Journalist turned diplomat Hussain Haqqani has become the pointsman in Washington to deliver the Pak message that goes beyond the usual mixture of bluff and bluster. That Pakistan is serious in its defiance is clear from Haqqani’s willingness to defend the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI), which, according to most commentators, is a highly politicised and Islamised institution and is in urgent need of reforms. ‘It is important that the institutions that are to be partners in this (anti-terrorism) effort do not start feeling under attack, whether it is ISI or the Pakistani military,’ Haqqani told the Americans with a straight face forgetting what he himself used to say against the ISI not too long ago.

Haqqani and his President Asif Ali Zardari have quoted the price for stopping acts of defiance. The base price is $30 billion over the next decade; it turns out to be $3 billion a year for the ‘proud’ nation—in addition to whatever has been committed or is in the pipeline. How the US reacts to the open challenge thrown up by Pakistan will be watched with interest in India as President Obama has told Islamabad that it cannot expect a free lunch.

Addressing the Atlantic Council, a Washington based think-tank, Haqqani mocked at the US for finding billions of dollars to bail out its sick organisations and companies whose sole achievement is that they could not ‘make cars that they could sell.’ He said the US has become ‘intrusive’ when it comes to aiding a nation that is ‘accused’ of failure. And declared that the American money should not flow to these ‘mismanaged companies and Wall Street brokers’ but to Pakistan, where money is needed to build ‘schools and infrastructure.’

A word about Haqqani, first. He is a Pakistani who perhaps serves the purpose that an Iraqi called Chalabani had for the US before it invaded Iraq: providing inputs to the Americans that they could not possibly get from official sources in Islamabad. Throughout the Musharraf era he remained in the US, ensconced in the American academia and making a mark as a Musharraf critic.

Obviously, only the Americans can tell how useful he was during the nine-year rule of the General in Pakistan. We can be sure that they have not learnt any lessons from their tryst with Chalabani. Readers will recall that during the Saddam era Chalabani had been constantly updating Washington about Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ The man was rewarded with a plum ministerial job after the US forces had taken over Baghdad. Soon afterwards the Americans discovered that Chalabani had misled them about those weapons; he was unceremoniously thrown out of job. Chalabanism proved disastrous for President Bush Junior.

Haqqani’s job appears to be to play on the American paranoia about Pakistan’s likely take over by the dark forces of the Taliban, and extract as much money as possible. If the Pakistani envoy is not misleading the Americans he should be explaining to his audiences in the US why his government and the more powerful Pakistani army continue to be ambivalent about fighting the Taliban and other terror groups?

When Haqqani insists Pakistan is being ‘accused’ of moving towards ‘failure’, he is suggesting that the internal situation is under control. But he contradicts himself in the next breath when he dwells on the great ‘sacrifice’ his country continues to make in fighting terror. If things aren’t bad, why should Pakistan be witnessing a staggering increase in the number of terror attacks. The terror score card in the first 100-days of 2009 is 20 deadly attacks, 332 killed and 421 injured. Most of the victims are civilians, according to the News International. The per-week average killing comes to 24. And the daily average casualty rate stands at three. The deadliest suicide attack thus far was carried out on March 27 at a mosque on the Peshawar-Torkham Highway in the Jamrud subdivision of Khyber Agency during the Friday congregation, which killed 85 people.

Suicide bombers struck four times in January 2009, killing 21 people and injuring 52. In February seven attacks left 118 people dead and 158 injured. Six suicide bombers blew themselves up in March, killing 130 people and injuring 147. In the first 10 days of April, three suicide bombers killed 63 people and injuring 64. The NWFP was the most affected. Suicide bombers targeted Mingora, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Peshawar as many as eight times. Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) were hit six times by the suicide bombers targeting the Khyber and North and South Waziristan Agencies. Punjab province, which is the main terrorist recruitment base, saw five hits — two in Islamabad and one each in Rawalpindi, Dera Ghazi Khan and Chakwal. The first suicide attack of 2009 in Islamabad was carried out on March 23 when a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance of the Special Branch headquarters, located in the Sitara Market, killing a policeman. The second attack on April 4 took place close to a camp set up on a main road of Islamabad for the protection of foreign diplomats.

Neither Haqqani nor his masters in Islamabad and Rawalpindi assure us that these terrorist killings will end. Nor are they ready to commit themselves to a ‘No Terror Export’ policy. From the tone and tenor of their speeches it is clear that Pakistan’s fight against terrorism will remain half-hearted as ever before. And terror will remain an instrument of Pakistan’s state policy against its eastern and western neighbours.

So, when Haqqani makes out a laboured case for US money for building ‘schools and infrastructure’ in Pakistan, his interlocutors should put a counter question: Why cannot Pakistan cut its heavily bloated defence expenditure to build schools, hospitals and roads? Only a country at the bottom of development pyramid would require foreign aid to provide its people basic civic amenities like hospitals, schools and drinking water. All because of misplaced priorities, jingoism and no concern for the well being of people.

Pakistan’s protestations against drone attacks on its lawless tribal areas evoke no response in the US. After all, it is no secret that the Pakistanis have tacitly agreed to those attacks and have even allowed their launch from Balochistan but cannot acknowledge it publicly for political reasons. Significantly, the Pakistanis are pressing the Americans hard to give them the drones so that they can use those pilotless planes. Where? Surely, not in the tribal areas, for obvious reasons. Can there be any doubt that the sole target of the drones, should Pakistan have the ‘sovereign’ right to use them, will be India?

By now few in the world believe that despite all the real or imaginary threats it receives from the long arm of the Taliban, Pakistan has no will to eliminate its terror network. Instead, every passing day it keeps coming up with absurd charges against an ‘Indian hand’ in all the terror attacks it has been facing, including the one on Sri Lanka cricketers. The ‘proof’, clinching for the Pakistanis, of the Indian ‘hand’ comes when some of the terrorists killed by the security forces are found to be ‘infidels.’

How? Because they fail the circumcision test! It turns out most of the Pakistani men in the ‘lawless’ tribal belt do not go for circumcision. The local customs do not make it obligatory upon them to wear this ‘flinching’ identity. It might worry some in Pakistan that having travelled the course from blackmail to ‘defiance’ they are now stepping into a farcical territory that may not really amuse their ‘friends.’

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