Pakistan is Destabilizing Under Failed Bush Afghanistan Policy

Juan Cole has a new group blog with in depth foreign affairs analysis. The lastest post was a historical essay on the development of Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan. Noting that Pakistan seems to be destabilizing with Musharraf as weak as ever, the author speculates that the confrontation at the Red Mosque was a convenient distraction from the dissatisfaction with the Musharraf. The majority of Pakistanis are not fundamentalists who are suspicious of fundamentalist Islam. The author believes the "Talebanization" of Pakistan is the result of the US pull out of Afghanistan to go to Iraq. The whole article is a good read. Here is the key excerpt.
Informed Comment Global Affairs

The strengthening of militant forces in Pakistan - and their inward gaze - has not come from any radicalization of Pakistani society but from the incomplete operation of US forces in Afghanistan. The war in Iraq drained away any plan for a viable and functioning Afghanistan. The defeated troops carried their tribal allegiances back across the border into the Northern and Western regions of Pakistan - and turned their attention onto Pakistani state. Musharraf, busy consolidating the military's dominion had no viable way of combating these tribes - he has no legitimacy. I could be writing an alternative version of this recent past, if democratic tendencies had actually been allowed to develop in Pakistan since 2001. You may call it 'paradoxical' but the only solution to de-Islamization of Pakistan is democracy - not the support of dictatorships.