The World's Toughest Job

If ruling coup-prone Pakistan is perilous in the best of times, consider the current plight of Pervez Musharraf. The general who seized power exactly two years ago to domestic acclaim now sees his effigy burned in the streets. The self-appointed President who favored the Taliban has turned his back on a Muslim neighbor. The military ruler shunned by the West has cast his lot with Washington. After two years of mollycoddling religious extremists, he has vowed to move "swiftly and firmly" if they protest his new policies too violently. Now he must navigate a country with enough enriched uranium for 50 nuclear bombs between the hard demands of Western allies and the howls of rage from anti-American citizens.

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With his unflinching decision to join America's war on terrorism, Musharraf initiated one of the most dramatic U-turns in Pakistan's history. Now he sits on a powder keg. Makeshift bunkers have sprouted around embassies and government buildings in the capital of Islamabad. Heavily armed riot police ringed the city of Quetta near the Afghan border, where angry protests all last week left five people dead. Soldiers huddled behind sandbags and armored-personnel carriers patrolled the streets in restive Peshawar while young men shouted for jihad. Militants roamed through the port city of Karachi, burning, looting and clashing with police as they chanted, "Osama, nuclear power of the Muslim world!" As Muslim sympathizers of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban whipped up fury in the streets, Musharraf's show of force kept the protests under relative control. This time.

The dangers for Musharraf in the events set off by Sept. 11 are everywhere to see, yet there are opportunities too. He has an unprecedented opening before him to remake a failing state into one where extremism might no longer flourish. And he seems determined to take it. For the first time in his short reign, he is directly confronting the religious radicals who shape so much of the country's domestic and foreign policy to a radical agenda. "This is a battle for the heart and soul of Pakistan," says Chris Smith, senior research fellow at King's College London Center for Defense Studies. "He has taken a decision to stem the tide of the forces of radical Islam." Says Andrew Kennedy, Asia director of London's Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies: "He's either going to win big or lose big."

First he must weather the gathering crisis that could flash into ungovernable riots at any provocation. Last week he agreed to let U.S. forces use two Pakistani air bases, while assuring his countrymen they would be used only for logistics, not combat. Although Washington forewarned him, the President will take heat from all sides now that the U.S. has issued a freeze order on the assets of the Rabita Trust, a three-decade-old Pakistan charity reportedly enjoying support from top officials, including Musharraf. The U.S. said Rabita's secretary-general was a founder of bin Laden's al-Qaeda.

In the face of it all, Musharraf is moving vigorously to tilt the odds his way. Besides deploying heavy security forces to contain demonstrations, he put three of the most virulent extremist leaders under house arrest. His most significant actions took place inside the army's barracks. He renewed his term as military chief "indefinitely." And he shook out top generals partial to the Taliban or its brand of fierce Islam who might try to undermine his new policies. Just about everyone was taken off guard, only a few hours before the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan began, when Musharraf smoothly purged three key generals who had engineered the October 1999 coup that brought him to power. He replaced the vice chief of staff with Lieut. General Muhammad Yusuf Khan, a moderate general whose friends call him "Joe." He kicked upstairs to a ceremonial post a key corps commander considered sympathetic to the ideological extreme. He replenished the upper ranks with loyal officers more ready to side with the Taliban's enemies.

Most startling was the premature retirement of trusted friend Lieut. General Mahmoud Ahmad, chief of the formidable Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, widely regarded as the country's invisible government. As a staunch patron of pro-Taliban policies, Ahmad is thought to have opposed Pakistan's new alliance with the U.S. Musharraf had reason to fear that segments of the ISI might thwart promised cooperation with U.S. intelligence. And it is said that Musharraf hit the roof when an ISI-linked jihad group devoted to wresting Muslim Kashmir from Indian control took responsibility for a blast in the Indian city of Srinagar two weeks ago that killed 42. The target and the timing--just when Musharraf was fending off accusations that Pakistan sponsors terrorism and asking Washington to take a more balanced view of the Kashmir dispute--couldn't have been worse.

The new boss of ISI, Lieut. General Ehsan ul- Haq, is regarded as moderate, professional and without political ambition. But some wonder if he is ruthless enough to overhaul an agency still filled with Islamic sympathizers. ISI, says a diplomat, "has to be cut down to size."