Arrests bolster Bush's embrace of Pakistan

[Nambe]

The Christian Science Monitor

Islamabad has been working with the CIA to nab key Al Qaeda suspects, but the well of radical Islam there is deep. ..

With criticism growing here that the US was not getting much for its billion-dollar partnership with Islamabad, the security operations - carried out with CIA-supplied surveillance equipment and other sophisticated American backing - have put the shine back on US-Pakistani relations. ..

In just one example of the challenge, the commission reports that in Karachi alone more than 200,000 children are being educated in the city's 859 madrassahs - religious schools that are often a poor child's only opportunity for education, but which in some cases have been "incubators for violent extremism." ..

Even on the security front, some critics maintain that Musharraf's actions have come in fits and starts rather than as a sustained effort, and have primarily been calculated to keep American attention - and aid - flowing. (Some Pakistanis joke that Musharraf, who launched a first offensive against Al Qaeda into the troublesome tribal region of Waziristan last spring, is waiting for the fall to take down Osama bin Laden and deliver to the US the ultimate October Surprise).

More soberly, some critics assert that forces of the ousted Taliban, still fighting US forces in Afghanistan, are allowed to cross over and regroup in Pakistan with impunity. ..



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