Pro-Taliban radio preacher Maulana Fazlullah, known as the FM mullah, has incited Pakistani Islamists to the point that nine of the 12 districts of Pakistan’s Swat Valley have been taken over by Islamist militants. Sharia law has been established in these areas, television and music have been banned, women are prohibited from going to school and are required to wear veils, and men are required to grow beards.

The Pakistani military has launched an operation to reclaim the valley. Yet, even though 15,000 Pakistani troops have been deployed with numerous helicopters, tanks and armored vehicles, the area has not yet been reclaimed from the approximately 500-strong Islamist militants.

Most of the insurgents are home-grown—Pakistanis nourished by resentment for the current Pakistani government and by jihadist teachings of the FM mullah.

Earlier this summer, Islamists belonging to Lal Masjid, or the Red Mosque, led by two brothers, Maulana Abdul Aziz and Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi, sought to establish a Taliban-like system of sharia law within the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s raid on the Red Mosque in July marked one of his biggest crackdowns on Islamic terror since he came to power in 1999.

Musharraf’s suppression of Islamists in Islamabad and the Swat Valley has intensified his confrontation with extremists across Pakistan. The high death toll unleashed by both these operations seems to be further turning popular support against Musharraf. Fazullah’s takeover of the Swat Valley followed, and may have been in response to, the government’s strike against the Red Mosque.

Musharraf justified his decision to declare emergency rule on November 3 by declaring that such drastic measures were necessary to halt the growing threat of Islamic extremism in Pakistan. Now, however, he seems to be backing down, under international pressure. He has scheduled parliamentary elections for January 8, and his official spokesman confirms that the president will quit the army on Wednesday (November 28). Gen. Ashfaq Kayani has been named Musharraf’s successor as army chief as soon as Musharraf quits the army and is sworn in as a civilian president.

United States President George W. Bush is optimistic about Musharraf’s steps to get Pakistan back on the path to democracy. Yet, it will be hard for Pakistan to fight Islamic terrorism when the support of the people is divided between Musharraf, opposition leaders Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, and Islamic extremist movements.

Bhutto is considering boycotting the parliamentary elections in January unless Musharraf lifts emergency rule before then. Pakistan’s Daily Times editor Najam Sethi has claimed that “Bhutto was unlikely to boycott the elections because pro-Taliban Islamic parties would probably take part. If Ms. Bhutto doesn’t contest the elections and sits with Nawaz Sharif, whereas the mullahs go ahead and participate, that could lead to a very interesting situation.”

General Kayani seemingly prefers to return the army to a behind-the-scenes role in politics, so free parliamentary elections should take place if Musharraf keeps his word. Yet, if a free democratic election truly does take place in Pakistan, Musharraf is likely to find himself without many friends in his government. As divided as political loyalties are in Pakistan, Islamist mullahs are likely to gain an even more drastic victory than they did in 2002—the year when Pakistani Islamic parties secured their best results ever.

Although both Musharraf and Bhutto are calling on Pakistan’s moderates to reconcile and revitalize efforts against the rising tide of radical Islam, the chances of Pakistan’s moderates reconciling are about as great as Musharraf and Bhutto reconciling: almost nil.

If Pakistan’s political arena were to undergo an Islamic shift, only the military would be capable of saving the country.

Pakistan’s current secularist philosophy is firmly rooted in the teachings of Mustafa Kermal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. Ataturk pioneered the concept of the secular state in the Islamic world. He taught that the creation of a modern state in a traditional and divided country required a modern army as a facilitator. His teachings were embraced by Turkey, Egypt, Iran and Pakistan. Iran rejected Ataturk’s military-supported secular system in 1979 and replaced it with an Islamic theocracy. Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan still rely on a strong military to provide stability for their secular governments (Stratfor, November 6).

If Pakistan’s political scene became engulfed by Islamic radicalism, the army could stage a coup—as it has done numerous times throughout Pakistan’s history—and restore the secular state. This would only be possible, however, if the army was united.

Recruits for the army come from a broad cross-section of the population. Thus, political and ideological divisions among the Pakistani people naturally filter into the army. Stratfor reported on November 20 that there have been reports of junior officers strongly criticizing Musharraf and of soldiers flashing the victory sign to opposition protesters in the street.

There was even one reported case of a mid-level commander refusing to open fire on Islamic militants in the Swat Valley because, he said, the army was fighting its own people. He refused his orders even as a gun was pointed to his head and is now being court marshaled for insubordination.

Of course, it should not come as a great surprise that there are Taliban sympathizers in the military. The world at large first became aware of the Taliban because the Pakistani government appointed them to protect a Pakistani convoy trying to open up a trade route into Central Asia in 1994.

Five years later, in 1999, the Pakistan Inter-Service Intelligence Agency (isi) invited the Taliban to send thousands of jihadist fighters into northern Pakistan to aid the Pakistani Army in its fight against India.

This took place just months after Musharraf overthrew Sharif in a military coup.

There are even rumors that the isi sent $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker.

Pakistan and the Taliban worked closely together until Sept. 11, 2001. After the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, Bush had his then-secretary general, Colin Powell, tell Musharraf, “You’re either with us or against us.” When it came to supporting the Taliban against the United States or supporting the United States against the Taliban, Musharraf made the obvious choice. This was the beginning of Pakistan’s “war on terror.”

Just because Musharraf made that choice, however, does not mean that every member of the Pakistani military made the same decision.

The New York Times reports that “Pakistan’s intelligence services contain enough sympathizers and supporters of the Afghan Taliban, and enough nationalists bent on seizing the disputed province of Kashmir from India, that there are grounds for real worries.”

Could the fact that both the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence Agency and the Pakistani Army have pockets of pro-Taliban sympathizers be a factor in why Musharraf’s government cannot take back a valley from 500 radical Islamic mountain men?

Like its populace, Pakistan’s army has divided loyalties. This does not mean the army is about to fracture tomorrow, but it could be a harbinger of things to come. If a section of the army rebels and turns to the Islamic side, or even to a secularist opposition side, Pakistan’s political stability is done for.

Even Musharraf’s appointed heir to the army command, General Kayani, is friends with both Musharraf and Bhutto. While this has made him convenient as a go-between between the two, it is also indicative that the loyalties of the army are not 100 percent behind Musharraf. Like the civilian population, the army is torn between Musharraf’s current regime, the secular oppositions of both Bhutto and Sharif, and pro-Taliban extremists.

As both the army and the government of Pakistan weaken, it is the Islamic extremists who are growing stronger. The widespread political division of the country may give them the chance they need to increase their power if free elections are held in January.

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry recently wrote, “American leaders are telling Musharraf to take off his military uniform and give real freedom to that country. However, the military is the only institution that gives stability to that extremely divided country …. We helped get rid of Iran’s ‘corrupt’ shah in 1979. He was replaced by Ayatollah Khomeini, who began state-sponsored terrorism in the Middle East. Are we about to see another ayatollah rise to power? This time in nuclear Pakistan?”

Watch for how Pakistan’s democratic elections unfold and watch for division in Pakistan’s army. If the political scene undergoes an Islamic shift and if the army divides, the situation in the Middle East will go from American headache to nuclear nightmare.