Here are some thoughts from Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist who highlights several critical issues on Pakistan and thinks America is getting a bad deal from President Pervez Musharraf: 


“The roots of the crisis go back to the blind bargain Washington made after 9/11 with the regime that had heretofore been the Taliban’s main patron: ignoring Musharraf’s despotism in return for his promises to crack down on al-Qaeda and cut the Taliban loose. Today, despite $10 billion in U.S. aid to Pakistan since 2001, that bargain is in tatters; the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and al-Qaeda’s senior leadership has set up another haven inside Pakistan’s chaotic border regions.”


“While neither agency [Defense Department and CIA] is usually directly concerned with decision-making on Pakistan, both boast officers with far greater expertise than the White House and State Department crew. These officers, many of whom have served in Islamabad or Kabul, understand the double game that Musharraf has played — helping the United States go after al-Qaeda while letting his intelligence services help the Taliban claw their way back in Afghanistan.“


“Running parallel to this domestic political crisis is the growing problem of radical Islam; the Taliban and al-Qaeda are now deeply entrenched in the tribal border belt adjacent to Afghanistan. These groups gained political legitimacy last year when Musharraf signed a series of dubious peace deals with the Pakistani Taliban. They are now coming down from the mountains to spread their radical ideology in towns and cities by burning down DVD and TV shops, insisting that young men grow beards, forcibly recruiting schoolboys for the jihad and terrifying girls so that they won’t attend school. The military has refused to put a brake on their extremism.”


“Musharraf promised the international community that he would purge pro-Taliban elements from his security services and convinced the Bush administration that his philosophy of “enlightened moderation” was the only way to fend off Islamic extremism. But Pakistan today is the center of global Islamic terrorism, with Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mohammad Omar probably living here.”