General Pervez Musharraf

What could you buy with $6 billion? You could finally rebuild the New Orleans neighborhoods that Hurricane Katrina destroyed. For almost six years, you could provide a daily meal for every one of the 36 million Americans who live below the poverty line.

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has created conditions which contribute to the ongoing destabilization and fragmentation of Pakistan as a Nation. The process of US sponsored "regime change", which normally consists in the re-formation of a fresh proxy government under new leaders has been broken. Discredited in the eyes of Pakistani public opinion, General Pervez Musharaf cannot remain in the seat of political power. But at the same time, the fake elections supported by the "international community" scheduled for January 2008, even if they were to be carried out, would not be accepted as legitimate, thereby creating a political impasse.

"Pakistan's Armed Forces Should Join Hands with the Pakistani People and Stop U.S.-Zionist Intervention." Jamaat al-Muslimeen leader Imam Badi Ali (Greensboro, North Carolina) issued an Islamic ruling (Fatwa) on the latest situation in Pakistan (November 16).

Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto warned Sunday that "foreign forces" could enter Pakistan unless the government re-establishes control in tribal border areas that have become militant hotbeds since the U.S.-led invasion of neighboring Afghanistan.

President Pervez Musharraf resigned his military post as Chief of Army Staff Wednesday, handing over the command stick to his successor in a ceremony at army headquarters and ending his eight years of military rule. He remains president and will be sworn in to a new five-year term in the capital on Thursday, but as a civilian president his power will be diminished.

N THE midst of public statements of support for "democracy" in Pakistan and the recent visit to Islamabad by the American envoy John Negroponte, Washington is quietly preparing for a stepped-up military intervention in the crisis-ridden country.

The US is considering a plan to create gangs of mercenaries from local population in the border areas of Pakistan to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban, emulating its tactics in Iraq's Anbar province.

Over the past six years, the Bush administration has spent almost $100 million on a highly classified program to help General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, secure his country's nuclear weapons, according to current and former senior administration officials. But with the future of that country's leadership in doubt, debate is intensifying about whether Washington has done enough to help protect the warheads and laboratories, and whether Pakistan's reluctance to reveal critical details about its arsenal has undercut the effectiveness of the continuing security effort.

The opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was placed under house arrest this morning, her political party said. Streets were filled with police officers carrying batons and shields, and trucks blocked roads, trying to prevent access to a protest rally that Bhutto had helped organize in Rawalpindi, the garrison city adjacent to the capital of Islamabad.

Police officers armed with tear gas and clubs attacked thousands of protesting lawyers Monday in the city of Lahore and rounded up lawyers in other cities as the government of the Pakistani president, General Pervez Musharraf, faced the first signs of concerted resistance to the imposition Saturday of emergency rule.