POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY THE DAILY TELEGRAPH'S PETER FOSTER
Musharraf has already lost his Western sponsors (READ: The United States), and it wasn't because of television or judges.
We only have hints here and there, but it is clear that the U.S. has put him under tremendous pressure.
Recall the bombing of the madrassa, killing about eighty young people? It was the U.S. in its typical 'bomb now ask questions later' approach. It was Musharraf's job to accept responsibility for it.
The border with Afghanistan is a situation that the comfortable, steak-fed neo-cons, gazing at wall maps in Washington, cannot accept.
They simply do not understand it. Neither does much of the public.
The Durand Line, separating Pakistan and Afghanistan, was an artificial border created by Britain, never reviewed later as it was supposed to be, separating what is largely a single tribal group, millions of them on both side of the 'border,' the group from which the Taleban gets its strength.
The immensely complex realities and implications of this situation are why Pakistani intelligence was involved with al Qaeda from early on.
Musharraf is expected to just close the border and bomb all the bad guys. No one in Washington accepts the realities there, they only care about the political realities of Washington.
