The US needs to End its Support for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf

The War on terror is reaching a critical stage in 2007. Iraq is continuing to be a major mess, the Taliban is resurging in Afghanistan, and our key allies never seem to be on the same page. A few of our most important allies, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, represent some of our greatest failings. Saudi Arabia is quick to arrest "terrorists" at home but export extremism abroad. Pakistan after breaking its ties to the Taliban, in order to support the War on Terror, is subtley restoring its relationship to the Taliban and inadvertently furthering its extremist agenda to encompass not just Afghanistan but Pakistan proper.

President Musharraf's government had contributed to many successes on the war against al Qaeda but failed to capture Bin Laden or Al Zawahiri ,who are believed to be located in the tribal provinces of Pakistan that border Afghanistan, the Northwest Frontier Province and or Waziristan. The tribal regions are very conservative and are pretty lawless with little government control. Pakistani forces have entered it but were repulsed and signed a ceasefire last year. Musharraf's government has failed on many different occasions to stop the spread of Islamic extremism and has often acquiesced to their demands like last week when the government agreed to the demands of the hardline clerics of the Lal Masjid Mosque, who are seeking to impose Sharia law in Islamabad. This is a critical period for Musharraf, who has promised to hold elections this year. If Musharraf is to leave his office it should be at this time.

General Musharraf receives most of his support from the military and religious parties and used both groups to marginalized the mainstream parties of Benazir Bhutto's secular, People's Party and the Muslim League, led by Nawaz Sharif. With his support, Islamic radicals continued the proxy war against India by destablizing Kashmir. The Pakistani military and the Pakistani Intelligence helped create the Taliban in order to create a friendly government in Afghanistan that would help build an oil pipeline that would leave Pakistani ports for export. Supporting the US after 9/11 forced them to change temporarily their policy regarding Afghanistan. Since most of the Taliban fled to Pakistan and has the support by much of the people in the border regions, the Pakistani government made a reversal of its policy and concluded that the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai, which is pro-Indian, is not going to last. There has been many reports that the ISI (Pakistani Intelligence) has been actively recruiting jihadis to fight Nato in Afghanistan. -New Statesman

The rising Islamization of Pakistan is a direct threat to the West and President Musharraf's weakness or acqiescence to it is a liability. The US and the UK must start quietly back the mainly secular democratic opposition in the name of democracy and weaken his influence. In recent days there has been huge demonstrations protesting the Talibanization of the country in Karachi and Lahore. People have also been protesting the sacking of a Chief Justice through unconstitutional means causing an uproar in the law community. It is believed that he was sacked because he may challenge the legality of the coming elections to the Supreme Court. There were also rumors that he was investigating the dissappearances of individuals who may have been taken by the intelligence agencies or by militants.- the Independent

Musharraf can easily get reelected with the help of the Intelligence agencies and the security service. He currently is trying to cut a deal with exiled leader Benazir Bhutto and allow her to become the Prime Minister if she supports him as the President. It would give his regime legitimacy for his electoral victory.

Bhutto would be a good asset for the US to apply pressure on Musharraf to stop cutting deals with Islamic radicals. Bhutto should be able to get a great deal of support from the opposition , who are tired of the President's policies. The US by trumping the democracy, won't seem like much of a change of policy regarding our policy with Musharraf; we already have encouraged him in the past. Unfortunately it would be hard for the West to encourage much change in the regime when it is dominated by the military and intelligence agencies. A weak Pervez Musharraf and an even weaker secular opposition could be catastrophic and a major defeat in the war on terrorism.