As you've probably heard by now, Musharraf has declared martial law in Pakistan. (Well, he calls it "Emergency Rule. Same thing, when you suspend the constitution.) The judiciary was about to rule that Musharraf couldn't have run for president while also chief of the army. He is going to completely purge them, and has taken 8 of the supreme court justices into custody. Word is also that the US greenlighted this, and that Musharaff will be moving the army en-masse against the northern tribal areas to route out support for al-Qaeda. Bhutto may also have been complicit (anyone who thinks Bhutto is anything but scum is quite mistaken) and may wind up in some sort of power sharing deal. Or she may turn on Musharraf, if she thinks he's weak enough.

The real question here is whether the army will break when used against the northern tribal areas. The army is the key institution in Pakistan and holds the country together, but a lot of the lower officer corp and the line troops seem very unhappy to be used to fight their own countrymen and their allies (remember, the Taliban was a Pakistani
creation) at the behest of the United States.

I have no real sense of what will happen, because I have no firm sense of whether the army will break or not. If it does it will probably be a Colonels revolt, not a Generals revolt.

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