The End of the Bush-Mush Affair

"They complained that Musharraf had failed to root out elements of the Pakistani intelligence service that remain sympathetic to the Taliban, which has regained strength and appears to move easily across the border into Afghanistan to attack U.S. troops.

"'From the American point of view, we wildly mis-estimated him and we wildly mis-estimated Pakistani capabilities,' said Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution, who was visiting Pakistan this week. . . .

"Last week, Ted Gistaro, the U.S. national intelligence officer for transnational threats, warned that Al Qaeda had 'strengthened its safe haven in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas by deepening its alliances with Pakistani militants,' and said it 'now has many of the operational and organizational advantages it once enjoyed across the border in Afghanistan, albeit on a smaller and less secure scale.'

"Critics said the revival of the extremist threat signals the failure of the Bush-Musharraf partnership.

"'It ends an era marked by great cooperation but unfulfilled expectations,' said analyst Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University."

Daniel Dombey, Andrew Ward and Amy Kazmin write in the Financial Times: "During the closest years of their relationship, between 2001 and last year, Mr Bush rarely let an opportunity go without lauding Mr Musharraf for his tough stand on 'radicals' and 'extremists'.

"But eventually, the Pakistani leader's star fell, even with Mr Bush, after a new democratically elected government came to power in Islamabad this year and proceeded to sideline Mr Musharraf.

"'The US was like a partner that has been cheated on for years and refuses to see the reality,' said Frederic Grare, a specialist on Pakistan at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington. He argued that the Bush administration overpersonalised its dealings with Mr Musharraf, brushed aside signs of Pakistani support for the Taliban and failed to perceive his lack of political support."

Deb Riechmann writes for the Associated Press: "'Bush came to call him the indispensable man,' said Bruce Riedel, a senior adviser to three presidents on Middle East and South Asian affairs. 'In the end, he also became the man who couldn't deliver. Bush was very slow to realize that he either had been had by Musharraf or that Musharraf was not up to the task. Historians will debate this for years.'"

For more on the history of the Bush-Mush relationship, see my November 19 column, Bush's Crush on Musharraf, which was prompted by articles in the Washington Post and New York Times describing how Musharraf wooed and won Bush shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Michael Abramowitz wrote that week in The Washington Post: "Over the course of a dozen private meetings and numerous phone conversations . . . the savvy and well-spoken Pakistani president has made a point of cementing his personal relationship with Bush. Musharraf has regaled the U.S. president with stories of his youth in Punjab, his empathy for rank-and-file soldiers and his desire to reform the education system in Pakistan, according to individuals familiar with those conversations."

Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote then in the New York Times: "Experts in United States-Pakistan relations said General Musharraf has played the union masterfully, by convincing Mr. Bush that he alone can keep Pakistan stable. Kamran Bokhari, an analyst for Stratfor, a private intelligence company, who met with General Musharraf in January, said the general viewed Mr. Bush with some condescension."