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