Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is damned if he does move against Pakistani militants and damned if he doesn't, writes Graham Usher in Lahore Three weeks after the Mumbai attacks the Pakistani government is on the ropes. On the one side it is facing a barrage of coercive diplomacy, choreographed by the United States but very much to an Indian tune. On the other it is being accused of "appeasement" by an increasingly nationalist opposition, almost certainly echoing the sentiments of Pakistan's military establishment, still the country's main power centre. As President Asif Ali Zardari flounders, the result is incoherence. So, having denied any "tangible evidence" linking Pakistan to Mumbai, on 7 December security forces in Pakistan Kashmir moved against a camp linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LT), a Pakistan-based group India says carried out the slaughter. This was followed by raids on Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JD), charged by India to be LT's civilian wing yet defined under Pakistani law as an Islamic charity. More than 100 JD offices have been closed and 50 leaders arrested, including LT "founder" and JD "emir" Hafiz Said. The first action came after pretty tangible evidence had been unearthed showing Ajmal Kasab, the sole arrested Mumbai gunman, to be a Pakistani national: good investigative reporting by Pakistani and British journalists located his native village in the Southern Punjab. The second followed a United Nations decision on 10 December to put JD on the "terrorist blacklist" for alleged ties to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Both Pakistani moves were taken under duress. The ban on JD had been enforced because "all states must comply with international obligations arising out of Security Council resolutions," said Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmoud Qureshi. But "India has not so far provided any evidence about Pakistanis' involvement in the Mumbai attacks", he added. Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar was blunter. "Had we not banned JD in line with the UN Security Council resolution we would have been declared a terrorist state," he said. The US denied the threat, as it has been denying just about everything else the Pakistan government says. While Condoleezza Rice has been at pains to insist the "Pakistani state" was not involved in Mumbai, she has "irrefutable evidence" that the attackers were launched from Pakistani soil. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has gone further. At a rapid press conference in Islamabad on 14 December he told a red-faced Zardari that "the group responsible [for Mumbai] is LT and they have a great deal to answer for". Also "three- quarters of the most serious terror plots being investigated by UK authorities have links to Pakistan". Finally he offered Pakistan $9 million in anti-car bomb equipment and material "to educate people not to be extremists". With friends like these the Pakistan president may not need enemies. But the enemy is becoming clear to most Pakistanis. The Indian government says not only were Pakistan nationals involved in the Mumbai carnage but so too were its intelligence services. It has rejected Zardari's offer of a Joint Commission to investigate the attacks. Instead it wants LT and JD to be "dismantled", their cadre to be imprisoned and leaders like Said extradited: these are impossible demands. Nor has the coercion just been diplomatic. On two occasions on 13 December Indian aircraft violated Pakistani airspace, once over Pakistani Kashmir and once near Lahore, two areas where LT-JD are based. Zardari said it was an "inadvertent" incursion due to a "technical mistake". But US media said the Indian planes might have been on a trial run to strafe Muridke, the main JD centre near Lahore. Pakistani jets were scrambled to repulse the invaders. War felt a shot away. It is easy to understand India's pain. One hundred and seventy-two of its people and others were killed in Mumbai for being in the wrong city, in the wrong country, on the wrong day. Public anger is directed almost as much at the ineptitude of the government's internal security policies as at Pakistan. And the government knows Pakistani promises to investigate are worth little. In 2002 -- after an attack on the Indian parliament blamed variously on LT and another Pakistani group Jaish Mohamed -- Pakistan banned both and arrested 2,000 of their members. Most were released within a year, often with new titles like "emir" and JD. There was a similar air of make believe about this "crackdown". Prior to his arrest Said vowed to take his case to the Pakistani High Court, proving "that the JD is an educational charity, not a terrorist organisation". But he called for neither protests nor agitation against the ban. "We don't want confrontation. We understand Pakistan needs good relations with India at times like these," said a JD member. Like 2002, he feels the storm will pass. Zardari knows it probably won't. But he also knows he and his government are powerless to "dismantle" groups like LT. These fall under the army's protection. And the more the army detects an Indian "conspiracy" behind the current pressure on Pakistan the more cosmetic will any action be against those it views as "assets", like LT. Future Pakistan-India relations may mean a lethal impasse. The only way out of this is for India, America and Britain to cut Zardari some slack. So far they are cutting only enough rope to hang himself.
