Musharraf regime in danger?

The UK's Independent suggests in this piece that the cartoon riots in Pakistan are really aimed at toppling Musharaff.

Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, the religious party that called yesterday's rally, was placed under house arrest. Just hours earlier he had warned of a nationwide campaign to unseat the President if Musharraf were to hinder the protests. "We will not stop till we achieve our objectives against the present rulers," he said. "General Pervez Musharraf is acting as the representative of western civilisation and is fighting a battle against Islamic values."

For Musharraf to crack down with force is therefore a high-risk strategy, giving his opponents a pretext to raise the temperature further. He now faces his toughest 10 days in power as the countdown begins to a visit from George Bush. Unless Musharraf can quell, or at least contain, the dissent before then, the visit looks set to be engulfed by the "rolling campaign" of street protests that Pakistan's religious parties have warned they can deliver.

This crisis is no longer just about cartoons. It has become entwined with the desire by Musharraf's Islamist enemies to destabilise him by fanning a much wider uprising against what they see as his traitorous alliance with America.

If they are successful in toppling Musharraf, that's a bit spooky. Pakistan already has nuclear weapons. That would put them in the hands of a radical Muslim group.