Ballot, not battle: The heavily armed bodyguard of a Pakistan candidate. (Reuters)

Lahore, Feb. 17: The news from Pakistan is not that it is going to the polls tomorrow, the news is that elections are going to do little to shake off the calamitous cloud gathered on this troubled nation.

Its most recent burst struck Parachinar in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) late last evening — a suicide bomber who drove his car bomb into a local election office, killing 58 and leaving 80-odd mangled in the mayhem. Jihadi violence has spiralled out of control and mocks ominously at the current engagement for power between President Pervez Musharraf and the political parties.

This was the 64th suicide attack over the last year and everybody’s betting the next one couldn’t be far away. Experts have lost count of the physical toll they’ve taken but they seem unanimous that terror has torn at the nerves so deep, the country can’t contemplate remedies.

“Forget this election, which is a fraud anyway,” says I.A. Rehman, one of Pakistan’s most respected civil society voices.

“Why can’t we see the real threat? We are imploding as a nation, the struggle for rights is all very well but we should be running for our lives because the guns won’t leave us. The central problem today is not who rules Pakistan but who threatens it,” Rehman said.

More Pakistani soldiers have been killed trying to put down al Qaida and the resurgent Taliban in the high and barren wilds along the Afghan border than died in all the four wars against India put together. But the jihadis have shown no signs of wither while the Pakistan Army, verily the institution that holds this country together, takes huge blows to the body and to morale.

Last fortnight, Baitulla Mehsud’s Pakistani Taliban shot down a military chopper in south Waziristan, killing seven top army officials including Major General Jawed Sultan, the commander of anti-jihadi operations in the NWFP. The government quickly suspended action and sued for talks that the Taliban, such is their sway, have only agreed to consider.

Ahmed Rashid, author of a globally acclaimed work on the Taliban, believes he is merely being conservative in saying that his country is teetering on the edge and the ground underfoot is giving way.

None of the exploding commerce of Lahore’s neon-lit supermarkets, none of the cushioned comforts of his well-appointed bungalow, none of his weapon-ready private guards seems to contain Rashid’s galloping anxieties. “This is all fake, illusory,” he says. “One major strike by the jihadis anywhere in the world and I am convinced it will be traced back to Pakistan, such has been the proliferation. And then all the bets are off, there will be nothing to stop the Americans from doing here what they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. Musharraf is really their last man. He has the army and the army was meant to do the job. It very obviously can’t. Hundreds of his soldiers have deserted in Waziristan or just surrendered to the jihadis, that’s very disturbing.”

Democracy? Rashid lets out a laugh, then winces. “A popular democracy would probably have the strength to engage with these forces and co-opt or outflank them, but where are the people who will bring us that? Benazir Bhutto displayed a flicker of potential and look what happened to her. This is our most alarming and depressing moment because there is nobody to protect lives, I can’t see an agency that can.”

It’s a fair estimate that the government’s writ doesn’t run over nearly half of Pakistan — most of the NWFP and Balochistan in the west, substantial parts of Sindh down south. There is a daily war on in these parts that the Pakistani army has not been able to end in years. The trouble, though, is that increasingly it is a war refusing to be contained in the remoter regions; it’s exploding its frontiers into the heartland of Punjab and Sindh. Benazir Bhutto’s assassination and a slew of suicide bombings in Lahore and elsewhere are proof.

A former ISI general who would not be named explained the motives and mechanics. “Musharraf slept a long while with the jihadis, but of course they now hate him and his war on terror, they would do anything to bleed him,” the general said. “And they have a ready hand to take up arms — all the fellows that Musharraf trained for jihad in Kashmir but prevented from going across because he suddenly became a warrior against terror.”

The general wouldn’t give numbers, but he said there were enough of them around. “They are mostly Punjabi boys, high on motivation, low on occupation, it is no surprise they are joining hands with Pashtuni jihadis and expanding the constituency of terror.”

That’s the constituency Pakistani leaders perhaps need to win over more desperately than all those they have been fighting for in this election. Were you to believe the sagely Ahmed Rashid, it is beyond the scope of tomorrow’s election to throw up such a winner.