An atmosphere of stale defensiveness has sunk over Kabul. The mood has been lowered by the protracted saga of the Afghan election count, almost two months on from the first round August 20 vote. It's a drama veering towards farce more often than post-modern play, as we wait endlessly for a result, that like Godot, does not want to come.

Winter has not yet arrived in Kabul, though the evenings are cold, quickly taking the heat of the sun out of the day. Afghan politicians are frustrated and twitchy, second-guessing the reasons for the U.N.-backed election watchdog's plodding. We are being solidly methodological to retain the confidence of all, says the Electoral Complaints Commission, as it examines thousands of dodgy votes. A thankless task, most likely. The ECC officials will be puzzling over whether a box of votes has been mass-endorsed for one candidate, and should not stand, or if the suspiciously similar ticks on the ballot paper are attributable to only one man in the village knowing how to write. Many of the rural voters will never have held a pen in their hand, argued one official. It is natural in such a tribal society for the village to establish a consensus on who to support. Do such ballot papers count? Remember Florida, and how 'hanging chads' and the U.S. Supreme Court gave George W. Bush the presidency over Al Gore? It's that kind of agony.

Behind the scenes the whispers are that hesitation and delay are because the outcome is excruciatingly close, too close to call. President Hamid Karzai, once set clear for victory, may find first round success ripped from his grasp by the disqualification of votes stuffed into ballot boxes by his supporters. He'll likely win a second round, if it happens, against his former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah; but there will have been a loss of dignity, of self-confidence and of an opportunity to stabilise Afghanistan and get on with fighting the Taliban.

Other more fraught scenarios are possible, as outlined by my colleague. Would Karzai gamble that the West has no alternative to him in Afghanistan? And that he can therefore afford to ignore the opprobrium that would follow if he rejected an outcome he did not like? Or are the suspicions of chicanery, back-room pressure on election officials and string-pulling by all involved just a proliferation of nonsense to fill the void left by the lack of a clear outcome?

Eventually the result will be out, perhaps by the time some of you get round to reading this. Most likely I will be back in London, watching from afar. Optimists would have it that clarity will clear the air, the Afghan political mood will lighten and spoils to all will come from the haggling over the shape of the next government.

Meanwhile Afghanistan is Limbo-stan. Obama won't decide his strategy on Afghanistan until he sees what kind of Afghan partner he has to deal with. At least until then, and possibly longer, he won't say yes or no to the extra troops that General Stanley McChrystal says he needs to carry out the counter-insurgency strategy that he has prepared. (Though he'll carry out a different strategy, with no or fewer extra troops, if that's what he's ordered to do by his commander-in-chief). So in this limbo - the Washington policy void is filled with echo-chamber exhortations across the political divides; the Taliban is emboldened; Afghanistan's neighbours are positioning themselves to benefit or at least guard against strategic loss should Washington fold its tent; and Western publics are wondering if there is a real purpose to their boys getting their limbs blown off while trudging through the fields of southern Helmand.

In a world used to watching war played out on television, and more recently to following protests in Iran via Twitter and YouTube, the Pakistan Army’s impending military offensive in South Waziristan on the Afghan border is probably not getting the attention it deserves — not least but because the operation is shrouded in secrecy.

Yet the offensive has the potential to be a turning point in the battle against the Taliban which began with the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Many Taliban and their al Qaeda allies fled Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas after the U.S. invasion – the CIA said this month it believed Osama bin Laden was still hiding in Pakistan. The offensive in South Waziristan, designed to target Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, would if successful deprive the Taliban and al Qaeda of what has been until now one of their safest boltholes.

Before the army launches a full-scale offensive, the United States appears to be stepping up missile strikes by unmanned aircraft to weaken the Pakistani Taliban –  an attack on Tuesday by a U.S. drone killed about 70 militants.  The attack, on a funeral for one of six militants killed in a similar strike earlier in the day, would appear to indicate increasing coordination between the United States and Pakistan, although Pakistan publicly condemns the drone operations. When the army does go in, it is likely to face intense fighting against Mehsud and his thousands of well-armed followers, who have had years to prepare defences.

The killing on Tuesday of Mehsud rival Qari Zainuddin has also encouraged speculation that the military is working hard on time-honoured tactics of divide and rule, by trying to find tribal leaders who will turn against Mehsud (the blog Changing up Pakistan has produced an excellent round-up of media reports on Zainuddin’s death). 

 If Pakistan’s military intelligence is indeed looking for allies, Zainuddin’s death might deter potential candidates - Mehsud has a reputation for being both clever and ruthless, and well capable of planning many steps ahead of the offensive he has long known is coming. Anyone who doubts the Taliban and al Qaeda’s capacity to plan ahead should remember that Afghan resistance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud was killed two days before 9/11 in what many analysts now see as a pre-emptive strike to undercut domestic support for U.S. retaliation for the attacks on New York and Washington. So be prepared for the unexpected.

But beyond the reports of drone attacks, the news of Zainuddin’s death, and the refugees streaming out of Waziristan, it is hard to know exactly what is going on there. 

“The truth is though little is known about what exactly is going on in South Waziristan Agency, who is fighting whom and why, and what is likely to happen in the days and weeks ahead,” Dawn newspaper says in an editorial. “What is clear so far is that the security forces are squeezing Baitullah Mehsud’s strongholds by cutting off the three main routes that lead to them and pounding targets from the air.”

What you do keep hearing is that the Pakistan Army — which has been accused in the past of on-again off-again operations in the tribal areas that only allowed the militants to get stronger — is absolutely serious about pressing on with an offensive against the Pakistani Taliban which began in the Swat valley and will now continue into Waziristan. 

One to follow closely — even without live TV or Twitter.

(Photos of Pakistani military in the Swat region)

How can you tell when U.S. forces in Afghanistan are operating alone?

When they call it "the coalition".

That’s not a joke. It's just how things work in Afghanistan, where two separate forces with two separate command structures -- one completely American, the other about half American -- operate side by side under the command of the same U.S. general.

 "When we say 'coalition', basically that means it's just us," a helpful U.S. military spokeswoman explained last month to a reporter who had just arrived in country after being away for a couple of  years. "Otherwise, it's the 'alliance'."

And it's not just words.

"The alliance" and "the coalition" maintain completely separate press offices, each of which is often allowed to give only bits and pieces of detail about the same incident. The result can be a bit confusing.

First, some history.

The "coalition" refers to Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S. (or, as they like to say, "U.S.-led") mission ordered by President George W. Bush back in 2001 to catch Osama bin Laden and overthrow the Taliban.

Occasionally over the past eight years it has actually operated as a coalition, with contributions from Britain and other countries.

But these days, it's strictly an American mission, with thousands of U.S. troops engaged in hunting insurgents, training Afghans and providing air support. (Well, maybe not quite strictly American: there could be a handful of British or Australian special forces in there too. But that's a secret.)

"The alliance", meanwhile, refers to NATO, which now leads the International Security Assistance Force, set up by the United Nations to provide a small number of mostly European peacekeepers for the capital after the fall of the Taliban, also back in 2001.

ISAF's role gradually expanded until 2006, when it spread throughout the country, got a lot bigger and began fighting the Taliban, especially in the south and east. ISAF now includes contributions from around 40 nations, but these days the force is about half American and getting more so by the week as thousands of U.S. reinforcements arrive.

Since last year, ISAF and "the coalition" have both been commanded by the same U.S. General, David McKiernan, who is about to be replaced by another, Stanley McChrystal.

Because ISAF -- unlike "the coalition" -- actually IS a coalition, it has stringent rules on what its members let it say. When its troops are involved in an incident, ISAF won’t say what country they come from, or precisely where in Afghanistan the incident took place.

The defence ministry of each country is supposed to reveal that information back home, but that can take hours or even days. And if troops from more than one Western country are involved -- not to mention Afghan soldiers and police -- piecing details together can require the skills of Sherlock Holmes.

Here's an example: a few weeks ago, "the coalition" said one of its soldiers was killed in an incident. NATO said four of its soldiers had died. Neither said where: somewhere in eastern Afghanistan. It took several hours and phone calls throughout Afghanistan and Riga to determine that three of the soldiers were Americans, two were Latvians, and that the incident was the same as one Afghan troops had already reported in Kunar province.

The investigation ended with a conversation that went like something like this:

    Reuters: You've said one American was killed, right?
    U.S. military spokeswoman: That's what we've said, yes.
    Reuters: And four NATO soldiers were also killed, right?
    U.S. military spokeswoman: Yes, that's what ISAF has said.
    Reuters: And two of those NATO soldiers were also American?
    U.S. military spokeswoman: Yes, I can confirm that.
    Reuters: So actually three Americans were killed, yes?
    U.S. military spokeswoman: Yes, that's correct.

 Confused? Join the coalition...

Read President Barack Obama’s speech on his new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan and compare it to what he said a year ago and it’s hard to see how much further forward we are in understanding exactly how he intends to uproot Islamist militants inside Pakistan.

Last year, Obama said that ”If we have actionable intelligence about high-level al Qaeda targets in Pakistan’s border region, we must act if Pakistan will not or cannot.” Last week, he said that, ”Pakistan must demonstrate its commitment to rooting out al Qaeda and the violent extremists within its borders.  And we will insist that action be taken — one way or another — when we have intelligence about high-level terrorist targets.”

The United States has already stepped up attacks by drone missiles on suspected militant targets in Pakistan’s tribal areas since Obama took office, despite official protests by Pakistan, which says they are counterproductive since they cause civilian casualties and encourage people to support the insurgents.

The Pakistani protests began to look rather hollow after media reports that the drones were taking off from a base inside Pakistan. But that may have missed the point. The question of where the drones are based is perhaps less important than the distrust between the U.S. and Pakistani militaries on sharing intelligence about militant targets.

General Ashfaq Kayani, now head of the Pakistan Army, tells a rather revealing story about this. He is quoted in Brian Cloughley’s book “War, Coups and Terror” as describing the case of a tribesman with a performing monkey who gathered an audience of turban-clad, rifle-bearing men around him in a village in 2005. The U.S. controllers of the drone mistook the event for a weapons-training session or military briefing and dropped a missile, killing many in the audience (he doesn’t say what happened to the monkey). “This, said the General, was an example of lack of cultural understanding,” writes Cloughley.

“The monkey incident, and other attacks by the U.S. within Pakistan,” adds Cloughley, “have convinced the population of North West Frontier Province and a disturbing number of other citizens, including many in uniform, that there is nothing to be gained by supporting the United States, which they consider to be overbearing and imperceptive in its engagement with the country.”

So has intelligence-sharing moved on since then?  If the United States wanted to be sure of hitting the right targets, it could ask the Pakistani military to help it guide the drones and then assess, on looking through the remote camera, whether they were on course.  Or as Foreign Minister Mahmood  Qureshi said last month, it could give Pakistan drones to carry out the task itself.

But intelligence-sharing is not easy at the best of times between different national armies. It’s particularly tough when you don’t trust your allies. Senior U.S. military officers say they believe elements in Pakistan’s Inter-Services intelligence, or ISI, provide support to Taliban or al Qaeda militants. Has Obama worked out how to square that circle? As yet, we don’t know.

The other big question is over where the United States intends to target the Islamists. U.S. officials have begun saying publicly that the Afghan Taliban are based in Quetta in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan — quite different from the tribal areas where both the Pakistan Army and the U.S. drone missiles have been concentrated until now.  “Quetta appears to be the headquarters for the leaders of the Taliban and some of the worst people in the world,” special envoy Richard Holbrooke said in an interview with the BBC.

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Two years after Iftikhar Chaudhry was first sacked by then President Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan government officials said he would be reinstated as Chief Justice after a nationwide protest led by Pakistan’s lawyers.

It’s been a rollercoaster ride. After he was removed by Musharraf, Chaudhry was reinstated only to be sacked again and placed under house arrest along with many other lawyers when the former general declared emergency rule in November 2007. At the time, Pakistani lawyer/politician Aitzaz Ahsan wrote in an editorial in the New York Times that the leaders of the lawyers movement ”will neither be silent nor still”. But he also fretted that the lawyers’ movement would be ignored by the United States and overlooked by the forthcoming election.

Then after an election which brought President Asif Ali Zardari to power, the lawyers protested again in June last year in what they called a “Long March” - named somewhat perversely after the military retreat led by Mao Zedung in the 1930s.  Their protest fizzled after failing to achieve its objective.  This time around, a “Long March” to Islamabad seems to have succeeded. 

“The quiet, patient man is on his third life, having been deposed twice previously by former President Pervez Musharraf.  Let’s hope he serves his term completely, without obstruction, and for the public good,” wrote Arif Rafiq on the Pakistan Policy Blog. “Kudos to the lawyers movement — one of Pakistan’s most organized, disciplined, and strategically-keen social movements.  Kudos to the political parties, third party groups, and street and Internet activists who stuck by their side.”

The lawyers’ movement was in some ways a triumph for civil society.  It sought to find its ideological roots in the founder of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, himself a lawyer. And given that hardline Islamism tends to flourish in places where the rule of law has broken down, it can also say it has played its part in undercutting a growing Taliban insurgency.

But after teetering on the edge of a precipice over the lawyers protest, has Pakistan really reached a turning point, or simply righted itself temporarily?

Chaudhry himself was first appointed by Musharraf after the then-general launched a military coup in 1999, so he cannot say he has always been a loyal servant of civilian democracy. And as discussed in an earlier post, the deal to reinstate Chaudhry may have been achieved as a result of prodding from the Pakistan Army, which begs the question of how well civilian democracy can flourish in Pakistan if it has to be underwritten by the country’s powerful military.  His promised reinstatement — announced after days of negotiations — may also carry with it a political deal whose outcome and required allegiances we are yet to discover.

So is the government’s promise to reinstate Chaudhry a triumph for civil society? Or a false dawn, masking further problems ahead?

(Reuters photo: a lawyer tries to escape tear gas in Lahore)

It has been a tense game of poker between India and Pakistan since the Mumbai attacks. On the face of it, India had the much stronger hand -- not least because it captured one of the attackers alive and got him to confess to being trained in Pakistan.

But has it played its cards well?

Some analysts say India overplayed its hand in the initial days after the attack by saying the military option remained open.

That allowed Pakistan to cloud the issue and raise the spectre of an Indian military strike -- neatly uniting the country behind the army and against India.

One former foreign secretary told me India had made a mistake on those initial days, by making a threat it was not prepared to carry out and allowing Pakistan the chance to play the victim.

Since then, New Delhi has been much more restrained and cautious in what it has said, admirably so according to diplomats and analysts I have spoken to. On Monday it presented its carefully complied dossier of evidence to Pakistan and other countries.

But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh raised the stakes again this week by suggesting that the Pakistani "agencies" must have known about and supported the plan to attack Mumbai.

Pakistan has once again pounced on this claim, accusing Singh of engaging in a propaganda war.

Last year India had the backing of the U.S. in its allegation that the ISI was involved in the attack on its embassy in Kabul.

But this time around, diplomatic sources say New Delhi has yet to prove to them that the ISI was involved.

"In their oral presentation, Indian officials told the envoys of their belief that the ISI was indeed involved in the incident," Siddharth Varadarajan wrote in the Hindu newspaper.

"Thought his claim was not contested, at least one nation, the United States, has told India it is still not in a position to share this perception."

I wonder now if Singh might have overplayed his hand again. Should he have stuck to what can be proved in a court of law, so that he retains the moral high ground and gives Pakistan no room to wriggle out?

Or is he simply saying what everybody knows -- that the ISI has links to extreme Islamist groups and must have at least known this attack was being planned?

India has asked the United Nations Security Council to blacklist the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the Pakistani charity which it says is a front for the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, blamed by New Delhi for the attacks on Mumbai. But how far is India prepared to go in engaging the Security Council, given that it has resisted for decades UN invention over Kashmir?

Indian newspapers have suggested that India invoke UN Security Council Resolution 1373, passed after the 9/11 attacks on the United States, and requiring member countries to take steps to curb terrorism.  The latest of these calls came from N. Ram, Editor-in-Chief of Indian newspaper The Hindu, who said India must respond to the Mumbai attacks “in an intelligent and peaceful way”.  

So is India preparing to break a long-standing taboo about United Nations intervention?  It first turned to the United Nations in 1948, after India and Pakistan began their first war over Kashmir. The Security Council mandated a ceasefire and India’s then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru also promised a plebiscite in the former kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir (comprising land now held by India, Pakistan and China) to allow the people to decide whether they wanted to join India or Pakistan.

Since then the UN Resolutions have become one of the major bones of contention in the tortuous relationship between India and Pakistan. Until relatively recently, Pakistan insisted that India make good its pledge to hold a plebiscite, while India insisted this had been superseded by the Simla accord following the 1971 war, in which the two countries agreed to resolve all their disputes bilaterally.

Before anyone leaps to judgment on this, I’d recommend reading the exact wording of the UN Security Council Resolutions. Here is the PDF link to the April 1948 resolution, which makes clear that Pakistan must withdraw fighters first from its side of Jammu and Kashmir, followed by a progressive withdrawal of Indian troops, to allow a plebiscite to take place.  It also says that the choice for the people of Jammu and Kashmir was whether to join India or Pakistan; independence — at least as far as the Resolution goes — was not an option.

For those who comment regularly on this blog, I’m aware this is a two-paragraph simplification and am happy to follow up in the comments section. But for the purposes of the present day, what are people saying?

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The concept of a televised war was born in January 1991, when news networks reported live on the missiles slamming into Baghdad and millions watched from the comfort of their living rooms as tracer fire lit the sky above Iraq's capital. A decade later,  the world watched in minute-by-minute horror as the twin towers came crashing down in New York. 

Now, with the ferocious militant attacks in Mumbai, we have arrived in "the age of celebrity terrorism". Paul Cornish of Chatham House argues that apart from killing scores of people, what the Mumbai gunmen wanted was "an exaggerated and preferably extreme reaction on the part of governments, the media and public opinion". 

It's too early to tell if governments will respond with extreme reaction, but the saturation coverage of the drama in the world's media would suggest that, at least on this level, the killers were successful.  

"Almost within minutes, television screens showed harrowing scenes of pools of blood where people had died or been injured, hotels ablaze, Indian army snipers firing at distant targets, and CCTV images of the attackers," Cornish writes.

The first reports of shooting in the streets of India's financial capital did not actually come from the mainstream media.  A BBC news technology blog suggested that the social networking site Twitter  "came of age" during the attacks because it carried messages on the shootings some time before television networks and news agencies started reporting them. Indeed, according to a Reuters report, blogs fed an information frenzy on the 60-hour gun rampage and siege, underlining the emergence of citizen journalism in news coverage.  

However, the live coverage that followed on television networks, particularly Indian ones,  was shrill, sensationalist and bordering on the hysterical. As the Financial Times points out, this is not new in India's competitive television market, where some channels flash the words "Breaking News" all day and "the only thing that matters is to be 'first', even if first is wrong".  The blizzard of reporting inaccuracies over this incident was astonishing. In a despatch on why we should take reports from the scene of a massacre with a grain of salt, Jack Shafer catalogues the instances from Mumbai of what he calls "crap masquerading as authoritative news".

How does high-octane reportage like this feed into the popular mood, and how far could that influence the hands of policy makers in New Delhi and Islamabad?

To find out, watch for Breaking News.