Pakistan's support for US carries political pitfalls

By PETER POPHAM

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan has the power to strangle the Taleban regime in neighbouring Afghanistan, without American help.

It can cut off its fuel, shut down its bank accounts, prevent the flow of food and clamp down on the black market trade that is the militia's lifeline - measures American officials have reportedly asked the Pakistani Government to take.

If the "full co-operation" President Pervez Musharraf spoke of means anything, it means doing these sorts of things as well, America insists, as opening Pakistan's skies to US jets and its soil to US troops, even fighting shoulder to shoulder with those American forces.

But if Pakistan is in a position to bring Osama bin Laden's hosts to their knees why does it challenge credulity that it should do so? Because the Taleban is Pakistan's baby - a brawling, truculent, maladjusted baby - but flesh of Pakistan's flesh, faith of Pakistan's faith.

Pakistan is rife with Islamic zealots, many of them armed and hungry for jihad, holy war. It is the cradle of jihad, producing not only the Taleban but groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, who are waging what one analyst called "industrial-scale jihad" against India in Kashmir.

The groups are a squabbling crew and include vicious sectarian elements devoted to bumping off Shi'ites or other Muslim minorities. No one group commands broad, nationwide loyalty. That is the fact on which President Musharraf must be pinning his hope. Because if his support for the US goes much further than announced, for Pakistan it will be a leap into the unknown.

Musharraf has been itching to put the fundamentalists in their box ever since he seized power nearly two years ago. His hero is Attaturk, who transformed Turkey from a theocracy into a modern, secular republic. He has made some progress in curbing the enemies of secularism in Pakistan.

He has led a drive to disarm this gun-saturated country; he banned two sectarian groups and tried to stop others raising funds; he is trying to regulate the madrassas, the Islamic schools from which the Taleban sprang, and oblige them to teach more than the Koran.

Musharraf has support. One Islamabad citizen said: "I am in favour of supporting the US request for help ... but the religious parties will resist. Sensible people want to support America, but the religious parties always resists when "gorasahib" (white sahib) wants to come to the country."

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