West awaits Musharraf's fate

Peter Preston, Guardian News Service, London

Here is one terrorist threat even Tony Blair doesn't need to vamp up. It is self-evidently real and ominously recurrent. If, one day soon, it claims its target, then the world of Bush and Blair -- plus their so-called war against Osama and chums -- will be rocked to its core. The peril couldn't be greater, the edifice more ripe for toppling. Yet somehow, when these bombs go off, we shrug and look away. Somehow we don't make the connections.

Consider the chill facts, though. Twice, during the 10 days before Christmas, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, has narrowly survived highly professional assassination attempts. First, the bridge he was traveling over near Islamabad was destroyed by five separate charges only seconds after his car made it to the other side. (An electronic blocking device in his limo bought him the fraction of time that saved his life.)

Then, as if to signal al-Qaeda's return to more tested methods, a Rawalpindi suicide attack killed 14 people and injured nearly 50. Musharraf, again, escaped by seconds. How many more lives does this president have left?

Not too many, perhaps. He wasn't, on either occasion, following an advertised route. He and his guards were proceeding privately from point A to point B. His would-be killers weren't leaning on a lamppost in case a nice little target passed by. They knew he was coming. They knew where to plant sophisticated explosives. Their intelligence was perfect. They have an inside track. If they keep to it, they'll surely get him in the end. Which is when the core really starts to rock.

Without Pakistan on board, Afghanistan cannot hold. Without Afghanistan, the campaign against terrorism turns to humiliation. Where's Osama? Somewhere in a cave near the border. Where are his men? Regrouping beyond the reach of the stretched forces George Bush has left behind. Musharraf, grimly pursuing his chosen course to the end, keeps Pakistan as the indispensable foundation of coalition activity. But what happens if he vanishes from the scene?

The bombers who try and try again aren't stupid. They've asked and answered that question, too. Pakistan hangs in a constitutional void. It has a president, self-selected and sanctified by a dodgy referendum. It doesn't have an anointed successor waiting to take over and carry on seamlessly if the worst happens, only a void.

By chance, in the Christmas days between assassination attempts, Musharraf concluded negotiations on a legal framework order that slots the details of his qualified return to democracy in place. He will, for instance, take off his military uniform for the last time at the close of next year. He'll become a sort of civilian.

But this deal has been concluded between his parliamentary mates and the rightwing Islamic parties who did so well in the elections. It snubs the two major and continuing parties of potential governance: The Pakistan People's party and the Muslim League. They're left outside while Musharraf wheels, deals and canoodles with the forces in his land most opposed to America, the war against terror and everything he himself stands for. He is either very brave or very stupid. Take him out of the equation and there is no center left to hold -- except, of course, the army.

But which self-promoting general, stepping in, is going to plonk his head on the same block? Which intelligence service hierarchy, riddled with the religious fervor President Zia ul-Haq introduced, is going to succor a Musharraf clone? The stakes could not be higher.

Pervez Musharraf, for all his evasions, is a pretty determined man. He has India's prime minister coming to town for talks about peace. He has chosen a necessary course and, by and large, sticks to it. But Washington and London, applauding benignly, can take absolutely nothing for granted. Here is a teeming country boasting its own brand new weapons of mass destruction. Knock one piece off the board (or blow up one bridge on time) and everything, including the nature of the finger on the button, changes.

Another 9/11 attack on the White House lawn -- or the back side of Downing Street? Maybe. The awful warnings of homeland security are always, rather hysterically, with us. But a calculating, canny Osama has a much easier and more tempting place to strike: And is doing just that. Pakistan is the frontline of 2004, with only one lonely (almost) ex-soldier guarding the gate. When the WMD go off there, then the connections engulf us all.