August 25, 2008 (LPAC)--Just as Lyndon LaRouche has been warning for weeks, the ouster of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has led to a major political crisis in Pakistan. Today, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif withdrew from the coalition government, over a dispute with the PPP (Pakistan Peoples Party) over Sharif's demand that the deposed head of the supreme court be reinstated. Although PPP leader Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of the assassinated Benazir Bhutto, claims that he will be able to reconstitute a parliamentary majority despite the Sharif pullout, the Zardari-Sharif dispute revives longstanding feudal battles, that had been significantly reduced during the Musharraf nine years in power. During both the Bhutto and Sharif governments, the Pakistani ISI had built up the Taliban apparatus in Afghanistan, and created an opium smuggling empire now estimated to generate $160 billion a year in black market revenue.

Zardari announced late last week that he would be the PPP's candidate for President in upcoming Sept. 6 elections to fill Musharraf's post. Sharif has announced that he plans to support a former supreme court justice, who will run against Zardari. Among the issues surrounding the supreme court fight are: longstanding corruption charges against Zardari, and reports that the supreme court, under deposed chief justice Ifikhar Mohammed Chaudry, was about to open a major investigation into Pakistani complicity in numerous U.S. "renditions" of suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban collaborators.

In an effort to demonstrate that the government is not weakened by the Sharif pullout, the PPP-led regime today announced a ban on Pakistani Taliban, a coalition of radical groups behind a series of spectacular recent terrorist attacks, including a recent bombing of a government munitions plant, in which 67 people were killed.

Lyndon LaRouche has issued a series of statements, beginning Aug. 15, denouncing the Bush Administration for failing to intercede to prevent the ouster of Musharraf, which was certain to trigger a major destabilization crisis in the South Asian nation, that has already spilled over into Kashmir and Afghanistan. LaRouche described President Bush's failure to act to support Musharraf as "another grave strategic blunder" by the White House. He said that the Bush White House, for all practical purposes, is owned by Saudi factions implicated in the "Al Yamamah" Anglo-Saudi apparatus.