Leading Article: Pressure from all sides

The Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf, adopted the clothes of progressive moderation when he spoke at the close of an Afghan-Pakistani tribal conference in Kabul yesterday. The President condemned the "Talibanisation" of the countries' border regions and argued that radicalism was holding the region back while the rest of Asia prospered.

But what President Musharraf failed to mention was Pakistan's responsibility for stoking religious extremism over the past three decades. The leaders of the Taliban were indoctrinated in extremist Pakistani madrassas in the 1980s. These madrassas had been encouraged and funded by the Pakistani security services in the belief that religious militants would be useful in the struggle against the Soviets and also against India over Kashmir. The Taliban still find support in Pakistan's western provinces. And even more incredibly, they still seem to have the tacit support of elements in Pakistan's security services.

For a long time, President Musharraf did very little to confront the issue of religious radicalisation. Only now, since the army's storming of the Red Mosque in Islamabad, have those militants risen up against the Pakistani state. A wave of violence over the past month has killed 360 people.

Meanwhile, the President is suppressing democratic institutions in Pakistan in order to preserve his grip on power. Parliamentary elections are due later this year. But yesterday President Musharraf is reported to have reiterated that he will not allow Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, the two main opposition leaders, to return to the country before elections. This suggests that a reported power-sharing deal between the President and Ms Bhutto is in jeopardy; so does the fact that the President seriously considered imposing a state of emergency last week.

Other elements of Pakistani civil society are growing restive too. President Musharraf's sacking of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry in March, in a transparent attempt to head off any legal challenge to his position as head of the army, backfired when thousands of demonstrators drawn from Pakistan's professional classes took to the streets.

President Musharraf is under pressure from all sides. The religious fanatics are rising against him. The middle classes have tired of his excuses for postponing the return of full democracy. Even his friends in the White House are beginning to doubt his claims to be an ally against extremism. The question seems increasingly to be whether the President will relinquish power peacefully, or whether he will drag Pakistan further down with him.

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