Right now it really sucks more than anything else to be Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. I know, I know, you’re thinking how can it suck to be the military leader of a country with 160 million people and a nifty collection of nuclear capabilities ‘ it’s hard to see the downside here. Wouldn’t it be worse to be former Sen. Larry Craig sitting at the dinner table with his family or O.J. Simpson sitting in a court room without Johnny Cochran to rhyme and dazzle a jury toward another acquittal?

At first glance, I’d say Musharraf has it easy compared to these two winners. But look closely at the Pakistani president’s situation and you’ll see why he may need something stronger than an antacid (mild sedative?) and why it sucks to be him more than anyone else.

Musharraf is the leader of the largest Muslim country in the world and an increasing majority of his subjects are growing weary of his dictatorial style of governing. The West feels he doesn’t do enough to curb the growing insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the extreme factions within his own country feel he does too much. He’s caught between a rock and a hard place known as George W. Bush’s ‘war on terror’ and to top it all off, this week he was officially added to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida shit list.

Ordinarily it wouldn’t be such a big news story to have a leader of a Western-leaning Middle Eastern state to be the target in the latest round of Jihadball. However, Pakistan is different because they possess nuclear weapons. Shudder to think what will be if the insurgency spills over into a nuclear-armed country.

Yikes.

When you consider what’s actually happening in Pakistan, such an event doesn’t seem so unlikely. It’s widely believed that the insurgency in the Middle East is being run out of the rugged, semi-autonomous tribal regions in Northwest Pakistan bordering on the opium powder keg of Afghanistan.

Osama bin Laden and his followers are most likely hiding out there. Suicide bombs have gone off in crowded urban centers all throughout his country and now that jihad has been officially signed, sealed and delivered, we have to wonder how quickly and how severely the security situation on the ground in Pakistan will deteriorate.

And aside from the obvious security situation in his country, the president’s problems are political as well. In his desperate struggle to maintain power, Musharraf readily opens the Joseph Stalin playbook in dealing with political opposition. Case in point: the only two other popular political figures in Pakistan aren’t currently allowed into Pakistan.

Last week, after the Supreme Court stood up to Musharraf’s edict of exile for one of his opponents, former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif triumphantly returned to Pakistan for a grand total of four hours before Musharraf had him arrested on corruption charges and re-exiled into Saudi Arabia. That’s how you play the role of ‘The Decider.’ President Bush, I assume you’ve been taking notes.

And so Pakistan sits on the brink of a much-maligned state of emergency. This essentially translates to President Musharraf consolidating his power base and remaining the only candidate in the upcoming presidential election. Meanwhile, our government here in the States sits back and allows him to make a mockery of democracy because he comes out every so often and denounces the insurgency and because we are afraid of the Islamic extremist alternatives to his regime. It’s just another one of the costs of doing business in the Middle East.

Jonathan Schwartz is a senior economics major who can stand beside some things he thinks are right, and can stand beside the idea of stand and fight. This is our country.