Terrorist Islamic Republic of Pakistan (TSP): Mar. 29, 2011

[MurthyB]

Re: "visa officer" Brandy. I almost thought my cover had been blown . But just for the crowd here, he got it wrong. It's not "Brandy", it is "B Randy". That's how the folks in Khost know mois

[Charlie]

Pakis swearing at each other on national TV

Its Hassan Nissar and some other guy. Hassan Nissar is that "Musalmanon ki tariq" guy. Hope Pakis evolve much more and bring in some AK-47's to TV studios..

[Charlie]

A Paki Rapette's account of the Mohali Match...from VISA to India and everything...

[jrjrao]

Arif Jamal's report says that the Paki jernails are feeling pretty good about kicking Amerikhan. And they have more plans to kick Amerikhan some more in the future, as per the tactically brilliant ones.

Choking off Pakistan-U.S. relations?
http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/20 ... _relations

As the scheduled American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014 nears, there is a growing feeling among the Pakistani military establishment that Pakistan should get ready to play a bigger role in the post-U.S. Afghanistan, in order to secure its own interests and prevent or curtail an Indian presence in the country. In spite of U.S. officials' statements to the contrary, the Pakistani military establishment feels the U.S. will once again abandon Afghanistan and the region. As they do not expect the flow of U.S. aid to Pakistan to continue, members of the Pakistani leadership want the U.S., to use an official's words to me, to "bleed a little like the Soviets."

The Pakistani military establishment also believes that they control the lifeline to the U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, one which they feel they can choke off at will. The experience of "bringing the United States to its heels," as one Pakistani official put it to me, by blocking the NATO supplies through the Torkham border crossing in September 2010, only reinforced their belief.

...according to credible sources in the Pakistani government, a group of former Pakistani servicemen are currently preparing an unofficial "plan B" to once again halt the flow of supplies to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, with the knowledge of the Pakistani military. According to this plan, if the Americans do not agree to the new terms of cooperation from Pakistan, various civilian and political groups will block the highways leading to Afghanistan at some date in the not-so-distant future. Sources tell me that the legendary former Pakistani intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, one of the key coordinators of weapons and money to the anti-Soviet mujahideen and a vocal supporter of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, is playing a key role in the preparation of this plan. Gen. Gul enjoys the support of thousands of ex-servicemen who are organized as part of the Pakistan Ex-Servicemen Association (PESA). In a recent TV talk show appearance, Gul asked the government and the military to adopt this plan, and said that this blockage would turn Afghanistan into a graveyard for the American troops after 15 days, the time he estimated it would take for them to run out of fuel. In addition to ex-servicemen, Gul can also mobilize members of several jihadi-linked groups, including the Lashkar-e-Taiba-affiliated Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

Imran Khan's PTI has already called for a sit-in in Peshawar on April 23-24 on the highway leading to Afghanistan. This experimental blockade would be repeated from time to time, potentially drawing more people with each new protest, until the U.S. accepts Pakistani terms and agrees to revamp the relationship.

[Ananya]

these guys are jokers,they think they have a trillion $ in cash reserves. in the same 15 days America would make Pakistan's economy to a hyper inflationary one.

[Virupaksha]

these guys are jokers,they think they have a trillion $ in cash reserves. in the same 15 days America would make Pakistan's economy to a hyper inflationary one.

Dont over estimate American power.

[Ananya]

i am not overestimating , but if those jokers think they can do something like this and getaway and have america to their knees they are wrong right.

i trust this is common sense

[saadhak]

since you seem to have watched the program, mind putting it in BR acronyms thread so that it can be added to brf compendium ?

Narad already got there
But have added the youtube and timesnow tv links as references.

P.S.:
Not sure if we should also add the other RAA agint whose cover is blown -- Robert Singh aka Farookh Shah!!
Mr. Brandy sounds more sexy though.

[nachiket]

A Paki Rapette's account of the Mohali Match...from VISA to India and everything...

The ease with which they got their VISAs is scary.

[CRamS]

ravi_ku:

Through a combination of the mere threat of cutting off moolah, and a real alliance with India (not the hot air India US relations of today), TSP RAPE will be on their knees pleading saaar saaar with US in a matter of hours, yes, hours.

Someone posted the WSJ editorial. I was struck by what they said is the alternate US strategy if TSP does not behave, and that incluides robust alliance with India. My question is this. There is this often repeated claim that TSP forms the crucial supply link to refurbish US (and its lackeys') troops in Afganisthan. If that were so, does the WSJ threat hold any water?

[Gagan]

A Paki Rapette's account of the Mohali Match...from VISA to India and everything...

The ease with which they got their VISAs is scary.

The visa section / rules for RAPEette women are much more lenient.

If one is a Pakistani male between the ages of say 16-35 years, try get a visa easily to any country, won't happen unless his baap is a mantri/bigshot in pakistan.

These days being a pakistani male, one is a terrorist until proven otherwise - certainly a potential terrorist.

Sad fact, but absolutely true.

[Johann]

ravi_ku:

Through a combination of the mere threat of cutting off moolah, and a real alliance with India (not the hot air India US relations of today), TSP RAPE will be on their knees pleading saaar saaar with US in a matter of hours, yes, hours.

Someone posted the WSJ editorial. I was struck by what they said is the alternate US strategy if TSP does not behave, and that incluides robust alliance with India. My question is this. There is this often repeated claim that TSP forms the crucial supply link to refurbish US (and its lackeys') troops in Afganisthan. If that were so, does the WSJ threat hold any water?

CRS, currently about half of the US supplies to Afghanistan pass through Pakistan, and the other half through the Former Soviet Union. The "Northern Distribution Network" is something they've been working on over the last 2, 2.5 years.

The Americans are continuing to work on expanding the capacity of the northern route. The relative percentage of supplies passing through Pakistan will drop when the surge dies down and the numbers of troops die down.

The Taliban has been trying to build up in Northern Afghanistan, and the numbers of attacks on convoys has been spiking. The whole resurrection of the Quran-burning non-even in Northern Afghanistan is part of a strategy of radicalisation that they hope will bring in non-Pashtuns in to new local Taliban chapters.

[CRamS]

Johann:

If US is really serious about making TSP behave, all they need to do is send in someone like Amrithraj and threaten to bomb them to a parking lot and make good on its threat should TSP dilly dally. Come on, cut the crap, TSP's utility is much more than just AfPak, and you know it.

[RajeshA]

Originally posted by jrjrao

WSJ editorial of tomorrow:

The Pakistan Ultimatum -- Much as after 9/11, Islamabad has to choose whose side it is on

So Pakistan now demands that the United States withdraw hundreds of American intelligence operatives and special-ops trainers from its soil and stop the CIA drone strikes on al Qaeda, Taliban and affiliated terrorists. Maybe the Obama Administration can inform its friends in Islamabad that, when it comes to this particular fight, the U.S. will continue to pursue its enemies wherever they may be, with or without Pakistan's cooperation.

Relations between Washington and Islamabad historically have never been easy, and now they seem to have reached something of a watershed. The fault is not all one-sided. Congressional potentates have made a habit of criticizing Pakistan publicly even when it was cooperating with the U.S. and deploying thousands of troops to fight elements of the Taliban. And promised American aid has been haltingly disbursed.

Then again, Pakistan's behavior hasn't exactly been exemplary. Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, has longstanding links to terrorist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Haqqani network. The government and military have made no move against the Quetta Shura, the operational nerve center in Pakistan of Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

Islamabad's U.S. cooperation has also been double-edged. The government of President Asif Ali Zardari allowed the U.S. to increase the number of drone strikes. Yet it has made a point of complaining about them publicly, playing a particularly cheap form of politics to shore up its waning popularity with a domestic constituency smart enough to see through the hypocrisy.

The Pakistani army was also happy to cooperate with the U.S. when the targets of the strikes were members of the Pakistani Taliban who had their sights set on Islamabad. But the army has been less cooperative when the targets were the Afghan Taliban based in Pakistan or the ISI's terrorist partners.

Matters came to a head in January with Pakistan's arrest of CIA contractor Raymond Davis, after he had shot and killed two armed pursuers. Mr. Davis, who carried an official passport, ought to have been released immediately to U.S. custody under the terms of the Vienna Convention. Instead he was held for 47 days, questioned for 14, and released only after the U.S. government agreed to pay a multimillion-dollar indemnity to the families of the pursuers.

The failure to release Mr. Davis was an indication of how easily cowed Pakistan's civilian government has become in the face of an anti-American public. It also suggested a darker turn by Pakistan's military and the ISI, which were infuriated that Mr. Davis was investigating the activities of the Lashkar-e-Taiba now that it has expanded operations to include terrorism in Afghanistan. Pakistan has also complained bitterly about a drone strike in North Waziristan last month that it claims killed tribal leaders meeting with the Taliban.

A more charitable explanation is that Pakistan's military is angry the CIA is sharing less intelligence with the ISI. In this reading, the mass expulsion of U.S. security officials is really a demand for closer cooperation, even if it's a peculiar way of eliciting it. It's also possible that Pakistan army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani is trying to burnish his own public image by way of an anti-American tantrum that will pass in time.

Still, if the CIA doesn't trust the ISI, that's because it has demonstrated repeatedly that it isn't trustworthy. The Pakistani army has yet to reconcile itself to the idea that Afghanistan should be something other than its strategic backyard, preferably under the control of clients such as the Taliban, and it harbors paranoid illusions that India will encroach on Afghanistan to encircle its old enemy.

Pakistan's civilian government has also done itself neither credit nor favor by failing to tell Pakistan's people the truth about drone strikes, which is that they strike with pinpoint accuracy and that claims of civilian casualties are massively inflated for the benefit of Taliban propaganda. The government could also add that insofar as those drones are taking out leaders of the Pakistan Taliban, they are safeguarding Pakistan's beleaguered democracy.

However Islamabad chooses to act, the U.S. has a vital national interest in pursuing Taliban and al Qaeda leaders in their Pakistani sanctuaries, both for the sake of the war in Afghanistan and the security of the American homeland. Pakistan can choose to cooperate in that fight and reap the benefits of an American alliance. Or it can oppose the U.S. and reap the consequences, including the loss of military aid, special-ops and drone incursions into their frontier areas, and in particular a more robust U.S. military alliance with India.

In the wake of 9/11, the Bush Administration famously sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to Islamabad to explain that the U.S. was going to act forcefully to protect itself, and that Pakistan had to choose whose side it was on. It's time to present Pakistan with the same choice again.

Something I wrote sometime earlier!

America has allowed Pakistan to dictate:

• American boots on the ground, as incursions from the Afghan side, are not acceptable.
• Incursion of American attack planes and helicopters into Pakistani air space, are not acceptable.
• America does not get to expand the drone strikes into Northern Baluchistan, Quetta, even if senior Taliban leadership live there.
• Targeting of Pakistani security personnel manning the border is not acceptable, even if they are complicit in letting in Afghan Taliban to the safe sanctuaries on the Pakistan side.

Often the annoyance with the Americans has been expressed by burning trucks carrying supplies to the Americans in Afghanistan by road. Raymond Davis is a new means of controlling the Americans.

Considering the Pakistani's success in restraining America, it is but natural that they get over-confident.

The Americans make a big mistake in giving in to the Pakistani demands.

The Americans need to go back to their original formulation of policy in the AfPak battleground. Either Pakistan cooperates, or they will be bombed to the stone age!

When the Americans first started taking Pakistani complaints and requests into account, it was there and then that the downward slide began in America's effectiveness in controlling the war theater. It was when the drama thought out for public consumption about Pakistan being an ally in the GWOT started playing, it was then that Pakistan knew they were off the hook. Now USA needed to keep the pretension.

Al Qaeda committed 9/11. Taliban gave sanctuary to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Pakistani Army created Taliban and controlled them (which they still do).

So basically Pakistani Army is responsible for 9/11!

This is the basic fact that the Americans need to always keep in view, when dealing with Pakistanis.

The Americans need to reformulate their stance towards Pakistan so that it better represents the reality of their relationship - that America gave Pakistanis a chance to redeem their substantial guilt in 9/11 and they blew it!

America needs to designate Pakistan as a terrorist country on parole. A terrorist country on parole has no rights to make nuclear weapons. As of now the international community should take custody of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Furthermore Pakistan has to visibly, transparently and credibly decommission its jihadi networks.

Pakistan will never do the needful by appeasement, only through credible threat, the taste of whose punishment is meted out to Pakistan on a regular basis.

That America could not do well in Afghanistan considering the restrictions, the world and the American citizenry would forgive and forget! Afghanistan is a side-show and no victory there needs to be found or declared. There is no loss of face, if America leaves Afghanistan. But if America messes up Pakistan big time, then the world will not forget that!

America needs to put Pakistan in the cross hairs again!

[Johann]

Johann:

If US is really serious about making TSP behave, all they need to do is send in someone like Amrithraj and threaten to bomb them to a parking lot and make good on its threat should TSP dilly dally. Come on, cut the crap, TSP's utility is much more than just AfPak, and you know it.

America is no more likely to use overt force against a nuclear Pakistan that is against a non-nuclear Iran.

Unless you think the mullahs in Iran are being preserved for their utility of course....

Covert force is another matter. You can ask Raymond Davis, or the people trying to clear out stuxnet.

[CRamS]

Johann:

Lets say Mush after 9/11, or even now Kiyani start playing real hardball and tells US: kiss my arse, then what will US do? Overt force?

[Rangudu]

CRS,

Instead of thinking about the Amritraj threat, think about what Bill Clinton told Nawaz Sharif to make TSPA ski down from Kargil.

1. Economic strangulation i.e. immediate cutoff of IMF/WB funds
2. International opprobrium i.e. naming TSP as the primary guilty party in all fora - UNSC, G8, EU etc.
3. Sea blockade
4. Naming of key serving and retired TSPA Jernails as terrorists and siezing their overseas assets and banning them from entering US, Europe etc.

This is what forced their hand. Even after 9/11 it is the unsaid IMF cutoff that forced TSP's hand. Remember that they were about to default on loans.

Bombing etc. is a fantasy and anyway it is overrated. Even today, the #4 item on my list is probably at the top of US' cards if things go further south. We know that the Jernails may use suicide bombers to kill Indians but they themselves are too addicted to their overseas access, shopping trips for begums, "scholarships" to kids etc.

[CRamS]

R-Man, J, ...

Thakans for your responses, please give me insight on something else so next time I am equipped when someone like Fair pull a fast one. Many-a-time, slime balls like Uneven claim that TSP has been the most sanctioned of US "allies" and it has resulted in no change in their behavior. And of course, I have seen this repeated by Fareed bhai on his show. Is this really true? Has TSP really been sanctioned to the level you highlight above? Basically, Uneven is lying is he not?

[Prem]

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-us-p ... eem-2011-4
Why U.S.-Pakistan Relations Are Not As Bad As They Seem

But for all the talk of how serious the rift between the two countries has become—on its front page, the New York Times said the relationship was near collapse—the reality behind the schism doesn’t quite match the hype. Talking to officials on both sides makes it clear that intense talks are underway about the future of the U.S. in Pakistan, but according to a senior U.S. diplomat in Pakistan who couldn’t speak on the record, the U.S. is not being asked to drastically reduce its footprint. Surely this dust up could ultimately be debilitating to the partnership, but serious negotiations are continuing to find an acceptable way forward.
To shore up the rift, the ISI’s director, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, flew to Washington this week to meet with CIA director Leon Panetta. Preliminary reports from their meeting suggest that Pakistan’s demands aren’t as unbridled as one might expect. Pasha reportedly made no specific demands on the withdrawal of U.S. personnel. He did not ask for a halt to, or even a reduction in, drone attacks. Instead, Islamabad’s chief concern seems to be more transparency as to what the U.S.’s hundreds of embassy, intelligence, and military personnel are up to day in and day out.Rather than shoving each other away, talks in Washington and Islamabad suggest both sides are leaning toward a workable solution. “It’s really irrelevant to talk about numbers,” says the senior U.S. diplomat. “The idea of reduction in cooperation or reduction in [the U.S.] footprint is fluid right now.” In other words, while no one has a clear picture of where the negotiations are heading, it’s unlikely that there will be a dramatic downsizing.Western diplomats in Pakistan largely agree that the driving force behind the move to reduce and rein in the huge American presence is Pakistani Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. A strong Pakistani nationalist, Kayani is determined to reassert as much control as possible over U.S. intelligence and military operations in the country. He and his fellow commanders fear that some of the unilateral U.S. intelligence activity could be aimed at sensitive information on the details and whereabouts of the country’s more than 100 nuclear weapons.
Kayani also has to attune his actions to the politics within his own high command. He has to strike a balance between the sometimes conflicting views of his core commanders. Some are said to be both nationalist and anti-Western, while others believed to be less suspicious of and more open to the West. So to some degree Kayani has to appear to be standing up to the U.S. without subverting what is a beneficial relationship both economically and militarily to Pakistan.It’s clearly not going to be easy to repair the rift. “It’s got a lot of band-aids over it,” says the U.S. official. “Scar tissue is forming.” But both sides seem to be doing their best to ensure that a series of compromises can save the relationship from further harm. “There is a real desire on both sides to continue it [the relationship] and move it forward. This is a relationship you can’t wad up and throw away on either side,” the official adds. Washington is hoping that Islamabad continues to see it that way.

[SSridhar]

A Paki Rapette's account of the Mohali Match...from VISA to India and everything...

They had some help from inside India.

[anupmisra]

A Paki Rapette's account of the Mohali Match...from VISA to India and everything...

The next step was filling out the online Indian visa application form. Saying that the experience was frustrating would be as much of an understatement as saying Test cricket will miss Mohammad Amir: there was no “Go Back” option and the form kept dying on us thanks to some aggressive timeouts.

And, they kept trying to get in. Damn!! How desperate can these rapettes get?

[harbans]

Rangudu ji, Pakistan had already lost the initiative in Kargil and was facing a stark naked military whopping. Nawaz went to US only for a face saving gesture. It was to convince opinion at home that PA soldiers had not downhill skiied because of Indian military onslaught but due to US pressuring them to. I thought that was the echandee deal. US indeed was not supporting them as they knew exactly what the PA was up to. At least thats what i thought.

However i do think that between the present CIA-ISI spat and 'Amritraj' threat the US indeed has significant leverage on Papistan. Already there are people in the West now realizing that a plebiscite may certainly not end in Pakistans favor or Kashmiri independence if the option of Independence is introduced. Studies have shown it, particularly the one initiated by Gaddaffi's son. It's not for no reason that many including Musharaff have gone back on the plebiscite issue. If the US really wants to pressure Paki's it just has to completely cease issuing visas to Paki's and freeze Paki accounts and remittances. Most Paki Government and military elite have relatives/ property in the West. Introducing a few bills in Congress that will declare Papistan a Papistan..will jolt the PA into a gubo position. Supply of weapons to Pakistan is another one. Even if China started now it would'nt in 10 years be able to replace the American hardware in PA. PA IMHO is attempting brinkmanship and trying to salvage as much against India it can in all these deals..from strategic depth in Afgh, closing Indian consulates, involving itself in K..in this brinkmanship game Paki's will realize that US is serious about eliminating AQ and Taliban. The US will not leave Afgh the way the Soviets did. This is a long haul for the Americans and they have started realizing if they want a better afgh and leave with a sense of accomplishment, they might need India a lot more than now. Paki's franly have little choice. With the Northern route opening up, Washington may not be so dependent on the Paki's anymore. Even a simple threat of never delegitimizing Paki nukes and legitimizing Indian ones may be enough to get Paki's to GUBO. Promising a India in the UNSC in the next couple of years again will rattle the Paki's no end. Some of this is already going on..i guess as pressure tactics in the brinkmanship game last couple of years. I credit Obama's endorsement of India's UNSC membership as more due to Paki brinkmanship than anything else..not one Indian analyst guessed that Obama would do that. Anyways JMT/ gald to be corrected..

[shiv]

I believe she is contradicting herself. If the ISI wanted all that stuff - why pay money and have Davis released?

Because Pakistani civilian politics started interfering?

This is why Fair sounds like she speculates. All the information we have got so far tends to point to the idea that when it comes to the crunch the army will crush any political dissent. It would not have been difficult for the army to stop the political noisemaking.

I suspect that the story is not as straightforward as Fair makes it out to be. I was amazed at the manner in which Raymond came out all of a sudden. I am inclined to agree with what R-man says - that is the US has a fair amount of dirty linen on the Paki army which they threaten to expose if the Pakistan army does not toe the line.

But where the US has no control is in areas where the politics is itself outside the control of the army. This seems to be the case with the Pakiban. I suspect that all this triumphalism being displayed about how the Paki army showed the US its place is some bravado and echandee saving. Just my speculation..

[Airavat]

The Mohali cricket saga is another example of our loss of sense of proportion and of a state of denial about ourselves and our cricketing prowess

By Duffer Hilaly, former ambassador, and current cricket expert.

[Raja Bose]

The Mohali cricket saga is another example of our loss of sense of proportion and of a state of denial about ourselves and our cricketing prowess

By Duffer Hilaly, former ambassador, and current cricket expert.

Why is Mr. Hilaly's personal email address: [email protected]? Is he Mr. Brandy's birather?

[Raja Bose]

Comic created on phone while waiting for bus:

[sanjaykumar]

Prior to the match in Mohali I felt the team had done well to make it to the semi-finals, considering the threats and scandals which had led to one player fleeing and left others with sullied reputations. And, of course, the unsettling impact of the blood and gore in which Pakistan is awash. But, thereafter, I had second thoughts. Had not Italy also have terror, murder and bloodshed for thirty years, under the Borgias and yet managed to produce a Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance?


Yes that is the way to lie in the gutter:Look up at the stars.

[anchal]

The Mohali cricket saga is another example of our loss of sense of proportion and of a state of denial about ourselves and our cricketing prowess

By Duffer Hilaly, former ambassador, and current cricket expert.

if the Indian TV talk show the other day on which I was a panellist, is anything to go by, the level of paranoia, hate and suspicion of Pakistan manifested by Indian panellists suggests that peace is no more around the corner than is a white Christmas.

He sure is referring to Arnab washout

[Naidu]

Why is Mr. Hilaly's personal email address: [email protected]? Is he Mr. Brandy's birather?

Well, that's the ID he uses for doing his freelance IT work. His previous ID, [email protected], was not attracting many customers for some reason.

[Hiten]

PCB ready to host India at neutral venue

. Sources said that some of the senior cricketers are completely against travelling to the country till the perpetrators of 26/11 are brought to book

good news to start off the day - a well-placed comment on such lines from a senior cricketer leaked to the press, will surely torpedo any plans MMS may be conjuring to overlook 26/11 and other perfidy.

[abhijitm]

Why is Mr. Hilaly's personal email address: [email protected]? Is he Mr. Brandy's birather?

Well, that's the ID he uses for doing his freelance IT work. His previous ID, [email protected], was not attracting many customers for some reason.

[partha]

PCB ready to host India at neutral venue

. Sources said that some of the senior cricketers are completely against travelling to the country till the perpetrators of 26/11 are brought to book

good news to start off the day - a well-placed comment on such lines from a senior cricketer leaked to the press, will surely torpedo any plans MMS may be conjuring to overlook 26/11 and other perfidy.

Awesome. Hats off to our cricketers!

[abhijitm]

It’s just as well that the Indians were indulgent at Mohali because, had the boot been on the other foot, I suspect that their players would have been arrested on charges of match fixing. Actually, had the bookies not had India as the favourites, they would have gone on a shooting spree. Tendulkar look mightily relieved that he had finally found someone to hold on to a catch and end his wretched knock.

WTF this mad@@d means??

Why not news headlines "former pakistani ambassador accused Tendulkar of match fixing"??? That will bomb all cricket diplomacy.

[partha]

Even if India decides to play in a neutral venue. it should insist on Sri Lanka or Bangladesh and avoid the Dubai or Sharjah. I think SL will be more than happy to host the matches and earn some cash considering they incurred loses hosting WC matches.

[saip]

The Mohali cricket saga is another example of our loss of sense of proportion and of a state of denial about ourselves and our cricketing prowess

By Duffer Hilaly, former ambassador, and current cricket expert.

There is just one comment and it is totally negative. I am surprised News published it!

[abhishek_sharma]

Khyber Impasse: How long can the United States and Pakistan keep pretending that they actually have any interests in common?

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2 ... er_impasse

...

Both a senior U.S. and a senior Pakistani official told me that Pasha had not demanded any specific reductions of the U.S. presence on the ground in Pakistan. On the other hand, both agreed that Pasha had asked for restrictions on the drones.

There's something special about a relationship that only gets worse, but never actually falls apart. Pakistan has been selling itself to the United States as a national security bulwark since the earliest days of the Cold War, and Washington has been an eager and often uncritical buyer, subcontracting to Pakistani military and intelligence operatives much of the effort to arm and train the mujahideen who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Only in the 1990s, with the Soviet menace gone, did Washington allow the bonds to fray altogether, over Pakistan's nuclear program. The terrorist attacks of 9/11, however, gave Pakistan a new purchase on its self-appointed role. And the country's unique combination of a nuclear arsenal and a thriving population of Islamic extremists has made it not so much indispensable to Washington as terrifying to it. The United States can't walk away, and Pakistan knows it can't, and the United States knows Pakistan knows. Etc. It's the diplomatic equivalent of Tolstoy's dictum that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own special way.

...

But it could be more serious than that. The Pakistani official I spoke with said that the message from both Kayani and Pasha is that the drone strikes "have to be very, very limited" -- for example, in case of an "imminent threat" -- and cannot be conducted nearly as deep in Pakistani territory as they have been in recent years. But the drone strikes have eliminated dozens of leading Taliban figures and disrupted their capacity to train, plan, and communicate; no significant restriction would be acceptable to the United States. A senior U.S. official pointedly noted that CIA director Leon Panetta "has been clear with his Pakistani counterparts that his fundamental responsibility is to protect the American people, and he will not halt operations that support that objective."

...

The Davis case infuriated the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's spy agency, not only because Davis was operating on his own but because he was targeting Lashkar-i-Taiba, a terrorist group that the ISI has used to carry out attacks on India. And Kayani first raised the idea of restricting drone strikes in reaction not to the Davis case but to a strike against another tribal ally, the Hafiz Gul Bahadur group of the Tehrik-e-Taliban. U.S. President Barack Obama's administration has ramped up the drone strikes because the Pakistan Army has refused to go after Taliban groups that are intent on attacking U.S. troops in Afghanistan; the Army hasn't taken the fight to those militants because they don't threaten Pakistan and because they are useful in the perpetual effort to establish "strategic depth" against India, the enemy Pakistan is really worried about.

This is, at bottom, what's so uniquely strange about the U.S.-Pakistan relationship: It consists largely of efforts to finesse the fundamental and apparently unalterable fact that the enemy of one side is the ally of the other.

...

A divorce would be satisfying; but Pakistan needs U.S. aid, equipment, and training, and Washington is too afraid of what Pakistan might become to let it go. Christine Fair, a Pakistan expert at Georgetown University, is convinced that Islamabad has the upper hand in the confrontation and thus notes that U.S. officials will swallow their ire and make real concessions on drones and perhaps also on the presence of special operations forces. "We're in it for the kids," as she puts it waggishly.

But in Pakistan, as in Afghanistan, the time has come to lower expectations. The United States will have a significant presence in both countries, civilian as well as military, for a long time to come, and over the long run may help foster stability and decent governance in both places. But things will not get better in the short term. Last week, the White House released a report that included the startlingly blunt, if unarguable, assertion that Pakistan's complete failure to follow up its military efforts against the Taliban with even a semblance of efforts to "hold" or "build" cleared areas -- the civilian side of any counterinsurgency program -- meant that "there remains no clear path toward defeating the insurgency in Pakistan." That is, even in those places that Pakistan deems crucial to its own security, a feckless state has undermined an ambitious and often courageous military effort. The stark language may have been intended to shock the Pakistanis into action, but the only effect it seems to have produced is Kayani's edict on the drones.

As a recent government audit of U.S. aid efforts shows, the billions of dollars the United States has poured into economic development and governance in Pakistan haven't made much of a dent yet. As in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States has set out to change the habits and policies of a deeply refractory place -- a prescription for frustration and failure.

I'm not saying the United States should stop sending aid to Pakistan; it may eventually do some good and earn at least a little bit of goodwill. But Obama would be wise to bring the war in Afghanistan to a quicker end than he now plans, to expect less and demand less of Pakistan, and to turn his attentions toward the kind of problems the United States can actually do something about, at home and abroad

[ManuT]

Naughty naughty. A knock on the knuckles. You have not watched the mandatory 30 minutes if Times Now interview featuring Christine Fair.

My apologies that my comment necessitated you to go through 30 mins of it, for any inconvenience caused. She nearly said 'they have us by the scruff of the neck'. If it is any consolation, I reserve the right to disagree with you on something else at some time in the future.

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Also, does someone need to call someone macaca before someone gets excited.

According to Sushant Sarin a former ISI chief said "Indians will kick if you lick them, they will lick if you kick them"

I fail to see the point, here, if any. What sort of gospel wisdom is this.

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.... Sources tell me that the legendary former Pakistani intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, one of the key coordinators of weapons and money to the anti-Soviet mujahideen and a vocal supporter of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, is playing a key role in the preparation of this plan...

the legendary part... Sounds more like legendary Gen Hamid Lul.
Now, Lul (Oaf) is an urdu word I would use here.

[Rahul M]

gul in bangla translates as 'fib', so it's quite appropriate IMO.

[shiv]

According to Sushant Sarin a former ISI chief said "Indians will kick if you lick them, they will lick if you kick them"

I fail to see the point, here, if any. What sort of gospel wisdom is this.

This is such a commonly used cliche - it applies to Pakistanis as well. Only MMS does not know about it yet. Vajpayee learned that the hard way.

[ramana]

Pak ruling class has severe anxiety issues of late. Shows in their interviews and op-eds etc.