Stealthy Kayani goes after Zardari

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Say this for Pakistan’s army, their after-shave works reducing the critical faculties of U.S. "experts" on Pakistan within the CIA, the State Department and the Department of Defense to blobs of helpless jelly.

Since the jihadization of the military by Pakistan’s former President General Zia-ul-Haq in the 1970s, officer corps within the force has continued as a force multiplier for the numerous terror groups headquartered in urban and rural communities across the country.

Except for Jehangir Karamat, Pakistan’s former chief of Army Staff, who accepted his 1998 dismissal at the hands of then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, no chief of Army Staff since Zia-ul-Haq (1976-1988) has accepted any role for the elected civilian government of Pakistan in matters considered by the military to be within its purview. These include the portfolios of defense, foreign affairs and now the prime minister’s office, as well as subjects such as assistance to terror organizations, and the nuclear deterrent. Such an arrangement has had the tacit acquiescence of every NATO country including those who specialize in delivering sermons on democracy and human rights.

Despite the control of the armed forces over most areas considered key to the functioning of a government in any major country, both India as well as the United Kingdom are enthusiastic in insisting that Pakistan remain within "value-based" fora like the Commonwealth, and back every loan application of that country in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund despite the kleptomania of its higher echelons, which admittedly is a trait shared by Pakistan with several countries in the world including India.

Except the United States, no country in the world has lavished more treasure on Pakistan including the two runners-up in its “Santa Claus” sweepstakes - Saudi Arabia and China.

Pakistan's Mumbai Alibi (UPI)

M.D. Nalapat 

MANIPAL, India, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Since the terror attacks on Mumbai five days ago, Indian security sources have promoted evidence that the attackers were trained by elements of the Pakistani military.

While the field training took place at a camp run by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency near Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, fluency in the handling of ordnance was taught at another ISI safe house on the outskirts of Karachi.

Pakistan has done little to create deniability about these connections or earlier links discovered by U.S. intelligence agencies between the ISI and the July 7 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Many analysts see the top priority of Pakistani intelligence as reversing India's path toward social stability and economic growth. Still, why were so many telltale clues left behind in these attacks that enraged the Indian public and made the world aware that India is among the softest terrorist targets of the major democracies?

The hope of those who planned last week's attack was that India would respond to the attacks the way it did to the attack on its Parliament in 2001 -- by mobilizing troops on the Pakistan border and creating an expectation that a full-scale, conventional India-Pakistan war was imminent. At that time Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee's unwise decision to "bluff" the Pakistanis into cooperating with India by the threat of war boomeranged on New Delhi. Foreign missions evacuated their nationals in a panic and business confidence plunged.

Pakistan's Shotgun Marriage Falls Apart (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Despite substantial effort by the administration of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to ensure a majority for his Pakistan Muslim League (Q) and the Pakistan People’s Party in last February’s general election, it failed. Although cheated of the majority it should have had, Nawaz Sharif's PML(N) ran a respectable second to the PPP.

Although Musharraf sought an alliance between his loyalists and the PPP in exchange for having smoothed the way for the Bhutto clan to resume high office, "friendly advice" from the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, eager to secure unified political backing in Pakistan for its War on Terror, made Benazir Bhutto’s heir Asif Ali Zardari cobble up an alliance between the PPP and the PML(N).

Although the PPP has a Sindhi ethnic base, Zardari appointed a Seraiki Punjabi, Y. R. Gilani, as prime minister. Given his ethnicity and donnish approach to politics, Gilani has very little support within the PPP, in contrast to the more popular Makhdoom Amin Fahim, who is from Sindh. However, this very lack of support means that Gilani is less likely than Fahim to pose a challenge to the control that Benazir Bhutto's husband Zardari wields over the PPP. And being from Punjab, it is expected that he would be able to improve the tally of the PPP in that all-important province, at the expense of Nawaz Sharif.