Islamabad

Sixty years old, Pakistan remains trapped in the same revolving door between civilian and military rule that it has known all its life. Unstable, nuclear armed, regarded as a breeding ground for Islamist militancy and hiding place for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Pakistan is a country the West cannot take its eyes off.

As Pakistan marks its 60th anniversary, the country finds itself chafing under military rule with its identity and very existence threatened by a rising tide of Islamic extremism. Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network and its Taliban allies plot insurrection and global terror from bases in Pakistan’s northern tribal zones.

Embattled Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was set to decide on Thursday whether to impose emergency rule due to ”external and internal threats”, a government spokesperson said. Official sources said late on Wednesday they believed that a proclamation of a state of emergency was likely following a meeting later on Thursday at the president’s camp outside Islamabad.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Wednesday cancelled a trip to Afghanistan to attend a key anti-terrorism meeting, citing a previous engagement amid heightened security concerns. On the eve of a high-profile meeting of leaders from volatile regions bordering the two countries, Musharraf telephoned Afghan President Hamid Karzai to tell him that he would not attend.

Pakistan boosted security on Saturday fearing further attacks a day after a suicide bombing during protests at Islamabad’s pro-Taliban Red Mosque killed 14 people. Authorities were also investigating how the attacker was able to strike at a crowded market in the heart of the capital.

Hundreds of Islamists occupied Pakistan’s Red Mosque on Friday, painting the walls in their original colour and wrecking the official reopening of the complex after a bloody army assault on militants. Protesters chased out a government-appointed religious elder who was meant to lead the first Friday prayers at the Islamabad mosque since the military operation there earlier this month.

Two suicide bomb attacks killed at least 33 people in Pakistan on Thursday as a militant backlash intensified following the army’s storming of radical mosque in Islamabad earlier this month. A wave of bomb attacks since a siege and assault on the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, complex, a militant stronghold in the capital, has swept across Pakistan.

Several thousand Pakistani Islamists rallied on Friday to denounce the government for ordering an army crackdown on a radical mosque in the capital, Islamabad. Protests were held in several towns and cities across the country after Friday prayers but none was very big and there were no reports of trouble.

Pakistanis buried bodies on Thursday from among more than 70 followers of a revolutionary cleric, a day after commandos killed the last few gunmen hiding in the ruins of the Red Mosque. Anger ran deep in tribal parts of north-west Pakistan, though sentiment in most of the country sided with President Pervez Musharraf’s decision to send in the army.

Pakistani forces killed a rebel Islamist leader and more than 50 of his militants on Tuesday after 15 hours of fighting in an Islamabad mosque compound at the climax of a week-long siege. Militants mounted a last stand in the basement of a religious school where cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi was killed, the Interior Ministry said.

Pakistani forces stormed a mosque compound in the capital on Tuesday, killing at least 40 militants who were believed to be holed up with hundreds of women and children. With more than two-thirds of the complex cleared, commandos had yet to encounter any of the women and children.