Turmoil in Pakistan

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The world scene can change in an instant. With the assassination of former, two-time Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the geopolitical situation became more tense and uncertain thanit had been only seconds before her death. She was killed after the explosive force of an incendiary device strapped to a terrorist caused her to hit her head on a lever in the vehicle she was riding in. At least 28 others also died in the blast, and more than a hundred were injured. Nearly three dozen additional people have been killed in the ensuing unrest. Ironically, Bhutto was killed not far from where Pakistan's first Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated in October 1951 and where her own father, also a former Prime Minister, was hanged in 1979.

As the opposition leader in Pakistan, Bhutto had played an important role in challenging, balancing, and therefore moderating the government of Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, who came to power in 1999 via a military coup. In addition, her liberal Pakistan People's Party (PPP) provided an outlet for many Pakistanis who are unwilling to knuckle under to the rising tide of Muslim extremism sweeping that part of the world. The latest reports are that al Qaeda elements were behind the assassination, specifically Baitullah Mehsud, a wanted pro-Taliban militant leader based in the South Waziristan tribal region.

Obviously, Pakistan is geopolitically important for two primary reasons: 1) It shares a mountainous border with Afghanistan, where al Qaeda Prime (specifically, Osama bin Laden and his operations chief, Ayman al Zawahiri) is hiding; and 2) the Muslim country is part of the exclusive club of nations that possess nuclear weapons. Should Pakistan fall to radical elements—either the Taliban or its sympathizers in the military and/or the intelligence service—the Doomsday Clock would surely tick several minutes closer to midnight.

So far, Pakistan under Musharraf has remained a useful, though shaky ally of the U.S. throughout the War on Terror. While essentially a military dictator despite his recent resignation from the armed forces, Musharraf has been able to ride herd on the forces of religious extremism, military dominance, and secular liberalism that are the major ideologies of his fractured state. He has had to crack down on the most turbulent tribal areas, enforce loyalty from his own army, and negotiate with Bhutto and her faction. He is in the unenviable position of being everyone's enemy.

Pakistan is intrinsically unstable due to its hodge-podge nature: It is made up of at least five different major ethnic groups (Punjabis, Afghans, Kashmiris, Sindhis, and Balochis); a handful of separate Muslim ideologies; two major geographic regions (the mountain region and the Indus River Valley); and a strong secularist tendency, especially among the educated and urban populations. The army, which accepts enlistees from all of these groups, is for better or worse the prime instrument of stability, due to its power and discipline. With Bhutto's assassination releasing rioters into the streets, martial law and harsh military responses to flare-ups of fighting and looting are likely.

To further compound Pakistan's problems, the upcoming parliamentary elections may be postponed as well. One major party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, led by another former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, has already indicated it will not participate in them if they take place as scheduled on January 8. Bhutto's PPP, by far the largest opposition party, is now without a clear leader—in fact, it has never been without a Bhutto family member as its chairman. It may take weeks or months before a new leader is chosen, and even so, it may fracture into several smaller parties if it fails to reach a consensus on a new chief. Realistically, the Pakistani political scene will probably become even more chaotic.

This may actually work to Musharraf's benefit. With so much turmoil among the various political parties, candidates, and activists, he may emerge as the nation's only viable leader. Love him or hate him, Pakistanis may realize that, even though his regime has angered them in so many ways, he provides a measure of stability that is far preferable to the ravages of civil war. In other words, the devil that you know is better than the devil you don't know.

The United States, in its position as the leader of Western interests, would prefer Musharraf to maintain control and bring swift stability to his country. It has worked successfully with him in the past and knows which levers to push to get results. President Bush and his advisors know that al Qaeda wants nothing more than turmoil and confusion in Pakistan because it works best in such an environment. Through the Taliban, it could offer a stabilizing influence of a sort, particularly in the mountainous western regions of the nation, while procuring Pakistan's nuclear weapons for use in its cause through its supporters in the military and intelligence service. The U.S., then, will probably offer and provide intelligence and clandestine military support to the Musharraf government to help quell the disquiet as soon and as noiselessly as possible.

In a better world, the people of Pakistan would use the assassination of Benazir Bhutto to band together and expulse Muslim extremism from its culture. However, this is a world whose god is Satan the Devil (II Corinthians 4:4), whose hateful, destructive influence has deceived all humanity (Ephesians 2:2; Revelation 12:9). Thus, religious and political turmoil are part of the normal fabric of life—and will be until Jesus Christ returns to this earth to put an end to sectarianism and war by putting Satan away (Revelation 20:1-3) and ruling personally from Jerusalem (Revelation 20:4-6). Then, with Satan unable to broadcast his divisive attitudes, Christ will teach humanity His way of life that brings cooperation, peace, and unity (Isaiah 2:2-4). This glorious future of peace is why Jesus commands us in Matthew 6:10 to pray, "Your Kingdom come." Are we praying for it fervently enough?

A Threat in Central Asia

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When foreigners come to this country and comment on American news coverage, it is usually to opine that our reporting is, frankly, self-interested. The talking heads tell their audiences about American politics, American tragedies, American foreign policy, American military activity, and American human-interest stories. If something happens in which U.S. interests are not involved, well, it gets a momentary mention or none at all. The American public, it seems, only needs to know about events that hit close to home.

This is probably why only a handful of Americans—and most of them are foreign policy watchers and news junkies—have any idea what the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is or that it even exists. To enlighten the rest of us, the SCO was organized in June 2001 as an intergovernmental security group composed of six nations: Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Before that, since 1996, the first five of these six nations had been similarly organized as the Shanghai Five under the "Treaty on Deepening Military Trust in Border Regions," which was signed in Shanghai, thus the memorable name.

Since 2001, four additional countries—Mongolia, Iran, Pakistan, and India—have all been officially accepted as observer nations in the group, and all of these desire to become full members. Significantly, the United States applied for observer status in 2005 and was summarily rejected as not having a stake in the region. Several other Central Asian nations, such as Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, have shown interest in joining the group.

Ostensibly, the purpose of the SCO is security in the Central Asian region, with the focus on separatism, extremism, and terrorism. Although SCO officials have said that it is not the Organization's purpose to form a military bloc, they have held several joint military exercises—in fact, they met in summit and held joint exercises just this week in the southern Ural Mountains. Member nations' foreign affairs and defense ministers hold regular meetings, and they encourage contact and cooperation among their various law enforcement agencies. Its interests have also expanded into economics, trade, investments, energy, transportation, legal cooperation, illegal drug interdiction, humanitarian assistance, and environmental concerns.

In an August 17, 2007, release, the Associated Press reports:

The summit concluded with a communiqué that sounded like a thinly veiled warning to the United States to stay away from the strategically placed, resource-rich region.

"Stability and security in Central Asia are best ensured primarily through efforts taken by the nations of the region on the basis of the existing regional associations," the statement said.

India-born Dilip Hiro, writing in The Guardian on June 16, 2006, comments: "The rising importance and coherence of the SCO worries Washington—as well as its closest Asian ally, Japan. 'The SCO is becoming a rival block to the U.S. alliance,' said a senior Japanese official recently. 'It does not share our values. We are watching it very closely.'" The concern is that the SCO is becoming a challenger to NATO.

The nation that has the most to gain by using the SCO for its purposes abroad is Russia. Under Vladimir Putin, the Russian bear is reviving internationally, once again making "great power" statements on foreign affairs and flexing military muscles that were even recently thought to be atrophied (for instance, Russian TU-95 bombers buzzed U.S. Navy assets near Guam on August 9). Due to its huge energy resources, particularly oil and natural gas, the Russian economy is stable, and the fossil fuel demands of nearby nations, specifically European nations, give Moscow a stout cudgel to use to persuade them to see things its way. Thus, it is thought that Russia, as well as the other oil-rich Central Asian nations, may try to use the SCO as a club to expand its energy dominance. In this guise, the SCO would be a new OPEC with teeth.

From a biblical point of view, the formation of this relatively new group may have interesting ramifications. Ezekiel 38 contains the famous and somewhat controversial "Gog and Magog" prophecy. The controversy revolves primarily around the prophecy's timing. Some—and a majority of Protestant prophecy watchers would fit in this camp—believe that this great army will come out of the East to destroy the State of Israel during the lead-up to the return of Christ. The other side figures that the placement of Ezekiel 38 and many of its internal details argue for it being a parallel prophecy to the attack of Gog and Magog in Revelation 20:7-9, that is, late in the Millennial period.

However, the intriguing aspect of the SCO concerns the peoples, the nations, that are involved. To a great extent, they line up well with those mentioned in Ezekiel 38:2-6. Gog, Magog, Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal all have links with Russia. Persia is modern Iran. Ethiopia and Libya are "Cush" and "Put" in the Hebrew, both of which had Eastern branches that settled in the areas of the "Stans" (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, etc.) and India. Gomer probably refers to the Chinese, and Togarmah most likely indicates Mongolia and some of the Siberian tribes. These identifications are admittedly speculative, though they are based on sound biblical, historical, and linguistic evidence.

Nevertheless, an Eastern bloc led by a resurgent Russia, comprised of nations that contain half the world's population in aggregate, having four nuclear club members and huge, modern, well-equipped armies, and with black gold to back it, is a force to be reckoned with. We would be wise to keep an eye on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization over the next few years.