Musharraf's Own Inaction Brought On Crisis, Observers Say

Chaudhry is now in position to block Musharraf's plans -- including his bid to win a new term from a Parliament that was elected five years ago in balloting marred by irregularities.

"Lawfully, he can do it. But morally, the Parliament's at the end of its term," said Ishaq Khan Khakwani, a government minister and member of Musharraf's party. "How can it elect him again?"

Khakwani said he suggested to Musharraf a year ago that he hold parliamentary elections in March 2007, and then win a fresh term from the new legislature. With Musharraf's popularity running high, Khakwani argued, he would emerge even stronger.

But the president was in no mood for the idea, several government insiders said, because he worried new elections could dilute his power.

"He made a mistake," Khakwani said.

Delays have also hurt Musharraf in his battle against rising militancy in Pakistan, critics say. His handling of the standoff at the pro-Taliban Red Mosque in Islamabad seemed to illustrate the problem: Through months of provocations by the mosque's radical clerics, Musharraf watched and waited. By the time he decided to take action, the clerics' followers had built up a fearsome arsenal and were prepared for a fight. During a nine-day siege in July, the neighborhood around the mosque became a war zone as security forces nightly traded intense fire with militants holed up inside. When the smoke cleared following a decisive raid, more than 100 people were dead -- including a dozen elite army commandos.

The end of the standoff brought a wave of attacks that claimed more than 200 lives, with suicide bombers striking a variety of targets, including a political rally in Islamabad and a mosque at an army base. It also coincided with the breakdown of a cease-fire in North Waziristan that had once been the centerpiece of Musharraf's strategy for containing the Taliban threat. Although the 10-month-old deal officially died in July, observers of the tribal region along the border with Afghanistan had long said it wasn't working.

U.S. officials also have grown increasingly concerned that the area is being used as a sanctuary for al-Qaeda fighters. Still, Musharraf clung to the deal.

"If you say one lie, you have to say 10 more to cover that first one," said retired Brig. Mehmood Shah, for years a top government official in the tribal areas. "They called it a good agreement, and they went all the way to Washington to say so. They could not then turn around and say that it wasn't."

The unrest has not ended. Last week, radical fighters took over a shrine in northwestern Pakistan and renamed it Lal Masjid -- Red Mosque.

The government brushes off concerns that the recent wave of violence could be the start of a much larger conflagration that will engulf Pakistan. "What we've seen here is a reaction to the Lal Masjid," Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said in an interview last week. "We predicted it. We expected it. We're dealing with it."

Others are not so sure, pointing to the Taliban's enhanced ability to assert control over broad swaths of territory. "Looking at the past few months, I see that Musharraf is the biggest loser," said Afzal Khan, a senior opposition politician in the northwestern area of Swat. "The militants are the biggest winners."

Special correspondent Imtiaz Ali in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.