Now why would Pakistan, an ostensible U.S. ally on the proverbial “war on terror,” provide health care for the one-eyed Taliban leader who is wanted for acts of terrorism?

The report, says Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington, has “no basis whatsoever.”  Haqqani, a career diplomat and a democrat, is a credible man, perhaps more credible than the original source of the story, an organization called the Eclipse Group.

This is a shadowy consulting business run by Dewey Clarridge, a career CIA official whose loyalty to democratic norms has been questioned. Clarridge served as director of the CIA’s Latin American division of the CIA in the 1980s. In the 1980s, Clarridge was part of a CIA network that sought to evade congressional restrictions that forbade the CIA from waging covert war against the government of Nicaragua. Since then, he has toiled in the gray zone between public service and private enterprise. So let’s be clear on the dueling sources. Back then, Dewey Clarridge sought to evade the rule of law. Today, Husain Haqqani seeks to respect it.

On the other hand, Haqqani may not know what his own government is doing. There is no dispute that Pakistani intelligence service–our ally in defending the country’s nuclear arsenal–cultivates and funds its owns allies in the vastness of Afghanistan–including sworn and lethal enemies of United States.

Pakistani intelligence officials live and breathe the reality that the American public and the U.S. Congress have not quite grasped. The U.S. military–like every other Western expeditionary force in the region since Alexander the Great–will eventually leave Afghanistan. And when they do, Pakistan will still be there.

So: Nothing would be less surprising than Pakistan helping Mullah Omar in his hour of need.

Taseer’s death deprives Pakistan of a colourful politician with unusual reserves of pluck. More significantly, it signals a worrying reduction in the public space for public figures, who cannot even count on their own police to protect them. The country’s liberals have not felt so isolated since the dark years of the Zia dictatorship in the 1980s.

via The Hindu.

The radicalization of Pakistani society is at the heart of the conflict between Western countries and jihadists, and it is getting worse, not better, as we grow ever more dependent on the Pakistini intelligence services to sustain our over-extended military occupation of Afghanistan.

we can say that the White House was successful in changing the story of their midterm defeat, but the success was temporary.  The world still writes about the President much more positively than negatively, and the President received better coverage in our biggest rivals’ blogs than in their mainstream media sources.

What this snapshot of Obama’s recent travels omits is the larger picture, including the Middle East where Obama’s expensive kowtowing to Israeli demands ($33 milion a day) has ended the honeymooon of his Cairo speech, even in counties, , such Jordan and Qatar, where media outlets are controlled by pro-American regimes.

If Mr Karzai and most Afghans really do want peace talks with the Taliban then that should be Nato’s focus.

….last year, there were 44 drone attacks, killing only five key Al Qaeda targets but the civilian casualties exceeded 700 Pakistanis. Passionate appeals have been made to all the visitors from the US – Congressmen, officials, military brass and others  that these attacks must stop. Pakistan is absolutely critical for US strategy in the region and its war against terror is solely dependent on Pakistanis’ cooperation. Pakistan must spell out to the Obama Administration that any more cooperation with the US would be subject to US meeting Pakistanis’ concerns.

There’s no evidence that is going to happen. From the point of view of U.S. policymakers, this isn’t a dilemma. In Washington, the answer is equally obvious, though diametrically opposed, to Pakistan’s: the battlefield advantages outweigh the political costs. In the short run, that is surely true. In the long run, it depends on ignoring Pakistani democracy.

That’s not the only problem with talking to the Taliban  but it is true that the world’s biggest secular democracy is a forgotten factor in Afpak politics.