Pasha unplugged

The conditions in Islamabads Parliament House were clearly trying. As reports in Pakistans Dawn newspaper detailed on the days after,no one had been prepared for Fridays in-camera session of the two Houses with the military top brass to last for 12 hours. With an injunction against anybody or anything being imported into the premises after 3 pm,the subsequent shortage of food and,in Army Chief Ashraf Kayanis now celebrated case,cigarettes tested everybodys stamina. Nonetheless,eventually the agenda for the day was accomplished: in a resolution,Pakistans Parliament reposed its confidence in the defence forces and said there would be dire consequences if an Abbottabad-style unilateral operation was attempted again.

If the chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence,Lt General Ahmed Shuja Pasha,was struck by the glaring unpreparedness of civilian cafeterias,he probably kept it to himself. But the trial,with parliamentarians questioning him on the Abbottabad strike and with his offer to resign for the intelligence failure still up for grabs,must have taken its toll. Why else would the chief of one of the most formidable,feared and inscrutable intelligence agencies use the occasion in the manner he did to warn India against carrying out a strike within Pakistan. Tough talk is loose change amongst soldiers,but Pasha went further. According to reports in Pakistani newspapers,he said that targets had been identified in Indian territory and that a rehearsal had also been carried out.

Pasha has obviously not inherited his predecessor Kayanis quality of reticence,so advocating it could be pointless. What are these rehearsals he referred to? Are they dry-runs or operations formulated on the drawing board? Given that the shadowy role of the ISI in incidents in India is likely to be scrutinised in the trial in Chicago beginning this week of Tahawwur Rana for his involvement in 26/11,perhaps he could talk on.