Musharraf Finds Himself Lonely at Top

Islambad, Jul. 9 2002 (INS News) -- Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, who bet his future on a post-Sept 11 alliance with the West, has lost "considerable popular support as he has forced a series of dramatic changes in the country at the behest of his foreign allies", a media report said on Friday.

A New York Times article based on recent interviews with dozens of Pakistanis said that "Musharraf has no friend left at home".

"Nine months after joining the Western coalition against terrorism, Musharraf, is isolated in his own land, increasingly a figure of ridicule and the focus of a growing anti-Western fury that is shared by Islamic militants and the middle class alike," the paper said.

"The decline in the general's fortunes represents an abrupt turnaround since last autumn, when he was hailed at home and in the West as a reform-minded Muslim leader in the mold of Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey and one of the general's heroes", it said.

Musharraf's hold over the army and at least the upper echelons of Pakistan's powerful intelligence services, the paper says, is not in doubt, for now, and there appears to be no immediate threat to his power. But at no time since Sept. 11 has he appeared as isolated or vulnerable.

"Musharraf's dutiful carrying out of Washington's demands is galvanizing a widespread feeling that he has largely traded away Pakistan's sovereignty to the US and that Pakistan's new policy toward Kashmir is the latest in a series of humiliations he has endured at America's hands," it said.

Musharraf has become so closely identified with the Americans that he has even earned a nickname on Pakistan's streets: "Busharraf", the paper said.

-- Sam Asharaf - South Asia Correspondent in Trivandrum, India
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