Is it really true? After May 2, Kiyani had to visit different garrisons to pacify the soldiers, and upon a question from one of them Kiyani said we are helpless as we have mortgaged ourselves to united states.
Paying mortgage
**A comment is said to have come from COAS General Kayani in late May to the effect that Pakistan has mortgaged itself to the United States. He is reported to have said that we were unable to pay back the loan and that we were helpless debtors to an America determined to have payback. **
Reports in foreign newspapers and media outlets speak of General Kayani fighting for his position against a group of corps commanders who have become increasingly anti-American since the Bin Laden raid ñ and allegedly increasingly critical of their commander. The New York Times went as far as to say that a colonel coup internal to the army was unlikely but was not completely out of the question.
These reports have mostly emanated from foreign sources and there is very little by way of domestic corroboration, but it seems reasonable to conclude that there may be a grain of truth in them. ?
Notwithstanding foreign pot-stirring it may be time to turn down the heat under the bubbling pot of US-American relations. The two countries are perhaps never going to be best friends but they do not need to be enemies either.
The relationship is always going to be transactional but we are not without bargaining chips. Lines have become blurred in the last year, the rules of engagement indistinct, and the Bin Laden raid while, at one level, was revealing of gaps in a range of our security agencies has prompted a sharpening of focus and a redefining of the relationship with the Americans.
Inevitably, this is not going to be a comfortable process for either side. Unfortunately international relationships are characterised as much by deceit as they are by honesty, and that is also true for that which exists between Pakistan and the US.
Outgoing US Defence Secretary Robert Gates admitted this fact only the other day saying every country lied to the other. Dishonesty aside, they do have to work together and devising mechanisms to allow that is an essential part of the relationship. Thus there is reported to be a new joint counterterrorism task force to oversee operations against terrorism.
The new force is said to be designed to curb American unilateralism in its intelligence operations in Pakistan, likewise is the scaling back of American troops or trainers here.
The Americans may replace the two Orion aircraft that were lost in the PNS Mehran raid, and they will keep supplying us with F-16s. We may not be able to fight the Americans, but we are not without collateral to pay the mortgage either.
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