Arif Ali/AFP/Getty Images

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's decision to fire 60 judges last November helped set in motion the political crisis that led to his party's electoral defeat. But since its February victory, Pakistan's ruling coalition has failed to live up to its campaign promise to reinstate the judges -- to the relief of Musharraf, whose reelection might be declared illegal if the old Supreme Court were to return.

Today, a breakthrough was finally made as coalition leaders Nawaz Sharif, of the Pakistani Muslim League-N, and Pakistan People's Party leader (and Benazir Bhutto's widower) Asif Zardari, agreed in Dubai that legislation to reinstate the judges will be brought to Parliament on May 12. The announcement came two days after the coalition's self-imposed deadline for restoring the judges.

Officially, the deadlock was caused by disagreement over whether the reinstatement should be accompanied by constitutional changes, with Zardari was pushing for new rules to prevent the judges from being sacked again in the future. (Unofficially, Zardari didn't want to bring back Musharraf's arch-enemy, former Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammed Chaudhry, for fear that the latter would revive corruption charges that the Musharraf-appointed court had dismissed.)

The agreement appears to be a victory for Sharif, who hopes the speedy reinstatement of the judges will lay the groundwork for Musharraf's ouster. Zardari has a different view -- he says he wants to gradually erode Musharraf's power through legislation, and worries that an injunction against the president will be meaningless if the military doesn't play along. Pakistan may have to wait until after May 12 to see who's right.

The New America Foundation's Steve Coll and Peter Bergen were on CNN the other day, and they made some encouraging comments to Wolf Blitzer:

WOLF BLITZER (Host): [...] What's the latest in terms of the hunt for bin Laden? Is the U.S. and the West any closer to finding him?

STEVE COLL (President, CEO of New America Foundation): Well, I'm not aware of any specific intelligence that has lit up the trail in the last six months or so, but the circumstances in which he's hiding have changed. And he's probably in Pakistan and there his popularity has declined considerably, and also you've got a new government in power, so the motivations on the Pakistani side are changing very quickly.

BLITZER: What do you think, Peter?

PETER BERGEN (New America's Schwartz Senior Fellow): Yes, I think the hunt for bin Laden is going very poorly. As Steve said, bin Laden's support is evaporating in the North-West Frontier Province, where he's almost certainly hiding. A recent poll showed he had dropped from 70 percent favorable in August of 2007 to 4 percent.

BLITZER: So wouldn't that make it easier for Pakistani or other -- or the U.S., Afghan troops, somebody to find him?

PETER BERGEN: Yes. And I think the short answer is yes. Also a very sharp decline in support for suicide bombings amongst Pakistanis. Unfortunately, on the other hand, you have got a Pakistani government which is doing a deal with some of the militants in the North-West Frontier Province at the same time. So as always, sort of a mixed message here with the Pakistanis.

If the Pakistanis can convince those militants to dime out their special guest, it might all be worth it.

(Hat tip: Sameer Lalwani)

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Due to skyrocketing rice prices, Liberians are switching to pasta and learning how to twirl spaghetti on a fork. In India, the government has restricted rice exports, and moms are choosing between eating and paying for their children's schooling. Meanwhile in the United States, Wal-Mart's Sam's Club warehouse stores are limiting the sale of 20-pound (9 kg) bags of jasmine, basmati, and long-grain white rice to four per customer.

In the developed world, food shortages might be overhyped. The head of the California Rice Commission told Reuters, "Bottom line, there is no rice shortage in the United States. We have supplies." Plus, how many Americans buy 80 pounds of rice per shopping trip? (Apparently, it's restaurant owners and small-business owners who typically buy in bulk.)

But for people in developing countries, outrageous food prices and shortages are a serious reality. Josette Sheeran, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, which provides food aid to the needy, told FP in this week's Seven Questions, "This is a silent tsunami." Video, audio, and prepared remarks from her recent talk on global food insecurity at the Center for Strategic and International Studies is also available here.

By the way, if you want to help hungry people get rice, play the Free Rice vocabulary game.

Getty Images

Tulsi Tanti, one India's most inspiring "green" entrepreneurs and now one of the world's richest people (worth $3 billion), is facing stiff challenges with his wind power company that could either lead to its massive failure, or its unbridled success. Tanti is hailed as one of India's most globally successful businessmen in the vein of Ratan Tata and Lakshmi Mittal -- but his company is one of the few that has given India the potential to be a worldwide leader in alternative energy.

But now Suzlon Energy, which Tanti founded and now serves as chairman and managing director for, confronts two main challenges, according to Friday's Wall Street Journal. First, the 144-foot-long windmill blades the company has sold to energy firms including California's Edison Mission Energy have begun to split in some locations, and Suzlon has had to recall 1,251 blades. That represents the majority of blades the company has sold in the United States, and a cost of at least $30 million to the company to repair the cracked blades and reinforce the rest.

The second major challenge for Suzlon is gaining access to the wind industry's most advanced technology. Suzlon is actually in a prime position to do so through its 33.6 percent ownership stake in the innovative German turbine manufacturer, REpower. The problem for Suzlon, however, is that under  German law, REpower can consider Suzlon a "competitor" since it does not own a majority of the company. It is therefore not obliged to transfer its blueprints to Suzlon; Suzlon would need to buy out the minority shareholders. And REpower is refusing to share the technology at present in order to protect the interests of those minority shareholders.

Nonetheless, it's unlikely that these setbacks spell major trouble for Suzlon. As of late last year, the firm had a $3.5 billion order backlog, and wind power demand in general has been growing significantly. With its green credentials and the fact that oil is continuing to hit record highs, wind power is set to remain popular. Moreover, Suzlon has withstood plenty of other challenges since its founding in 1995: the withdrawal of tax breaks in India, competition with major Western companies to acquire other foreign firms, and overseas expansion -- including cracking into the U.S. and Chinese energy markets. Suzlon's annual sales amount to $1.8 billion, and its profits are growing. The WSJ reports that it probably won't be able to make a tender offer for REpower until 2009. Even so, given Suzlon's history I'm expecting the deal to go through, and for Tanti to look back on these problems as minor glitches. And if you live in the United States, don't be surprised if part of your electricity payments soon end up in Suzlon's coffers.

PRAKASH MATHEMA/AFP/Getty Images

In summer 2001, I was on a trip to Kathmandu, Nepal with some friends from college. It just so happened that my long-planned visit came just after the royal heir supposedly went crazy, machine-gunned his father and dozens of palace guards, and then committed suicide (naturally, by shooting himself in the back with an AK-47). The king's unpopular brother, who seemed a lot like Scar from The Lion King, took power. Meanwhile, Maoist insurgents held something like seven provinces at the time.

Needless to say, the country was a bit on edge when my friends and I arrived. We felt safe, but it often seemed like we were the only tourists around.

I remember taking a rickety taxi out to see the famed "monkey temple," a.k.a. Swayambhunath stupa. On the way, I craned my neck incredulously to see a bombed-out bus that looked like it might still be smoldering. "What's that?" I asked the driver. "Don't worry," he laughed. "It's just the Maoist rebels." He assured me that they only killed policemen. When I returned to my hotel that evening, a note from the U.S. Embassy warned us not to go to the attached casino, which had received bomb threats.

Nearly seven years later, the Maoists are going to be in charge. Ain't democracy grand?

RAVEENDRAN/AFP/Getty Images

Back in November, Passport noted that urban Indian hospitals were developing their telemedicine capabilities in order to cater to the country's rural citizens. Now, that expertise is set to benefit patients all across Africa. As the first India-Africa summit kicks off in Delhi, India's efforts build and expand its ties across the African continent are already underway.

Last July, the Indian government -- working with the African Union -- launched the 542 crore ($135.6 million) Pan-African E-network project. The initiative has been called Africa's largest infrastructure project in history, and is designed to develop Africa's information and satellite communications technologies. It aims to connect 53 African countries to a satellite and fiber-optic network. Telemedicine is just one component of this broader scheme, and African countries are already seeing the results. The Black Lion Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for instance, is connected to the Care Group of Hospitals (cardiac specialists) in Hyderabad, where Indian doctors can advise Ethiopian doctors on X-ray and laboratory test result interpretation via a high-speed internet connection. During its year-long pilot run, Black Lion doctors have used the link more than 50 times, and Indian officials estimate the E-network project has helped 100 patients. Telemedicine programs are set to expand across the continent.

The Indian government hopes to increase its sales in information and communication technologies to Africa, and gain a foothold in this sector before China can dominate. In addition to helping patients and developing African countries' ICT infrastructure, projects such as the telemedicine venture will also create goodwill between India and the continent -- a sentiment often lacking in China-Africa relations.

With India also hungry for resources that Africa can provide, developing these types of mutually-beneficial linkages could favor India in the long run. And through its relatively long history with Africa, India has been able to take advantage of existing cultural and commercial affinities to expand the relationship. As a result, trade between India and Africa has ballooned to $20 billion (2006/2007) from $967 million in 1991 (when India began its economic reforms). But whether these efforts, and India's attempts at creating goodwill, can compete with China's cash and favors remains to be seen.

AFP/Getty Images

India's foreign minister has given the Dalai Lama, who heads the Tibetan government in exile in Dharamsala in northern India, a warning: Don't mess up our relationship with China. Here's Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Indian TV:

India will continue to offer [the Dalai Lama] all hospitality, but during his stay in India, they should not do any political activity, any action that can adversely affect relations between India and China".

Tibet expert Robert Barnett recently told FP that Delhi is increasingly distancing itself from the Tibetans in order to solidify its ties with Beijing.

FP: Will India find it harder to tolerate the Tibetan government in exile?

RB: India is clearly moving in the direction of distancing itself from the exiles. Some people think it's preparing for the death of the Dalai Lama, and then it will distance itself even more. There were indications of a sea change after the Dalai Lama received the Congressional Gold Medal in America last October. The Indians issued an order, presumably under pressure from China, that their cabinet ministers were not allowed to meet him or receive him upon his return. This was seen as very unusual. I don't want to suggest some major realignment, but the indications are very much that India is maintaining ambiguity but showing that it largely wants to engage with China. That said, it hasn't taken any irreversible steps yet in terms of the Tibetans.

Another question to my mind is, What happens to Dharamsala when the Dalai Lama dies? What's received little analysis in recent weeks is Beijing's long-term strategy of waiting out the Dalai Lama in order to control his succession. Traditionally, Tibetan Buddhism's No.2 figure, the Panchen Lama, helps determine the next Dalai Lama, believed to be a reincarnation of the former. But the Panchen Lama named by the Dalai Lama in 1995 was arrested by the Chinese and hasn't been seen since (he was 6 years old at the time of his arrest). China then named its own Panchen Lama, a teenager who just so happens to be a big fan of Chinese nationalism. How that succession issue shakes out will be of enormous importance, and how China handles it will determine to what extent the recent protests are a sign of things to come.

As Pakistan's new government settles in, press reports are saying that Husain Haqqani, an FP contributor and a former Carnegie Endowment analyst, will be made Pakistan's next ambassador to Washington. He would replace Mahmud Ali Durrani, a retired general who would become national security advisor. For now, Haqqani has been made "ambassador at large" and the change in Washington isn't expected until June, when Durrani's term expires.

If the reports are true, it's an interesting development. Haqqani has written extensively for FP, most recently in a debate with Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also the author of "Think Again: Islamist Terrorism" (along with Christine Fair), "Islam's Weakened Moderates," "The American Mongols," and "Islam's Medieval Outposts." A theme of his writing is a staunch defense of democracy and a plea to do more to help Islamic moderates weaken extremists. He has a lot of friends in Washington and in the media.

When we last interviewed Ambassador Durrani in November, I thought I detected some hedging on his part. He didn't seem entirely confident that Pervez Musharraf would remain the president, nor was he willing to take the usual shots against Benazir Bhutto. Perhaps he was just being characteristically polite. In any case, Durrani appears to be landing on his feet in the new order, so he must have played it smart.

State Department officials John Negroponte and Richard Boucher are in Islamabad for what sounds like an extremely uncomfortable meeting with Pakistan's new government. Pakistan People's Party advisor and FP contributor Husain Haqqani made it clear that things ain't what they used to be for the Americans in Pakistan:

If I can use an American expression, there is a new sheriff in town," Mr. Haqqani said. "Americans have realized that they have perhaps talked with one man for too long."

MANPREET ROMANA/AFP/Getty Images

Looks like the United States isn't the only country that has security problems at its embassies:

A group of Tibetans on Friday barged into the high-security Chinese Embassy, agitating against the crackdown on pro-independence protesters in Lhasa by Chinese authorities.

Waving the Tibetan flag and draped in banners carrying anti-China messages such as "Boycott Beijing Olympics," about 20 Tibetan students, including some women, scaled the walls of the embassy in the high-security Chanakyapuri area, taking the security personnel by surprise.

Francois Durand/Getty Images

India's Tata Motors has just recieved a $3 billion loan from Citigroup and JP Morgan that will likely to be used to purchase luxury British auto brands Jaguar and Landrover. Tata has been in acquisition talks with Ford about the two brands since at least the beginning of the year, and the deal is now expected to be finalized around the Mar. 26.

If Tata's bid succeeds, the company would become the producer of the world's cheapest car, the $2,500 Nano, and some of its most expensive. The paradox raises the question -- will Tata be able to cut costs for its new luxury brands, whose troubles are well-known? Tata's chairman has already ruled out shifting the production of Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles from Britain to cheaper locations, though Wharton's John Paul MacDuffie believes Tata could restore the brands to profitability through other means.

For an India that was ruled by Britain for nearly ninety years, Tata's purchase will starkly reinforce the arrival of the "post-colonial" moment. As MacDuffie explains, "there might be a certain sense of pride in acquiring the 'Jewel in the Crown'." Like Tata's previous acquisition of British steelmaker Corus and teamaker Tetley, and India's United Breweries Group's purchase of Scottish whisky distiller Whyte & Mackay, Tata's acquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover would symbolize yet another "post-colonial table turn."

Tata is well aware of the potential blow to British pride. "These brands will continue to belong to Britain," Chairman Ratan Tata has assured. Except that now, they will be owned by an Indian company.

I'm surprised U.S. media outlets haven't picked up on this nugget from a story about Monday's bombing in Lahore, Pakistan, which targeted the Federal Investigative Authority:

Deputy Inspector General (Investigations) Tasadaq Hussain said police had collected the remains of the two attackers. Part of the head and a leg of the FIA building attacker were found from the roof of a nearby building, he said. He said the attacks had targeted the US-trained Special Investigations Group (SIG) that had been working on the third floor of the building. Plastic explosive C4 was used in the attacks, he added. [my emphasis]

Syed Saleem Shahzad, writing for the Asia Times, says the unit in question is "a joint initiative of US and Pakistani planners set up to eliminate the strong roots of radicalization in Punjab province." The worry is that jihadi groups from the northwest are extending their influence into historically moderate Punjab, making it easier to infiltrate and attack hard targets. Shahzad warns:

Tuesday's attacks are significant... in that the establishment's most secret underground offices are now on the militants' radar, and more attacks are anticipated.

(Hat tip: The indispensable NightWatch)

Eminent Afghanistan scholar Barnett Rubin is sounding the alarm about rising wheat prices in South Asia. Seeking to tamp down food inflation, Pakistan has reduced its exports of wheat to Afghanistan. That could lead to dangerous riots and civil unrest north of the Durand Line and provide a potent political issue for the Taliban to exploit. The flip side, Rubin notes, is that the rising prices of farm products ought to make crop-substitution programs more viable:

Nonetheless, the rise in price in wheat and other commodities (what is happening to horticultural commodities, flowers, essential oils, and so on?) presents an opportunity for investing in other cash crops and their marketing in Afghanistan. For all the rhetoric about how the drug economy is supporting insurgency and terrorism, where is the program to seize this market opportunity? And for all the talk of the importance of Afghanistan to global security, where is the program to assure Afghans of an affordable supply of basic food?

Indeed, the lack of creativity on this front has been astonishing. A few weeks back, I attended a Cato Institute luncheon with Said Tayeb Jawad, Afghanistan's ambassador to the United States. Noting that opium traffickers often loan farmers the money to plant and fertilize the opium harvest for the coming year, I asked the ambassador what programs are in place to provide loan support for farmers who want to grow alternative crops. According to him, there are essentially none. So if you're an Afghan farmer who wants to grow wheat or strawberries instead of opium poppies, you're largely on your own. And we wonder why Afghanistan now supplies 93 percent of the world's opiates.

Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov hopes he has made an offer the women of his country can't refuse. For the simple task of birthing eight or more children (yes, eight or more), women will receive a one-time bonus of $250.

But wait! There's more: They'll also receive free dental care, free utilities, and free public transportation for life. With eight kids, free diapers or, better yet, a free vacation might be more appropriate.

Berdymukhammedov is partly correcting for the mistakes of his predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov, who, during his 15-year reign of insanity, renamed the months of the year, banned beards, and forced schools to exclusively teach the "spiritual guide" -- the Ruhnama -- that he'd written for citizens. Among Niyazov's many other bright ideas were abolishing free healthcare, firing thousands of healthcare workers, and closing all hospitals outside of the country's capital. As a result, child mortality in Turkmenistan has spiked dramatically in recent years, leaving the new president to offer what incentives he can to keep new generations of Turkmen coming.

MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images

Major international events often impose enormous burdens on poor and minority communities. Roughly 1.5 million people, for instance, will be displaced by the Beijing Olympics. For the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, South Korea forcibly evicted 720,000 people while the homeless population was detained in the city's outskirts. The 1996 Atlanta Games uprooted about 30,000 poor residents, and Sydney, Athens, and other Olympic cities witnessed similar social dislocations. But New Delhi has taken its "preparations" for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, kind of a mini-Olympics involving current and former British colonies, a step further: by arresting and imprisoning beggars.

Delhi's Social Welfare Department is organizing "cleanup operations," the Christian Science Monitor reports:

Every morning, it dispatches nine vans from its Beggar Raid Team. Each carries three plainclothes men, who scan the crowded streets of bullock carts, cows, motorbikes, cycle rickshaws, newspaper hawkers, and stray dogs for ragged people pleading for money.

"Since the end of last year, we've been told to increase the numbers we arrest," says Anand Pandey, a civil servant known as a "raid officer" ...

Warrants are not necessary for arresting beggars. Once picked up, they are tried in the city's Beggars' Court. Those whom Mr. Pandey calls "first-time offenders" often go free with a warning. Others are incarcerated until friends or family scrape together the money to pay their bail of about 3,000 rupees (about $75). Many are locked up in "beggars' homes" – dedicated jails – for a minimum of one year and a maximum of 10, the latter being the same penalty given for violent robberies. If they are "blind, a cripple or otherwise incurably helpless," according to the law, beggars can be locked up for life.

The city is also creating a "beggar database" to hold the photographs and fingerprints of offending beggars, so that "habitual" panhandlers can be convicted more easily. Already, during the past year, 2,537 beggars have been arrested and 1,133 convicted. Many of the city's beggars are elderly, ill, or amputees, and have little chance of finding regular work.

Let's face it, the city is arresting and locking up these beggars for no reason other than that they are poor. "Many of these people have no option but to beg. To arrest them without even providing the infrastructure that guarantees them the most basic needs is appalling," Anand Kumar, a human rights lawyer in New Delhi, told the Monitor. With such cruel and regressive attitudes toward the poor, New Delhi's efforts to portray itself as a modern "world-class city" for the Commonwealth Games are doomed to fail -- at least in the eyes of human-rights campaigners around the world.

As more people all over the world -- mostly notably in China and India -- enter the ranks of the middle class and are able to afford the calorie-rich diets of the Western world, their increased appetites have helped drive up prices of foods such as bread, milk, and chocolate, notes FP Editor in Chief Moisés Naím in his latest column, "Can the World Afford a Middle Class?"

Chocolate companies such as Nestlé, Mars, Ferrero, and Hershey are eager to satisfy the cravings of budding chocoholics in Asia, where consumption of the sweet stuff lags far behind that of Europe, as shown in the following table, based on numbers from a recent BusinessWeek article. To boost sales, these companies have sometimes had to adapt flavors to Asian tastes, such as with green-tea Hershey Kisses and azuki-bean Kit Kats, which the slide show here details.

Chocolate consumption, per capita annually	24 lbs. (11 kg), in Britain and Switzerland	3.5 oz. (99 g)	5.8 oz. (165 g)
Annual sales	$35 billion	$813 million	$394 million
Sales growth	1-2% annually	nearly doubled in past 5 years	64% in past 5 years

Photos: SEBASTIAN WILLNOW/AFP/Getty Images; MIKE CLARKE/AFP/Getty Images; SEBASTIAN D'SOUZA/AFP/Getty Images

Syndicated columnist Robert Novak asks why the U.S. government is still going to bat for Pervez Musharraf after the Pakistani president was so clearly rejected at the polls:

Overwhelming repudiation of President Pervez Musharraf by Pakistan's voters did not immediately dilute the Bush administration's support for him. On the contrary, the first election returns were barely in Monday night when the U.S. government began pressing victorious opposition leaders not to impeach the former military strongman. [...]

Since Bhutto's murder, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher has antagonized Pakistan's opposition leaders by insisting that Musharraf was committed to a ''good'' election while in fact voting rolls were being rigged. Minimal election-day vote fraud is attributed to Musharraf's weakness rather than strength. The army refused its cooperation, needed to really steal votes. According to Pakistani sources, the army high command was alarmed that Musharraf's unpopularity had undermined public esteem for the military.

These changes apparently escaped the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, which on election eve reported to Washington that Musharraf's Pakistan Muslim League-Q would do well enough to force a coalition government. Vote rigging probably cost the opposition 25 seats, mainly in Baluchistan -- not enough to prevent a two-thirds majority by opposition parties that could vote impeachment in the lower house.

More on State's pro-Musharraf maneuvering here. It's not the first time in recent years the State Department has made a bad pre-election call. Condoleezza Rice admitted being surprised when she heard Hamas had won the Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006, despite plenty of signs that a groundswell of anger was brewing against Fatah. In fairness, these things are hard to predict. I, for one, expected Musharraf to do a better job with the cheating and thought there would be much more violence. But after the results are in, isn't it time to accept reality?

... I should note that Novak is wrong about the two-thirds majority, which the anti-Musharraf forces don't quite have.

Buried in the WSJ's interview with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf today was this little gem:

WSJ: Now you have two well-known figures from the 1990's, Mr. Sharif and Mr. Zardari, back in very powerful positions. Are you confident that the problems Pakistan had in the 1990's won't crop [up]again?

Mr. Musharraf: I hope not. There's the National Security Council, as I said. The other check is the freedom of the media. I would like to take all the credit for that. Whatever the media says, it is I who gave them the private television channels. Back in 2001, there used to be one -- Pakistan Television. Today, there are over 50 channels operating. The media should exercise a check over the government.

All the credit? For Pakistan's lousy "Not Free" rating from Freedom House's Freedom of the Press rankings? Or how about for American freelancer Nicholas Schmidle's expulsion from Pakistan last month a few days after he wrote about the Taliban in the frontier provinces? How about the fact that foreign journalists are essentially barred from reporting in half the country?

Musharraf specifically cites Pakistan's private television channels, apparently as levers of freedom he has bequeathed to the country. But he shut down most of those same channels during the recent emergency period; riot police tore up the offices of one of the most popular channels; and popular TV journalists have been put on "forced leave" or made to sign codes of conduct once they were allowed back on air. So, yes, Musharraf is right when he says "[t]he media should exercise a check over the government." But journalists have to be allowed to operate without censorship first.

Nawaz Sharif (John Moore/Getty Images)

Monday's elections in Pakistan were -- to use a timeworn cliché -- a political earthquake. Although the poll numbers were clear, very few Pakistan watchers expected that President Pervez Musharraf would allow the opposition to win in such a decisive fashion. In the end, South Asia expert Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told me, "There was a depth of resentment that not even the government's manifold efforts at shaping the outcome could prevent."

So what happens now? "With the quite utterly conclusive demise of the PML-Q,"  Tellis said, "the coalition that is likely to be formed will be between the PPP and the PML-N." (Referring to Musharraf's Pakistan Muslim League, the Pakistan People's Party of the late Benazir Bhutto and now her husband Asif Zardari, and the PML-N of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, respectively.)

But what about Musharraf? "This result simply just cannot be good news for him," Tellis said. "I mean, this is absolutely devastating." Nawaz Sharif, you may recall, despises Musharraf for ousting him back in 1999, so there's little chance his party would want to keep the general around. The PPP is another story, Tellis said, and Zardari might be willing to let Musharraf stay on as president -- but with vastly curtailed powers. "I would not treat his departure from office as inevitable," Tellis cautioned. But for Pakistan, he said, the return of the moderate civilian parties represents "a very hopeful moment." Now we'll see if they can deliver.

Well, well, well. It looks like Pervez Musharraf didn't do such a good job rigging the elections after all:

Almost all the leading figures in the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, the party that has governed for the last five years under Mr. Musharraf, lost their seats, including the leader of the party, the former speaker of Parliament and six ministers.

Official results are expected Tuesday, but early returns indicated that the vote would usher in a prime minister from one of the opposition parties, and opened the prospect of a Parliament that would move to undo many of Mr. Musharraf’s policies and that may even try to remove him.

It looks like Benazir Bhutto's party, the Pakistan People's Party, will win a plurality of seats, followed by the Pakistan Muslim League of former PM Nawaz Sharif. But we'll have to see what the official results bring when they are announced tomorrow, and we'll have to see if any secret deal was in fact struck to keep Musharraf in power. He is sounding mighty conciliatory right now.

The best news of the night? The fundamentalists were apparently trounced in the Northwest Frontier Provinces.