Over the past week, while all eyes were focused on Libya and the Middle East, America's most frustrating, most turbulent, and least predictable bilateral relationship took a serious turn for the worse. I speak, of course, of Pakistan.
On April 11, the New York Times disclosed that Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of Pakistan's Army, had grown so angry over the growing reach of U.S. counterterrorism efforts that he was seeking to close down the drone flights that have targeted terrorists on the Pakistan side of the border with Afghanistan and to expel a large fraction of the CIA and special operations officers and contractors currently in the country. The same day, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, head of Pakistan's spy service, had made an emergency trip to Washington to deliver at least some of those demands in person. But on Wednesday, the United States launched more drone strikes, prompting Pakistan's Foreign Ministry to lodge a "strong protest" with the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. It was, in short, a really bad week.
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