General Ashfaq Kiyani: the man who calls the shots in Pakistan: Times Online

Bronwen Maddox: Analysis

Is General Ashfaq Kiyani the most dangerous man in Pakistan? The most indecisive? Both?

The head of the Pakistan Army has done an about-turn from his quiet but shocking position that the Government’s appeasement of the Taleban in the Swat Valley was a necessary step — one that might even be the model for other confrontations inside Pakistan. His view, it has emerged in the year and a half since his appointment, is that the army was built to fight India, not Pakistanis. The Taleban, he seemed to suggest, was merely an uncomfortable phenomenon, which raised interesting, almost academic questions about how much to respect local culture. (A lot, seemed to be his answer, even if “local culture” meant the rules imposed by the Taleban).

Now, in public, Kiyani, right, has changed, apparently stung by Hillary Clinton’s denunciation of the lack of effort against the Taleban.

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