Word: musharraf
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...Ahmed's sympathy for the Taliban. When the President sent him down to Kandahar last Sept. 17 to persuade Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar to hand over bin Laden, the spymaster instead secretly told Omar to resist, an ex-Taliban official told Time. Word of this double-talk reached Musharraf, who replaced him as ISI boss with General Ehsan ul-Haq, a trusted friend and ex-military intelligence chief who shares Musharraf's more Westernized views. His orders were to weed out "the beards," as the Islamic extremists are nicknamed inside the agency, and make the ISI more obedient...
...least five key ISI operatives?some retired, some active?stayed on to help their Taliban comrades prepare defenses in Kandahar against the Americans. None has been punished for this disobedience. And in New Delhi, Indian intelligence agents insist that during the battle for the Taliban bastion of Kunduz, Musharraf persuaded the U.S. to allow Pakistani C-130 planes to airlift out between 300 to 1,000 of its pro-Taliban fighters before American jets poured fire onto the northern Afghan town. Both Washington and Islamabad deny this happened. What is well documented is that even halfway through the U.S. campaign...
...joined out of conviction, not compulsion," says a government official. This change has been noted gratefully in Washington. "We're quite pleased with the cooperation we've got from them," says a U.S. official. A Western diplomat in Islamabad concurs, "There's grudging compliance. The ISI is saluting Musharraf and obeying him." This required a 180 turn for Pakistani spooks. Former friends such as the Taliban and homegrown jihad outfits became the new enemies. "Overnight, our strategic assets," as one top Islamabad official puts it, "had become liabilities...
...acidly, "It seems inconceivable that there isn't someone in the ISI who knows where they're hiding." Maulana Masood Azhar, leader of the Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group to which the kidnapping suspects belonged, is under "country club" arrest at his home in Bahawalpur, a diplomat reports. Despite Musharraf's Jan. 12 ban on five extremist groups, most of their firebrand leaders were recently set free, a move that perplexed Islamabad diplomats. "We didn't have enough proof to charge them," explains a Pakistani official...
...Should Pervez Musharraf continue to rule Pakistan for the next five years? Yes No Not Sure...