ARE the Pakistani authorities trying to lure the US back into Afghanistan as the Trump moment expands? That would be both ridiculous and self-defeating, but there`s negligible evidence for the proposition aired last week in a quadruple-bylined Drop Site News report.

Citing anonymous sources, it claims the `remarkable plan` for `a large-scale military campaign against Islamic State-linked groups` is `going hand in hand` with efforts to effectively decapitate the [PTI] by persuading its stalwarts to abandon all hope as far as Imran Khan is concerned.

The Drop Site bulletin recites Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain`s favourite notion that `private pressure from State Department diplomats` was instrumental in IK`s `removal of power by the military in 2022`. There`s no mention of the confidence motion he lost in parliament, which tolls the knell for heads of government in practically every democracy. Of course, it was engineered, but that`s true of all noconfidence motions pretty much anywhere in the world.

The report descends into contradictions and incoherence. The disappointing set-up in Pakistan is at loggerheads with the Taliban administration in Kabul, and inevitably alarmed at the activity of IS-K on the bordering region and beyond. Pakistan was chiefly responsible for the advent of the Taliban in the 1990s, but the resurgent variety is not beholden to Islamabad and it has responded positively to recent overtures from New Delhi.

The first incarnation of the Taliban, sponsored by Pakistan alongside Saudi Arabia, with US connivance, turned out to be a disaster. The second version is following the same path, albeit without Islamabad`s direct involvement. Reality does not match Drop Site`s illusions. Besides, there is little indication so far that US President Donald Trump has paid any attention to the Af-Pak region, beyond adding Afghanistan to the list of Joe Biden`s follies even though the former president was effectively following up on the preceding Trump administration`s Doha deal with the Taliban.

The doolallies at Drop Site cite CJCSC Gen Sahir Shamshad Mirza`s speech at a British think tank last August as evidence of `the Pakistani military`s pitch to pull the US back into the region`.

That would be a useless pitch to a president who is dedicated primarily to selfpreservation. Trump has other issues on his limited mind, but let`s hope no one mentions Kashmir in his presence, lest he add a `South Asian Switzerland` to a to-do list that already includes a Middle Eastern riviera in Gaza, to which Palestinians would never be able to return.The self-aggrandising dimwit at the helm of the world`s most powerful nation has thus far been focused on other regions.

He has faced little resistance domestically or internationally. Wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu was the first foreign leader to be hosted at the White House, followed by Japan`s prime minister. Narendra Modi sallies forth this week, and likeminded acolytes will no doubt follow. Modi appears to be unperturbed by the fact that deportees to India returned home in handcuffs and shackles. Alternative responses are exemplified by Colombia`s president Gustavo Petro, who sent his presidential plane to fetch deportees after refusing permission for US military flights to land.

Other Latin American leaders have fewer qualms about accommodating the obscene wishes of their northern neighbour. That obviously does not include Cuba, where US-occupied Guantánamo Bay has already begun to host deportees.

At home, Trump is busy depleting the government he now heads with the help ofhis co-president Elon Musk. In some spheres, that`s not necessarily cause for alarm. Destroying the FBI and perhaps even the CIA won`t do any harm. Likewise, the NSA, whose mass surveillanceEdward Snowden exposed. Biden did not include him among the substantial list of those he decided to pardoninhis last days as president. His family, though, was preemptively exonerated. And many of those who would have vocally resented any such attempt by Trump demurred.

The conga-line of supplicants from overseas will likely carry on. Pakistan`s leaders would love to clamber onto the bandwagon, but Trump has shown little interest in the region, amid his temptation for Gaza and lust for Greenland and Canada. None of this ought to be a surprise. Much of it was featured on his first-term wish list, yet remained unfulfilled. The second time, let`s see.

Americans opposed to Project 2025 are floundering in their efforts to resist the barrage of nuttiness that daily comes their way as policy is formulated via Truth Social, the website Trump set up after he was kicked off Twitter before it became X.

Trump will likely go down in history as a remarkable representative of a bizarre elite that struggled to find its feet. What comes next remains to be determined. • mahir.dawn @gmail.comEdward Snowden exposed. Biden did not include him among the substantial list of those he decided to pardoninhis last days as president. His family, though, was preemptively exonerated. And many of those who would have vocally resented any such attempt by Trump demurred.

The conga-line of supplicants from overseas will likely carry on. Pakistan`s leaders would love to clamber onto the bandwagon, but Trump has shown little interest in the region, amid his temptation for Gaza and lust for Greenland and Canada. None of this ought to be a surprise. Much of it was featured on his first-term wish list, yet remained unfulfilled. The second time, let`s see.

Americans opposed to Project 2025 are floundering in their efforts to resist the barrage of nuttiness that daily comes their way as policy is formulated via Truth Social, the website Trump set up after he was kicked off Twitter before it became X.

Trump will likely go down in history as a remarkable representative of a bizarre elite that struggled to find its feet. What comes next remains to be determined. • mahir.dawn @gmail.com