Sifting through the reports there are two major bones of contention between the American point of view and the Pakistani perspective on things–the drones, and the “hideouts”.

US Point of view: The USA wants Pakistan to forget about India and focus its forces in Afghanistan. In effect Washington wants to outsource the Afghan war to Pakistan and wants to make sure that 500,000 of it regular army is used to quell the insurgency in FATA. For this the USA is willing to pay Pakistan $1.5 Billion Dollars per annum for the next decade.

Pakistan Point of view: Pakistan does not consider Afghanistan or Afghans its enemies. The main enemy for Pakistan is India. It cannot bank on US assurances that India will not attack Pakistan or try to destroy it. Indian machinations in Afghanistan are anti-Pakistan as are its current actions in Kashmir and the water disputes. The US has no credibility on any matter in Pakistan. The US attacks Pakistan at will ignoring its sovereignty causing huge hardship for the civilian casualties in FATA. The US has installed a pro-India and anti-Pakistan government in Afghanistan which has allowed India to use its territory against Pakistan. The threat to Pakistan from India is real.Kabul: The final assault begins-How long can NATO hang on? Pakistan considers them “hideouts” not “enclaves” or “sanctuaries”.

Indian Point of view: Kashmir is off the table. All terrorism emanates from Pakistan. There is no difference between “freedom fighters” and “terrorists“. India has legitimate interests in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has to convince Mr. Holbrooke that the Drone bombing is counterproductive, that the threats from India are real, that if the US is serious about this war it needs to immediately hand over 300 Cobra and Chinook choppers, 5000 nigh vision glasses etc and that the Marshall plan has to start sooner than later.

LAHORE, Pakistan — The American special envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke, wound down his whistle-stop tour of Pakistan on Wednesday with a brief visit to the lawless tribal areas, and then dinner with liberal intellectuals at a rooftop restaurant here in Lahore.

He had come to listen, not to lecture, Mr. Holbrooke said. What he heard was a familiar list of requests for more money and arms from Pakistan’s top leadership, as well as a litany of complaints about American airstrikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas using Predator drones.

Mr. Holbrooke’s trip to Pakistan, and his four-day tour of Afghanistan, which is scheduled to begin Thursday, was part of a top-to-bottom review of American policy in the region ordered by President Obama.

The challenge for the new administration is how to persuade a Pakistani military fixated on its archenemy India to reorient its troops to fight the Qaeda and Taliban insurgency that is engulfing the country.

Washington also wants to convince the poorly organized and almost bankrupt civilian government, led by President Asif Ali Zardari, that it must support the military in its counterinsurgency efforts by providing proper governance and development.

As part of his tour in the capital, Islamabad, Mr. Holbrooke met with Mr. Zardari; the military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani; and the head of Inter-Services Intelligence, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha.

Officials familiar with the conversations say Mr. Holbrooke was faced with universal opposition to the Predator strikes, which American officials say have helped disrupt the Qaeda network.

The Pakistanis insist that the drone strikes have killed civilians, further turned public feeling against the United States, and represent an infringement of their sovereignty.New York Times: In Pakistan, U.S. Special Envoy Finds Discontent By JANE PERLEZ, Published: February 11, 2009

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The job before Holbrooke is to manage these three points of view and also take into account the renewed Russian interest in Central Asia and Afghanistan. Can Holbrooke manager Pakistani fears with Indian suspicions and American interests. If Holbrooke tries to brush away threats to Pakistan, his proposal will be dead on arrival (DOA). If this presidential terms continues to be war of words between Islamabad and Washington, the Anti-Americanism will grow and Islamabad will wait out the American and NATO occupation ’till they get tired and leave. If Indian suspicious are not catered to, they will continue to try to destabilize Pakistan with covert and overt actions.

• Obama to unveil new policy: Marshal Plan & end to bombing raids in Pakistan
• Peek into Obama’s brains: Bruce Reidel on Pakistan
• Growing consensus in the Obama team: Much of Pakistan’s problems originate in Afghanistan
• Obama advisor Weinbaum predicts total Afghan policy review: Sees focus on talks & Reconciliation
• Afghanistan: Gen. Petraeus’ Pakistani advisers: Indians jittery
  Obama adviser Weinbaum gives deep insights into new Afghan policy

According to Bruce Reidel, Mullah Omar has promised NATO a safe passage out of Afghanistan, similar to what they had given the Soviets when they withdrew from Afghanistan.

On February 15, 1989, Commanding General Boris Gromov was the last Soviet soldier to leave Afghanistan, walking across the Friendship Bridge that connected that war-torn country with what was then Soviet Uzbekistan.

Nearly 15,000 soldiers, advisors, and other Soviet officials died during the war that Moscow launched in December 1979. Today, Gromov is convinced there are no military solutions to political problems in Afghanistan. He spoke at a recent Moscow news conference.

Gromov says force will accomplish nothing in Afghanistan, and notes that increasing or decreasing troop strength will only bring a negative result. The general says the best way to deal with Afghans is to reach an agreement with them. Voice of America

Taliban is Indefatigable: UK Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith . The Taliban are testing the defenses of Kabul. Another daring attack on Kabul rattles Karzai’s shakey regime.They are slowly executing more and more daring assaults on the most fortified capital on the planet. Afghanistan audacious attack: Karzai-Kabul weaknesses exposed . About a 100,000 trained soldiers guard the “Mayor of Kabul” and his entourage in the heart of  West Asia. Despite daisy cutters, and the most sophisticated arms known to man, this rag tag band of coarse men have kept the finest army in the history of the planet at bay. Today these cave dwelling, tobacco chewing, motor-cycle riding thugs who use donkeys for transportation and pigeons for communication control 80% of the the country formerly known as Afghanistan. The last days of the last “emperor”. The “Mayor of Kabul” is being replaced

Afghan defeat: Whose Spring offensive?

What, if anything, the Obama administration plans to do about the protests over the missile attacks was not clear, officials said.

A retired Pakistani general, Talat Masood, who attended a dinner in honor of Mr. Holbrooke at the American Embassy on Tuesday night, said he got the impression that there may be some effort by the Americans to make the drone strikes more palatable by conducting them as a joint operation.

The foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, called the attacks “counterproductive” and said that Pakistan and the United States would form a joint team of officials to review policy differences, including the missile attacks.

As well as voice opposition to the missile strikes, General Kayani asked for more equipment for the army’s counterinsurgency efforts, which the Pakistanis have long asserted they have been denied by Washington. “We are crying hoarsely,” General Kayani’s spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, said of the request that was made to Mr. Holbrooke.

Mr. Zardari, who is presiding over a crumbling economy on life support from the International Monetary Fund, made a major pitch for immediate American economic assistance, officials said.

On Wednesday morning, Mr. Holbrooke flew in a helicopter over the mountainous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where supplies for American and NATO troops in Afghanistan have come under attack from militants in recent months.

He was then flown over the Bajaur and Mohmand areas of the tribal belt, where the Pakistani Army is fighting the Taliban.

He landed at Ghalanai, the small town that serves as the capital of Mohmand, and heard from the government’s chief representative, Amjad Ali Khan, how the civilian authorities were using the persuasion of local tribes to bring young men who had joined the Taliban back into the fold.

But as the government was showing Mr. Holbrooke its best efforts against the insurgents, a car bomb killed a popular provincial legislator in Peshawar, the chaotic capital of the North-West Frontier Province. The politician, Alam Zeb Khan, was driving to inspect a development project in the city, his supporters said, when a remote-controlled bomb blew up his car.

For a sense of how the insurgency is affecting people, Mr. Holbrooke met in Peshawar with a group of women from nongovernment organizations.

A young woman who lived in Swat, an area where the army has virtually lost control to the Taliban, told Mr. Holbrooke how the Taliban had killed her husband. The women of Swat, she told him, were confined to their houses, were not allowed to go shopping, and lived in fear of the Taliban, who spread their message through FM radio.

Though Mr. Holbrooke was accompanied by the deputy commander of the United States Central Command, Maj. General John R. Allen, the high-profile visit by a civilian envoy could change the tone of the conversation with Pakistan, said Ahmed Rashid, the author of a recent book on Pakistan and Afghanistan, called “Descent into Chaos,” who attended the dinner with Mr. Holbrooke in the old town in Lahore.

“This is a complete sea change in what Pakistan is used to,” said Mr. Rashid, who was invited to Washington just before the inauguration to attend a small foreign policy dinner with Mr. Obama.

“There is a suspicion in the American establishment that the Pakistani Army has found it easier to pull the wool over the eyes of the American military. It will be harder to do that with the civilians.”

On Thursday, before leaving for Afghanistan, Mr. Holbrooke is scheduled to meet Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-N who served as prime minister twice in the 1990s.

Mr. Sharif holds some sympathies with the Islamic parties, and, as a rival of Mr. Zardari’s, he is considered an important figure for the Americans because he would like to maneuver his way to power in the coming year. New York Times: In Pakistan, U.S. Special Envoy Finds Discontent By JANE PERLEZ, Published: February 11, 2009

Seven Years in Afghanistan by Gary Leupp