Strata-Sphere:

My personal opinion about what is going on in Pakistan is that Musharraf is preparing for his grand finale. No, he is not attempting to grab power, he is about to take a dramatic step towards crippling the last stronghold of al-Qaeda and its leadership in the lawless tribal regions of Pakistan. My theory is Musharraf is going to do the dirty deed so Bhutto can take over once it is done. I noted a while ago how Bhutto gave Musharraf cover for calling in US forces to cleanse al-Qaeda from the tribal areas of Pakistan.

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said on Monday that she might allow a U.S. military strike inside Pakistan to eliminate al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden if she were the country’s leader.

“I would hope that I would be able to take Osama bin Laden myself without depending on the Americans. But if I couldn’t do it, of course we are fighting this war together and (I) would seek their cooperation in eliminating him,” Bhutto said in an interview on BBC World News America.

We have noted for months the Pakistan build up of 100,000 forces surrounding the region. We have noted the on-again, off-again attempts to let the tribes in the region clear out the foreign Arab, Chechen and Uzbek terrorists. We have noted the battles that have been waged against the Taliban and these foreign fighters. It all seemed to not go anywhere, but it did demonstrate a good faith effort to avoid a full up fight and its repercussions on Pakistan itself.

As Iraq has become a no-go zone for al-Qaeda (they really pissed off the Iraqi Sunnis and are now hunted down) the only place left to regroup is in these lawless regions of Pakistan. This is not pure conjecture, it is actually being seen “on the ground”:

There are signs that more foreign fighters are joining the Taliban in Afghanistan. These foreign militants are believed responsible for the upsurge in suicide bombings — and some experts say they have strengthened the Taliban insurgency.

Most are Pakistani militants, who slip across the border into Afghanistan to join the Taliban. But there are other nationalities as well — says Seth Jones, a specialist on Afghanistan at the Rand Corporation. “Small numbers are Arabs, especially Saudis, Libyans, Egyptians. A small number also of Uzbeks, Chechens and some other Central Asians. But the bulk of these are Pakistanis, including Pakistani Pashtuns.”

This area of Pakistan is right along the Afghan border and creates a good base of operations into Afghanistan. There is a lot of recent action in Afghanistan as well, which is not a coincidence in timing I would wager. We have attempted to take out al-Qaeda’s number two (Zawahiri) at least once, and maybe twice, with air strikes into the region. So we know there is more than massing forces there, it also probably hosts al-Qaeda’s top leaders