POREG VIEW: If the right-wing British tabloid, the Express daily, is to be believed, the Cameron government is not convinced by the denials in Islamabad of an imminent military coup. This is not going to be sweet music to Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Gilani. In fact, the planned UK army mission to rescue ‘stranded’ British citizens working in Pakistan in the event of a crisis is a personal setback to him. Because, Gilani has made it his mission to publicly pooh-pooh the talk of a coup.  

It was the Mohajir leader, the London based Altaf Hussain, who had set the ‘coup’ ball rolling with his repeated calls to the army to take over the reins of the government once again. The immediate provocation for him was the targeted killings of his cadres in Karachi, and Gilani’s failure to lead the flood relief effort from the front. 

Clearly, the British government’s plan is not an empty rhetoric. It has created a data base of all British citizens working in Pakistan. They will be moved to a move to a safe place in the event of an emergency. The Afghan based elite British force, Special Air Service (SAS), is tasked to rescue them with in four hours of a crisis hitting Islamabad.

The message from the plan is clear. One Britain, and by extension, the West, are worried over the increasing fragility of Pakistan’s political system. Two Britain and again by extension, the West, are reluctant to depend on Pakistani agencies in the event of a crisis. Neither message is a good omen since global aid is not liberally flowing into the country and the Bretton Woods twins have popped up new conditionalities even to release the $2 billion loan committed under the standby arrangement (SBA) signed in 2008.