Dangerous Ground
	Can Pakistan's dictator Pervez Musharraf, a battle-tested soldier, survive the political minefield that lies before him?
	By Anthony Spaeth Islamabad
PAULA BRONSTEIN/GETTY IMAGES FOR TIME MAN IN THE MIDDLE: Few leaders have faced more crises than General Musharraf

The 1964 edition of rising crescent, the yearbook of the Pakistan Military Academy, is filled with nicknames, in-jokes and adolescent digs. Graduating cadet Pervez Musharraf, 20, is teased for his hearty appetite and a preference for a center hair part. ("Has the habit of splitting hairs.") But this slim volume is more than a collection of collegiate memories; it's also a testimonial to the camaraderie whipped up during two arduous years of grunt training in the foothills of the Himalayas. Musharraf's classmates concluded his entry: "Quite a guy to be with, especially when in a fix."

Which was a valuable kind of classmate to have: within months of graduation, the newly minted officers saw action in Pakistan's 1965 war against India over Kashmir, and Musharraf won a medal for gallantry. When war with India came again in 1971, he led a squadron of commandos from the Special Service Group (ssg), Pakistan's equivalent of the Green Berets. "I was always a risk taker," the 58-year-old Musharraf recalls, and he trained his men not to flinch at danger. Seated in the parlor of his army residence in Rawalpindi, surrounded by 18th century muskets and gilded sabers, Pakistan's President described for Time a favorite training exercise. He would order a soldier to lie as close to a set of railroad tracks as possible, facing an oncoming train. "The train will definitely not touch you," he would tell the soldier. "But you have to keep your head up and eyes open."

It's lucky for Musharraf that he has had ample experience of dealing with danger. No leader in Asia, perhaps in the world, has survived the number and magnitude of political crises that he has endured in recent months. After Sept. 11, Washington embraced Pakistan as its closest ally in the war against the Taliban—a group cultivated by the Pakistani government. Musharraf acceded, forcing the country into a gigantic policy U-turn. In December, India moved 500,000 troops to its border with Pakistan and demanded that Musharraf stop the infiltration of militants into Kashmir—many of them covertly trained and armed by Pakistan's army. After six months of tension—with the hourly threat of nuclear war—Musharraf backed down, cutting off the flow of insurgents. He's also cracking a whip on the country's madrasahs, religious schools that often preach sectarian violence and hatred of the West.

All of this has come at a perilous price. By going moderate, Musharraf has alienated many of his supporters and fomented a bitter sense that he is merely America's lackey. Some extremist groups, possibly linked to al-Qaeda, want Musharraf's whole Yankee-loving crowd eliminated, and they have brought terror to the commercial capital of Karachi, setting off bombs to kill foreigners and murdering American journalist Daniel Pearl. Musharraf "has crossed all limits," declares an active member of Jaish-e-Muhammad, an extremist group implicated in numerous attacks in Indian-controlled Kashmir. "There will be a backlash. There will be more suicide attacks. We are ready to sacrifice our lives." The biggest score for such extremists would be Musharraf, whose security is extra tight. (Last week the government announced it had foiled an April assassination plot against the President by extremists who had the help of a traitor from Musharraf's paramilitary police force.) The general, who has been known to carry a gun, shrugs off the danger. Says wife Sehba: "I do the major worrying." But a friend of Musharraf's confides, "He should be scared—he is scared."

The world is counting on Musharraf to help steer South and Central Asia from local chaos to regional security, from the brink of Armageddon to Pax Pakistana, and from fundamentalist fervor to secular moderation. Nisar Sarwar, a retired army colonel who was at the military academy with Musharraf, notes, "The ssg motto is 'Who Dares, Wins.' And he dares to win."

But the question today is whether he has dared too much. Musharraf now faces the gravest challenge of his life, having to hold firm in the face of a maelstrom of conflicting forces: pressure from the U.S., Indian saber rattling that could lead to war, seething fundamentalists and extremists scattered throughout his own land—and now the demands and intrigue of Pakistani politics, an arena Musharraf openly despises. Musharraf himself is under no illusions about the enormity of the task before him. Asked if his is the world's toughest job, he replies with quiet bluntness: "I think at the moment, yes."

Under U.S. pressure, Musharraf has kept to his promise to end one-man rule through national elections this October. He's already appointed himself President, but he'll share power with an elected National Assembly, a Senate and four provincial legislatures—all packed with wheeler-dealers who harbor competing agendas. According to Pakistan's constitution, the President must give up control of the military, which would mean ceding the army's might—and his power base—to another general. Musharraf has given no indication that he is willing to do so. And he is currently rewriting the constitution to counter this threat to his power and ensure that he does not become a lone figure without regiments or a political party behind him.

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