'West's support for Musharraf makes Pakistan seedbed of terrorism'

Writing in The Guardian yesterday, Bhutto asks: "Why is it that the terrorist trail always seems to lead back to Pakistan?"

"Why are second-generation Pakistani emigres far more attracted by this pattern of terrorism than other disillusioned Muslims in the west?"

"What is it about Islamabad that puts it at the centre of terrorist plots?"

Pakistan's first, and so far only, female premier wrote that Musharraf has "played the west like a fiddle" by offering support in the so-called "war on terror" to keep the United States and Britain "off his back as he proceeded to arrest and exile opposition leaders, decimate political parties, pressure the press and set back human and women's rights by a generation."

"The Musharraf dictatorship doles out ostensible support in the war on terror to keep it in the good graces of Washington, while it presides over a society that fuels and empowers militants at the expense of moderates."

Bhutto, who twice governed Pakistan in 1988-1990 and 1993-1996, said the message sent by military dictatorships in Pakistan, both Musharraf's and that of Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq between the late 1970s and late 1980s, was that "might is right".

"The West, by supporting the suppression of the democratic aspirations of Pakistanis, has enabled the dictatorship to permeate this message among a new generation of Muslim youth."

She concludes that the country has to embark along the road of democratic reform, writing: "A democratic Pakistan, free from the yoke of military dictatorship, would cease to be the Petri dish of the pandemic of international terrorism."