Pakistan fighting multi-pronged battle:

Since May 2, Pakistan has been in a state of undeclared, multi-pronged war. It is something of a pincer movement, with one flank being external to the country, while the other is internal but commanded by certain regional as also extra-regional powers.
There is no convincing reason to believe that the May 2 raid conducted by the United States at a residential place in Abbottabad did take out Osama Bin Laden or that the same was conducted without the prior knowledge or approval of Pakistan. All that has come out so far suggests otherwise.
The unfolding narrative has necessarily to be seen in the perspective of the divorce made by Islamabad consequent to the capture of CIA operative Raymond Davis in Lahore on Jan. 27 and his interrogation at the hands of the notorious Punjab police about which many South Asians share a joke.
That has to do with how a certain stolen donkey of a village influential was “recovered” by cops from this force in the form of a poor elephant shouting all the way on top of his voice from the wilderness to the habitation: “I am that same donkey.”
So this particular White elephant of ours sang like a canary after being feted by studs at the dingy Old Anarkali Police Station overnight. He compromised in the process not only his own mission; which was but one string of the covert war launched by the CIA to destabilize Pakistan; but also numerous cells of fifth columnists spread all over the country.
That turned the tables on both America and its quislings within Pakistani political and diplomatic echelons. All strategic decisions came under the firm grip of the military leadership. It still suited the latter to let the democratic circus go on.
Having ended the marriage of inconvenience with Uncle Sam that it had been coerced into at gunpoint following 9/11, Islamabad effectively broke off whatever little cooperation it had been obliged to extend to the pathological sex offender. It was time for the ugly American to pack his bags and go back to where he had come from.

The United States was for once desperate. It still beseeched a less than dishonorable exit (of most but not all of its military presence) from Afghanistan. Pakistan obliged with the caveat that Washington would utilize it strategic partnership with New Delhi to arrive at a peaceful settlement of the Kashmir dispute.
Kashmir, with Pakistan’s water lifeline of the Indus River System emanating overwhelmingly from the territory of the former Princely State under India’s illegitimate control, has become a concern of the state’s survival.
India has persistently, albeit not surprisingly, been eating up Pakistan’s share as the lower riparian recipient of the Indus Water System allocated by the 1960 Treaty brokered by the United States. The large number of new projects it is currently working on upstream pose a real and present threat to Pakistan.
If these schemes are made operable now, India would be in a position to remove the only physical obstacle in the way of launching a military assault to have a handle on Pakistani Punjab’s narrow waist: it could dry up the canals; most crucially, the Bambanwala Ravi Bedian (BRB) Link Canal to expose Lahore; this summer by storing more water in its planned reservoirs upstream.

Pakistan has delivered on its word to the United States; it has let Uncle Sam take the purported trophy of Osama’s head so that the former’s espoused “graceful” exit can be materialized. “We had gone to war in Afghanistan to take out the big bad guys; we have achieved the mission. Time for our brave soldiers to be reunited with their families!” Obama would declare triumphantly. Loud applause all across the United States.
Obama’s popularity graph has already started going up. Upcoming mid-term Congressional elections are finally not such a big problem for the Democratic Party; the president’s re-election next year also appears a less formidable challenge.
What of India? New Delhi is squirming. Deliver it must. It would not be easy for the bloated self-image of ‘Shining’ India that cannot feed well over its billion-plus population to come to terms with the changed geo-strategic realities.


Then came the attack on the Karachi naval-cum-army base of Mehran on May 22, crippling Pakistan’s naval surveillance arm by destroying two P-3C Orion aircraft; India and India alone has the motive for the cowardly crime. But then, what else is new in New Delhi?
Meanwhile, China has, taking a break from its long-held policy of not going public on diplomatic messages to India, clearly sounded an unmistakable warning for India to keep its hands off Pakistan.