A particularly egregious example:
Pakistan Shows Its True ColorsAt the urging of hard-line clerics in Islamabad, Pakistani police last year arrested Younis Sheikh, a medical lecturer, under Pakistan's draconian blasphemy laws, and in August, an Islamabad judge sentenced him to be hanged, USA Today reports.
Sheikh languishes in a jail in nearby Rawalpindi, waiting for Pakistan's High Court to hear his appeal. The mullahs of Islamabad say he defamed the prophet Mohammed when he told students the prophet's parents weren't Muslim because they died before God revealed Islam to their son. Despite an international outcry over the Younis Sheikh case and his own campaign to rid Pakistan of Islamic extremism, President Pervez Musharraf has shown little stomach so far for a showdown with Muslim militants over the country's blasphemy laws.
In "If Iraq, Iran, and North Korea Are the 'Axis of Evil,' Why Is Pakistan an Ally?" research fellow Leon Hadar writes that, "Pakistan's government, led by an unreliable military clique that is assisting radical Islamic terrorist groups in Kashmir, pressing for a war with India, and presiding over a corrupt and mismanaged economy, has been a recipient of vast sums of U.S. military and financial aid."
The answer is very simple. Pakistan has nuclear weapons and the current government is at peace with the US and will not allow the nukes to be used in a religious jihad.
The Pakistani government is fragile and sits on top of nation with about 60% of population being radical, Al Qaida supporting, Muslims.
Pakistani government needs all the help we can give it to protect those nukes.
Should the current Paki government fall to the zealots we WILL have to take military control over those nukes, and prop up a new government.
Our survival depends upon it. The current government has allowed us to build 3 new military bases in their country (not widely publicised)
Militant Islam will nuke us without regard to their own survival. We are allies with Pak government to prevent their takeover.