-Taiba told reporters that the attacks were “inhuman and barbaric acts.”

The bombings were an extremely intricate affair and could not have been pulled off by amateurs. CNN is reporting that the bombers hid their timers in pencils and used a military explosive known as RDX.

These bombings hit me quite personally, I suppose in a similar way that the London terror bus bombings (”7/7″) affected many Americans. No doubt there is a cultural and racial barrier which prevents some Westerners from empathizing with these victims — brown-people-killing-brown-people type of thing, or something like that.

But we all ought to pay attention, because the timing and execution of the attack hint at a sophisticated operation which almost assuredly required expertise in explosives and sabatoge. This was not the work of some “disenchanted jihadis”, which has become the standard answer for every terrorist attack. There is something much deeper at work here, and I hope that over the next few weeks more light will be shed on why someone decided to blow up commuter trains in Mumbai.