Over and over we're told that Pervez Musharraf is "a key ally in the war on terror" and "a moderate" who is supposedly trying to defeat extremists. General Musharraf is no moderate. In 1999, he almost started a nuclear war with India by sending his forces into Kargil, across the border between India, Pakistan and Kashmir. When Pakistan's then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ordered the army to withdraw, General Musharraf started planning his military coup.

Over and over we're told that Pervez Musharraf is "a key ally in the war on terror" and "a moderate" who is supposedly trying to defeat extremists. General Musharraf is no moderate. In 1999, he almost started a nuclear war with India by sending his forces into Kargil, across the border between India, Pakistan and Kashmir. When Pakistan's then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ordered the army to withdraw, General Musharraf started planning his military coup.

In October 2001, during the US invasion of Afghanistan, General Musharraf publicly warned the Northern Alliance not to "take advantage" of this to expel the Taliban from Afghanistan's government.

That's not unusual behaviour in Pakistan's military, which from independence on has moved from massacring non-Muslims in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to arming, training and funding Islamic jihadists and terrorists from the Taliban to Pakistani terrorist groups targeting civilians in India and Kashmir. In the late 1990s, Osama bin Laden operated from some of the same camps in which Pakistan's ISI military intelligence trained these terrorist groups.

The army also continues its long-standing practice of covertly aiding Islamic fundamentalist parties in Pakistan with money and allowing them and fundamentalist terrorists free rein while threatening, arresting and harassing members of secular parties.

Despite promises from General Musharraf of fair elections, EU observers reported that neither the 2002 elections nor the recent ones were fair. General Musharraf and his Islamic fundamentalist allies in the Pakistan Muslim League lost the latest elections despite sending police to harass and arrest opposition party members; despite the ISI harassing, attacking and murdering journalists under General Musharraff, as the Committee to Protect Journalists reports; despite the atmosphere of fear created by the military and their violent fundamentalist allies; despite placing opposition party leaders such as Imran Khan under house arrest after they were handed over to police by Islamic extremists.

Yet, shamefully, the US government is still providing General Musharraf and the military with more billions in military aid. According to reports, the Bush administration and the British government are also putting pressure on the parties that won the latest elections to let General Musharraf stay as President and allow his unconstitutional dismissal of the head of Pakistan's Supreme Court to stand. What does it say about their judgment and commitment to democracy and the rule of law that they prefer funding and supporting a dictator and a military that have trained, armed, funded and fought alongside terrorists for decades to accepting the will of the majority of the people of Pakistan as expressed in elections? If our governments will just stop being either the dupes or the accomplices of General Musharraf and Pakistan's military, then democracy there has a real chance to defeat extremism. Isn't that what the "war on terror" is meant to be about?

Duncan McFarlane, Braidwood, Carluke.