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.

Furthermore, many serving and retired members of the military fraternity have over the last 25 years become staunch advocates of the conservative brand of Islam espoused by the religious right-wing. Apart from retired generals, such as Hamid Gul and Aslam Beg, there are serving generals in the Pakistan army (including the ISI) whose close family members were part of the Lal Masjid network. The long rope given to the Masjid’s clerics by Musharraf is attributed to this sympathetic faction within the military. The Lal Masjid operation itself and the lethality of the arms and ammunition that were recovered are indicative of a deep collusion between elements of the security establishment and the mullahs. The scale of the violence triggered in the last 10 days — 200 have died — would suggest there is a deep cleavage within the military. The vernacular press has denounced the Musharraf regime for using an army of Allah against its own true believers, and the killing of police trainees in Hangu is perceived as a warning and corresponds to the Iraq and Afghan experience.

It is not without reason, therefore, that Musharraf in his meeting with select editors in Rawalpindi on Wednesday, appealed to politico-military moderates in Pakistan to come together to thwart the challenge that religious extremism poses to the country. An army chief in Pakistan, appealing to the moderate faction within the ‘fauj’, is of grave import. Events in the coming few weeks will tell whether this cleavage within the ranks over what status to accord to the jihadis is closing or being further widened. Here the role of the ex-servicemen who inhabit the troubled NWFP and Pak-Afghan border, will be critical to the military initiatives that Musharraf is embarking upon.

The second strand is the domestic political domain. It is being suggested that the Islamabad bomb blast of Tuesday, which killed 13 workers of the Benazir Bhutto-led PPP had an Al-Qaeda hand. If this is established, it would be all the more ominous, for it would lend credence to the current anxiety in Washington that the Musharraf regime is either unwilling or unable to deal firmly with the extra-regional jihadi forces within Pakistan. By extension, if the Al-Qaeda leadership, in its disaggregated manifestations, has decided to enter Pakistan’s domestic political arena to advance its own agenda, shades of the Iraqi imbroglio cannot be discounted.

And the final crack is the exposure of the China factor in Musharraf’s decision-making matrix. In his televised public address after Lal Masjid episode, the he had made an impassioned reference to the special quality of the Sino-Pak relationship and the enormity of harm that the jihadi groups had perpetrated by targeting Chinese nationals in Pakistan. This public stance has further alienated both Musharraf and paradoxically China within Pakistan’s right-wing constituency. The targeting of a restaurant in Hub on July 19, where a police convoy was escorting Chinese nationals, indicates this.

It remains to be seen whether Musharraf’s Houdini-like survival skills will see him through these complex challenges.

The writer is a strategic analyst