Pervez Musharraf has been headed out of power for months now but now, even the US State Department has begun to look for other options in the war against Muslim extremism. Ironically, that search has led to conservative, right wing crusader and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. 
The US “recognizes that, very likely if there is going to be a viable and acceptable leader of the opposition in the near future, it’s going to be Nawaz Sharif,” said Marvin Weinbaum, a former Pakistan analyst at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence.
The Christian Science Monitor reported that Benazir Bhutto had been the State Department’s top choice to bring democracy to Pakistan and eliminate the threat radical extremists pose to security in the region. Since her assassination, the State Department has had to expand its list of viable allies.
In a report broadcast on Voice of America today, Amit Pandya of the Washington-based Henry L. Stimson Center said that Musharraf may lose his hold on Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal.
“Because he is someone who enjoys little legitimacy and little popular support, it is going to be very difficult for him to respond in any particularly strong way that would contribute to the stability of the country,” he said.
Sharif, leader of the second largest political faction in Pakistan and a vocal critic of Musharraf, doesn’t have that problem.
Sharif has built a massive base of support among Pakistani voters as a conservative Islamic leader. His long exile in Saudi Arabia — negotiated after then -General Pervez Musharraf orchestrated a military coup in October 1999 — has made him a folk hero among Pakistanis who view Musharraf as a tyrant.
Though the US has made contact with Sharif’s party since Bhutto’s assassination, officials in the State Department have not revealed whether or not Sharif will be willing to cooperate with the US in its fight against terrorism. Sharif has reportedly built a strong relationship with the Saudi Royal Family and his party’s attempt to establish a legal system based entirely on the Koran before the October 1999 coup may not sit well with the US government.
Sharif may not be the perfect candidate to advance US interests but there is a sense that he may be a lesser evil.
He “may have very good relations with the [Saudi] royal family,” Weinbaum said. But “one thing for sure, he wouldn’t be taking his orders from Iran.”
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