A spate of gun and bomb attacks seen as a response to the Pakistan Army’s offensive in South Waziristan has sent jitters across Pakistan, including in the normally peaceful capital Islamabad. 

Conventional wisdom would have it that the attacks on both security services and civilians would eventually turn the people against Islamist militants rather as happened in Iraq at the height of the violence there. But as yet, there is no sign of a clear and coherent leadership emerging that might be able to forge a consensus against the militants.

“Where are you, our leaders?” asks Cyril Almeida in a column in Dawn newspaper. “As the country burns, parents agonise over whether to send their children to school or not, offices of businesses local and foreign ramp up their security measures, the average citizen thinks twice before venturing into crowded locales or government buildings, a simple question for our leaders: where are you? Where are you, President Zardari? Where are you, Prime Minister Gilani? Where are you, Nawaz Sharif?”

“The limitations of our political class are well known,” he writes. “Our politicians are venal, corrupt and weak. We have to muddle through with them because they are all we have. Expecting statesmanship is futile. But as the country burns and the people cower in fear, we must ask: for the love of God and all things that can be good, can they not for once, if only for a little while, stand up and be counted?”

In a country given to conspiracy theories, the attacks are feeding a rumour mill in which everyone talks about who will be targeted next, writes Fatima Bhutto, the estranged niece of the late Benazir Bhutto.

“There are stories being whispered in Pakistan these days, and their veracity is hard to gauge,” she writes. “No one knows what is real anymore in this country that seems hell-bent on self-destruction. In fact, our chief industry now seems to be the manufacture of fear, and everyone’s on the assembly line. The combination of ever-present violence and lack of reliable information has made us a country of debilitating Chinese whispers.” 

And unlike Iraq, where al Qaeda was largely seen as an outside force, those behind the spate of attacks are from within Pakistan, often from its heartland Punjab province. They spent decades being told, with official sanction, that they were fighting a noble cause, first against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during its 1979-1989 occupation and then against India in Kashmir, only to see the state turn against them.

In Iraq too, the United States skilfully used the power of American money to buy off local Sunni leaders to fight against al Qaeda. In Pakistan the power of American money is working against it, thanks to an uproar over U.S. plans to triple aid to the country, which are seen as carrying conditions which impinge on its sovereignty. 

No matter how much U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke might insist that there are no conditions attached to the American aid, and that U.S. intentions have been misrepresented, the perception lingers that the United States is using its money to threaten, rather than help, Pakistan. And that is a perception that can be exploited by militant groups keen to convince their followers that they alone will stand up to the United States.

The jihadica website says that the row over the Kerry-Lugar Bill, along with persistent rumours - denied by the government - of U.S. security company Blackwater expanding its operations in Pakistan - are recurring themes in Urdu-language jihadi literature.

“Militant scribes are chipping in on the hot topics of mainstream Pakistani media, dangerously aligning their grievances with those of the public - specifically, the latter’s anti-U.S. sentiments,” it says. ”While opinion may be torn on the use of military operations in Pakistan, Pakistanis from all walks of life appear united in perceiving the U.S. as an enemy.”

“So, what is to be done?” asks Pakistan’s News International.  ”We cannot obviously sit back and let our country be destroyed. Far more radical and more far-reaching steps are needed if the problem is to be overcome. The public needs to be involved to a larger extent in the effort against terrorism. This after all is a battle that has an impact on the life of every citizen – man, woman or child. The suicide bombers who strike so frequently have parents, siblings and other relatives somewhere. These people must play a part in stopping them. So too must their neighbours and others aware of the places where they are being trained and prepared for their missions.”

But in a country divided upon itself, who will lead that drive forwards?

(Reuters photos: the grave of a 19-year-old girl killed in an attack on Islamabad University; a child at the grave of Benazir Bhutto)

A street vendor in Srinagar, Kashmir's summer capital, sold hundreds of framed portraits of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in the last one week.

Kashmiri separatists and many residents are all praise for Gaddafi after his maiden address to the U.N. General Assembly last week in which he said Kashmir should be an "independent state."

It was a diplomatic embarrassment for India but has Gaddafi's U.N. speech actually won him an enthusiastic fan base in strife-weary Kashmir where Muslim militants are fighting New Delhi's rule since 1989.

The Libyan leader told the U.N. General Assembly last week that Kashmir should be an independent state, not Indian, not Pakistani.

Last week, dozens of Kashmiris carried placards reading "Gaddafi The Lion of Desert II" referring to the 1981 Hollywood movie "Lion of the Desert", which is about Omar Mukhtar, who led the rebellion against Italian rule in Libya and was captured and hanged in 1931.

The movie on Omar Mukhtar encouraged rebellion in Kashmir in 1985. This is for the first time in recent times a Muslim leader outside the Indian sub-continent has advocated Kashmir's complete independence both from India and Pakistan.

The two countries claim the region in full but rule in parts.

Encouraged by the speech, separatist leaders say Gaddafi's statement in the U.N. General Assembly should serve as an eye-opener for Indian and Pakistani leaders.

Despite two wars over Kashmir, India and Pakistan have so far failed to find a solution to the more than six-decade-old dispute over Kashmir.

New Delhi has so far largely struggled to win the hearts and minds of the people of Kashmir, where anti-India sentiment still runs deep.

Gaddafi also opposed the expansion of the U.N. Security Council by including countries like India. New Delhi, which has downplayed Gaddafi's statement, has not yet reacted officially.

Has Gaddafi's U.N. speech on Kashmir's "freedom" won him foes in India and friends in Kashmir?

U.S. ambassador Anne W. Patterson, in a speech reported by the Pakistan press, said last week that the depth of anti-Americanism in Pakistan, especially among the middle-class, had surprised her. Pakistan’s long-term interests were aligned with those of the United States, and those opposing U.S. engagement in the country had a limited understanding of  how the partnership based on economic assistance had changed the lives of Pakistanis, she told a meeting in Karachi. For added measure, she said that the “ïncreasingly prosperous middle class” would be the first to suffer if  hardliners gained ground.

She needn’t have looked further than to events last  week to see why America sits rather uneasily on the Pakistani mind, a heavy hand of friendship that Pakistanis are increasingly chafing against.

The New York Times reported that the Pentagon had cancelled the appointment of Maj. Gen. Jay W. Hood as the senior American officer based in Pakistan following weeks of criticism in the Pakistani news media over one of his previous jobs : commander of the U.S.  prison at Guantanamo Bay.

“During General Hood’s command from 2004 to 2006, military authorities force-fed with tubes detainees who were engaging in hunger strikes at the Guantánamo prison, a step they justified as necessary to prevent the prisoners from committing suicide to protest their indefinite confinement,” the newspaper said. “Also during General Hood’s tenure, reports that an American guard may have desecrated a Koran stirred wide protests in the Islamic world.”

The surprise was more that he was named to Pakistan in the first place, where resentment about Guantanamo runs deep. It was seen as all the more insensitive  given that a new government had taken over in Islamabad promising  a different approach to tackling Islamist militancy. For while the Pentagon might have been trying to send a crisis-tested 33-year army veteran to Islamabad at a pivotal time in the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda, it was his Guantanamo command that stuck in the Pakistan mind.

“Guantánamo Bay itself has become a symbol of injustice, torture and abuse of Islam, and sending a commanding officer from there to Islamabad begs the question: What is the message coming out of the Pentagon for Pakistanis by this insensitive act?” Shireen M. Mazari, director general of the Institute of Strategic Studies, wrote in The News back in March when the appointment was announced.

There was even more coming on Capitol Hill where, according to Pakistani news reports, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee told the Foreign Affairs Committee of Congress that while the late Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People Party was doing a good job, coalition partner Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), led by Nawaz Sharif, “needed to be watched.”

Her comments, widely reported in the Pakistan press, prompted admonishment at this kind of micromanagement of the affairs of a sovereign nation and warnings that it was a recipe for disaster.

Indeed the News  argued that the more the United States or members of its political establishment criticised Sharif the greater would be his following in a country rife with anti-American sentiment. Conversely Bhutto’s widower Asif Ali Zardari might cringe at praise from Washington because it would not do him any good at home.  

The best Washington could do, the News said, would be to distance itself from governance of the country. It might even arrest the anti-Americanism that  many Americans find hard to accept.