Brookings’ Flynt Leverett, in an article that opens by comparing the Syrian regime to the Godfather, takes a similar line as myself on Bashar al-Assad’s most attractive option in the wake of the UN demand for full investigative cooperation:

But [Asef] Shawkat and Maher [al-Assad] may have ambitions of their own. Shawkat’s wife, Bashar’s older sister Bushra, is by all accounts the most politically astute and ambitious of the Assad children, but because of her sex, she must pursue politics through her husband. Shawkat himself is no shrinking violet; he eloped with Bushra over her family’s objections when Hafez Assad was at the height of his powers. Bashar’s younger brother Maher has been described by an astute Western diplomat who knows him as a brutal and primitive man, possessing “all of Basil’s appetites but none of his qualities.” Maybe, just maybe, Bashar will treat the U.N. investigation as a chance to get rid of one or both of his most potent long-term rivals, and be the only man left standing at the end of the day.

Leverett suggests that Assad may not have directly ordered the assassination, which is not exactly outlandish. His disdain for Hariri was not exactly secret, and it’s highly doubtful he shed crocodile tears at the news of the assassination. However, there is simply too little information available — at least in the public sphere — to adequately put events together and ascertain where, exactly, the idea came from. Assad could have ordered the assassination or Maher, or Shawkat, could have taken the initiative for a despotic dictator that has traditionally been viewed as too weak among Damascus-based hardliners. Now dead (by suicide, supposedly) interior minister Ghzai Kana’an also plays into the story. If anything, the Mehlis report has cemented the fact that Syria is run by a regime of hotheads and countervailining personal and professional interests, led by someone comparable to the absent-minded professor with a lisp. Not exactly a non-toxic combination, but, sadly, it may be the least dangerous of all Syrian configurations currently available.

More tonight, hopefully, after the day job and class.

Hussain Haqqani’s "Jihad and Jihadism" concerning Pakistan is rather ancient in blog terms (it was published on August 3), but I still find it timely considering my semi-recent discussions of Pakistan and terrorism. Haqqani focuses primarily on Musharraf kicking foreign students out of madrassas a few weeks back, which was obviously nothing more than an attempt to deflect further criticism following the London bombings:

The Pakistani government’s decision to bar 1,400 foreigners from studying at the country’s madrasas is not the solution to terrorism. None of the terrorists involved in international attacks linked to Pakistan , even tenuously, over the last several years have been regular foreign madrasa students. Pakistan ’s real problem is the training camps established by Jihad ist groups in the country, which were tolerated by the Pakistani state for strategic reasons. Some of these camps operated under the cover of madrasas. By focusing on madrasas, and then only on foreigners within the madrasas, Pakistani officials are again missing the opportunity to move forward with a complete roll back of Jihad ism.

 

Blaming foreigners has become a convenient excuse in Pakistan , and elsewhere in the Muslim world, to avoid condemning the extremist Jihadists’ ideology of hatred. It is not necessary for everyone in Europe or the Muslim world to agree with all aspects of US or British policy to acknowledge that many Muslims have been so consumed by hatred of the West that they have lost their moral compass. Terrorism is reprehensible. Extremist ideologies that feed, justify or condone terrorism deserve unequivocal condemnation. Instead, non-steps such as expulsion of foreign madrasa students continue to distract Gen Musharraf’s regime.

…

For Pakistan ’s intelligentsia, too, this is a moment of truth. The perceived or real flaws of Europeans and Americans must not be used as the basis for shifting responsibility for Islamist terrorism from its ideology of hate to specific US policy decisions. The bulk of the recent victims of global terror have been Muslims, slaughtered by those claiming to speak in the name of a purer Islam. This slaughter is hardly a rational response to ‘‘occupation of Iraq , Afghanistan and Palestine ,'’ as some commentators describe terrorist attacks.

A good column, definitely recommended in full.

The Bush administration needs to start applying some sort of pressure to Musharraf over the madrassas themselves, as well as the established terrorist camps being kept around for a number of reasons, one of those being their strategic importance in a possible future conflict with India. One way I’d go about it is through utilizing the Pakistan-India-Iran natural gas pipeline project as leverage. Back in June the US threatened unilateral sanctions on Pakistan if it continued with the project, although that was meant primarily as a warning against closer Islamabad-Tehran ties. If the administration’s willing to go that far to affect Pakistani regional policy, I don’t see why it cannot link the pipeline to internal reform, as well. Of course, the US would have to consider the project as a carrot in such negotiations, or, perhaps, replace it with a push for increased bilateral economic relations, something very much desired by high level and influential Pakistanis including Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri.

As it stands currently, US sway in the region, particularly with India, is going to kill the pipeline, anyway, perhaps in lieu of a different, more US-friendly project based in Qatar (Chevron, Mobil, and Enron are all involved in Qatar’s energy industry.) It’s conceivable that one reason the US pledged civil nuclear support to India was to dismantle New Delhi’s need for the natural gas pipeline to begin with. Obviously, no one should pledge nuke cooperation with terrorist-harboring Pakistan, but alternatives are out there, ready to be utilized to modify Musharraf’s more dangerous behavior.