Syed Saleem Shahzad: Pakistan adds to US's Afghan woes

In 2001, before the US invasion of Afghanistan and the ouster of the Taliban, then-Pakistani president Musharraf advised Washington that there were two kinds of Taliban. The one group was militant, the other moderate. He pleaded to engage the moderates, but the Americans said Pakistan was too sympathetic towards the Taliban and rejected the proposal. After the defeat of the Taliban, Musharraf met president George W Bush and reportedly pointed out that the US was making a blunder by focussing all of its operations on Kabul and leaving the rest of the country to be tamed by the air force. Musharraf pointed out that Afghanistan had eight power centers - Herat, Kandahar, Nangarhar, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunar and Nooristan, Paktia and Paktika, Khost and Pansher. He suggested that if Bush wanted to consolidate American control, he needed to immediately negotiate with the various warlords in those regions and strike separate deals. The advice was ignored and the US made deals all over Afghanistan only with commanders associated with the Shura-e-Nazar. This council was formed by the late Ahmad Shah Massoud of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance that was made up of mostly non-Pashtun groups.

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All the same, General Headquarters in Rawalpindi has activated its forces and informed the authorities in Islamabad that it will directly supervise security in Islamabad. This is the first time security has been taken from the Ministry of Interior. Zardari is in a difficult spot over the reinstatement of the judges, especially ex-chief justice Chaudhry. In an American-brokered deal with Musharraf, Zardari was given a presidential pardon for all corruption cases that were pending against him, allowing him to take political office. Were Chaudhry to return, he would in all likelihood challenge the presidential order. American officials are now talking to opposition leader Sharif, Aitazaz Ehsan, the leader of the lawyers' movement, as well as Chaudhry, with a view to the possible ouster of Zardari, who only took office last September. On Thursday, US envoy Richard Holbrooke called on Gillani at the National Assembly and spoke to him for 15 minutes. According to sources who spoke to Asia Times Online, he expressed concern over the political turmoil and urged the premier to show restraint. Earlier, US ambassador to Pakistan Anne Peterson met with Sharif. The US still wants a government comprising secular and liberal political parties to support the "war on terror" and the military surge against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. With first pick Zardari looking more and more like a loser, a change of horses in mid-stream beckons, but such maneuvers in volatile Pakistan are never easy.