Afghanistan Feature: Pakistan to Karzai "Pick Us, Not the US" (Rosenberg)

Hamid Karzai and Yusuf Reza GilaniPakistan is lobbying Afghanistan's president against building a long-term strategic partnership with the U.S., urging him instead to look to Pakistan --- and its Chinese ally --- for help in striking a peace deal with the Taliban and rebuilding the economy, Afghan officials say.

The pitch was made at an April 16 meeting in Kabul by Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who bluntly told Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the Americans had failed them both, according to Afghans familiar with the meeting. Mr. Karzai should forget about allowing a long-term U.S. military presence in his country, Mr. Gilani said, according to the Afghans. Pakistan's bid to cut the U.S. out of Afghanistan's future is the clearest sign to date that, as the nearly 10-year war's endgame begins, tensions between Washington and Islamabad threaten to scuttle America's prospects of ending the conflict on its own terms.

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Pakistan Feature: Is This a "Crisis" in Relations Between CIA and Islamabad?

On Tuesday, both The Washington Post and The New York Times reported on Pakistani demands that the Central Intelligence Agency restrict its operations, including drone strikes, inside the country. The Post reported, from US and Pakistani officials, of Pakistan's demand that Washington "impose new limits on CIA drone strikes in their country and...expel agency operatives whose missions are not approved by Islamabad".

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Pakistan Feature: The Secret, Dirty War in Balochistan (Walsh)

The bodies surface quietly, like corks bobbing up in the dark. They come in twos and threes, a few times a week, dumped on desolate mountains or empty city roads, bearing the scars of great cruelty. Arms and legs are snapped; faces are bruised and swollen. Flesh is sliced with knives or punctured with drills; genitals are singed with electric prods. In some cases the bodies are unrecognisable, sprinkled with lime or chewed by wild animals. All have a gunshot wound in the head.

This gruesome parade of corpses has been surfacing in Balochistan, Pakistan's largest province, since last July. Several human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have accounted for more than 100 bodies --- lawyers, students, taxi drivers, farm workers. Most have been tortured. The last three were discovered on Sunday.

If you have not heard of this epic killing spree, though, don't worry: neither have most Pakistanis.

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Pakistan Feature: The Warnings in the Assassination of the Punjab Governor

The Pakistani Government's continued lack of strong action against this tide is only going to strengthen the fundamentalists who are threatening to derail any semblance of progress made towards democracy in recent years. Democracy does not mean anything if the rule of the majority translates into the oppression of a minority.

Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and all other non-Muslims in Pakistan will remain unsafe as long as people like Taseer are killed because the government does not want to address religious fundamentalism amongst its ranks and those of the military. The section of Pakistan’s population calling itself "liberal" will have to conform to fundamentalist ideas, live in fear or leave the country. This would effectively end Pakistan’s pursuit of a democratic state.

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Pakistan Breaking: Governor of Punjab Province Assassinated (Al Jazeera)

Al Jazeera English reports:

The governor of Pakistan's most politically important province of Punjab has been killed after shootings in a popular market in the capital Islamabad.

Police said Salman Taseer, a high-profile member of the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP), was killed by a member of his security detail.

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Pakistan Snapshot: "Hundreds" of Detainees Disappearing (Schmitt)

The Obama administration is expressing alarm over reports that thousands of political separatists and captured Taliban insurgents have disappeared into the hands of Pakistan’s police and security forces, and that some may have been tortured or killed.

The issue came up in a State Department report to Congress last month that urged Pakistan to address this and other human rights abuses. It threatens to become the latest source of friction in the often tense relationship between the wartime allies.

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Pakistan: At Least 43 Killed in Suicide Bombing on Saturday (Khan)

A suicide bomber, believed to be a woman, attacked a checkpoint in the northwestern tribal area on Saturday where people displaced by fighting were lining up for food.

At least 43 people were killed and about 100 wounded, officials in the Bajaur tribal region said.

One official said that a woman wearing a burqa was stopped at a security post in Khar, the main town in Bajaur. “She threw a hand grenade, and before the security force could respond, she detonated herself,” said the official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

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Afghanistan-Pakistan Special: Obama's Review Upgrades Situation from "Quagmire" to "Morass"

My initial reaction to the much-touted Afghanistan and Pakistan Annual Review, both in the release of five unclassified pages summarising the study and in the unclassified video conference of President Obama and his advisors, was the one that my father and grandfather would give to any grand proclamation --- be it by a politician, a TV pundit, a salesman, a kid on the street corner --- that meant far less.

Big Damn Deal.

Perhaps that is too jaded. Maybe the better approach is to try the wit of The Borowitz Report: "Defense Dept. Upgrades Afghanistan from Quagmire to Morass". Perhaps a twist of an aphorism might do, as in this from the Afghanistan Analysts Network: "Stamping Out the Fire by Pouring on Gasoline".

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Afghanistan-Pakistan Document: The Obama Administration's Grand Review

We were going to wait until Friday morning to run a special feature on the Obama Administration's much-heralded --- i.e., spun for the press --- review of the US approach to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

However, having just watched the star-studded press conference, with not only President Obama but also Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, telling the media how to interpret the five unclassified pages, I thought I would go ahead and put the document before the readers.

NOW SEE Video & Transcript: Obama, Clinton, and Gates on the Afghanistan-Pakistan Strategy Review

Analysis will follow on Saturday; however, I will offer this advance snippet.

Big Damn Deal.

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Wikileaks: Today's Guide to EA's Coverage

Analysis

Aluf Benn says "The Fiasco Doesn't Embarrass Israel One Bit".

Features and Documents

1. US officials have "No Confidence in Pakistani Leader Zardari, No Alternative to Afghan Leader Karzai".

2. A year before the 2008 Russian-Georgian war, the US Embassy in Tbilisi documents "The Russian Campaign Against Georgia".

3. In 2009, the US Embassy in Rome intervenes in Italian politics: "Pushing Back Against Silvio Berlusconi, 'The Mouthpiece of Vladimir Putin'."