Pervez Musharraf, President of Pakistan has shown his anger against George Bush. If Pakistani rulers don’t fulfill America’s wants the US forces might take direct action against the Al Qaeda elements operating from the tribal region adjoining Afghanistan. 

Permitting American military action on its soil would be a denigrating compromise of national honour and sovereignty, particularly since western forces are ever reluctant to withdraw from what they deem incompetently administered states.  Musharraf has already paid a price for appearing to jitterbug with the Americans. That US political leaders publicly indicate that their Pakistan-policy is solely dictated by their own narrow interests only adds to their offering. The problem, however, is that Musharraf has yet to convince the international community that his commitment to fight terrorism is more than merely verbal. India has ever had reason to doubt his sincerity For instance he insisted that the militants in Jammu and Kashmir were freedom fighters and was either unwilling or unable to snap the ISI's links with the tanzeems unleashing violence on the Indian side of the LoC.  The only terrorists against whom action has been taken are those who have threatened Musharraf himself. Now that the cover has virtually been blown, Pakistan will have few options but to prove itself to the west. Or find it increasingly difficult to stick to its stance that no foreign troops will operate in its territory.

Pakistan has spent the major part of its 60-year existence as an afterthought. Ideally, Pakistan should have either gone to pieces or forced to come to terms with responsible global citizenship after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Afghanistan’s descent into tribal and faith-inspired anarchy. Instead, it chose to emerge from the protective shadows of global powers by becoming the covert operations centre of an Islamist resurgence its adherents felt would eventually overwhelm a decadent West. In the 15-years or so between the times the Soviet Union’s defeat in Afghanistan became a waiting game and Osama bin Laden’s assault on mainland America on September 11, 2001.

The Taliban regime that controlled Kabul after 1996 was nothing but an extension of Pakistan’s larger strategic design. Kabul’s effectiveness in the global jihad would have been minimal had the commitment of its own fighters and the international brigade stationed in the camps not been supplemented by the expertise of Pakistan's military and intelligence wings. It is significant, for example, that the trail of many of the 9/11 bombers invariably led back to Pakistan. It is also noteworthy that Osama bin Laden’s dramatic escape from the Tora Bora caves in early 2002 was organized by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the ISI's favorite Afghan warlord.  The US dream of ushering in a democratic Pakistan is an illusion, and Benazir Bhutto paid the price at the behest of her American mentors to do the job on their behalf. No one knows that how much time and lives would be taken Pakistan becomes a democratic nation.