Word: musharraf
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...many Pakistanis, that message is suspect. The Americans have too long a history of pursuing their own interests in the region, they say. The rapid U.S. withdrawal at the end of the Soviet war in Afghanistan left Pakistan in chaos. America's long support for former President Pervez Musharraf's military rule alienated Pakistanis even further. Now it is commonly accepted that every political move in the country conceals an American motive, a belief shared by many Pakistanis living abroad. "It's well known that the present civilian government headed by a corrupt psychopath was conjured...
...What we need is a national change in consciousness," says Supreme Court advocate Aitzaz Ahsan, who led a lawyers' movement that brought about the downfall of Musharraf. "People need to be bombarded with the reality of what the Taliban represent." Ahsan wants to see videos of Taliban atrocities broadcast every night. Only then, he says, will people understand and act against extremism. "The whole nation needs to see what is happening. Not just the floggings by the Taliban but the beheadings, the digging up of the graves of our saints, the burning of our girls' schools...
...troubling trouble-spot. An epic suspension of disbelief is required to cast either of the men Obama welcomed at the White House on Wednesday as capable of leading a successful fight against the Taliban. Zardari's approval ratings are lower than those of the reviled former dictator President Pervez Musharraf; his army is reluctant to go to war against a section of the country's citizenry; and Pakistani public opinion remains more hostile to the U.S. than to the Taliban. Karzai, meanwhile, has long been written off by Washington an incapable of providing the kind of governance essential to winning...
...past year. The country's President, meanwhile, ahead of a trip to Washington, told foreign journalists that as far as his intelligence agencies were aware, Osama bin Laden was dead - though he readily admitted that they had no proof. The rituals recalled the days when General turned President Pervez Musharraf habitually deflected the Bush Administration's demands for tougher action against extremists. And as President Barack Obama prepares to welcome President Asif Ali Zardari to Washington next week, it's plain to see that the two sides don't share the same view of the Taliban's challenge...
This week, Obama will follow a path well worn by his predecessor, seeking to convince his Pakistani counterpart to do more against the Taliban. But the smart money says that, like Musharraf before him, Zardari - and the power behind the throne, armed forces chief General Ashfaq Kiyani - will be more inclined to simply do the minimum necessary to ease U.S. pressure, believing that their domestic insurgency will peter out when the U.S. ends its campaign in Afghanistan. That may explain Zardari's hopeful statement on bin Laden's current status...