BY SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
LONDON - To hear President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair tell it, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is a hero in the foiled plot to blow up U.S.-bound airliners.
Both leaders praised Musharraf's government for arresting two suspects and cooperating so closely with British and American intelligence agencies.
Left unspoken - again - was an uncomfortable truth. Pakistan remains a hotbed of Islamic radicalism that has been linked to major terror attacks, including 9/11 and last year's London bombings that killed 52. Musharraf's record at cracking down on extremism is mixed at best.
Yet both the U.S. and British governments continue to hail him as a major ally in the war on terror, for fear that someone worse could take his place.
"It's a marriage of convenience rather than true love," says Peter Neumann, director of the Center for Defense Studies at London's King's College. "It's necessary to engage Pakistan, because there are so many problems coming from there. The worst-case scenario is for Pakistan to be taken over by Muslim extremists and for them to be in charge of a very significant state that is a nuclear power."
The only Muslim country with an atomic bomb, Pakistan was once viewed as a pariah by the West. Musharraf came to power in a 1999 military coup, replacing a democratically elected leader. His government continued a dangerous cold war with India, its nuclear rival, and was one of just three to have diplomatic relations with Afghanistan's Taliban regime - many of whose members were trained by Pakistani intelligence agents to fight the Soviets.
Then came the Sept. 11 attacks and Bush's challenge: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." Musharraf's decision to cooperate has paid off, with the United States giving Pakistan $3-billion in military aid.
For his part, Musharraf has deployed as many as 80,000 troops to the rugged tribal areas near the Afghan border where Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders are presumed to be hiding. Pakistan has captured several top al-Qaida officials, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11.
"Musharraf has played his relationship with the West very well," Neumann says, "but at the same time his cooperation is very ambiguous."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently accused Pakistan's intelligence services of continuing to provide safe haven for Taliban members fighting the British in Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand.
Pakistan denies it. The clashes, which a British general calls the fiercest "dirty fighting" since World War II and Korea, have forced British troops to withdraw from isolated bases.
Pakistan has also frustrated U.S. officials by refusing to extradite the man accused of beheading Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi in 2002. Nor will it let Western authorities interview A.Q. Khan, a Pakistani scientist who smuggled nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. The White House hasn't pressed the matter, instead publicly accepting Musharraf's claim that Khan acted on his own.
"Given that nuclear proliferation is one of the big issues of the day, you would think Pakistan would come in for a hard time" from the United States, says Gareth Price, head of the Asia Program at London's Royal Institute of International Affairs.
"I don't think anyone believes Khan was acting without the knowledge of his government, but what's the point in exposing it? If we discover Musharraf is responsible, what do we do, remove the leadership of Pakistan? People do give Musharraf some leeway and it's quite understandable."
The 63-year-old general has survived at least two assassination attempts since 9/11. He faces a constant threat from Islamic extremists opposed to his cooperation with the United States.
Yet Musharraf has managed to "walk a tightrope," as one expert puts it, by maintaining close ties to conservative tribal leaders and fundamentalist political parties.
A moderate Muslim himself, "he's in the awkward position of having to support the right-wing religious parties to be able to sustain power," says Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, an expert on South Asia at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Critics say Musharraf has also failed to crack down enough on the madrassas or religious schools, which have helped to radicalize visiting students from Britain and other countries.
Musharraf says that 10,000 madrassas have registered with the government, but "the critical ones are the ones that haven't registered - those are the ones you should be looking at," Roy-Chaudhury says.
Why is Pakistan such a hotbed of extremism?
Despite U.S. largesse, it remains a poor country that spends much of its national budget to arm itself against its longtime enemy, India. What wealth there is lies mostly in the hands of a few families; for many others, "religion is more than an opiate, it is something that is all-preserving because of the dire social and economic conditions," Roy-Chaudhury says.
Many Pakistanis in the western tribal areas also have strong family ties to Afghanistan, where the fight against the "godless" Soviets who invaded in 1979 took on a religious fervency that has yet to dissipate.
In Pakistani border cities like Peshawar, "there's more of an Islamic orientation that's a blow-back from Afghanistan in the Soviet days," Roy-Chaudhury says.
Privately, the United States and British governments are said to be irritated with Musharraf, who has neither tamped down extremism nor held the free and fair elections he has been promising for years. But they continue to support a man whose biggest accomplishments have been staying alive and keeping his country relatively stable.
"The U.S. and U.K. go light on Musharraf, but what's the alternative?" asks Price of Chatham House. "The reason they go light on him is that no one can think of any better solution."
Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan£sptimes.com.
President Pervez Musharraf
Musharraf, 63, seized powerin a bloodless coup in 1999 after then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif dismissed him as army chief of staff in a dispute over military action in Kashmir. Musharraf quickly rallied support of the army leadership and ousted Sharif.
He appointed himself president in June 2001.
Musharraf broke a pledge to give up his military uniform by January 2005. It is unclear whether he will do so by 2007, when the next presidential elections are scheduled.
Musharraf was born Aug. 11, 1943, in Delhi, India, to Urdu-speaking parents who migrated to Karachi, Pakistan, after the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947.
He spent seven years in Turkey as a young boy, where his father was posted as diplomat. He learned Turkish and gained an admiration for Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern Turkish state.
