Pakistani leader seen as the West's only hope

ISLAMABAD - Minutes after India's cricketers beat Pakistan in Lahore last week, a casually dressed man with a moustache strolled on to the ground with a microphone. Relaxed and smiling, Pervez Musharraf looked every bit the politician, delighting the crowd with jokes about India's star batsman's long hair.

The style was more Bill Clinton than military dictator. And there was scarcely a hint that this was a man who had survived two assassination attempts, or that he is struggling to hold his nation together as it hovers on the edge of an anti-West implosion.

Just 24 hours after the cricket international the centre of Lahore was in flames and bodies lay on the streets, as the crisis over the "blasphemous sketches" of Muhammad moved into a new, violent and treacherous phase for Musharraf.

After a week in which protests spread like a rash across the country, many of them violent, Musharraf intervened to ban a rally yesterday in Islamabad, and ordered the detention of hundreds of ringleaders.

Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, the religious party that called the rally, was placed under house arrest. Just hours earlier he had warned of a nationwide campaign to unseat Musharraf if he were to hinder the protests.

"Musharraf is acting as the representative of Western civilisation and is fighting a battle against Islamic values," he said.

Musharraf's crackdown is a high-risk strategy, giving his opponents a pretext to raise temperatures further. He faces his toughest 10 days in power as the countdown begins to the visit of US President George W. Bush.

Unless Musharraf can quell, or at least contain, the dissent before then, the visit looks set to be engulfed by a "rolling campaign" of protests.

The cartoon crisis has become entwined with the desire by Musharraf's Islamist enemies to destabilise him by fanning a wider uprising against his US alliance.

Pakistan's unruly provinces on the Afghan border are still a hotbed for al Qaeda extremists and jihadists. Twice they have tried to blow Musharraf up. The Taleban, who fled here after being driven from Kabul, has not gone away.

Musharraf's removal could lead to the rise of a "jihadist" state and, as Pakistan is a nuclear power, a situation that Bush has described as "the worst form of Islamist militancy".

The American flag and branches of Kentucky Fried Chicken have already been burned in protests. How the cartoon protests tipped into deadly clashes with the potential to topple Musharraf is murky.

But then, since Pakistan's birth in 1947, its politics has been murky and violent. Its leaders often meeting violent ends or their rules have expired by way of exile, custody and coup.

One was hanged and one died in an unexplained air crash.

There is genuine anger about the cartoons. It is on the lips of everyone, from carpet sellers in Islamabad's Melody Market, to the ruling elite. In recent days it has been difficult not to encounter a protest in the capital with traders, lawyers, doctors, parliamentarians and women out in force.

Pakistani intelligence sources are emphatic that only a handful of extremist Islamists are manoeuvring behind the cartoon issue, aiming to bait the State into a clampdown that will radicalise opinion further.

Farhat Ullah Babar, a senator for Benazir Bhutto's secular Pakistan's Peoples Party, said the cartoon anger was wide open for exploitation by those who see Musharraf as the Western world's poodle.

The struggle between Musharraf, a liberal whisky-drinking Muslim, and the forces of radical Islam, has been simmering since he seized power in 1999 and began promoting a modernising agenda.

According to this vision, which carries the Orwellian name "Enlightened Moderation", Pakistan, a society so religiously conservative that a mixed-sex marathon last month caused uproar, would be transformed into a tolerant and progressive state. 

It would still be an Islamic republic: the Government ministry currently trying to rein in the madrassa religious schools for example, is also in charge of organising pilgrimages to Mecca, and the national airline plays prayers alongside safety procedures on takeoff.

Musharraf's partnership with Bush's "war on terror" has made the balancing act almost impossible, with critics saying it is part of a greater American plot to extend secularism.

Hafiz Hussain Ahmad, a hardline cleric and a senator for an opposition Muslim coalition also targeted by the clampdown, has an unequivocal view of why Musharraf has to be removed. "His total policy is against Islam."

Musharraf is, as one Western diplomat put it, "between a rock and a hard place, caught between accommodating the US' demands and preventing the further radicalisation".

His demand, for example, that the madrassas, for long the recruiting grounds for jihadists, expel foreign students, provoked a fierce reaction, so he has backed down.

Even compelling the madrassas to register with the Government or teach science and other "worldly" subjects, is a painfully slow process. Asked this week how many such schools there are, Religious Affairs Secretary Vakil Ahmad Khan, answered: "It is anybody's guess."

After six years of Musharraf, Pakistan appears as fragile, radicalised, and unmodernised, as ever.

Jamaat-e-Islami advocates an Islamic revolution, including the imposition of Sharia law. As riots raged last Thursday, Khurshid Ahmad, a senator for the party, declared of Musharraf: "He is an extremist, he took power by force, he has manipulated politics and law. He can never meet the expectations of an Islamic nation."

To this bearded man in a linen shalwar kameez and felt hat, the cricket-loving general might as well be an apostate.

Last month's air strike by the Americans on a Pakistani border village, a failed attempt by the CIA to take out al Qaeda's top men, radicalised opinion against the Americans.

The country is now awash with the rumour that Musharraf had advance knowledge of the air strike.

A violent separatist struggle meanwhile, is under way by tribal chiefs in Baluchistan, which has been wracked by shootings and small-scale bombings and suspicions hover that India is encouraging the separatists in revenge for the Pakistan's covert backing for jihadists in Kashmir.

Musharraf, meanwhile, has 70,000 troops hunting terrorists in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

Intelligence sources say up to 50 Taleban members were recently captured, but Pakistan has been unable to take credit because the domestic fallout would be so damaging.

Pakistan's 2700km border with Afghanistan means it remains vulnerable to instability. And despite a tentative "peace process", the spectre of a Kashmir war remains real.

Officially Pakistan has ceased sponsoring militants to carry out attacks on India, but these groups have probably affiliated to al Qaeda.

These pressures have left Musharraf little space, or willingness, to address a fundamental contradiction about his position. He seized power illegally vowing to restore "true democracy", but is still reneging on his promise to return Pakistan to civilian rule.

The absence of democracy is not the only contradiction. Despite its strict religious identity, it remains one of the most corrupt places on earth, where more than half the population is illiterate and average annual income is $900.

Even the urbane Prime Minister, Shaukat Aziz, a former chief executive of Citibank, finds it hard to dispute the perception of Pakistan as a failed state. "Yes, we have an image issue. Tell people you are going on a trip to Pakistan and they will ask you if you are feeling all right."

Musharraf's failure to grow a democratic culture means more turbulence if he were to be swept from power. As one Islamabad insider put it: "There is no plan B."

At a turning close to the Lahore-Islamabad highway stands a replica of a nuclear warhead and a sign to the Khan Research Laboratories, founded by A. Q. Khan - the "Father" of Pakistan's nuclear bomb. This is where uranium is enriched for Pakistan's nuclear programme.

Khan is now in disgrace after selling nuclear technology to Iran and Libya, and fears about the programme's security persist.

If Musharraf were to be toppled, could the West prevent jihadist groups - or their sympathisers - getting near the nuclear weapons?

Aziz insists that the fact both India and Pakistan have a nuclear deterrent is a guarantee of peace: "Peace is achieved through strength, not weakness. We must have the punch to defend ourselves."

But if Musharraf is swept away, who will control the punch?

THE WARRIOR PRESIDENT

* Born in New Delhi, India in August 1943.

* Spent part of his childhood in Ankara.

* Emigrated to Karachi, during partition.

* Became Chief of the Army Staff in 1998.

* Seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999.

* Formally made himself President in June 2001.

* Reneged on plans to quit as Army Chief last year.

- INDEPENDENT