Word: musharraf
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...George W. Bush on the phone. His language was friendly but firm as he asked President Pervez Musharraf on Sept. 11 if Pakistan could help hunt down Osama bin Laden. The choices facing Musharraf were stark: if he refused, America would consider it the worst kind of betrayal, and Pakistan would suffer harsh consequences. If he agreed, there would be enormous trouble at home; many Pakistanis believe bin Laden is not a terrorist but a true warrior of the Islamic faith who must be shielded from the U.S. at all costs. Friends say that Musharraf, 58, a low-key soldier...
...Musharraf's difficulties began even before any U.S. armed forces arrived. Fanned by the Taliban's rise in Afghanistan and a Muslim insurgency in Indian-held Kashmir, Islamic extremism has spread across Pakistan. Musharraf now risks making himself deeply unpopular, even loathed, by siding with the U.S. Protesters have already taken to the streets...
...Musharraf is not given to exaggeration, so Pakistanis were stunned when a visibly tense President, in a Sept. 19 televised speech, compared Pakistan's current predicament with the devastating 1971 civil war, in which Bangladesh fought free and the country was split in two. Unless Musharraf acts skillfully, hard-line religious forces could rise against his military junta--which came to power in an October 1999 coup...
Already, some clerics, especially among the rifle-wielding Pashtun tribesmen of the northwest frontier, are calling for a holy war against America. They are of the same tribe as the Taliban across the border. Tribesmen believe that Musharraf is breaking their strict code of Pashtunwali, in which honor and revenge are paramount. In the village of Shakot, gunsmith Aziz Khan glanced up from a lathe as he bored holes to craft a homemade Kalashnikov rifle (price: $120) and warned, "In our culture, we give our baby son an unloaded pistol to play with in the cradle, so that he becomes...
...intense and focused" four-hour meeting Sept. 14 with his regional corps commanders, Musharraf drew a grim picture of what would happen if he rebuffed the Americans: a possible U.S. air strike against Pakistan's nuclear-weapons installations, a declaration that Pakistan was a terrorist state because it backed the Kashmir militants, and a cutoff in international loans. Pakistan, although a longtime U.S. ally, was being squeezed by American economic and military sanctions issued in response to its nuclear arms program. Musharraf was evidently able to convince the generals. For now. On Saturday, the U.S. waived those sanctions...