Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, one of the United States supposedly "best allies" in the war on terror, gave the usual recipe for ending terrorism: tackle poverty and despair of the third world countries and resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Osama Bin Laden Phenomenon

One wing of the Taliban movement wants to give its top priority to demoralizing and evicting the United States and its NATO allies from Afghanistan. The other, led by Baitullah Mehsud, the man who allegedly ordered the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, wants to focus on the Talibanization of Pakistan. Mullah Muhammad Omar, the one-eyed Taliban leader whose movement was deposed and who has been in hiding since the U.S.-led invasion a month after Sept. 11, 2001, resurfaced – long enough to fire Mehsud.

Yvonne Ridleys veil:

Suspects in the assassination of Pakistans Benazir Bhutto number in the tens of thousands. Some 800 Pakistanis have been killed by suicide bombers in the past year. Bhutto had a close brush with death Oct. 18, a few hours after returning from eight years of self-imposed exile in Dubai and London. The suicide bomber killed more than 140 people and injured 350, some a few feet from where she was sitting in a large vehicle.

Now that Pakistani President Musharraf has given up control of the Pakistani armed forces, will he remain in control of that troubled country? Will there be democratization? Will the Islamists take power? Or will another military leader seize power?

Iraq and President Bushs war on terrorism - and Washingtons inability to focus on more than one major foreign crisis at a time - have overshadowed the geographic nexus of Islamist extremism. Afghanistan, where suicide bombers are now striking throughout the country; the Afghan-Pakistan border, where Taliban and al-Qaida have reconstituted their strongholds with virtual impunity; and a chaotic Pakistan, which many terrorists call home, should be the new U.S. geostrategic priorities.