Becoming modern at any cost

It was only later that the Prime Minister understood what Bush had said, because when he discussed it with his team, the ISI member suddenly burst into tears. That’s the worst of the sensitive agencies; as soon as the Americans mention them as working against their interests, they burst into tears, and start crying aloud. And they don’t limit themselves to just crying, they also lie on the floor and drag their heels. Sometimes it works (for example,, that’s how the ISI stayed out of the hands of Rehman Malik, when an ISI delegation didn’t provide the President the latest intelligence, but went for a collective freestyle demonstration of weeping aloud and heel-drumming on the floor, against the decision to hand them over to the Interior Division. The President worked the phones and had the decision reversed.)

But it wasn’t over for the ISI. The Multani Foreign Minister still had a meeting with Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee, and Mukherjee had to go along in Bengali slippers. Anyhow, Yousuf Raza Gilani had the first Seraiki-Potohari summit, because India’s first Sikh PM is actually a Potohari from Chakwal, not from Amritsar, where they truly speak Punjabi very different from Seraiki. But Potohari is hardly different from Seraiki, so Yousuf Raza, or rather Sain Yousuf, ran a very real risk to his own shoes, and refrained until the ISI came up again. This time as scuttling the Indo-Pak peace process, to which the Musharraf government is so deeply committed, by carrying out the Kabul Blast at the Indian Embassy.