With a Quiet Blessing, U.S. Attacks on Al Qaeda Spike | Newsweek Periscope

A Dangerous Place
Sumit Ganguly 5/8/2008 12:00:00 AM
India and Pakistan were on the verge of performing their first tests of nuclear bombs in the spring of 1998 when President Bill Clinton proclaimed South Asia "the most dangerous place on earth." The tests went forward 10 years ago this month--India's on May 11 and 13 and Pakistan's on May 28 and 30. In the decade since, the region has crawled back from the brink. In 2004 the two adversaries began peace negotiations, which are ongoing. Pakistan has made a rocky transition to democracy and New Delhi and Islamabad have recently begun discussions about energy cooperation. With the two rivals making such warm sounds, U.S. policymakers, distracted by trouble in Iraq and Afghanistan, are in danger of largely ignoring the continuing presence and activities of various jihadi groups within Pakistan who remain committed to wreaking havoc in Indian-controlled Kashmir and elsewhere. These entities, which Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate had spawned and nurtured, are still waiting in the wings.
Inside Pakistan's New War on Terror
Michael Hirsh 5/2/2008 12:00:00 AM
Some people in the Bush administration can't quite let go of Pervez Musharraf—even though Musharraf himself is letting go of Pakistan. The Pakistani president, already marginalized by a hostile newly elected government, has so little to do he's been playing a lot of bridge lately, according to a source inside the government. Expectations are that he'll quietly step down around the same time his greatest champion, George W. Bush, leaves office in early 2009. (At which time his likely replacement could be his erstwhile mortal enemy, Asif Ali Zardari, the controversial husband of the murdered Benazir Bhutto, who leads the now-dominant Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). But some hard-line U.S. officials inside the White House (interestingly enough, not including Dick Cheney) are still clinging to Musharraf's failed anti-Al Qaeda policies—which depended almost entirely on sporadic military strikes and CIA-Pakistani cooperation on intel—after nearly seven years of overwhelming evidence that they don't work. What's the evidence, you ask? Osama bin Laden and his operational commander, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are still alive and at large.
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
‘We Will Not be Blackmailed’
Ron Moreau 4/21/2008 12:00:00 AM
FACT CHECK
Factcheck.org On the Cleveland Debate
Brooks Jackson 2/27/2008 12:00:00 AM
SummaryThe Clinton-Obama showdown debate in Cleveland produced several false, twisted or dubious claims, most of which we've heard and debunked before.
LETTERS
Mail Call: Pakistan’s Problem

Readers of our Jan. 21 cover story on Pervez Musharraf's future unanimously blamed him for all of Pakistan's problems. "He destroyed national institutions so he can stay in power," said one. "Discontent is spreading," wrote another. A third opined, "The biggest threat faced by Pakistan is Musharraf."
This Is Pakistan’s War
Fareed Zakaria
In one of his many speeches on the sources of Islamic terrorism, George W. Bush argued that "when a dictatorship controls the political life of a country, responsible opposition cannot develop and dissent is driven underground and toward the extreme." In Bush's opinion, the antidote is democracy. As he said in another address, "If [people] are permitted to choose their own destiny, and advance by their own energy and by their participation as free men and women, then the extremists will be marginalized, and the flow of violent radicalism to the rest of the world will slow, and eventually end."