Former President, Gen (R) Pervez Musharraf appears on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria program GPS. He gives candid responses to Zakaria’s probing questions with frankness and outspokenness including calling a spade a spade with respect to Pak-Afghan relations, Pak-US friendship over the years, shortcomings of the War on Terror being fought in Afghanistan, and how Taliban now control more than 50 percent of Afghanistan thereby becoming a problem for Pakistan rather than the other way as being perceived by many.

Plus, Musharraf explains what happened to America’s $10 billion in aid to Pakistan over the last 10 years, and whether or not he would consider running again for office. A Must Watch!

PKonweb Report

MAY 15 – Pakistan army has temporarily lifted curfew in large parts of the Swat valley to allow civilians to flee the intense fighting against the Taleban.

The curfew is being suspended for eight hours during the day, officials say.

According to official count, more than 800 militants have been killed so far as a result of military operations in Swat, Dir, Lower Dir, Buner, Mingora and adjoining areas.

The Malakand division of the Frontier province is ground zero of the military Ops, more specifically Mingora district which has been mined by the Taliban, reports say.

Aljazeera TV reported today that Taliban are still in control of Swat Valley despite military claims that the Taliban have been pushed back. According to Al Jaeera correspondent Imran Khan, the Taliban are preparing for street to street fight in Swat and adjoining areas.

Swat does not have a common border with Afghanistan or with any other country, yet the Taliban have been able to make inroads into the valley and have established bases with supplies and arms and ammunitions, some claiming to have come from across the border including the regional stakeholders.

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The army appears poised to enter Mingora city, having lifted the curfew Friday to allow thousands of its remaining residents to flee. Whereas classic guerrillas would melt away into the hills, the Taliban in Mingora, puzzlingly, seemed to be waiting to take on the advancing troops, as soldiers and guerrillas adopt surprising conventional war tactics.

The army itself hasn’t committed the number of troops that experts think would be required for counterinsurgency operations, and the high level of Taliban deaths the military has claimed would be unlikely if the Islamic extremists were using guerrilla tactics.

Officials in Washington , which has backed the Swat offensive, fear that Pakistan risks excessive civilian casualties with its current approach, as thousands of residents remain trapped in the valley, reported McClatchy special correspondent based in Islamabad.

“If they (the Taliban ) try to fight the army in Mingora or some other town, they don’t stand a chance against the superior numbers which the army can assemble and the firepower the army can deliver,” said analyst Javed Husain , a retired army brigadier who served in Pakistan’s Special Services Group commando unit.

So far, the nine-day-old army offensive in Swat — which is 100 miles from capital Islamabad,— hasn’t moved into the valley’s towns. Those who managed to escape Mingora, where five headless bodies were found this week, warned that the army would face tough resistance from deeply entrenched Taliban in the city.

Shaukat Saleem , a Mingora resident who escaped from Swat on Friday, said the Taliban had blocked roads in the city with trees and boulders. They’ve mined the streets, dug trenches, made bunkers and occupied many civilian homes, he said. He said that he saw “lots” of Taliban as he was leaving the city, who stopped him for questioning at 10 to 12 of their checkpoints.

“Mingora is completely in Taliban hands,” said Saleem, who’s now a refugee at the Jalozai camp near Peshawar with his wife and son. “On the streets you only see Taliban and stray dogs.”

The army estimated earlier this week that as many as 200,000 civilians were still in Mingora, and it was unknown how many remained there after Friday’s exodus. The army said that it had cleared the area that leads to Mingora from the south as far as Udigram, a village on the outskirts of the city.

“We allowed the civilians to move out of Mingora city. We relaxed the curfew,” said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the army’s chief spokesman.

Abbas declined to comment on the timing of a Mingora operation and whether the army would wait for all the residents to evacuate. It seems likely that thousands of them remain in the city, leading to fears that the Taliban might use them as “human shields.”

It’s taken years for the Pakistani public to back operations against the Taliban , and that support could evaporate easily, said the McClatchy news report.

Ali Dayan Hasan , a South Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch , a U.S.-based advocacy group, warned that the Taliban could be “luring” the army into a fight in Mingora.

“If there are lots of dead civilians and lots of dead soldiers (in Mingora), it could do morale-sapping damage,” Hasan said. “If we hear of 2,000 civilians dying, say, it’s all over.”

The U.S. military has encouraged Islamabad to embrace counterinsurgency tactics, which call for winning civilian support, not just killing the enemy and seizing ground. Some U.S. officials, however, worry that the Pakistani army isn’t willing or able to move away from traditional war-fighting tactics.

“If you talk to the (Pakistani) military leadership, they say they get it, but do they understand it the way we understand it?” a senior U.S. military official told McClatchy , speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to be more candid. “Often their definition of counterinsurgency is warning a village before an attack.
That’s it.”

The army claims to have killed well more than 800 Taliban in Swat so far, including 200 at a training camp that was bombed from the air. Guerrilla tactics would have had the insurgents mounting hit-and-run operations and ambushes in small groups. If the high death toll is correct, that would suggest that the militants were fighting pitched battles with the army, but assembling 200 Taliban at one spot would violate guerrilla instincts, analyst Husain said.

The Pakistani army has said that it’s deployed as many as 15,000 men against a Taliban force it estimates at 4,000 to 5,000, in a war that’s being fought in mountainous terrain. The standard counterinsurgency manual suggests that an army should outnumber a guerrilla enemy by 10 to 1 or more, the report said.
“Fifteen thousand is not enough at all. That’s only enough to secure the operational area,” Husain said. “They need more, and for that they would have to pull out troops from the eastern border.”

To the frustration of Washington and other Western allies, Pakistan continues to deploy most of its army on its eastern border to safeguard against its traditional enemy, India , which it fears might attack while it’s fighting the Taliban on its western border.

By MARK LANDLER

On May 4 1999 Husain Haqqani was yanked off a Pakistani street and bundled into a car a blanket thrown over his head. He managed to keep his cellphone hidden in his pocket and surreptitiously dialed a friend’s number to let her know he was in trouble.

That may have saved his skin said Mr. Haqqani now Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States. The news of his detention made it harder for his captors Pakistani intelligence agents to hurt him Mr. Haqqani said though he was roughed up and kept in jail for two months until a court ordered his release.

As the Obama administration struggles with another darkening crisis in Pakistan Mr. Haqqani has become an influential figure in Washington – a silver tongued interpreter in public of his country’s bewildering politics but also a relentless unyielding defender of Pakistan’s image and reputation.

The crisis has given Mr. Haqqani 52 access to the highest levels of the Obama administration and Congress the latest twist in a lifetime spent navigating Pakistan’s treacherous political shoals.

He speaks several times a week with Richard C. Holbrooke the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan who calls him “one of the most skilled ambassadors I have ever seen.” He figures he has met with 90 members of Congress. And he is a fixture on CNN the op ed pages of newspapers and at research groups around Washington.

But critics say Mr. Haqqani is a quick change artist who cozies up to whoever is in power. Before he left Pakistan in 2002 after falling out with Gen. Pervez Musharraf he had worked for both his country’s leading political figures – Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto- switching from one to the other with dispatch depending on whose fortunes were rising.

As a journalist Mr. Haqqani cultivated sources in Mr. Musharraf’s circle. But he soon became an outspoken critic of the Musharraf government making his life in Pakistan difficult. He aligned himself solidly with Ms. Bhutto – and after she was assassinated in 2007 with her husband Ali Asif Zardari now the president.

Since moving to the United States Mr. Haqqani has developed an affinity for American culture. He taught international relations at Boston University from 2004 to 2008 and he roots for the Red Sox. The American experience has only added to suspicions about him back in Pakistan.

“They see him more as a U.S. envoy than a Pakistani envoy ” said Mowahid Hussain Shah a Pakistani lawyer. “They see him as someone who is competent and bright but slick.”

Mr. Haqqani readily admits shifting his allegiances over the years. But he denies being an opportunist saying he underwent a personal journey from being an Islamic activist in his youth to a conservative supporter of Mr. Sharif to an acolyte of the populism of the Bhutto clan.

“Is changing one’s opinion opportunism?” he said. “Opportunism would be if I got commercial or financial gain from changing my opinion and that charge has never been made of me.”

Mr. Haqqani speaks in lucid well rounded sentences that suggest his background as a journalist and commentator. He is catnip for American journalists offering a mix of high minded analysis and street corner gossip. (The New York Times put him on a retainer for several months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks when he was working as a journalist to help its correspondents better understand Pakistan.) But he can also be prickly and peremptory using his new post to hector reporters editors and policymakers over perceived slights or misinterpretations.

His book “Pakistan Between Mosque and Military” offered a nuanced analysis of how the armed forces and Islamist groups have used one another in an effort to build influence in the country.

Mr. Haqqani relishes mixing journalism with politics which got him into trouble in 1999 when he was the spokesman for the opposition to Mr. Sharif then prime minister. After his abduction he faced corruption charges which were later dropped.

His ability to bounce back from adversity may be tested yet again. Mr. Haqqani’s star is now hitched to Mr. Zardari a billionaire who has himself been dogged by suspicions of corruption and has seen his popularity plummet as Pakistan falls deeper into distress.

Mr. Haqqani does his best to polish his boss’s image.

Mr. Holbrooke himself no slouch in the media mastery department said “Some ambassadors’ influence is derived logically from the country they represent Husain Haqqani’s influence is derived from his absolute mastery of the American media.”

Mr. Haqqani’s ties to the Bhutto family run deep. On the day Ms. Bhutto was killed Mr. Haqqani recalls taping interviews with television stations for 12 hours. At times he broke down in tears on camera.

Mr. Haqqani’s wife Farahnaz Ispahani is a member of the Pakistani Parliament and a spokeswoman for Mr. Zardari.

This week Mr. Haqqani said he arranged an early morning visit by Secretary of StateHillary Rodham Clinton and Mr. Holbrooke to Mr. Zardari at the Willard hotel. The reason was partly personal Mrs. Clinton said hello to Ms. Bhutto’s 20 year old son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari whom she had last seen a decade earlier.

Mr. Haqqani views himself as a mediator between old friends with a lot of baggage in their relationship.

“I see my role as helping Americans understand that Pakistan is undergoing a transformation ” he said. “Then I have to persuade Americans to help Pakistan with that transformation.”

The solution to Pakistan’s instability Mr. Haqqani said is redoubled American support for its democratically elected government. But Mr. Zardari faced deep skepticism when he tried to reassure lawmakers that Pakistan had the political will and military resources to repel a Taliban incursion that has pushed to within an hour’s drive of the capital Islamabad.

Mr. Haqqani’s belief in Pakistani democracy is hard won and heartfelt said Teresita C. Schaffer a former American diplomat who befriended Mr. Haqqani when they both served as ambassadors to Sri Lanka. But as an ambassador she said his views were bound to be rosy.

“The part that he has slid over particularly in his current job is whether the government is competent enough to make the democratic enterprise work ” Ms. Schaffer said.

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Columnist

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has a problem. His government is near collapse, hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing the Taliban in northwest Pakistan, and militants are within 60 miles of the capital, Islamabad.

So yesterday, Zardari did what any sensible world leader would do in a time of crisis: He went to see Wolf Blitzer.

“My government is not going to fall,” Zardari assured Blitzer as he sat with the cable news host in the Situation Room — not the one in the White House, but the one in CNN’s Washington bureau near Union Station.

Blitzer directed Zardari to watch a presentation of the Taliban’s gains on CNN’s “magic map” plasma screen.

“Exaggerated,” Zardari said. “We’ve been giving them a fight.”

“Do you need American help?” Blitzer offered.

“I need drones,” Zardari said.

Luckily, Blitzer had some drone footage. “If you turn around over there, you can see some pictures,” Blitzer said. Zardari obliged. Next, Blitzer directed him to look at a video of a CNN “iReport” from a Pakistani college student in Florida. “Turn around and you can see him,” Blitzer ordered. Zardari, looking bewildered by Blitzer’s arsenal of plasma screens, obeyed.

“Are you going to send your troops in,” Blitzer demanded, “and clean out that area from the Taliban and al-Qaeda?”

“Most definitely,” Zardari promised.

Blitzer was satisfied. “Mr. President,” he said, “good luck.”

Winning the coveted support of Blitzer will no doubt take a place of honor in Zardari’s scrapbook from his trip to Washington this week. Now, if he can only get similar support during today’s meeting with President Obama. The Obama administration has enough on its hands without worrying about whether the Taliban and al-Qaeda will be able to topple the government in nuclear-armed Pakistan. But crises in that region wait for no man — and now one has come, literally, to Obama’s doorstep.

Zardari will join his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, in a meeting with Obama today, following Israeli President Shimon Peres’s meeting with Obama yesterday. The visits by the three leaders turned Capitol Hill into a tangle of photo ops yesterday. Zardari, fresh from his audience with Blitzer, sat down with the House Foreign Affairs Committee. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi received Peres three hours before her meeting with Karzai, who had given a lunchtime address to the Brookings Institution. And all three were bound to run into busloads of pro-Israel activists participating in a lobbying day as part of the annual gathering of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Administration officials, in turn, went into global-crisis mode. Vice President Biden spoke to AIPAC in the morning, sat down with Peres in the afternoon, then invited in experts to talk with him about Pakistan over dinner at the Naval Observatory. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was in Saudi Arabia trying to get that country’s help for Pakistan to fight off the insurgents. Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s troubleshooter for Afghanistan and Pakistan, spoke to the House Foreign Affairs Committee about the crisis.

Holbrooke spoke of the “air of panic” in Pakistan after the fall of the Swat Valley to the Taliban. “I like to point out to my New York friends that it’s the same distance from [Islamabad] as East Hampton is from New York, and it bears the same psychological relationship to the people of Islamabad as a vacation spot, although real estate prices were not quite as high.”

“And we won’t talk about the parties,” said Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-Calif.).

Complicating things, as always, were lawmakers, who sought to put conditions on aid to Zardari’s government. Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said he wanted new requirements put on Pakistan in exchange for more U.S. support. “I don’t believe that the Pakistan government and the Afghan government are sufficiently focused and organized and unified,” he complained, perhaps underestimating the difficulty of being focused, organized and unified when your country has fallen into violence and anarchy.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) joined in the demands. “We’ve got to see a seriousness of purpose by the Pakistani government,” he said.

At the daily White House briefing, questions about the region displaced the usual fare about the economy and swine flu.

“What is the president going to do to reassure Zardari? . . . Why should we keep throwing more money at it? . . . What does the president want President Zardari to do that he’s not already doing?”

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs replied with vague references to “deep concern” and “renewed commitments.”

But such expressions seemed unlikely to calm the worries on Capitol Hill. At the House Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Berman told Holbrooke that “it appears to many of us that Pakistan is at a tipping point.” Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) put it this way: “Let me be blunt. Pakistan’s pants are on fire.”

Holbrooke did not quarrel about the state of Pakistan’s trousers, calling the country “a state under extreme test” but not yet a failed state. “Our goal must be to support unambiguously and help stabilize a democratic Pakistan headed by its elected president, Asif Ali Zardari,” Holbrooke said.

Fortunately for Zardari, Wolf Blitzer is on the case.