Tight Bind

In a region of the world where the cruel irony of history has warped societies and partitioned nations, the greatest irony of the moment may be that the two men on the subcontinent who can best understand each other's predicaments are not on speaking terms. Antagonists in the world's longest-running dress rehearsal for Armageddon, India's Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, now, surprisingly, face similar foes. India's hawkish Hindu fundamentalists pose problems for Vajpayee's coalition at home and call for war against Musharraf's Pakistan abroad. Pakistan's Islamic extremists now despise Musharraf as much as they hate traditional...