How real are the Bush administration’s threats to Pakistan? Just prior to  the Lal Masjid siege and the subsequent storming of the mosque that left the deputy cleric dead the US government had announced Pakistan as the only real  ally of the American war on terror.
Yet it’s taken only two weeks and despite an ostensibly “successful” Operation Silence by President Musharraf's Special Forces for the Bush administration to do a complete U-turn on its stand. And suddenly Pakistan becomes the fresh target to further the manhunt for Osama who incidentally needs to be resurrected through “new” tapes and messages to remind people that he is still alive and still the “most dangerous man” in the world today.
Enough noises from many quarters (a sizeable amount coming from the country's western neighbour) have been made to suggest that several active Taliban and al-Qaeda functionaries have been enjoying the Pakistan government’s hospitality.
And the use of the Hurkat Ul Mujahideen’s Fazalur Rehman Khalil in negotiations during the Lal Masjid siege only helped vindicate the Indian government's position. Despite that, the US administration chose to hunt Osama down in Afghanistan!
Political gimmick
While the response from Pakistan to the American threat was quick, strangely, President Musharraf – generally a man of many words – has chosen to use his Foreign Minister for the counter threats. Besides, the president has shown tremendous and uncharacteristic restraint when it comes to the manner in which the ISAF and NATO troops have been functioning along the tribal belt.
The fresh threats have to be seen as another attempt at international political gimmickry considering that the NATO has been violating Pakistani airspace in their war against terror as it did in the Parachinar region recently.
Artillery attacks from the Afghan side into North Waziristan have been common with civilian casualties only mounting as has been the case in Afghanistan. What is evident is that the much criticised peace deal that the president had entered with the local Taliban militia in North Waziristan last year (which also explains the relative freedom with which the Jamia Hafsa seminary had so far functioned) has now been abandoned.
The Lal Masjid and the seminary within it – to use a cliché – were just a stone’s throw away from the ISI’s headquarters in Islamabad. To think that the activities challenging the president's “enlightened moderation” were continuing unabated practically in the intelligence agency’s backyard without their knowledge would be hard to swallow for anyone.
Unending struggle
And even as the Pakistani president finally finds himself in a tighter spot in his split roles as an American ally in their war on terror as well as the appropriate leader for an endurable democracy in Pakistan, the struggle for his eastern counterpart has not eased either, especially in light of the more recent Korean hostage crisis in Afghanistan.
The joining of Abdul Salaam Rocketi, a former Taliban commander and current lawmaker, in the negotiations, is a reflection of the peculiar situation of the Afghan parliament which finds men like Rocketi dealing with policies and laws for a stable and secure Afghanistan – men once themselves responsible for subverting peace and rule of law. And amidst these political wranglings a man fondly remembered as baba (grandfather) in Afghanistan quietly passed away.
King Zahir Shah’s four decade rule in today's ravaged Afghanistan is remembered for the span of rare peace. Though largely inconsequential to any debate on the country’s future especially with the abolition of monarchy in 2004, the king continued to command loyalty and was a reassuring presence for many members of the parliament. Many of his reforms in the 1960s had included new rights for women in voting, education and the work force – rights that have been promised in theory even today but in a country that has seen only unending violence for so long, the struggle to translate it into practice still continues.