IS THE USA UNDERMINING AN ALLY
Two days back a CIA drone attacked a house located in a thickly populated residential district of the Norh Westy Frontier Province of Pakistan. The reason for the attack: alleged presence of the Al Qaeda leader, Zarqawi. The USA has repeatedly violated the national soverignty of her allies by launching illegal air strikes against targets presumed to be hostile. In the process innocent civillian lives are lost. It is now abundantly cleat that the human intelligence available to the CIA is woefully inadequate. Instead of learning from the errors of the past, it appears that the CIA is operating without adequate political authority for its actions. The need to maintain presidential "deniability" in case the actions go horribly wrong, as it did this time, makes the situation particularly dangerous. Anyone familiar with Rudyard Kipling's Kim would know that the region where the strke took place is essntially tribal and the writ of the central government located at Islamabad barely runs there. The US strike has become a dangerous predicament for the US ally, President Parvez Musharaf.
The war aginst the Al Qaeda is preceived as a war against Isalm by influential sections of the Pakistanian establishment. The training schools for the so called jehadis funded by the American tax payer in the 1970s and 1980s, when the terorists of taday were the freedom fighters fighting against the Soviet, have nurtured a subculture of fanatic anti Americanism in that region. In fact the US ally President Musharaf is walking a tightrope: at any time the Jehadis can topple his regime and no amount of piousUS homilies about the war against terrorism will change the situation.
By undermining the regime of Musharaf the USA has done the Jehadis of Pakistan a good turn: They now have a cause to rally around. The bell tolls for the regime in Pakistan.