The Pakistani army's operations have the support of mainstream political parties and, increasingly, of the civil society in that country. As the Pakistani army gains confidence that its campaign against the Taliban has India's support, and that it has no reason to be anxious about its eastern border, it is possible for our neighbour to transfer more troops from east to west, and intensify its anti-Taliban operations further. Meanwhile, the US is augmenting its forces in Afghanistan. Therefore, speculation about the risk of nuclear weapons and materials falling into the wrong hands at a time when the Pakistani army, government and civil society appear to have decided to firmly fight the Taliban threat indicates a lack of confidence in the professionalism of the Pakistani army and the staying power of the US in this campaign.
A typical example of this is the article 'Help us or we leave' in the International Herald Tribune last week by Stanley Weiss, the eminent founding chairman of the Business Executives for National Security. He argues that if Russia, China, Iran and India which have an interest in eliminating the al-Qaeda don't come to the help of the US, it should quit Afghanistan. In India, reports of US efforts to negotiate deals with various warlords in Afghanistan, including Hekmatyar and Haqqani, tend to be interpreted as signs of eagerness by the US to get out of Afghanistan. In the light of inadequate progress of America's overtures to Iran, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's intransigence, North Korean defiance and the US's compromise with Pakistan on the wording of the aid legislation President Barack Obama's image as an effective leader has lost some of its earlier shine.
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9:46 PM
Moderate Islamist here
