"Having lost even the thinnest veneer of acceptance by his compatriots, he is desperately seeking external validation. In an ironic twist, his fortunes soared, when the twin towers went down on 9/11. He has since been living off the misery of the innocent.

He used global terrorism as his platform to stand tall. And tall he stands as he rubs shoulders with the leader of the world’s only superpower. Besides this image polishing, he is the world’s only dictator whom terrorism has left $20 billion richer. This is the amount of money that the US has set aside for remaking war-ravaged Iraq into a modern democracy. It is 20 times the cost of reconstruction of Afghanistan.

What has Musharraf done to merit such riches? He had continued to provide tutelage to the Taliban to the last day of their purge from Afghanistan. Then, he had an opportunistic turnaround to become their nemesis. Is this a feat worth a $20 billion reward? He has, indeed, catapulted the war on terror into a goldmine of self-enrichment.

He is now using it to consolidate his "one-man democracy." The United States apparently wants to strengthen his hold on power. It is rewarding him for his willingness to fight its war on terror. With President Bush’s re-election, Musharraf feels more sure-footed than ever. No one in the country can hold him to account.

All institutions – parliament, executive, judiciary and media – are wrapped around his little finger. They are coerced into his servitude. As a result, Pakistan has submerged into the will of one man. Having invested himself in absolute power, he has choked off all avenues of democratic change. It might help the US, in the short term though, to see to it that Musharraf is secure in power, regardless of legitimacy. The US can hope to achieve its strategic objectives, with relative ease, by having a "one-man democracy" in Pakistan.

This line of thinking, however, drops two caveats: First, personal interests cannot substitute bi-national interests. Having personalised its relations, the US is mistaking a "dictator" for "Pakistan." Hence, every reward for him is a retribution for the nation.

To entitle himself to the spoils of war, Musharraf has lately carried the mantle of "enlightened moderation". To deny Pakistan any positive recognition, he paints it as a "militant," "violent," "extremist," and "obscurantist" nation.

But a man who has so much riding on terror will unsurprisingly continue to grab on to it. He knows well that his predecessor, Zia-ul-Haq, made a grave mistake evicting the Soviets from Afghanistan. As soon as their last man left Kabul, he found himself junked by the US. He will be no exception if the war on terror comes to an end. Well-schooled in the past, he is, therefore, not in hurry to see an end to the war on terror. He may be shaken by terror itself, but he finds the "war on terror" richly rewarding. When others bleed, he wallows in money and power.

Although he selfishly caricatures Pakistan, the overwhelming majority of its citizens were happy to see the Taliban gone. They willingly assumed a leading role in the global war on terror. They equally willingly swallowed the high price of its fallout in religious strife in their own midst. They went so far as to foreswear all forms of violence whether in the cause of "national liberation," or "religious redemption."

The second caveat that was cast away is the fact that Musharraf is the reason that Afghanistan was far and wide seeded with terror. He is the author of the most discredited gospel on Taliban: They are our co-ethnics; they provide us strategic depth against India; and they keep the gates for us to Central Asia, Russia, and Eurasia.

He has been a staunch defender of this theology until the last Talib disappeared into hibernation. He built himself as the savior of their Afghanistan. In siding with them, he was seeking legitimacy for his power grab as a man who has turned Afghanistan into the "fifth province of Pakistan." In helping the US to rout them, he was seeking legitimacy for his continuation in power. His alliance with the US and the US’s generous recognition of it put him on a pedestal at least for the outside world. Yet it gives him zero legitimacy at home.

On the contrary, he is widely detested. People project their disdain for him onto his backers. As the Pew Research Centre lately found, 96 per cent of Pakistanis nurse "unfriendly sentiment" towards President Bush. One may argue that it should be all the more reason for the US to keep Musharraf in power. I think it is all the more reason to throw him out. Most of his detractors burn with the deeply held conviction to bring democracy to Pakistan. Among others, they include even Islamists who have come to believe in the power of ballot, instead of bullet, to bring about change. If democracy is denied in Pakistan, the country will quickly turn into another Afghanistan or Iraq.

Today, the US is propping up a dictatorship to beat terrorism. Isn’t the former a breeder of the latter? Shouldn’t investment in democracy be a prudent way to end terror? And yes, this investment, it is claimed, is being made in Afghanistan and Iraq, the history of which never bore witness to even faintest of democratisation. Yet the US enthusiasm for returning them to model democracies remains un-dampened. On the other hand, a country that was birthed by a democratic vote continues to be a safe haven for dictatorship to achieve "democracy" in Afghanistan and Iraq. Go figure!