John Kerry is going to pilot a bill providing aid to Pakistan, and he does not like President Obama's policies on Pakistan.

Kerry is just back from a trip to Pakistan and his sharp criticism of Obama's topmost foreign policy priority has raised eyebrows here. Among his criticisms, he says its important for the civilian component to come in along with the military action, otherwise "The army (goes) in, they expend(ed) a lot of energy for us, some lives, and you know, nothing came in underneath it — absolutely nothing. So you're going to wind up with a bunch of folks who are going to hate you."

Unfortunately, thats actually completely true, but this is the way things have been going on for decades between Allah, Army and America. Partly because the army/government has been pocketing everything the Americans gave out, because ultimately their top priority is themselves. But equally because having given the money, US too absolved itself of any other responsibilities. Things have to be different now, everyone knows that, they just don't know how to get there. 

The churn is in full flow here but the ideas are really no different : Richard Holbrooke is hosting a "invite only" conference on Afghanistan in Washington on Thursday, but the speakers are almost all Washington's usual suspects. There are no Afghan-Afghans and no Pakistani-Pakistanis (Shuja Nawaz of the Atlantic Council doesn't count) and certainly no Indians. Much better will be a trilateral summit between US, Pakistan and Afghanistan in Washington early May, where US president Obama is believed to be readying himself for some old-fashioned head-banging.

The Talibanisation problem in Pakistan is the bigger problem , but everybody is afraid to say that what really needs to be done is Pakistan's entire institutions need to be rewritten. That bespeaks the kind of involvement and commitment impossible to guarantee from halfway across the world.

The problem with this lack of ideas is that they keep coming back to the old ones - "The only way that you are going to give the Pakistani government and armed forces the confidence to shift their focus is to address some of those areas of tension to try to reduce tension between the countries," Under Secretary of Defence for Policy, Michele A Flournoy, said at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on Tuesday. She also called for developing confidence-building measures between the two countries "to allow the sort of breathing space that would allow the folks on the Pakistani side to turn their attention to some of the internal challenges they face." The "deep historic distrust" between India and Pakistan, was coming in the way of the latter focusing on fighting the war against terrorism, she insisted while speaking about the Obama Administration's new Afghan-Pak policy.

Here, India is squarely to blame. South Block takes this brahminical approach to anybody asking for ideas - they even accompany it with a self-deprecating laugh so as to cover their inadequacies. and let opportunity after opportunity be squandered because they're so afraid to open their mouths.

The MEA mandarins living in their ivory tower also clam up with think tank wallahs in Delhi, so nobody really knows what the current thinking in the government is. Meanwhile, think-tanks too find it easier to recycle ideas, so nobody is really any wiser.

Meanwhile, the problem actually gets much worse.