The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone.  The writer is Pakistan’s High Commissioner to London and a former advisor to the late Benazir Bhutto.

                                                  By Wajid Shamsul Hasan

Ever since the late Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party announced its decision to field the widower of the former Prime Minister, Senator Asif Ali Zardari, as its Presidential candidate, he has become the target of a well-calculated media blitzkrieg especially when he is emerging as a sure winner. Besides an attempt to resurrect the dead horse of alleged corruption, he is also being accused of being unhealthy, of having unsound mind.

Skies had fallen on me when Ms Benazir Bhutto was martyred. It seemed the end of the world. My profound apprehensions were regarding the future of Pakistan - destined to be a failing or a failed state - long before her cold-blooded murder.

I had always looked at her as the only national leader who had the commitment, rare courage, unprecedented popularity, determination and dauntless perseverance that could save the country from a widely predicted dénouement. Her assassination had pushed the country to the edge of a precipice. A sheer nudge - from the deeply grieved angry nation - especially in Sindh where the reaction to her assassination was most pronounced as reflected in the people’s spontaneous outburst that they would not have anything more to do with Pakistan - could have plunged the country into the valley of death and doom but for the timely intervention of Senator Asif Ali Zardari. He grasped the gravity of the situation and stood up to save Pakistan from break-up. His words to angry and violent masses: “Your dear leader Benazir Bhutto had laid down her life to save Pakistan and not to destroy it.” And both he and his resolute 18-year old son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari re-enforced Benazir Bhutto’s life-long philosophy that democracy is the best revenge.

Thus the populist wrath was transformed into an electoral victory to defeat both the dictator and his collaborators. Indeed the worst adversity for him and the nation had made Zardari a man of destiny and he converted the nation’s profound grief into unparalleled strength. In deference to her wishes he set himself on the task of translating her dying commitment to the nation that her death should serve as a catalyst for change. Not a politician in his wife’s mould and having spent more than half of his married life in incarceration, the manner Zardari has handled the post-Bhutto situation has made him past master at the game. SAZ has definitely out-manoeuvred those who wanted to play games with him including the former President. He has achieved the much desired change peacefully and without risking the lives of his people what many other senior politicians had been seeking through confrontation.

During my last visit to Pakistan (June), I found it in the midst of a propaganda vertigo and a campaign that SAZ was allegedly in cahoots with the former President. I had left Pakistan reassured by SAZ when he told me “he” will be out by August. His critics even accused him of giving the former President unnecessary time to regain what they called his hold on power. They failed to understand that the time-delay was well-spent in evolving a fool-proof strategy to outmanoeuvre the President.

His singular achievement was the MQM’s decision to abstain from voting in Sindh Assembly that made its no-confidence in the former President unanimous. His triumph was complete when MQM’s Quaid Altaf Husain stole the march on others by unconditionally nominating SAZ as MQM’s Presidential candidate soon to be followed by others. As a result Mr Zardari has emerged “as the frontrunner to become the country’s next president after receiving the support of a key opposition party” was the considered view of UK’s most prestigious newspaper The Financial Times (London, August 21).

Mr Husain believes that Mr Zardari will be the best candidate for the country. “He will keep the federation together and promote harmony as well as national unity.” “The way Mr Zardari handled the issue of [President Pervez Musharraf’s] resignation is really admirable.”  Mr Altaf Husain also believes that since the President has to be from a smaller province in that case there could not be a better candidate than Mr Zardari. Indeed, Zardari was the first among national politicians to have sought forgiveness publicly from the Balochi leaders and Balochi people for the atrocities committed against them - a sample of his sincerity to carry the entire nation along with him.

The Financial Times reaffirmed the inevitability of Senator Zardari’s candidature as President when it conclusively quoted a senior western diplomat in Islamabad that, given the PPP’s credentials as a liberal political party, Mr Zardari’s presidency would appeal to the US and its European partners.
“Right now, the US is keen to allow a more populist figure to come to take charge” and Zardari as a PPP candidate shall carry with him Benazir Bhutto’s powerful credentials along with PPP’s own image - an image of tolerance and liberal values” is the consensus view in the diplomat enclave of Islamabad. As events unfold, the coast seems to be clear for Mr Zardari to play a historic role as Pakistan’s democratic President replacing a dictator.

As the time for the presidential race is running out with Zardari in the lead by miles dirtier media spinning has also gone into top gear. While notwithstanding the usual stories and innuendos, one senior political pundit has bypassed most of the media spinners by putting in words: “A great threat perception is fast developing in Islamabad’s key power centres, around Asif Ali Zardari’s attempt to occupy the presidency. The concern is not about his political right to contest the election but about the way he has adopted, the tactics that he is using, the misleading claims, broken promises, petty politicking, unauthorised name dropping and other tactics to achieve his political ambitions”.

The above observation is typical of the new media culture in Pakistan. When one is impossible to be brought down factually, ruthless fiction is the weapon most profusely used. No other political leader has so far shown as much of courage as Zardari by accepting where he has erred. He definitely did not fulfil the Bourbon Declaration for the restoration of judiciary when it was sought to be implemented at gun-point of ultimatums and deadlines.
 
Could there be a better test than by knowing the taste of the pudding by eating it? Most certainly not!  SAZ has initiated the process and several judges from those who had been removed by President Musharraf are back and the rest would surely follow. As far as the case of Mr Justice Iftekhar Choudhry is concerned, many among the lawyers’ fraternity and judges believe that he has become too politicised. Quite a few of his colleagues feel that it would be best for the independence of judiciary if he formally joins politics. Everybody is free to have his/her opinion.

Half a sentence regarding name dropping by Mr Zardari as alleged - without of course naming names - leaves much more than meets the eye. When a Pakistani leader says publicly that the Pakistan Army under Army Chief General Ashfaque Pervez Kiani is sincerely committed to upholding the constitution, supremacy of the parliament and to remain at the beck and call of the democratically elected government of the day - it is merely a statement of facts and not name dropping as alleged.

Last but not the least a word or two about the physical condition of Mr Zardari. Reuters has quoted a spokesman of Nawaz Sharif’s party (PML-N) as saying “if the report of Zardari’s mental illness were true, he would be ineligible to run for president.” He seems to have let the cat out of the bag inadvertently. It seems that those parties that have put up their candidates for the presidency besides the PPP - though sleeping in different beds - are seeing the same dream - to see SAZ out of the race - somehow.

I have known Mr Zardari very closely since his marriage with martyred  Bhutto in 1987. On no occasion did I find him absent-minded or forgetful as reported by the Financial Times. I can vouch that Mr Zardari was never mentally sick. During his nearly 8 long years of incarceration (starting from November 5, 1996) he was subjected to many kinds of torture to break him up. He almost died when he had his tongue pulled. It was the courage of some Sindhi police officials who had intervened to save Zardari.

Had they not informed his family and friends and had not the then Governor Sindh General Moinuddin Haider intervened, he would have bled to death. On the Governor’s intervention he was removed to Aga Khan Hospital and his life saved.
 
Despite the torture, Mr Zardari did not bend. It was his dauntless courage that kept him going through the most adverse circumstances even during the years of his continued detention under President Musharraf when his emissaries frequently visited him to break him up through a carrot and stick policy.
 
Finally he was let off by the Supreme Court. Obviously eight years of stress did affect him and he ended up with angina and was treated in Dubai and later in the United States. Bhutto’s assassination was worst thing to happen to him. Had he been a sick person he would have collapsed and been broken up by the horrendous tragedy and had he not been a medically and physically fit person he could not have kept his cool, looked after his children and family, taken control of the party leadership before it was broken up or taken over by a Musharraf plant.

The finest hour of his reservoir of courage and herculean strength also saved the country when the people of smaller provinces - especially Sindh - had reacted violently in anger and had declared a UDI as a natural reaction to Bhutto assassination. It was Asif Zardari who braved their anger and calmed them down by telling them that his wife and their leader martyred Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto had laid down her life, given her blood to save Pakistan and not to destroy it. Had he joined in their chorus for revenge, no power on earth could have saved the country from dismemberment. He mobilised the nation on the legacy of Bhutto that democracy is the best revenge and turned the violent tide to vote for the PPP’s return to power.
 
Let me share with you here my own experience of jail in President Farooq Laghari/Nawaz’s time. I was detained for more than seven months, inflicted lot of pressure to force me to perjure at gun point against Ms Bhutto and Mr Zardari that I developed stress diabetes, blood pressure and dysfunction of kidneys. Not only for months I used to hallucinate and needed medical help. I received treatment and counselling in London and soon I overcame both trauma and stress.
 
Unfortunately, the media these days run after scandals without considering one’s circumstances. Zardari had suffered a long sentence of eleven years (30 months in first Ishaq-Nawaz govt) without being convicted by any court of law and without any charge being proven against him despite the government of the day spending billions to have him convicted. But that does not mean he had not been stressed or suffered from it. Like me SAZ did seek some medical help and was fit in no time.

All through the years - from 1977 to this day - persistent attempts have been made to hijack or break the PPP of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Benazir had outsmarted this by nominating Senator Asif Ali Zardari as her successor. Being the closest aide to her, she had discussed with me all possible eventualities and why she had wished to write a will. How prophetic her fears were amply proven.

Senator Zardari is a man of courage, resilience and steadfastness for more than eleven years - facing all sorts of tortures and attempts on his life-who will not barter the party’s interest for his own safety.

(The writer is Pakistan’s current High Commissioner to the Court of St. James and was Advisor to former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto)
 

A comment recently by Asif Zardari, the powerful head of the Pakistan People’s Party, that the country’s next president could be a woman has set off speculation that he might propose the name of one of his sisters, both members of his party, to succeed President Pervez Musharraf.

What better way to burnish Pakistan’s credentials as an enlightened democracy than have a woman as head of state at a time when the power of Islamist militants is growing, especially in the vital northwest region where they have been burning down schools for girls.

Besides, installing either Faryal Talpur or Azra Fazal Pechucho as president would help tighten Zardari’s grip on power with a handpicked president and prime minister, as The Pakistan Policy Blog notes. The name of National Assembly speaker Fahmida Mirza has also been mentioned as another possible woman candidate.

But then again, and reflecting the pressures on them, Zardari and coalition partner Nawaz Sharif might turn to the troubled North-West Frontier Province, choosing a candidate from there as one way to counter the expanding influence of the Islamists. One of the frontrunners would be Asfandyar Wali Khan, president of the Awami National Party, a regional group with liberal credentials, based in the NWFP. Candidates from Baluchistan, the other region where a low-key insurgency has raged, have also been mentioned in reports

Linked perhaps to the eventual choice is also a decision on whether the presidency should be returned to its ceremonial post as was traditionally the case, or continue with a much more powerful institution as was the case with Musharraf.

Under Musharraf, the president retained the authority to dismiss parliament and make top military and judicial appointments, source of much of the political turmoil that engulfed the final years of his rule. The president is also the head of the country’s nuclear command authority.

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.

With hindsight, it seems clear that a mass movement named after Mao’s Long March but also claiming Gandhi’s principles of non-violence risked disappointing its supporters.  The failure of the Long March by Pakistan’s lawyers to restore judges sacked by President Pervez Musharraf, and its dispersal last Saturday, has prompted much debate about why its leaders gave up without at least staging a sit-in.

Defence analyst Ikram Sehgal called the Long March a logistical success in its ability to garner mass support without violence, but a tactical failure. “The tactical failure of this long-lasting tremendous effort founded on great principles has become a strategic disaster for Musharraf’s opponents,” he writes in The News.  “About Pervez Musharraf, ‘with such friends who needs enemies’, one can paraphrase the saying for him: ‘With such enemies why does he need friends?’”

The blog All Things Pakistan says supporters of the Long March “are justifiably feeling let down by the grand posturing, thundering rhetoric and the subsequent retreat from agitation”. But it adds: “The lawyers’ movement is profoundly significant. It constitutes the finest historical ‘moment’ in our troubled history.”

Aitzaz Ahsan, the leader of the lawyers’ movement, writes in Newsweek  that the Long March was “an act of collective and nonviolent defiance perhaps unrivaled in Pakistan’s checkered history”.

“As the first rays of the Saturday sun streaked over Parliament, I delivered the concluding speech, and this remarkable crowd, the biggest in Pakistan’s recent history, dispersed peacefully for the trip home,” he writes. “Not a shot was fired or a pane of glass broken. Yet more than 200,000 Pakistanis had managed to make their point: they wanted their judges back.”

Yet why did the lawyers’ leaders give up without staging a sit-in that might have forced home their point? 

Was it simply poor judgment, as suggested in this piece in the Khaleej Times: “The mystery behind the decision of Aitzaz Ahsan, the man who had so successfully and so untiringly spearheaded an unprecedented campaign of lawyers and civil society, may not be unveiled in near future,” it says. “Those who saw him delivering the concluding speech to close the long march say that he was not in his usual self and was witless.”

Or had the movement become too dominated by those, including former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who were more focused on getting Musharraf out as seen in this BBC video than on restoring the judges?

It’s worth remembering that Gandhi had a habit of calling off protests if he thought they were going in the wrong direction, often irritating his own supporters in doing so. So have the lawyers avoided a confrontation in order to fight all the better another day? Or have they missed their chance?
  

This is definitely a case of “the more you know, the less you understand”. 

There has been much talk in the media about whether PPP leader Asif Ali Zardari is heading for a showdown with President Pervez Musharraf to force him out of office.

But it is not clear whether Zardari is really looking for a showdown, or instead a climbdown that would allow Musharraf to stay on with reduced powers, while also accommodating former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, whose antipathy to the former army general dates back to the 1999 coup.

For an outsiders’ view, The Australian boiled it down into a story headlined “Leaders duel in battle for Pakistan. 

“Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, enraged over a tirade against him by Asif Ali Zardari, last night cut off longstanding secret contacts with the dominant Pakistan People’s Party as speculation mounted he would launch a counter-strike to shore up his hold on power,” it wrote.

But there is also an interesting insiders’ view from Ikram Sehgal, a defence analyst close to the Pakistan army, who says that Musharraf might replace army head General Ashfaq Kayani with another man to counter any attack by his political opponents. 

“Offence being the best defence, there are signs that the Empire is now preparing to strike back. The perception of continuing absolute authority in the public mind is quite a virtuoso performance by Musharraf, given that this avid bridge player’s only remaining power base is the ISI controlled by talented cousin Lt Gen Nadim Taj,” he writes. 

“The distancing of the Army from politics is a myth as long as uniformed officers in the ISI manipulate political power. For the populace the Army and ISI are synonymous, the perception of their meddling in Pakistani politics is very much alive and well, and will probably remain so. All principal political federal and administrative appointments are presently subject to “clearance” by Nadim Taj.  So let’s not fool ourselves!

 ”"Unsubstantiated rumours are afloat that Musharraf will replace Kayani with Nadim Taj as COAS of the Pakistan Army, sooner rather than later–i.e., before the constitutional amendment to be tabled by the PPP takes away his powers to appoint the Service Chiefs. Even when trial balloons do not fly, the desperate will gamble, throwing caution and calculated risks to the wind. ”

All I might add is that officers in the Pakistan army are rather good at playing bridge (just like the officers in the Indian army).  So what will Musharraf go for? Will he declare No Trumps and try to win with a three of clubs? Or is he still holding the Ace of Hearts?
 

Pakistan’s hottest rock band Junoon plays in Srinagar, Kashmir on Sunday, in what must rate as the biggest music show in decades in one of the world’s most militarised regions.

Junoon, or madness in Arabic,  will play in a heavily fortified auditorium on the banks of the Dal lake, but its Sufi music and soaring guitar riffs should resonate far beyond, given that this is where Sufism, a form of Islamic mysticism, struck roots in the subcontinent.

The idea of a Pakistani band playing in the centre of Kashmir, which has been at the heart of 60 years of unremitting hostility between the neighbours, is itself remarkable, a testament to the change that is quietly taking place.

It would have been unimaginable a few years ago, Ïndia’s NDTV quotes a local college professor as saying.

Both nations have faced challenges in recent days; India, the blasts in Jaipur which at another time would have almost reflexively been blamed on the neighbour, and Pakistan renewed bombings and a civilian coalition government that is dangerously drifting apart barely weeks after it was formed.

The neighbours have been tested in Kashmir itself recently with reports of cross-border incursions and gunbattles but they have kept their counsel, and resumed peace talks this week.

So what’s the subtext to Junoon in Kashmir, if at all ? Yusuf Jameel, who has reported extensively on the region, says the political connotations of their presence in the disputed territory are not lost on anyone, and authorities are trying to ensure there is no trouble.

 The concert has been organised by the South Asia Foundation, a non-government organisation, and is part of celebrations marking the  inauguration of the Kashmir Study Institute at Kashmir University. Indian President  Pratibha Patil is expected to attend the show as also other government leaders which obviously complicates the issue.

“After all, Islamabad has not officially given up its claim on Kashmir, though to many both in the neighbouring country (Pakistan) and here in Jammu and Kashmir, it is only dragging its feet from what it would until a few years ago insist is its jugular vein,” writes Jameel. The hardline elements in Kashmiri separatist groups are not going to be very pleased with the Junoon act, he says.

But the band that sometimes has been likened to U2 has been down this kind of road before. Founder Salman Ahmed, who trained to be a medical doctor, says inspired by the music of Led Zeppelin he traded his stethoscope for an electric guitar because he thought that was a better instrument to heal his deeply wounded society.

Blending traditional Sufi music with western instruments and melodies, the  band has created a new genre of pop music, Sufi rock. And their songs call for harmony and peace instead of nuclear proliferation and corruption, making them a constant thorn on the side of Pakistan’s ruling authorities.

In the early 1990s a law was passed - aimed directly at the band - banning “jeans and jackets” from appearing on television. The group  did a video for a song called Accountability which proved too much for then Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

And they have done their bit on the other side of the border too. They were in India playing the week New Delhi stunned the world conducting nuclear tests in the summer of 1998.

“We want cultural fusion, not nuclear fusion”, young Indians waved a banner in a packed concert. Junoon denounced the arms race, saying India and Pakistan couldn’t afford it and were better-off giving their citizens clean drinking water, jobs and health facilities.

The Indian tests were followed by a similar series by Pakistan that month.
 

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is pushing for visa-free travel with India, and has gone to the extent of saying Islamabad might do it unilaterally  if New Delhi is not prepared to go the distance.

As ideas go, visa-free travel in a globalised world isn’t anything remarkable. In the context of the tortured India-Pakistan relationship this, however, would be nothing short of a political masterstroke.

For people like my parents’ generation, among the millions who crossed the border from Pakistan following the bloody partition of India never to go back, visa-free travel would be akin to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Likewise for the millions of Muslims who moved in the opposite direction, leaving homes and some family members behind in India, before the curtain dropped.

Until the peace process began in 2004, there was barely a trickle of Indians and Pakistanis travelling between the two countries. Just over 8,000 visas were issued to Pakistanis by the Indian High Commission in Islamabad the year before; that number reached a bit more respectable figure of 100,000 by 2007. The numbers are far less for Indians visiting Pakistan.

And it must rate as one of the most oppressive visa regimes between any two countries. For one, there is no concept of a tourist visa for nationals from the two countries. I, as an Indian, cannot go to Pakistan as a tourist; it has to be for a purpose such as birth, death or marriage and you must know somebody there, such as a relative or a friend for the application to be even processed.

And if you are one of the handful who do get a visa after months of waiting, it is usually a city-specific visa; so if you are a Pakistani you could get a visa to visit New Delhi but not Mumbai;  for an Indian, it could be Islamabad, but not Rawalpindi. And you must report to the police upon arrival and at the time of departure.

Even diplomats of the two countries suffer much the same restrictions. A Pakistani embassy official based in New Delhi for example cannot travel to Agra three hours away without permission from Indian authorities; and precisely the same restrictions apply to Indian diplomats based in Pakistan.

So for Sharif to suggest abolition of visas - against such a history of distrust - does take your breath away. Is is really possible ? Bombs this week in the Indian tourist city of Jaipur won’t help and only strengthen the case of those who point to external links to the attacks and urge caution in allowing easy movement between the countries.
 

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.