June 26, 2002	Wednesday	Rabi-us-Sani 14, 1423

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SAN FRANCISCO, June 25: President Pervez Musharraf faces an ominous challenge to his rule from three militant groups that now stand against him, each capable of using violence to bring him down, Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday.

Those who track Pakistan’s turbulent domestic political environment worry openly about a nightmare scenario “one in which elements from the three diverse strains of militancy set aside their individual causes, link up with Al Qaeda members and unite around a set of shared objectives: removing Musharraf, a key US ally in the war on terror; destabilizing the country; and driving the United States from the region, the paper said.

The paper did not name the groups but said two of these groups “one consisting of Pakistanis who fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan, the other made up of warriors dedicated to capturing all of the disputed Kashmir region for Pakistan and the Islamic cause” were once de facto allies of Musharraf’s government. The third “extremists from Pakistan’s majority Sunni sect” was already at odds with him.

The dangers posed by these extremist groups “whose informal linkups may already have begun - have increased sharply in recent weeks because of the steps taken by President Musharraf to ease the crisis with India over Kashmir, the paper said.

There are about 1,000 uniformed Americans and a large FBI contingent based in Islamabad as part of the war on terrorism, so the United States has a large stake in Pakistan’s internal stability, Los Angeles Times said.

Americans also have a stake in a political struggle being watched across the Muslim world “that of a leader who cast his fate with the West in the wake of Sept 11, and is now locked in a battle to survive the backlash, the paper concluded.