Bhutto is bad, but she may be our Taliban nuclear deterrent

PAKISTAN increasingly looks like an accident about to happen - if it has not already done so. The complacency with which the West has watched the slow meltdown taking place in this crucially strategic area has been little short of criminal. Now, when it may be too late, the geopolitical chatterati are running around like wet hens, demonstrating their inadequacy.

Pakistan is a nuclear power. That fact in itself testifies to the inefficacy of Western realpolitik in recent decades. Neither Pakistan nor India should have been permitted to acquire nuclear weapons; interdiction of nuclear proliferation should have been an axiom of American and British, Nato and EU foreign policy, enforced, if necessary, by the military destruction of installations, regardless of the "friendly" status of the nations involved or their democratic credentials (as with India).

It was a kind of post-colonial thermo-nuclear multiculturalism that anaesthetised the West into tolerating Third World states acquiring weapons of mass destruction, setting precedents that now complicate the issue of Iran. We may be about to reap the whirlwind. Western governments have a duty to their citizens and the rest of the world to make it clear that, if there is any imminent likelihood of Muslim extremists gaining access to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, a pre-emptive strike, Israeli-style, will immediately and unhesitatingly be launched.

Only after adopting that premise can we proceed to deal with the nasty car crash that is Pakistan's internal politics and geopolitical entanglements. The realities are daunting. The only alternatives to Islamic extremism are the failing strongman Pervez Musharraf and the serially failed prime minister Benazir Bhutto: two broken reeds. Daily, Musharraf's power, credibility and options are draining away. Bhutto is the ghost of corruption past, recently described by the American historian Arthur Herman as "one of the most incompetent leaders in the history of South Asia".

So far as their credentials to act as a bulwark against Islamic militancy are concerned, their histories are not encouraging. When the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, Bhutto regarded them as a stabilising force that would open access to markets in Central Asia and sent them military and financial support. Musharraf followed the same line until 2002, when he executed a dramatic U-turn in the wake of the atrocity in New York and was rewarded with $10bn in military aid and huge subsidies for intelligence. That was hardly money well spent, considering his Inter-Services Intelligence is permeated with Taliban and al-Qaeda sympathisers.

One of the false reassurances with which Western observers comfort themselves is the much-quoted fact that, at the last Pakistani elections, Islamic extremists gained "only 11% of the vote" - as if we were talking about the Lib Dems' prospects in Hemel Hempstead. Any terrorist force that enjoys 10% popular support, or more, has that sea of complicity within which the guerrilla swims, as Mao Zedong phrased it. The only effective power in Pakistan that can challenge Islamic militancy is the army - and it is becoming very tired of doing so. Last year the army lost 300 men fighting a war in which it does not believe. Almost one-fifth of the troops are Pashtun and they have no wish to fight their own. Muslim bombers have carried the war to the army's heartland of Rawalpindi, with devastating consequences for military morale. Musharraf's war on terror has been a travesty. A year ago he signed a peace accord, supposedly with the Utmanzai tribesmen of the North Waziristan Agency, bordering on Afghanistan, but actually with the Taliban. Musharraf has been defeated, Waziristan is Taliban territory.

The International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, with which British troops serve, is being defeated too. History is repeating itself: in 1842 one man survived of a British column 16,000-strong retreating from Afghanistan. We went in this time to support "human rights" (we even had a team of feminists working in Kabul to "raise the consciousness" of Afghan women - the most surefire way of converting peaceable husbands and fathers into al-Qaeda firebrands) and our sole achievement has been to reactivate the heroin trade, which the Taliban had stamped out.

It is time to face reality: the West is taking a battering in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Our presumed "democratic" candidate is Benazir Bhutto, twice deposed for corruption. The charges were fabricated, say her supporters. If so, the governments of France, Spain, Poland and Switzerland have been party to this fabrication, as has Interpol, which last year issued a warrant for her arrest, along with her husband. There are allegations relating to dealings with French aircraft manufacturer Dassault that will be difficult to shrug off. Part of Bhutto's recent compromise deal with Musharraf was to allow her access to her Swiss bank accounts, totalling £740m.

The fact remains that only Musharraf and Bhutto can hold Pakistan together. If they come to an accord, we would do well to hold our noses and applaud. There is always the possibility a new military strongman might emerge. If so, priggish denunciations of a lack of democratic credentials will be a luxury the West cannot afford. We must focus on the need for stability, think of those ominous warheads and ask ourselves if we really want to replace Musharraf and Bhutto with Bin Laden.

Mobs of lawyers challenging riot police may stir the juices of BBC and Guardian reporters, but while they are effective in destabilising the situation, have they the capability to create a strong alternative government? Bhutto's opportunist alliance with the judiciary that hanged her father is just one of the many anomalies of this crisis. The great, unspoken nightmare is the danger, if not only Musharraf but the whole military caste feel threatened, of a diversionary war with India over Kashmir.

That perennial casus belli is the dog that, so far, has not barked. The West must caution all parties to keep it muzzled. We must also recognise that this incendiary region is in major crisis and our response requires both firmness and pragmatism.