Wow:

A hoax telephone call almost sparked another war between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan at the height of last month's terror attacks on Mumbai, officials and Western diplomats on both sides of the border said today.

Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani President, took a telephone call from a man pretending to be Pranab Mukherjee, India's Foreign Minister, on Friday, November 28, apparently without following the usual verification procedures, they said.

The hoax caller threatened to take military action against Pakistan in response to the then ongoing Mumbai attacks, which India has since blamed on the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), they said.

Mr Zardari responded by placing Pakistan's air force on high alert and telephoning Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, to ask her to intervene.

But when Dr Rice called Mr Mukherjee, he said that he had not spoken to Mr Zardari and that his last conversation with Shah Mahmood Qureishi, the Pakistani Foreign Minister, had been quite civil.

"It's unbelievable, but true," said a Western diplomat familiar with the frantic diplomatic exchanges that eventually resolved the misunderstanding.

"It was a little alarming, to say the least."

UPDATE: Sherry Rehman, the Pakistani information minister, says the call was "processed, verified and cross-checked under an established procedure":

Without naming [leading Pakistani newspaper] Dawn, which carried the story in its edition of Dec 6 titled ‘A hoax call that could have triggered war’, a statement quoted the federal minister as having said, while commenting on reports in a section of the press, that it was not possible for any call to come through to the president without multiple caller identity verifications.

The Nov 28 call by someone from New Delhi who posed himself as Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, she insisted, had also been processed, verified and cross-checked in accordance with an intricately laid down procedure.

“In fact the identity of this particular call, as evident from the caller line identification device, showed that the call was placed from a verified official phone number of the Indian ministry of external affairs”, Ms Rehman said.

The lone surviving terrorist from last week's devastating attacks in Mumbai has been in police custody since he was captured last week (his exact name is a matter of dispute, but let's call him Ajmal Amir Kasab for now). He's given up some information, according to press accounts, but the Times of London now reports that Indian interrogators are prepared to take a drastic step to get more answers -- giving him truth serum.

While it sounds like something that only exists in bad spy flicks, or in the pages of a Harry Potter volume, administrating truth serum, or narcoanalysis, is an actual technique used by Western intelligence agencies during the Cold War. The interviewee is typically drugged with barbiturates and then undergoes a form of psychotherapy by interrogators. It's a questionable tactic given that the drugs can cause hallucinations and psychotic episodes.

According to Mumbai's joint commissioner of police, much of the information Kasab gave has been accurate (it was Kasab who told where to find the boat the terrorists hijacked). Questions about his background and nationality remain, however. On Tuesday, Mumbai Police Chief Hasan Gafoor told reporters that Kasab admitted he is a Pakistani and comes from a village in the Punjab province.

But some journalists, like the BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan, who are following up on these details by visiting Faridkot, the terrorist's alleged hometown, find the information conflicting.

Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari told CNN that he "very much" doubts that Kasab is Pakistani, but pressure is building in India to prove that he is and unravel his links to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant organization U.S. and Indian investigators believe is behind in the attacks.

Hence, truth serum. Though it may be effective in getting Kasab to spill the beans, I'd rather that drugs and psychotherapy not become a substitute for good, old-fashioned intelligence.   

Good story in the Wall Street Journal about Yusuf Muzammil, the Lashkar-e-Taiba leader who India believes is a key figure in the Mumbai attacks:

Just two days before hitting the city, the group of 10 terrorists who ravaged India's financial capital communicated with Yusuf Muzammil and four other Lashkar leaders via a satellite phone that they left behind on a fishing trawler they hijacked to get to Mumbai, a senior Mumbai police official told The Wall Street Journal. The entire group also underwent rigorous training in a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, the official said.

This much has already been widely reported, with some minor discrepancies about where the satellite phone was found. But here's a new wrinkle:

Mr. Muzammil had earlier been in touch with an Indian Muslim extremist who scoped out Mumbai locations for possible attack before he was arrested early this year, said another senior Indian police official. The Indian man, Faheem Ahmed Ansari, had in his possession layouts drawn up for the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel and Mumbai's main railway station, both prime targets of last week's attack, the police official said.

Mr. Ansari, who also made sketches and maps of locations in southern Mumbai that weren't attacked, had met Mr. Muzammil and trained at the same Lashkar camp as the terrorists in last week's attack, an official said.

If this is a trial balloon, I say two thumbs up:

President -elect Barack Obama is seriously considering giving former ambassador Richard Holbrooke a key role in handling diplomacy in south Asia, a move that would put one of America's most prominent international troubleshooters in the middle of trying to resolve the thorny and interrelated problems surrounding India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to several sources familiar with the transition.

Holbrooke, it must be noted, has been more or less auditioning for this job. Best known for his role in brokering the Dayton Accords that ended the war in Bosnia, he has in recent years been establishing himself as an authority on Afghanistan and South Asia.

So what has he been saying? Fortunately for us journalists, he's left a long paper trail.

He supports democracy in Pakistan. He thinks the war in Afghanistan "will eventually become the longest in American history." He's a fierce critic of spray eradication of poppy crops. He called recently in Foreign Affairs for a regional diplomatic strategy toward Afghanistan involving Iran, China, India, and Russia. He wants tough conditions on aid to Hamid Karzai's government, which he views as weak. He says the national police are "Afghanistan's most corrupt institution." 

Aside from his generally on-point analysis of the situation, Holbrooke would bring a lot of other qualities to the job. He has experience working with NATO in the Balkans. He's not afraid to stand up to warlords or bust through bureaucratic roadblacks in Washington. He wouldn't shrink from delivering harsh truths to leaders in Kabul and Islamabad. He'd have the relentless drive needed to keep the Obama administration focused, knows how to get attention in the press and on Capitol Hill, and has a good feel for how to use domestic politics to his advantage. Frankly, it's hard to think of anyone better suited for this mission.

He's one of the most fascinating figures in the world of international terrorism, a criminal mastermind linked to everyone from al Qaeda to Bollywood starlets to East African drug cartels. Few in the West have heard of him, though he is practically a household name in South Asia.

And now, India is connecting him to last week's attacks in Mumbai.

The Indian government has asked Pakistan to extradite exiled Indian gangster Dawood Ibrahim, who has long been accused of arranging the 1993 bombing attacks in Mumbai. The extradition request is not a new one, and Pakistan has always denied harboring Ibrahim. But now is probably as good a time as any for Indian officials to give it another try -- whether he was involved in the latest carnage in Mumbai or not.

There is precious little reliable information in the public domain on Ibrahim. Some of what we do know comes from the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which designated him a "global terrorist" in 2003.

He was born in India -- ironically, as the son of a police constable. His early history is sketchy, but what is known is that he worked his way up to become a top figure in the Mumbai underworld. Indian officals say he fled his homeland for Dubai, fearing prosecution, though different accounts give different dates for this change of address.

OFAC describes Ibrahim in its listing as "an Indian crime lord" who "has found common cause with Al Qaida, sharing his smuggling routes with the terror syndicate and funding attacks by Islamic extremists aimed at destabilizing the Indian government." He is "known to have financed the activities" of Lashkar-e-Taiba, according to the listing.

That all seems fairly solid. For sheer entertainment value, though, it's hard to beat this 2001 profile by Pakistani journalist Ghulam Hasnain. The lurid details of the story seem too vivid to possibly be true:

Ibrahim lives like a king. Home is a palatial house spread over 6,000 square yds, boasting a pool, tennis courts, snooker room and a private, hi-tech gym. He wears designer clothes, drives top of the line Mercedes’ and luxurious four-wheel drives, sports a half-a-million rupee Patek Phillipe wristwatch, and showers money on starlets and prostitutes. He bought Lahore model, Saba, with whom he reportedly had a passionate involvement, a house and a car. Nor does he shirk his obligations: Mandakini, of Ram Teri Ganga Maili fame, former Bollywood actress with whom he had a child is reportedly still being supported by him.

His daily regimen is also rather kingly. He wakes in the afternoon. After a swim and shower, he has breakfast. In the late afternoon, he gives his employees an audience where he briefs them on their assignments and they give him daily reports of his myriad businesses.

If in the mood, he engages in a game of cricket or snooker with friends. And as the sun sets, Dawood and his party set off for any one of his 'safe houses' in Karachi for an evening of revelry – usually comprising drinks (Black Label is his preference), mujras and gambling. The long-married Dawood’s passion for women has made him a favoured client for local pimps. His current liaison notwithstanding, he whets his allegedly large sexual appetite with a variety of women.

"He prefers virgins, preferably young girls. And he is a good paymaster. If the market rate for a woman is 10,000 rupees, Dawood pays 100,000 rupees. He is thus always surrounded by Pakistan’s top call girls," discloses one of his family friends.

The most incendiary claim in the article? Hasnain says Dawood is "Pakistan’s number one espionage operative." Indian officials may believe that, but I have yet to see solid, independent evidence. Some have speculated that the piece caused Hasnain's four-day abduction, after which he returned "a broken man" and recanted the article.

He chose his words very carefully, but U.S. President-elect Barack Obama nonetheless made big news in India with this exchange from today's press conference:

[Question:] During the campaign, you said that you thought the U.S. had a right to attack high-value terrorist targets in Pakistan if given actionable intelligence with or without the Pakistani government's permission. Two questions on that.

One, do you think India has that same right?

And, two [...] some people up there on the stage took issue with your saying that. They have strong opinions about issues ranging from Pakistan to the surge. And while they're all committed to have a successful United States, what private assurances have they given you that they will be able to carry out your vision even when they strongly disagree with that vision as some of them have been able to do in the past? [...]

OBAMA: I think that sovereign nations, obviously, have a right to protect themselves. Beyond that, I don't want to comment on the specific situation that's taking place in South Asia right now. I think it is important for us to let the investigators do their jobs and make a determination in terms of who was responsible for carrying out these heinous acts.

I can tell you that my administration will remain steadfast in support of India's efforts to catch the perpetrators of this terrible act and bring them to justice. And I expect that the world community will feel the same way.

I don't think this is what Obama intended to communicate, but here's how the Times of India is reporting it -- as if the president-elect had issued a "tacit endorsement" of India "bombing terrorist camps in Pakistan" under certain circumstances:

Sovereign nations have the right to protect themselves, US President-elect Barack Obama said on Monday, when asked if India could follow the same policy he advocated during his election campaign — of bombing terrorist camps in Pakistan if there was actionable evidence and Islamabad refused to act on it.

Although Obama said he did not want to comment on the specific situation involving India and Pakistan, his tacit endorsement of New Delhi adopting the same policy was circumscribed by two caveats: first, let the investigators reach definite conclusions about the Mumbai carnage, and second, see if Pakistan will follow through with its commitment to eliminate terrorism.

That's a bit of a stretch. Now, for the good news: Despite the palpable anger in India and word that India's security status has reached a "war level," no troops are moving to the border with Pakistan as they did after the attacks on the Indian Parliament in late 2001.

Unnamed Pakistani military officials seem eager to let it be known that they are ready and willing to give up the fight against militants in the tribal areas. The News reports from Islamabad:

All main militant groups fighting in Fata, from South Waziristan to Bajaur and from Mohmand to the Khyber Agency, have contacted the government through different sources after the Mumbai bombings and have offered a ceasefire if the Pakistan Army also stops its operations.

And as a positive sign that this ceasefire offer may be accepted, the Pakistan Army has, as a first step, declared before the media some notorious militant commanders, including Baitullah Mehsud and Maulvi Fazlullah, as "patriotic" Pakistanis.

These two militant commanders are fighting the Army for the last four years and have invariably been accused of terrorism against Pakistan but the aftermath of the Mumbai carnage has suddenly turned terrorists into patriots.

A top security official told a group of senior journalists on Saturday: "We have no big issues with the militants in Fata. We have only some misunderstandings with Baitullah Mehsud and Fazlullah. These misunderstandings could be removed through dialogue."

Baitullah Mehsud, let's recall, is the tribal leader accused of masterminding the murder of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Some "misunderstanding."

Interpreting some earlier statements by Pakistani officials about shifting troops to the eastern border, the Times of India says the following:

Stripped of complexities, Pakistan is conveying the following message to the US: If you don't get India to back down, Pakistan will stop cooperating with US in the war against terror.

It's amazing how quickly India appears to be falling into the terrorists' trap.

It seems obvious that Pakistan's civilian government, led by President Asif Ali Zardari, has no interest in stirring up trouble between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. And it seems equally obvious that any elements of the ISI, Pakistan's notorious intelligence service, who might have been in some way involved in the attacks in Mumbai would have done so in order to undermine rapprochement between Islamabad and New Delhi.

As for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Kashmir-focused militant group has made clear that it aims to provoke conflict between India and Pakistan and stir up a pro-Islamist backlash among Muslims in India.

Yet one can already see public anger in India leading political developments in a direction the terrorists wanted. Some Indian politicians have been less than careful in saying the terrorists were sent by Pakistan, the state, rather than that they came from Pakistan, the country (which hasn't even been confirmed yet, anyway). India is considering halting talks over Kashmir and ending the five-year cease-fire along the Line of Control. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has vowed to "go after" those responsible for the attacks, which could box him into the dangerous step of taking action against Lashkar-e-Taiba within Pakistan-held territory.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's hackles are up, its military leaders raising the alert levels of their forces and threatening to divert troops from the Afghan border to the eastern border with India. Zardari's about-face on sending ISI chief Ahmad Shuja Pasha to New Delhi is clearly a response to domestic pressure after Indian newspapers said Pasha was being "summoned." Similarly, the more vocally India calls on Zardari and Army Chief of Staff Ashfaq Kayani to crack down on militancy, the tougher politically it will be for them to do so lest they be seen as doing New Delhi's bidding.

In India, the same sort of perverse dynamics are at work. Already, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is making political hay out of the terror in Mumbai. The party has been running newspaper ads saying, "Fight Terror. Vote B.J.P." Instead of rallying behind Singh's government, the BJP has instead called for its resignation and accused Singh of being soft on terror. These tactics may well backfire, but based on the BJP's history of populist, anti-Muslim rhetoric, we should be concerned about its return to power.

Cranking up the pressure on Pakistan may fit the public mood in India -- and it may be smart politics for Singh and his ruling Congress Party -- but it is folly as policy.

Who benefits in Pakistan when tensions with India rise? Precisely the anti-democratic hardliners in the military and intelligence services, and the Islamic hardliners who are their sometime allies, that India should want to see marginalized. As one South Asia analyst told Reuters, "The forces that are threatening the West, the forces that are threatening the civilian democracy in Pakistan and the forces who are acting against India are all interlinked to each other."

We should pray that Singh has the wisdom and the political acumen to navigate this minefield more skillfully than he has thus far.

The Hindu reports on the latest from Mumbai:

Maharashtra Police investigators say they have evidence that operatives of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba carried out the fidayeen-squad [suicide-squad] attacks in Mumbai — a charge which, if proven, could have far-reaching consequences for India-Pakistan relations.

Police sources said an injured terrorist captured during the fighting at the Taj Mahal hotel was tentatively identified as Ajmal Amir Kamal, a resident of Faridkot, near Multan, in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

Highly-placed police sources said two other Pakistani nationals had also been held in the course of intense fighting on Thursday.

All three, the sources said, identified themselves as members of a Lashkar fidayeen squad.

Based on the interrogation of the suspects, the investigators believe that one or more groups of Lashkar operatives left Karachi in a merchant ship early on Wednesday. Late that night, an estimated 12 fidayeen left the ship in a small boat and rowed some 10 nautical miles to Mumbai’s Gateway of India area.

The investigators say the fidayeen unit of which Mr. Kamal was a part then split up into at least six groups, each focussing on a separate target: Mumbai’s Nariman House, which is home to a large number of Israeli families and a Jewish prayer house; the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus rail station; the Cama hospital; the Girgaum seafront; and the Taj and Trident Oberoi hotels.

As usual, treat such early, anonymous reports with caution.

One must always be suspicious when a "new" terrorist organization crops up. Today's horrific attacks in Mumbai were claimed by a previously unknown group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen. But one India journalist claims the pattern of the attacks suggests that Lashkar-e-Taiba, a nasty Islamist organization based in Lahore, Pakistan, and with a significant presence in Kashmir and links to al Qaeda, may be to blame.

Here's where it gets interesting -- and I stress here that I am just speculating. Lashkar-e-Taiba's main goal is to expel India from Kashmir. In the past, some have accused elements of the Pakistani military and intelligence services of having ties to the group. Pakistan's government has always hotly denied such accusations.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has in recent weeks moved closer to the United States, made some significant gestures toward India, and moved to shut down the political wing of the ISI, Pakisan's powerful intelligence service (that's the unit that tries to steal elections). How likely is it that some angry "rogue elements" of the ISI, aligned with Kashmiri jihadists and a team of Indian domestic extremists, sought to head off these moves? I have no idea, but it's definitely a theory worth exploring.

There's another more straighforward explanation for today's attacks -- revenge. A group calling itself the "Indian Mujahideen" has claimed responsibility for attacks in a number of different cities over the past several months. The Indian Mujahideen sent a warning in September expressing anger over recent raids by the city's antiterrorism squad (ATS). Today's message from the Deccan Mujahideen appears to be identical:

You should know that your acts are not at all left unnoticed; rather we are closely keeping an eye on you and just waiting for the right time to execute your bloodshed. We are aware of your recent raids at Ansarnagar, Mograpada in Andheri and the harassment and trouble you created there for the Muslims.

"You threatened to murder them and your mischief went to such an extent that you even dared to abuse and insult Maulana Mahmood-ul-Hasan Qasmi and even misbehaved with the Muslim women and children there.

"If this is the degree your arrogance has reached, and if you think that by these stunts you can scare us, then let the Indian Mujahideen warn all the people of Mumbai that whatever deadly attacks Mumbaikars will face in future, their responsibility would lie with the Mumbai ATS and their guardians - Vilasrao Deshmukh and R R Patil. You are already on our hit-list and this time very very seriously."

The chief of Mumbai's ATS was killed in a gun battle with some of the attackers today.

UPDATE: On CNN just now, terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna says that the Indian Mujahideen are most likely to blame, and they are the same group as the Deccan Mujahideen. "No other group has the capability," he said, emphasizing the group's strength in Mumbai. He also pointed out that such attacks would have taken months of planning.

A quick follow-up to yesterday's post on the inaccurate reports in the Pakistani media claiming that FP had named Karachi's mayor "the second best mayor in the world":

The Dawn newspaper, which gave prominent placement to the original inaccurate story, have now run a second story that quotes FP's Media Coordinator Jina Hassan setting the record straight.

According to Dawn's site, the story is the newspaper's most read and most e-mailed item today, so hopefully this clarification should put an end to the whole mess. Although the amusing headline, "Magazine denies declaring Kamal 2nd best mayor," kind of makes it sound like this is a matter of opinion.

We invite anyone who's still confused to just read the original piece.

One of my responsibilities here at Foreign Policy is manning the "FP Editor" e-mail account. It's always fun to come in in the morning and see how readers around the world are reacting to what we print. Sometimes, the reactions can be a bit strange, though.

Yesterday, we started receiving e-mails from readers and journalists in Pakistan asking for comment on reports that we had named Karachi's mayor, Mustafa Kamal, "the second best mayor in the world." This would be an understandable query if we had actually said anything of the sort.

At issue is a sidebar from FP's recent Global Cities Index that names Kamal, Berlin's Klaus Wowereit, and Chongqing's Wang Hongju as "mayors of the moment" who have found innovative ways to globalize their cities. The mayors are not ranked, nor are we implying that they are objectively "better" than any other mayors, but that didn't stop the Karachi city government from issuing a press release on its Web site (they've changed the text since being contacted by FP) congratulating Kamal for being the No. 2 mayor in the world. For the record, the three names are not listed in any particular order.

Pakistan's biggest English-language newspaper, Dawn, then printed a glorified transcription of the mayor's press release by the government-controlled Associated Press of Pakistan as a front-page story without ever checking with us to see if it was accurate.

According to the e-mails we've received, the inaccurate story has been widely reported on Pakistani TV, radio, and blogs. Most absurdly, Karachi's city council apparently held a heated debate over whether to pass a resolution congratulating Kamal for the honor we allegedly bestowed on him. Judging by today's e-mails, the efforts of some blogs to correct the story only seem to have confused readers more.

According to one reporter, who unlike Dawn contacted us for comment, "Karachi is riddled with banners by the local government, congratulating Mr. Kamal for being declared as second best mayor of the world by the Foreign Policy."

We hate to rain on Kamal's parade, and certainly intend him and his city no disrespect, but we simply never ranked him in any way. This entire mess could have been avoided with some very basic fact-checking.

This autumn, an ancient trade route that crosses the disputed Kashmiri border between India and Pakistan opened after being closed 61 years ago, when the two countries broke free of the British Empire. Many hope the opening of the trade route, in a bitterly disputed Himalayan region, will boost the economy on both sides of the “Line of Control” that divides the territory. In the photo above, the first truck carrying goods from the Pakistani side rumbles across the bridge to the Indian side.

For Kashmir's artisans, famed for their rugs, copper bowls, and other handicrafts, the opening of the trade route is a sign of hope. Check out some of their beautiful creations and learn more about the trade route in this week's photo essay, "Making Peace, One Trinket at a Time."

TAUSEEF MUSTAFA/AFP/Getty Images

I'm pretty sure it would be illegal for Barack Obama to accept these funds. And perhaps a nonpartisan appeal to the next president would be wiser at this point. Still, it's a very enterprising idea from a bunch of young teens in Peshawar -- give us "books and pens," not "bombs and missiles":

A group of schoolchildren in Peshawar collected 261 US dollars for 'Uncle Obama’s election campaign' in a bid to help restore peace in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and Frontier province of Pakistan.

Holding placards and charts inscribed with slogans for peace and 'No more war and bombings,' the school children, mostly aged between 10 and 13 years, denounced increasing incidents of blowing up of schools, bombing of residential areas and displacement of families in the Fata and the volatile Swat district of the Frontier province.

"Uncle Obama we expect peace from you," read one placard held by a 10-year-old boy. Another chart, shown by an 11-year-old girl, stated: "Let us smile and play." They appealed to Barack Obama, the Democratic party's nominee for office of the US president, to give them books and pens instead of bombs and missiles.

The schoolchildren said they planned to hand the money over to the local U.S. authorities to pass along to Obama.

In Friday's Morning Brief, I noted that a Pakistani judge had detained Judi Kenan, a 20-year-old U.S. citizen of Pakistani origin, for attempting to enter Mohmand Agency, a militant-dominated Pashtun district in Pakistan's tribal areas that is off-limits to foreigners. Kenan said he was visiting a friend in Mohmand, but didn't have his friend's address. He was found with a knife, according to his lawyer.

Mohmand Agency sounds like a lovely place to visit. New York Times reporter Jane Perlez visited a hospital there in 2007 and described the region as "a desolate landscape where women are strictly veiled." The local Taliban commander is a nasty fellow named Omar Khalid who has ties to terrorism stretching back before 9/11 and claims to have 3,000 fighters under his command. Several teenage suicide bombers in Afghanistan have been traced to the area.

As for Kenan, The News reports that he was "bearded" and "clad in traditional Pakistani dress" when he was apprehended. According to the Karachi-based newspaper, he had actually been living in Miriamzai, "a village located close to the volatile Matani and Badaber towns on the Peshawar-Kohat Road," where his father grew up. His mother is from Florida.

Curiously, U.S. news organizations don't seem to have picked up this story yet, perhaps because there is little information to be had. What I want to know is: Was Kenan just a naïve tourist exploring his ethnic homeland? Or was he going to Mohmand to receive some kind of training before returning to the United States on a mission? Does America, in short, have its own home-grown terrorism problem?

RIZWAN TABASSUM/AFP/Getty Images

Do we need another secret intelligence assessment to tell us that Pakistan is falling apart?

No.

If anything, that country's slow-motion collapse been reported to death over the past several months. Nonetheless, it's reassuring that the situation there is getting high-level attention in Washington.

Much has been made of Pakistan's troubles with terrorists and tribal militants, and there are lots of good ideas out there for how to address them. Less discussed? The country's economic meltdown.

As Fasih Ahmed reports for Newsweek, Pakistan's economy is in "free fall." The country's credit ratings are being slashed; creditors are making runs on banks; inflation is soaring; and capital is fleeing. If things continue to get worse, we may come to find that -- while the two issues are certainly related -- the global financial crisis did to Pakistan what the terrorists never could.

Barack Obama and John McCain like to disagree about Pakistan, as they did in the debate last night. Obama says yay to cross-border raids if key terrorists can be picked up or killed. McCain says nay, arguing that the soft talk/big stick approach will work better in a country where public opinion is already dangerously set against U.S. efforts.

But no matter how much both candidates mumble about fundamental differences with their opponent's approaches, each seems to agree on one thing: They expect that results in the war on terror can come sooner rather than later.

I'm about to ruin the party.

In Pakistan, not only are results are not only a long way off, but they are looking more and more elusive. Carnegie Endowment scholar Ashley J. Tellis offered this timeline in a policy brief earlier this fall:

Even if Islamabad were to overcome the immediate problems related to terrorism, the permanent transformation of Pakistan would be decades away."

Why so long? FP wanted to get a bit more nitty-gritty. So this morning, I chatted with Dexter Filkins of the New York Times, who has done sharp reporting for his book, The Forever War, in Iraq and subsequently in Pakistan.

The good news is, Pakistan is no Iraq. The bad news is, the timeline might be even longer. Sorry senators, but that might mean the victory fireworks will come long after the first term, if indeed they come at all.

Check it out.

President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan suprised quite a few with his comments about relations with India in a Wall Street Journal interview over the weekend:

When I ask whether he would consider a free-trade agreement with traditional archenemy India, Mr. Zardari responds with a string of welcome, perhaps even historic, surprises. "India has never been a threat to Pakistan," he says, adding that "I, for one, and our democratic government is not scared of Indian influence abroad." He speaks of the militant Islamic groups operating in Kashmir as "terrorists" -- former President Musharraf would more likely have called them "freedom fighters" -- and allows that he has no objection to the India-U.S. nuclear cooperation pact, so long as Pakistan is treated "at par." "Why would we begrudge the largest democracy in the world getting friendly with one of the oldest democracies in the world?"

Not only does Mr. Zardari want better ties with Delhi, he notes that "there is no other economic survival for nations like us. We have to trade with our neighbors first." He imagines Pakistani cement factories being constructed to provide for India's huge infrastructure needs, Pakistani textile mills meeting Indian demand for blue jeans, Pakistani ports being used to relieve the congestion at Indian ones. For a country that spent most of its existence trying to show that it's the military equal of its neighbor, the agenda amounts to a remarkable recognition of the strides India has made in becoming a true world power.

Zardari's description of the Kashmir rebels as "terrorists" rather than "freedom fighters" or "jihadis" as Pakistani politicians have traditionally referred to them was particularly controversial. Kashmiri seperatists responded by breaking curfew to protest and burn him in effigy. Zardari has since walked back his remarks somewhat, assuring the public that there's no change in Pakistan's Kashmir policy.

While it would be great if Zardari intended to get serious about normalizing relations with India, it seems like there might have been a bettter way to go about it than overturning decades of military policy through an off-the-cuff remark to an American reporter. Given how fragile his political position is, he might want to cover his flanks a bit more thoroughly before he makes another comment like this.

I was amused to see the BBC misquoting the new Central Command commander, Gen. David Petraeus, on the "existentialist threat" facing Pakistan:

You have heard the newly elected President Zadari. You've heard the army chief and others all recognise that this is in a sense an existentialist threat, this is a threat to Pakistan's very existence," the general added.

Of course, Petraeus actually said "existential threat," as the accompanying video shows, without the "-ist." He was referring to the Taliban and other militant groups.

But I wonder, what would an existentialist threat to Pakistan consist of? Suddenly, madrasa students are reading Sartre and Camus instead of memorizing the Quran and the Sunnah? Nihilism replaces Islamism as the reining ideology of tribal militancy? That, to me, sounds like positive change.

You know the situation is bad when people are fleeing to Afghanistan:

Fighting between Pakistani troops and militants in a tribal region has forced some 20,000 Pakistanis to seek refuge across the border in eastern Afghanistan, the U.N.'s refugee agency said Monday. [...]

According to Pakistani officials, the fighting in Bajur has displaced as many as 500,000 people. Most have found shelter with relatives across northwestern Pakistan, though about 100,000 have taken refuge in camps set up by Pakistani authorities.