Word: musharraf
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Once again, Pakistan's mullahs are on a collision course with President Pervez Musharraf. In the latest clash, on June 2, religious groups that control Pakistan's Northwest Frontier province declared that Shari'a law would be enforced in their territory?superceding the British-style legal system that is Pakistan's law of the land. Shari'a is the strict religious code that governs Islam. From now on, Arabic, the language of the Koran, will be obligatory in schools; girls 12 years and older will have to wear the head-to-toe veil known as the burqa, and women will...
...challenge to Pakistan's shaky, secular government is the last thing Musharraf needs, but the mullahs are pushing a showdown. The Muttahidda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), a political bloc of six religious groups, intends to set up a morality police to enforce Islamic virtue, raising cries among human-rights activists against the "Talibanization" of the province. But popular support for the change is evident: even before the law imposing Shari'a was passed, Islamic youths roamed the town of Peshawar tearing down billboards featuring images of unburqa'd women. The religious parties warned Musharraf not to interfere. "We will resist...
...backing down. "You can't keep following this path if it leads nowhere," Hoodbhoy says. This opinion is gaining currency among influential government officials and policymakers, especially in the wake of Sept. 11 and the Bush Administration's success in Iraq. Convincing the generals and their boss, Musharraf, who planned one of the most successful incursions in the Kashmir conflict?the capture of several strategic peaks in the Kargil region in 1999?is a tougher...
...Still, Musharraf is halfway there. After Sept. 11, he earned kudos from Washington for helping catch more than 450 al-Qaeda suspects and trying to slow the flow of holy warriors into Indian-held Kashmir. Although the number of militants crossing into Kashmir dipped slightly, India now claims that Pakistani intelligence once again has opened the tap, sending perhaps hundreds of fighters across every month and furnishing them with guns, rocket-propelled grenades, radios and daily intelligence on where Indian troops are patrolling. For the Bush Administration, this presents a credibility gap. On a visit to Washington last week, General...
...Publicly, Pakistan says it's not aiding the Kashmiris. But privately, Pakistani officials have told the U.S. that time will be needed to scale down their country's support for the militants. Otherwise, they say, Musharraf may face a backlash from extremist cells, which still abound in Pakistan, as well as from religious parties and some of his own officers. Pakistani officials also argue that Musharraf doesn't exert full control over the wilder extremists roaming Kashmir, such as Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Toiba, which are widely blamed for terrible civilian atrocities. Even without support from Pakistan, though...