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FRIEND OR FOE?
by apjunkmail on Nov 12, 2007 01:12 AM
Underpinning this deal are Musharraf's
published credentials. He has always
given the impression that he and his
troops are Western-leaning moderates.
However, the real Musharraf is far
more complicated, and a good deal of
the time we have paid the general to
stand by us, he has been cosseting the
forces that are bent on undermining
the West, as part of a policy of
defiance that stretches back two
decades. Musharraf's career took off
in the mid-1980s, when he was
dispatched to train fighters aiding
the mujahedeen in Afghanistan - all
part of a U.S. proxy war to eject the
Soviet army that had invaded there in
1979. The conflict brought a secular
Pakistan army into close proximity
with jihadis, serving to radicalize
ordinary soldiers, as well as
sharpening their intelligence skills
and battle craft. Musharraf won his
first real plaudits in 1988 when he
was ordered to cool a political
uprising by Pakistani Shiites living
in Gilgit, in the north. Using out-of
-work mujahedeen fighters, Musharraf's
men killed hundreds, crushing the
revolt, and he was rewarded with a job
at army headquarters. Born a Sunni, he
had never identified with political
Islamism but from then on he
understood the power of manipulating
faith. By the mid-1990s, as director
general of military operations, he was
serving Benazir Bhutto, who was in her
second term as
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