TAG : pakistan

She came, she made the appropriate noises about partnerships, she even praised the local mangoes, which was well received by the local press. The independent Geo TV happily reported that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had “bought and savored” Pakistani mangoes during her recent visit and proclaimed them “delicious”.
 

What does it take for a US Secretary of State to be favorably covered by the alarmingly anti-American Pakistani media? It’s money, not mangoes. And Clinton came in offering billions of it.
 

Under the Kerry Lugar Bill, named after US Senators John Kerry (Democrat) and Richard Lugar (Republican), which was passed by Congress last year, Washington has committed to $7.5 billion economic and development aid to Pakistan over the next five years.
 

When the big Gen. Stanley McChrystal gaffe news just broke, experts across the globe were desperately scrolling past near-naked pics of Lady Gaga on the Rolling Stone Web site, seeking the offending piece.
 

But now it’s online and the very first sentence of the Michael Hastings’ piece makes me squirm.
 

‘How'd I get screwed into going to this dinner?" McChrystal asks at the start of the piece.
 

How did he get screwed granting Hastings such access?
 

Yes, yes, America’s top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s latest gaffe is a big “oh boy” even by McChrystal’s standards.
 

In the Rolling Stone article, “The Runaway General,” which portrays him as a lone wolf in typically testosterone-driven, pop-culture magazine prose, McChrystal takes on a slew of Washington bigwigs.

He will pay for his folly of course: the top US commander in Afghanistan has been summoned to the White House for a sound drubbing, no doubt.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court has upheld a lower court’s decision that Hafiz Saeed, head of the Islamic group accused of masterminding the 2008 Mumbai attacks, cannot be detained.
 

No surprises here. It’s the same old story with a familiar plot and the inevitable ending.
 

The court ruled that the evidence against Saeed was weak. That’s true because there’s very little teeth to legal actions taken against Saeed.
 

Pakistani authorizes have never filed criminal or terrorist charges against the leader of the LeT (Lashkar-e-Taiba), a banned group now operating as the Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Instead, Saeed tends to get detained under the MPO (Maintenance of Public Order) law. In legal terms, that entails a limited detention period until a court ruling. In plain-speak, it’s a light rap on the knuckles for disorderly conduct.
 

This has happened before. In 2009 and 1996, Saeed was let go under MPO.

He’s dead. He’s alive. He’s dead. He’s alive.

It’s hard to keep up with the number of times Tehrik-e-Taliban’s goateed, AK-47-toting, beret-sporting chief, Hakimullah Mehsud, has been definitively killed - only to rise again.

But I’m trying.

Let’s see…he was declared dead last October, I remember.

But then he surfaced and issued a statement that read like a Journalism 101 class. Get your facts right, Mehsud jeered, noting that reports couldn’t seem to decide if he was killed on his way to Multan, Arukzai or Shaktai.

Then he was killed again in Jan this year. This time in Orakzai. No wait, it was South Waziristan. Or was it the North? Unnamed Pakistani intelligence officials swore on this latest drone strike. Successors were named and analyzed.

I remember the succession list included Qari Hussain Mehsud. This pleased me since I’m a creature of continuity.