Word: musharraf
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General Pervez Musharraf is ready to collect his reward. Pakistan's leader will meet with President Bush at the White House today, and he can expect considerable U.S. economic and political support to come his way for the strategic choices he has made since September 11. The U.S. will help, because the alternative is to let the government of a nuclear-armed state collapse...
...Given a "with us or against us" ultimatum by the Bush administration last fall, Musharraf sided with the U.S. and embarked on a risky campaign to save his country from its two-decade drift towards Islamic extremism and economic collapse. He offered the U.S. military bases and intelligence support to wage war on the Taliban and stared down the resulting domestic Islamist backlash. Recognizing that the rot of extremism ran to the highest levels of his military and intelligence services, he risked alienating the institutions that had brought him to power by purging a number of Taliban supporters from...
...Washington Musharraf's performance over the past five months has absolved him of the taint of seizing power in a military coup in 1999. His support is growing at home as well; there's little nostalgia among ordinary Pakistanis for the endemic corruption that characterized the decade of civilian rule that preceded the coup, and his stand against extremism is popular...
...needs Washington's help. His mission to remake Pakistani society remains a work-in-progress, and American support, both economic and political, remains critical. The kidnapping of American journalist Daniel Pearl is simply the most high-profile example of the resilience of Pakistani extremism. The embarrassment for Musharraf in that case is compounded by the fact that Omar Saeed Sheikh, the prime suspect who is now in police custody, is a British-born convicted kidnapper who moved to Musharraf's Pakistan early in 2000 after Kashmiri hijackers forced his release from an Indian prison...
...Nobody doubts Musharraf's commitment to eradicate the Taliban element in Pakistan. The persistence of entrenched pockets of extremism simply highlights the extent of the challenge he faces. The U.S. has thrown him essential lifelines in the form of debt rescheduling, economic aid and political patience and sympathy. And he's likely to get more of the same. Because nobody wants to contemplate the price of failure in a nuclear-armed state still crawling with extremists...