Twirp: Terrorist Wahabi Islamic Rep Pakistan 4

[Guest]

<b>Blow to the government</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->With President Zardari due to arrive in Washington next week, the US has piled on the pressure on the civilian government. On Wednesday, President Obama explicitly spelled out his concern: ‘The civilian government there right now is very fragile and [doesn’t] seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services.’

Perhaps Mr Obama meant less to undermine the civilian government here and more to alert the US political firmament of the need for immediate action (‘we need to help Pakistan help Pakistanis’). But then on Thursday the US media reported extraordinary comments made by Gen Petraeus, the top military commander for this region, to US lawmakers and Obama administration officials.

Gen Petraeus reportedly warned that the next two weeks were critical to the government’s survival and that if ‘concrete action’ was not taken to ‘destroy the Taliban’ the US would have to determine its ‘next course of action’. Damningly, the general went on to label the Pakistan Army under Gen Kayani as ‘superior’ to the ‘civilian government led by President Zardari’.

<b> It is clear that at the root of the American disquiet lies Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and the possibility of them falling into the militants’ hands. But the comments are perplexing, to say the least. First, American officials have themselves said in recent months that Pakistan’s nuclear programme is safe and well protected. Second, as worrying as the Taliban incursions into other areas of Malakand Division may be, there is little evidence that the militants have the capability to overrun Islamabad, let alone capture nuclear paraphernalia. So why the alarmist rhetoric? </b>

After eight years of George W. Bush, the one lesson the Americans had appeared to learn when it comes to Pakistan is that the only viable option here for long-term change for the better is the civilian one. And yet, having vowed to learn from President Bush’s mistakes, <b>the new American set-up is sending out devastating signals against the civilian government and drumming up the ‘safe’ option of the Pakistan Army. </b>

Whatever the PPP-led federal government’s sins of omission and commission, it must not be forgotten that it has been in power for little over a year and, on the militancy issue, is working in a fractious political climate and with little real control over the country’s national security policy. American impatience will only aggravate its problems.
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Coup/regime change countdown in fast mode.