Pakistan’s fractious coalition has agreed to begin impeachment proceedings against President Pervez Musharraf but can it really pull it off ?  Do they have the numbers — the two-thirds majority required from the National Assembly and  Senate combined? Impeachement is like a trial, so what charges will they bring against him?

And then there is the army, still arguably the most powerful institution in a country of 160 million people battling Islamist extremism, tension on its borders with India and Afghanistan where U.S. led coalition forces are hunkered down, and facing an economic meltdown.

Do Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif have the consent of the army to go after one of its own in such humiliating fashion?

The questions are jumping off the pages as Pakistanis debate the latest twist in a political drama playing out against the backdrop of a country increasingly restless with the heavy weight of its ally the United States on the one hand, and the rising power of Islamist forces on the other.

Is this for real, asks Adi Najam at All Things Pakistan, wondering if the impeachment proposal was more an attempt to keep the four-month-old coalition going, given that the numbers don’t seem to add up.

Then there is the external factor.  Are Washington, Beijing and Riyadh — three of Pakistan’s closest allies — in favour of the impeachment decision, a post on the Pakistan Policy Blog asks.

Musharraf, though, is not taking the threat lightly, and is lining up his supporters to fight the impeachment bill, according to the Daily Times.  The opposition has warned that the president might invoke Article 58(2b), the law that gives him power to dissolve the National Assembly.

When all is done, however, Pakistan must face the crises that dog the country and these will not disappear with Musharraf’s departure, if it comes to pass, as the Dawn notes. It listed the three main ones as the economic downturn, an unstable transition to democracy and an “explosive cocktail of militants rampaging across the country”.

One of the questions that repeatedly came up during Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s rather eventful trip to the U.S. last month was who was in charge of the Inter-Services Intelligence , especially after the botched attempt to bring the powerful spy agency - that critics see as a state within a state - under the interior ministry.

But at home, Pakistanis are asking an even more fundamental question: Who really is in control of  their country ? A very rough poll conducted by All Things Pakistan among people who visit the blog found that nearly 40 percent thought nobody was in control of the nuclear-armed Muslim nation of 160 million and from where at least the Americans are convinced the next major militant attack is coming.

About 28 percent said Pakistan People’s Party chairman Asif Ali Zardari was in control while 18  percent saw President Pervez Musharraf still calling the shots. But nobody, not one person, thought Gilani who, by all accounts was given a rather blunt message by his American hosts about his government’s failure to fight militants and their allies within, was in charge.

For Pakistan’s transition to democracy after nine years of military rule this is hardly inspiring. “The image of a prime minister who noone thinks has any power is sad and disturbing,” ATP notes in a later post and asks whether he is on his way out. Or, it asks, is the poll a broader warning of a country sliding further into chaos?

Gilani’s government is faced with Islamist militancy across Pakistan’s northwest and an America that is breathing hard down its neck asking for action. On top of that tensions with India on the eastern borders have suddenly and inexplicably risen, which doubtless increases the pressure on an army already overstretched on the Afghan frontier

 Gilani’s four-month-old coalition is fractured following the withdrawal of ministers belonging to Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League over the issue of reinstatement of judges fired by Musharraf. On Tuesday, the two sides were meeting to break the stalemate.

Adding to the sense of crisis, is an economy at risk of meltdown with acute power shortages, and higher fuel and food prices that have hit hard the poor majority.

Time magazine called Gilani an “accidental” prime minister leading a government too weak to act on any front including the faltering campaign against militancy or even the economy. Pakistan’s respected Dawn newspaper has gone to the extent of questioning Gilani’s authority in promising Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh an investigation into allegations that the ISI helped plan the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul last month. How could he have done that without taking the country  into his confidence, the newspaper asked.

Not surprising then, that the Daily Times reports that Gilani may quit if he is not allowed to function as a chief executive with a definite say in government.

As far as a strategy for Afghanistan is concerned, it’s a long shot. Bring peace to India and Pakistan and not only will that stabilise Pakistan but it will also ease tensions in Afghanistan. Indeed it’s such a long shot that it has not been considered as a serious policy option. That was until last month’s bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul. 

A spate of allegations that Pakistan’s powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),  was involved in the bombing has forced India-Pakistan rivalry back onto centre-stage. This is not just about India and Pakistan, or so the argument goes. Their rivalry is undermining U.S. efforts to defeat al Qaeda and the Taliban since the ISI is maintaining links with Islamist militants to counter Indian influence in the region. And Pakistan’s denial of involvement in the embassy attack has done little to quell the speculation.

In The Atlantic.com, Robert Kaplan argues that the war in Afghanistan is part of Pakistan’s larger struggle with India. “Afghanistan has been a prize that Pakistan and India have fought over directly and indirectly for decades,” he writes. ”To Pakistan, Afghanistan represents a strategic rear base that would (along with the Islamic nations of ex-Soviet Central Asia) offer a united front against Hindu-dominated India and block its rival’s access to energy-rich regions. Conversely, for India, a friendly Afghanistan would pressure Pakistan on its western border-just as India itself pressures Pakistan on its eastern border-thus dealing Pakistan a strategic defeat.”

His argument is that the ISI will never rest easy as long as it fears that Pakistan is threatened by a hostile Afghanistan on one side and a hostile India on the other.  “Unless we address what’s angering the ISI, we won’t be able to stabilize Afghanistan or capture al-Qaeda leaders inside its borders,” he says.

In the Globe and Mail Saeed Shah writes that the ISI was supposed to have severed ties with Islamist militants and the Taliban after 9/11. ”Only it didn’t. The links were loosened, but they remain, for the simple reason these militants are viewed as vital pawns in a bigger game: Keeping Afghanistan unsettled to limit the United States’s - and by extension arch-rival India’s -influence in the region,” he writes. “This is a military doctrine about national survival, not an ideology of religious fanaticism. Civilians are not welcome to meddle with it,” he says.

To understand where these writers are coming from, it’s important to remember that the Pakistan Army — and by extension the ISI — sees itself as the ultimate guarantor of Pakistani survival. And although it has stepped into the background from time to time to allow civilian governments into power, it will never allow Pakistan to become as vulnerable again as it was in 1971 when what were then West and East Pakistan were torn apart with the creation of Bangladesh.

“ISI’s primary duty is defending Pakistan,” writes Eric Margolis in another article which tries to explain the behaviour of the ISI.

The arguments are contentious, not least because Pakistan has repeatedly denied using militant groups as pawns against its much bigger neighbour.  India too is extremely touchy about the subject of Afghanistan, arguing that as a regional power it has a legitimate role there that does not deserve to be dragged down to the level of India-Pakistan rivalry. It has also spent years accusing the ISI of fomenting violence, from the Punjab insurgency in the 1980s to the Kashmir revolt in the 1990s, to Afghanistan in the 21st century — charges rebuffed by Pakistan — until the issue has become both impossibly murky and highly emotive.

But just suppose for a moment the arguments were correct.  Then would renewed efforts towards peace between India and Pakistan help stabilise Afghanistan? And conversely, what would be the price of their fragile peace process disintegrating?

Why now? Until this week, the ISI was an acronym for Pakistan’s powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, that was little known outside of South Asia. Now it’s all over the American media as the organisation accused of secretly helping Islamist militants in  Afghanistan and Pakistan, while the country it works for is a crucial ally in the U.S. battle against al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The New York Times led the charge by reporting that the CIA had confronted Pakistan over what it called deepening ties between members of the ISI and militant groups responsible for a surge in violence in Afghanistan. It followed it up with a story  quoting U.S. government officials blaming the ISI for an attack last month on the Indian embassy in Kabul. The Washington Post and TIME, amongst others, ran similar stories.

Whenever you see a deluge of stories in the media quoting government or intelligence officials, it’s always worth asking why those unnamed officials have chosen this particular moment to speak out. The accusations against the ISI — denied by Pakistan — are not new.  

India has complained for years about the role of the ISI in supporting the insurgency in Kashmir. It threatened to go to war in 2001/2002 over a December 2001 attack on the Indian parliament that it blamed on militants backed by the ISI,  a charge denied by Pakistan. The debate within India at the time was very similar to the one you can find today in the U.S. media — how much do the ruling authorities in Pakistan control the ISI, and to what extent is it a monolithic disciplined organisation, and to what extent does it have renegade members who might follow their own agenda?

More importantly, perhaps, in the current context, is how the Americans viewed the ISI.  The U.S. diplomats I knew in India had no illusions about the ISI, although publicly they refused to take sides as they tried – successfully as it turned out — to persuade Islamabad and Delhi to stand down from a conflict that threatened to undermine America’s post 9/11 efforts to tame Afghanistan.

During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, the CIA worked closely with the ISI to arm, train and fund the mujahideen. Between them they drove the Russians out of Afghanistan and helped bring down the Soviet Union. There can be no closer relationship between two countries’ spy agencies than that.  The CIA knows, and has long known, the ISI — perhaps better than any other country’s intelligence services.

So I come back to my original question. Why turn on them now?

There are, of course, obvious answers. Pakistan’s new government, elected in February, just made a botched attempt to bring the ISI under civilian control.  Its subsequent retraction served only to highlight the power of the ISI.  The Americans and their allies are suffering heavy losses in Afghanistan, while going into a presidential election where the war in Iraq, and the U.S. failure to hunt down al Qaeda and the Taliban, have become a major issue.

But I can’t help but wonder whether those unnamed officials now so keen to talk to the media are spinning a line.  There have long been arguments within the CIA about how to handle the ISI, with agents based in Kabul generally arguing in favour of confrontation and those in Islamabad backing cooperation.

So is what we are seeing in the U.S. media a reflection of a battle within the CIA over rival views on how to handle Pakistan and the ISI? Maybe.

Or is it a reflection of actual events, including the increase in violence in Afghanistan, the renewed focus on Iraq/al Qaeda created by the U.S. presidential election, the speculation about whether the United States will send its troops into Pakistan to hunt down leaders of al Qaeda and the Taliban, and heightened tensions between India and Pakistan over the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul? Maybe.

I am not asking these questions in the kind of rhetorical way that suggests that I already know the answer. I’m asking because I don’t know.

But I am just a little bit suspicious when I see the media all heading in the same direction. It feels uncannily similar to the way the media quoted unnamed officials about WMD to justify the invasion of Iraq. Many countries had been suspicious of Saddam Hussein since the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. But having ignored that for years,  there was suddenly a groundswell of opinion to remove him. Are we now seeing a similar groundswell against Pakistan?

Once again, I don’t know the answer, but suggest only that there is a need to ask why people have chosen this moment to talk.  Otherwise we prove the old cliche true, that “we learn from history that we don’t learn from history.”

(A word on comments. I write this blog because I want to hear what people have to say. Many people have posted excellent comments that have moved the debate forward. But please don’t swear and don’t abuse others. And stick to the subject. We’re in the 21st century here so let’s not go back to 1947.)

The leaders of India and Pakistan have a chance this weekend to stop things from spinning out of control when they gather in Colombo for a summit of South Asian nations.

The mood has decidedly turned sour in India, especially after the bombing of its embassy in Kabul which the Indians, the Afghans and now the Americans - according to a report in the New York Times- have blamed on Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence. Attacks in Bangalore and Ahmedabad, a day apart, and then the most serious eruption of gunfire across the Line of Control in Kashmir since a 2003 truce have further increased concern that a four-year peace process is rapidly coming apart.

Pakistan, hemmed in by an increasingly restive American force on its doorstep over the border in Afghanistan, and militant groups chafing within, has its own and perhaps even more serious set of problems. On Thursday a bomb went off outside its consulate in the western Afghan city of Herat,  and you begin to wonder if the foes have turned Afghanistan into a full-blown proxy battleground 
like it was during the Cold War between the former Soviet Union and the United States.

In a sign of the chill that has crept back into the relationship, the two sides even delayed an announcement of a meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yousaf Raza Gilani in Colombo, which is the custom at the annual summits of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, and which invariably overshadows the conference.
 
But meet they will, say most analysts and editorialists,  if nothing else to stop a further slide in ties. For all the outrage in India over the bombing in Kabul followed by the impersonal, indiscriminate and savage attacks in Bangalore and Ahmedabad, there isn’t an appetite for ratcheting of tensions with Pakistan.

There should be even less so in Pakistan, as it grapples with even bigger threats on its western borders with the Americans threatening to go after al Qaeda and Taliban, if its fails to do so, with or without permission from Islamabad.

It’s probably unusual to link to a report by the RAND Corporation and an op-ed on Foxnews.com in the same blog, but since both address the same subject – tackling al Qaeda in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region – here goes.

The first is a detailed report by RAND called “How Terrorist Groups End”. 

Its analysis of 648 groups that existed between 1968 and 2006 concludes that ”military force has rarely been the primary reason for the end of terrorist groups, and few groups within this time frame have achieved victory.” Calling for a rethink of U.S. strategy, it argues that policing and intelligence, rather than military force, should form the backbone of U.S. efforts against al Qaeda.”

Pakistan’s leaders have long argued that military force alone can’t work and have sharply rebuffed any suggestion that U.S. troops in Afghanistan might cross its border in pursuit of al Qaeda and the Taliban. “The U.S. military … should generally resist being drawn into combat operations in Muslim societies, since its presence is likely to increase terrorist recruitment,” the report says.  It does however say that military forces, but not necessarily U.S. forces, are a necessary component when al Qaeda is involved in an insurgency.

Since the report has been written from a global perspective, its prescriptions do not always fit easily into the Pakistan context. For  example it dismisses the Kashmir conflict as one that may take generations to resolve and  ”not a primary reason” for al Qaeda’s existence or support, without tackling the web of historical, militant and strategic links that bind together the fates of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir and India. But it’s packed full of data and analysis and worth reading in full. 

And for those who prefer easier reading and don’t mind the flippant tone, this piece on Foxnews.com caught my eye. The writer, a former CIA counter-terrorism officer, is determinedly irreverent, suggesting for example that North and South Waziristan should be renamed North Fubar and South Fubar.

But his conclusion is far from flippant: “The reality is that U.S. forces can’t operate in the region unilaterally unless we somehow suspend disbelief and decide the risk versus gain is worthwhile,” he says. “The next possibility, U.S. and Pakistani troops fighting side by side against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, is also highly unlikely given the backlash the Pakistani government would experience.”

“Over the next year or two we’ll undoubtedly pull troops out of Iraq and add troops to the effort in Afghanistan. That will in all likelihood help to further stabilize that country and allow for continued progress in the development of the infrastructure and government. What it won’t do unfortunately is resolve the problem across the border in Pakistan,” he says.

One of the most striking things about the weekend's bomb attacks in Gujarat was the mixture of savagery and sophistication.

Savagery because of the way a second wave of bombs were detonated at a hospital, apparently to target the crowds of concerned relatives who had gathered there. Had they been watching Contract, a recently released Bollywood film with a similar plotline?

Sophistication because of the way the coordinated attack was planned and executed without the intelligence agencies getting a sniff of it, even though dozens of people must have been involved.

It also looks as though the IP address of an American living in Mumbai was hacked to send an email just before the first blasts. Perhaps the perpetrators remembered how Daniel Pearl's kidnappers were traced in 2002 from a email sent from a cybercafe in Karachi. This time the sender of the email will be harder to trace.

The bombers also stayed one step ahead of the police by not using mobile phones to detonate Saturday's blast. That allowed the bombers to detonate the second set of bombs without having to worry about the mobile phone network being closed down (as police in Bangalore did on Friday). It could also will rob the police of some potentially valuable leads.

By reportedly using old, rented bicycles instead of newly bought ones, as they did in Jaipur, the bombers may also have covered their tracks more carefully.

The email from the Indian Mujahideen was professionally put together, even if its message was one of hatred. In it, the group insisted that "each and every Mujahid belongs to this very soil of India", and mocked the "cunning ones who call themselves the 'Intelligence Bureau'".

So far the police seem to have few leads on the Indian Mujahideen, but this level of sophistication and planning will undoubtedly lead some people to suspect the presence of a foreign hand.

It already has made some people wonder if India's intelligence agencies are well enough equipped and resourced to cope with this sort of threat.

But there is one thing I simply do not understand. The email says the attacks targeted Gujarati Hindus. But if that was the case, why were some of the bombs left in the Muslim-dominated old city? But I guess the working of a Mujahid's mind are not always easy to understand.

With both U.S. presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain calling for more troops to be sent to Afghanistan, there have been a slew of articles arguing this will at best not work and, at worst, fuel the insurgency.

The Financial Times quotes Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former U.S. national security adviser and prominent supporter of Barack Obama, as saying the United States risks repeating the defeat suffered by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. “It is important for U.S. policy in general and for Obama more specifically to recognise that simply putting more troops into Afghanistan is not the entire solution,” he is quoted as saying.

“We are running the risk of repeating the mistake the Soviet Union made . . . Our strategy is getting in deeper and deeper.”

That theme is echoed in Canada’s Globe and Mail, whose correspondent in Moscow talked to veterans of the disastrous Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1889, which helped lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union.  ”We knew by 1985 that we could not win,” it quotes veteran Ruslan Aushev as saying.  It then took Moscow four more years to extricate hundreds of thousands of troops.

In the Gulf News, Patrick Seale says that trying to force through a military solution on Afghanistan would be a grave mistake which would only radicalise the Muslim world further, while Juan Cole writes in salon.com that Obama could be jumping from the frying pan into the fire by shifting the focus away from Iraq to Afghanistan.

Are these the voices of reason that might temper the new U.S. zeal for taming Afghanistan — hoping to succeed where both the British and the Russians before them failed? Or will they be dismissed as pessimists?

For those with the patience for long-term solutions, here is a detailed piece from the Belfer Center which argues that the solution lies in restoring the autonomy and authority of the Pashtun tribes in both southern Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan. “Rather than seeking to extend the reach of the central government, which simply foments insurgency,” it says, ”the United States and the international community should be doing everything in their means to empower the tribal elders and restore balance to a tribal/cultural system that has been disintegrating since the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979.”

At the other end of the scale is a suggestion by U.S. counterinsurgency expert John Nagl that Afghanistan institute a draft to call up Afghans to fight the insurgency. ”It was good enough for the United States up until 1973,” said Nagl, an author and former U.S. Army battalion commander now at the Center for a New American Security think tank, according to this Reuters story. “How can it not be good enough for the fifth poorest country in the world which is afflicted by a difficult insurgency?”

No shortage of ideas out there then. But how many can be accommodated with the timespan of a U.S. presidential term, or indeed rushed through by the current U.S. administration, anxious to show a foreign policy success before President George W. Bush leaves office in January?

In a country facing the triple challenges of economic crisis, political instability and Islamist militancy, the impact on individuals can be easy to overlook. Amnesty International has tried to redress part of this by publishing a report about the hundreds of people it says have disappeared in Pakistan as a result of counter-terrorism measures.

It urges the coalition government elected in February to act immediately to resolve all cases of enforced disappearance. “We don’t know if those subjected to enforced disappearances are guilty or innocent, but it is their fundamental right to be charged and tried properly in a court of law,” says Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia Pacific director.

The report also calls on other governments, particularly the United States, “to ensure that they are not complicit in, contributing to, or tolerating the practice of enforced disappearances. Many people who have been secretly held in detention centres in Pakistan say they were interrogated by Pakistani intelligence agencies but also by foreign intelligence agents.”

So is the report enough to prod the government into action?

The Guardian quotes Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, as saying: ”The missing persons issue is high on the agenda. In fact when I called on the prime minister a few days ago … he mentioned this issue as well.” Babar added that the interior ministry had been “tasked to call a meeting of the [intelligence] agencies and sort it out”.

But it also quotes Amina Janjua, whose husband Masood disappeared three years ago, as saying that the government “talk a lot, but that is not enough.”
 

Take two nuclear-armed countries which are not officially at war, yet whose armies shell each other on a near-daily basis.  That is how it was between India and Pakistan before a November 2003 ceasefire ended their fighting over the divided former kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir.  With that ceasefire now showing signs of fraying at the edges and India saying that its peace process with Pakistan is under stress, it is worth remembering quite what a dramatic development it was for two countries which had come close to war in 2001/2002 to tell their armies to stand down.

Nearly five months after the ceasefire, I visited an Indian border post that had seen heavy fighting for years. It was in the Jammu region, at what had been a busy railway station in pre-partition days, on a road that once ran from the town of Jammu to Lahore. The railway station was left in India, with a railroad track that led nowhere, while the road had been closed since 1947.

The station building was pock-marked with bullets, but the guns had disappeared and the grass was beginning to grow again in the surrounding fields. The Indian troops had stripped down to their vests and trousers and were out playing soccer. On the megaphone,  they played music from Hindi films. They knew the Pakistanis at the other side liked the music. But they remembered to turn it down when it was time for the call to prayers. They had a respect for the other side here, born out of the strange courtesies that grow between two land armies when they fight each other for long enough.

Beyond the Indian checkpoint, a long avenue lined with poplar trees led up to the “zero line” between India and Pakistan. Virtually every tree was marked with bullets that had scraped across them or in some cases passed right through them. In the middle of the avenue, a giant peepul tree straddled the two countries, half of its roots in India, half in Pakistan. We walked up to the tree and waved at the Pakistani soldiers at the far end of the avenue. 

This was the closest India and Pakistan had come to peace in half a century.

Is this peace now unravelling as each country faces its own domestic crisis? The current situation does not create a stable foundation for  talks — Pakistan’s shaky coalition is struggling with an economic crisis, political instability and the threat of U.S. action against al Qaeda and Taliban militants on its border with Afghanistan, while the Indian government faces a showdown over its nuclear deal with the United States.

A return to the pre-ceasefire days looks unlikely, at least for now.  But with violence also on the rise in the Kashmir Valley — at least nine soldiers were killed by an IED at the weekend –you have to ask whether the two countries might have missed their chance to secure a durable peace in the more than four years since the ceasefire was declared.