America's Bad Deal With Musharraf, Going Down in Flames

Running parallel to this domestic political crisis is the growing problem of radical Islam; the Taliban and al-Qaeda are now deeply entrenched in the tribal border belt adjacent to Afghanistan. These groups gained political legitimacy last year when Musharraf signed a series of dubious peace deals with the Pakistani Taliban. They are now coming down from the mountains to spread their radical ideology in towns and cities by burning down DVD and TV shops, insisting that young men grow beards, forcibly recruiting schoolboys for the jihad and terrifying girls so that they won't attend school. The military has refused to put a brake on their extremism.

Musharraf promised the international community that he would purge pro-Taliban elements from his security services and convinced the Bush administration that his philosophy of "enlightened moderation" was the only way to fend off Islamic extremism. But Pakistan today is the center of global Islamic terrorism, with Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mohammad Omar probably living here.

Instead of confronting this threat, the army has focused on keeping Musharraf in power -- negotiating with extremists, letting radical Islamic students set up a base in Islamabad and so forth. Meanwhile, to spook the West into continuing to support him, Musharraf continues to grossly exaggerate the strength of the Islamic parties that he warns might take over his nuclear-armed country. In fact, the United States would be far safer if it pushed for a truly representative Pakistani government that could marginalize the jihadists, rather than placing all its eggs in Musharraf's basket.

How will the current crisis end? It's unlikely to peter out; the movement has lasted three months now, despite Musharraf's intelligence services' prediction that it would end within days. And Chaudhry is a formidable foe -- not a mere politician (who, in Pakistan, are inevitably corrupt) but a judge perched above the political fray.

The logical strategy for Musharraf would be to apologize to the nation for hounding the chief justice, bring all parties to a reconciliation conference and agree to early elections under a neutral interim government. If he still insisted on running for president, he would have to agree to take off his uniform first so that no matter who won, Pakistan would return to civilian rule.

But how can a commando general carry out such a U-turn without losing face, especially when he is being publicly backed by the White House? A secretary of state with vision -- a James Baker or a Madeleine Albright -- could have recognized that Musharraf's time is up. Instead, we have Rice and Boucher and Cheney, who -- just as in Iraq -- can only reinforce a failed policy. Washington is doing itself no favors by serving as Musharraf's enabler. Indeed, the Bush administration's policy of sticking by Musharraf is fast becoming eerily reminiscent of the Carter administration's policy of sticking by the shah of Iran.

Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist, is the author of "Taliban."