The two separate bomb attacks in Pakistan on Thursday — in Hub, near Karachi, where 26 people were killed and in the NWFP town of Hangu, where seven police trainees were decimated by a suicide car bomber — take the post-Lal Masjid death toll to 193. And, from all indications, it is likely to increase. This determined and bloody response by right-wing groups to Pervez Musharraf’s decision to crack down on religious extremists in his country will test his many skills honed over the past eight years since assuming power in a bloodless coup in 1999.

The Lal Masjid episode and its turbulent aftermath have revealed three critical faultlines in Pakistan’s polity. The unholy alliance between the Pakistani military and the mullahs goes back to the Zia years and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the eighties. The quip at the time was that three ‘A’s shaped Pakistan’s destiny — the Army, Allah and America — and the power-sharing arrangement in the country.

The cracks in this tri-lateral set-up showed up after 9/11, and George Bush’s decision to force Musharraf’s hand over the Taliban led to the first U-turn in the Pakistan military’s strategic policy orientation. The Taliban leadership was ostensibly abandoned, at least in the public sphere; but Musharraf made his Faustian bargain with the right-wing political parties — the MMA alliance — to consolidate his political base and ensure his election as president. This deal lies at the root of the Lal Masjid episode and it was common knowledge, both within the country and among Pakistan watchers, that the military had tacitly encouraged the Lal Masjid clergy to expand its influence, both in Islamabad and along the Pakistan-Afghan border.

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