Anyone surprised by the budding Military-Mullah Alliance (another MMA) needn't be. The shoddiest political compromise imaginable has been put together in Sindh, thanks to the army forgetting its old vendetta against Altaf Hussain's MQM. With that possible in Sindh, what isn't possible anywhere else?

Not long ago, remember, if the army hated anything in Pakistan, more even than the PPP, it was the MQM. Charges against the MQM covered the darkest sections of the penal code and included the kidnapping and torture of a serving military officer (the famous Major Kaleem case). Determined to crush the MQM, the army's intelligence agencies helped give birth to a splinter faction of the MQM, the Haqiqis.

But behold the wonders of expediency. Desperate for political support, General Musharraf sought it wherever it was to be found, no matter if it entailed supping with the devil or sending the army's own creation, the Haqiqis, to perdition. This is what has happened in Sindh: black painted white and white called by some other name.

The shots in that unfortunate province are called not by the colourful chief minister, Ali Muhammad Meher (if half the things whispered about him are true, I envy him his extra-curricular activities) but by Governor Ibad and his team of MQM ministers. Never the most efficient of provinces, Sindh's administration, or what there is of it, is paralysed by the tussle between the two.

Did anyone say that serious criminal cases filed in the past are languishing against Governor Ibad? Lies and propaganda spread by the MQM's enemies. Governor Ibad never did a violent thing in his life.

Now if expediency can dictate a working alliance between the military and some of the worst desperadoes on the national scene, what's wrong with stitching up an alliance with the cardinals and divines of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, especially when such an alliance is sanctioned by history?

Since the halcyon days of General Zia, the Pakistan army and the religious parties have been bound in strong ties of spiritual and temporal kinship. Forged in the killing fields of Afghanistan, this kinship spread to the political sphere, promoting extremism and hampering the growth of democracy.

Anyone with doubts on this score should consult Lt Gen Hamid Gul, once head of the ISI, who has always taken enormous pride in helping create the right-wing political alliance, the IJI, whose sole purpose was to thwart the PPP's march to power. Sounds too Machiavellian? Shouldn't. Far more than anything to do with intelligence, the intelligence agencies have excelled at such political games.

But what are the mullahs of the MMA up to? Not to put too fine a point on their manoeuvres, they are finally coming out in their true colours. They may not have signed an agreement with the government but all indications suggest they are on the verge of doing so.

What have they agreed to? The question of Musharraf's uniform will not be touched for another year and a half. At the end of this period the MMA will vote for another five-year presidential term for Musharraf. Which effectively means that, God willing, he'll be around as president until 2010. If this is not enough to shake the stoutest heart, the MMA will also help give constitutional sanction to the major provisions of the Legal Framework Order, Musharraf's hatchet job on the Constitution.

Not long ago the MMA divines were thundering that they would accept the LFO under no circumstances. Now by willing to compromise on the issue they are showing, not for the first time, that their capacity to execute the most complicated somersaults is second to none.

But what do they get in return? Little more than the assurance that their government in the Frontier and their share of power in Balochistan will not be disturbed.

Musharraf's pressure tactics have clearly paid off. Starting with the transfer of the MMA-friendly chief secretary and police chief in the Frontier, he gave a resounding pat on the back to the Frontier district nazims, all of them up in arms against the Frontier government. This was followed by the writs moved in the Supreme Court against the educational qualifications (a necessary condition for standing in elections) of more than two score of the MMA's elected legislators.

With no wish to sacrifice its huge stake in the present dispensation, the MMA has been quick to see the light. The PPP and the PML-N could afford to stick to a high moral stand in public (in public because behind the scenes the PPP has been ever ready to do a deal). But the MMA had a lot more to lose if it stood too much on principle.

In any event, being in the military's corner is nothing new for the mullahs. If an agreement is clinched, the nation will only be going back to one of its first principles - the military and the mullahs locked in their primeval embrace. We've been here before. We are going the same route again. Who says there's a forward dynamic in Pakistani politics? The reverse gear is most in use most of the time.

Soon after seizing power one of Musharraf's first public relations gestures was to have himself photographed with his two pet dogs in his arms. This was meant to show the world what a liberal he was - patting dogs being a sign of liberalism in Pakistan where most of the faithful consider dogs to be unclean animals.

Pakistan's 'liberal' classes - including such champions of the masses as Imran Khan - went wild with delight. Here was their man at last. An armed prophet to boot who would lance the scourge of fundamentalism.

All those early dupes, their numbers not puny, have a stricter account of reality now. The referendum stripped the first of their illusions. The ISI-assisted birth of the Q League, the Legal Framework Order (Musharraf's recipe for staying in power forever) and the constant shifting of goalposts before, during and after the 2002 elections took care of their remaining hopes.

Musharraf must be credited with one achievement. He's convinced even the doubters that military chiefs who seize power in Pakistan are made from the same building material. Their one guiding principle is survival, their one quest, how to stay in power forever.

Musharraf and the mullahs therefore are moving towards a dream arrangement. Musharraf gets both longevity and legitimization while the mullahs preserve their miserable government and a half along the Afghan border.

There is no dearth of irony in this new broth. Musharraf, as even American high school students know by now, is one of the greatest Bush acolytes on the face of the planet, indeed the second greatest after Tony Blair. The MMA and its leaders, however, are fiercely anti-American. Or this at least is the garb they choose to wear in public. They support the Taliban and oppose America's war on Afghanistan and its occupation of Iraq.

Now both these extremes are coming together, pro-Americanism and anti-Americanism hitched to a common cause. Musharraf is not going to abandon his pro-Americanism for the sake of the mullahs. It's the mullahs who'll have to adjust their walk to the requirements of keeping pace with their military ally. Which leads to an interesting conclusion: even while spouting anti-American rhetoric, the mullahs will, in effect, be on the side of America's greatest and most willing ally in the region.

TAILPIECE: Marx's prediction about the withering away of the state was realized in Karachi on the morning of Tuesday, July 28. Right from the Avari in the heart of the city up to the airport there was not one policeman, soldier or bureaucrat to keep the traffic moving or help clear Sharea Faisal of the hundreds of vehicles stranded the previous evening because of the mess caused by the rains.

Next to Shah Faisal Colony Sharea Faisal was under two feet of water. But for a group of youngsters, not more than ten or twelve, who were acting as volunteer traffic cops, the traffic would have come to a standstill and I and hundreds like me would not have made it to the airport.