Word: musharraf
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Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, must be puzzled. The country's image abroad remains far worse than the reality. The international media give scant coverage to our rapidly expanding economy, with GDP growth of over 8% and so many opportunities that every month another friend of mine seems to join the "brain gain" of those quitting jobs in New York and London to return home. Few stories are written about the dynamic youth culture expressing itself on our new television and radio stations, or through underground events like the massive rave that took place in Lahore last month. Little...
...Despite my reservations about the semi-democratic nature of Musharraf's regime, I am willing to give him credit for these positive developments. But I am also increasingly disturbed by some of his recent actions. First, he appeared to side with religious bigots opposed to a mixed-gender "mini-marathon" in Lahore and failed to condemn the police harassment of the race's supporters, including leading human-rights lawyer Asma Jahangir. Then he backed a travel ban on gang-rape victim Mukhtar Mai, preventing her from rallying support abroad for her cause. Under pressure from the U.S., the government...
...President Pervez Musharraf responded with a call to oppose "anyone trying to incite hatred." But sectarian violence has worsened under his reign. Musharraf has been reluctant to act against militant groups, largely to avoid alienating the fundamentalist political parties keeping his secular political opposition at bay. "The government does not recognize the threat homegrown terrorists pose to the stability of Pakistan," says Samina Ahmed of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based NGO. "Isn't it time the government recognized the price of the game being played...
Everyone does agree that in al-Libbi, the Pakistanis have reeled in a big fish. U.S. and Pakistani sources think that al-Libbi has been in direct contact with bin Laden and al-Zawahiri and that al-Libbi was the mastermind behind two attempts to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in December 2003. U.S. counterterrorism officials told TIME that the CIA suspects al-Libbi was involved in a terrorist plot timed to coincide with last November's U.S. presidential election, including "training and supporting people and planning to send operatives" who could slip into...
...skin disease, al-Libbi first developed ties with bin Laden in the early 1990s, when bin Laden was based in Sudan. According to a Pakistani intelligence source in Islamabad, al-Libbi became one of bin Laden's few trusted aides. After allegedly organizing the assassination attempts on Musharraf in 2003, al-Libbi fled to Waziristan, a mountainous area along the Afghan border that has long been outside the reach of Pakistani law. After the Pakistani army mounted an offensive in the region in March 2004, al-Libbi and other al-Qaeda fighters, thought to number fewer than 30, left Waziristan...