FRIEND OR FOE?
by apjunkmail on Nov 12, 2007 01:12 AM Permalink

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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