Good news from Pakistan (from a stability perspective): “Pakistan’s two main opposition parties announced Thursday that they would work together to form a coalition government. The apparent breakthrough came after the leaders of the two parties, the victors in Pakistan’s parliamentary elections, held make-or-break talks in Islamabad, the capital.” (more…)

Captain Ed highlights an additional positive outcome from the Pakistani elections — by accepting an unpleasant electoral outcome, Musharraf marginalizes the radical Islamists. There is also a corollary effect in western politics.  By accepting the negative result, Musharraf has definitely refuted the claims of many critics who cast him as a hopelessly corrupt despot. (more…)

The New York Times reports that, according to two former senior intelligence officials, “Pakistan’s premier military intelligence agency has lost control of some of the networks of Pakistani militants it has nurtured since the 1980s, and is now suffering the violent blowback of that policy.” (more…)

I apologize for not posting much on the investigation into Benazir Bhutto’s death lately: I think that most of us - myself included - have been overly focused on the US elections. If one doesn’t search for other news purposefully, one has the tendency to believe that the only relevant thing happening right now is that the Obama camp accused Clinton of downplaying MLK’s significance and that Michigan is the center of the world… for now. (more…)

Although I, like Jim Henley, believe that it was unwise for Benazir Bhutto to stick her head out of the car during a huge really (which made it a bit difficult to protect her), I don’t quite see how one can pretend that only she is to blame for her horrible death.

Pakistan’s President Pervez Mursharraf, however, disagrees: (more…)

Mark Bandeich reports for Reuters that Benazir Bhutto’s party, the Pakistan People’s Party, will “call on the United Nations for an inquiry into her assassination if it forms a government after elections next month.”

The reason is that they don’t trust the Musharraf government any longer since “[t]he government’s position on the assassination has been shifting from day to day,” as Farhatullah Babar, a senior official in Bhutto’s party said. (more…)

A day after Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf denied that his government had anything to do with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, a team of British officers arrived in Pakistan to help with the investigation of the politician’s horrific and violent death.

“The Scotland Yard team, who refused to talk to reporters after arriving at Islamabad Airport, is stepping into the cauldron of Pakistani politics,” the Spiegel reports. (more…)

If you’re wondering whether the story of Benazir Bhutto’s death can be even more awkward, I’ve got news for you: yes it can. The Pakistani government just made a huge u-turn. It has apologized for saying that she died of a skull fracture after hitting the sunroof of her car during a suicide attack.

The countries caretaker Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz Khan even went so far as to ask the media and people to “forgive and ignore” comments made by the Interior Ministry’s spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema. (more…)

McClatchy reports that “Benazir Bhutto had planned to reveal new evidence alleging the involvement of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies in rigging the country’s upcoming elections” on the day she was assassinated.

In fact, she “had been due to meet U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., to hand over a report charging that the military Inter-Services Intelligence agency was planning to fix the polls in the favor of President Pervez Musharraf.” (more…)

Robert Novak says yes:

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto followed two months of urgent pleas to the State Department by her representatives for better protection. The U.S. reaction was that she was worried over nothing, expressing assurance that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf would not let anything happen to her. (more…)

Earlier today, Pakistan’s opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. (more…)

Pakistan’s religious parties are in trouble: whereas support for them was growing only a couple of years ago, they’re now struggling to win any seats in the country’s parliament.

According to the latest polls, Islamic parties will only win some 4% of the votes in the January 2008 elections.

The main reason? Quite some Pakistanis are disappointed in the Mullahs who are politically active. In some regions, many people voted for them a couple of years ago, but their lives haven’t improved. As the Post puts it: “Their candidates […] have to answer for a dubious record in governing North-West Frontier Province, their traditional base of support.” (more…)