Check out email from my FNC colleague Amy Kellogg:
Greta,
We had a chance to sit down with former Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf this week. He spoke to us about so many things-his feelings about former President Bush, with whom he stood, shoulder-to-shoulder, in the fight against terrorism and extemism; the Muslim world's expectations of President Obama; thoughts about what it will take to defeat the Taliban; the effect economic sanctions had on Pakistan and what they mean for Iran; women in the Muslim world; rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan, and why he remains a hero in Pakistan; drone strikes; and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, whom Musharraf believes may in fact not even be alive.
All interesting discussion, particularly relevant as the eighth anniversary of the September 11th attacks is upon us. And the Taliban is resurgent. Musharraf believes the wolr must keep up the fight against the Taliban and other extremist groups, but though he is a military man, General Musharraf stressed the importance of political solutions to this problem, which includes identifying relative moderates within extremist groups, and reaching out to them. One thing I found particularly interesting was that he believes had the world recognized the Taliban and put embassies in Kabul back in the 90's, they would have had far greater sway over them, maybe even to the point of being able to get them to hand over Bin Laden. Of course we will never know if he is right. But Musharraf suggested the way to have influence over even rogue regimes is to engage them, make them dependent upon you, so that when you do need to sanction them, when you do need to pull back an economic or political relationship, you will have a far greater chance of success in effecting change of behavior. Once a state is in isolation, he claims, it has little to lose.
Amy
