ANALYSIS-Military mind leads Pakistan into state of confusion

By Simon Cameron-Moore

ISLAMABAD, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Strike fast, eliminate the enemy, and get out quickly.

President Pervez Musharraf, the former commando, often talks in those terms about operations against al Qaeda militants.

For the past few days Pakistan's military leader has taken somewhat similar action against troublesome judges under the cloak of emergency rule and suspension of the constitution.

"I have not learnt to surrender. I know how to face the situation. I never give in, I will confront," Musharraf said in an address to the nation on Saturday after taking steps to avoid any chance of a courtroom defeat that could have ended his rule.

The general's pre-emptive strike to rid himself of a Supreme Court bench that might have annulled his Oct. 6 re-election victory has heightened uncertainties in nuclear-armed Pakistan.

Some analysts reckon Musharraf has set off a chain of events he cannot control and will ultimately consume him, while others see him wounded but hanging on. Nobody sees him going easily.

"I think his problem is his own ego," said Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution in Washington. "He's always seen himself as the saviour of Pakistan and the indispensable leader."

If Musharraf is damaged too badly and is unable to function properly as president or army chief, his own generals could ask him to step aside.

"It may come to push rather than anything else -- it's hard to predict these things -- but the system bends only so far before it starts to break," Cohen said.

Under fire from Western allies and the international community, and with an angry Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's most popular and divisive opposition figure, now back in Islamabad, Musharraf appears to be hoping he can just replace the judges quickly, manage the politicians and make the whole mess go away.

RIGHT-HAND MAN

The general's political right-hand man, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, told Dawn newspaper the emergency could be over in two to three weeks.

Other high-ranking officials say elections, which had been expected in January, will be held on schedule or slightly later.

"If they do hold elections fairly soon -- that is within a month of the scheduled elections -- then he can get out of this, he can work a 'managed' election," said Cohen, adding that Bhutto could end up in government with old political foes such as Hussain.

Taking Musharraf at his word, and he has backtracked before, he is "determined" to quit as army chief and hold elections once his legal wrangles are resolved.

The trouble is that smashing the country's judiciary and muzzling the media -- television news channels were taken off the air -- will take an awful lot longer to fix.

"If two weeks after Nov. 3 Musharraf takes off his uniform and comes as a civilian president and says he's going to hold elections, I don't think that's satisfactory," said independent analyst Nasim Zehra.

"What happens about the judiciary? Are we going to take that as a fait accompli?"

They were hardly conducive circumstances for elections, which were never going to be free and fair so long as the party of Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister Musharraf deposed and exiled, was being suppressed.

COURTS BOYCOTT

Lawyers are up in arms, boycotting courts following the dismissal of judges such as chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, who refused to go along with Musharraf's interpretation of the law.

Musharraf quoted Abraham Lincoln while justifying himself by saying a limb had to be sacrificed to save the nation.

Most Pakistanis believe Musharraf was rescuing himself from a possible adverse ruling by the Supreme Court hearing challenges to his re-election while still army chief last month.

"He is a cheater, like other dictators we've had in the past," said Aamir Ali, who joined hundreds of other students at a protest in Islamabad that passed off peacefully on Wednesday. A text message circulated by mobile phone after Musharraf said he wanted to stop the nation committing suicide put a wry interpretation on his words that many Pakistanis would agree with.

"Suicide attack on the constitution, judiciary and media. The victims died, the bomber survived."

The judges Musharraf has chosen to fill the empty benches are unlikely to inspire confidence.

Those judges can strike down the challenges that made the Supreme Court stop Musharraf declaring victory after his re-election by parliament in October.

But analysts say they cannot restore his diminished moral authority or crumbling approval ratings.

Nor will a pliant judiciary go down well with foreign investors, even though the economy has been averaging 7 percent growth annually for the past four years. "You're going to have, I think, more of the same of what has been happening in Pakistan -- a bunch of fat cats and robber barons are going to hold sway," said Asad Saeed, an independent economist based in Karachi.

Musharraf is safe, analysts say, so long as the army stays loyal, mass protests are contained and Western governments calculate that they need Musharraf to have any chance of defeating al Qaeda globally and of stabilising Afghanistan by crushing the Taliban.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared that Washington doesn't "have all its chips on Musharraf", which begged the question where are the rest.

"It's a bluff," said Cohen. (Editing by Roger Crabb and Alex Richardson)