An arresting sentence in this BBC report on Pakistan President Musharraf’s latest troubles:

“‘The turning point clearly was the abduction of the Chinese massage parlour girls,’ says a senior diplomat in Islamabad.”

This is all to do with Musharraf having finally authorized an assault on the “Red Mosque” seminary in Pakistan’s capital. It’s a nest of radical jihadis, who have been making a nuisance of themselves going round the city imposing Islamic virtue, Taliban-style. One of those impositions somehow led to them kidnapping the madam of a Chinese-staffed brothel much frequented by Pakistan’s movers and shakers (if you’ll pardon the expression).

Musharraf has been loth to stomp on the jihadis for all the usual reasons—mainly, the Pak army’s long, long record of using jihadis as proxy troops in various conflicts (Afghanistan, Kashmir,…). Those jihadis really come in handy. However, the kidnapping of the madam got the Chinese mad. Everybody else—including us—is chronically mad with Musharraf for foot-dragging over his country’s jihadis, but China’s too close (they share a 300-mile border) and too mean (WAY meaner than us), and the Pak-Chinese relationship goes too far back—all the way back to Cold War days, when the line-up was Russia with India, Pakistan with China (and then, after Nixon/Kissinger, with us).

To paraphrase Elvis Presley:

You can burn my house, steal my car

Drink my liquor from that old fruit jar

Do anything that you want to do

But kidnap my whores, and I’ll come down on you!

The Red Mosque is now under serious siege. The seminarians swear they will all be martyrs rather than surrender. Let’s hope so.