Is the ISI Behind Hina Rabbani Khar & Bilawal Zardari Scandal?

By Dean Nelson

South Asia Editor

The Daily Telegraph/ 27 Sep 2012

Claims of an affair between Hina Rabbani Khar, the 34-year-old glamorous foreign minister, and the 24-year-old scion of the country’s most powerful dynasty have fuelled feverish speculation and outrage in Pakistan since they were reported in a Bangladeshi tabloid earlier this week.

According to Blitz Weekly, the married foreign minister, who has two young children with her millionaire husband, and Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, the PPP co-chairman, want to marry and have been regularly talking on the telephone and sending one another cards.

The tabloid claimed President Zardari is firmly opposed to their alleged relationship and had sought details of their mobile telephone conversations to establish the facts.

As per Bangladeshi tabloid, The Blitz, Hina’s husband Firoze Gulzar had called up his wife, who is New York for the UN summit with Pakistan President Zardari, to seek clarification on the “scandal” being tossed around by the media. Tabloid says Hina and Bilawal appear to be on a collision course with their families over their desire to turn their love affair into marriage. The tabloid claims that Hina told her husband to send the link of the news story that he was referring to and Gulzar subsequently sent the same to his wife. When he called her up again, Hina reportedly asked him: “where did you get all of this rubbish stuff?” and cut the line.

However, Gulzar is said to have known about the secret relationship between his wife and Bilawal for a while now. He got suspicious when he realized that his wife was brining souvenirs for Bilawal on each of her foreign tours.

He also saw her spend long hours chatting on the internet with Bilawal. When he asked Hina about what was that made her spend long hours on the internet with Bilawal, his wife reportedly tried to convince him that she was discussing political and diplomatic issues with the president of PPP with the aim to enrich his knowledge.

The Blitz, which was the first to report the story, claims that Feorze was not convinced and tried to argue with Hina, to which she turned furious and warned him that she would leave him if he doesn’t change his attitude.

The seeds of the distrust between Hina and Gulzar were sown after Hina caught him having extra-marital affair with a female staffer in one of his business ventures, The Blitz claimed, adding that Hina was terribly shocked at the betrayal of her husband and had attempted to commit suicide by taking sleeping pills.

Hina also crossed swords with Bilawal’s father Zardari after he came to know about the contents of the romantic greetings card sent by his foreign minister to his son.

The Blitz says that the President immediately called Hina and expressed anger for her extra-marital affairs with his ‘minor son’, but Hina was unperturbed and replied in a harsh tone that Zardari was being mean and asked him to refrain from interfering in her personal affairs”.

When Bilawal came to know about his father’s rudeness towards his lady love, he threatened to leave the post of the chairman of PPP and leave the country by the end of the year. Hina would also resign by then and marry Bilawal, the report added.

The paper cited “western intelligence agencies” as the source of details of messages the ‘couple’ had sent each other.

Hina Rabbani Khar and her husband have dismissed the claims as “reprehensible” and “trash”, but they have been reported widely in Pakistan where they spawned conspiracy theories among Islamabad’s political classes.

Senior PPP figures on September 27 said they believed the claims were part of a plot by the country’s feared ISI agency to damage Rabbani Khar’s reputation because it blames her for her part in facilitating a UN investigation into thousands of missing people detained by the security forces.

One PPP official said that the ISI expects the United Nations’ Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances to recommend senior army and intelligence officials be charged for their role and blame Rabbani Khar for allowing the delegation into the country.

“They are not happy with her,” the official said. “The UN mission received a cold reception but Hina was called in by the president to meet him and the army chief. She crossed some red line.”

The government has not officially commented on the allegations.

Ms Rabbani Khar, the daughter of a powerful Punjab landowner, has been the subject of rumours concerning her private life since she first became a minister in General Musharraf’s government in 2004.

There was speculation then that she might marry the then prime minister Shaukat Aziz, but instead she married businessman Firoze Gulzar. She later stood as a PPP candidate in the 2008 elections and was appointed as finance minister in the new PPP-led government. She won many admirers for her stylish clothes and designer bags during her visit to India in 2011 where the two countries made significant progress in improving their relationship.

Yellow Journalism & An Immoral and Unethical Internet Attack on Khar

By William Gomes

Yellow journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury has recently propagated falsehood against Hina Rabbani Khar. He claims that Weekly Blitz is a tabloid newspaper published in Bangladesh every Wednesday but in reality it is not available in the market.

Yellow journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury has cheated many people among them two women who came in public and flashed his criminal face.

Brenda West wrote “Choudhury operates a shady website called Jethro Conglomerate, for which a scam alert has been posted by an organization that regulates the business dealings of the commodities Choudhury sells. (In case you are curious or are impressed with Choudhury’s interest in things Jewish, Jethro is the Hebrew word for Choudhury’s preferred moniker, Shoaib.)

Choudhury states on the Jethro Conglomerates website that he represents a company called Noca. Noca itself does not seem legitimate. It is not licensed. It provides no information about who owns or runs the company. The representatives they do list could be of interest to law enforcement. The Noca site says it is located in Canada but it gives an unpublished Nevada phone number. There is an odor of mobster activity connected with this enterprise, as well as Choudhury’s involvement in it. As we shall see in Choudhury’s published resume, Choudhury worked closely with the indicted mobster, Aziz Mohammed Bhai, who fled Bangladesh in 2009 to avoid imprisonment for various charges, including murder.”

Brenda West wrote “In June 2011 Tass (info@itar-tass.com) spokeswoman Lora Potopova confirmed in an email and subsequent phone conversation with this reporter that the wire service never had a bureau in Bangladesh, and had no record of employ for Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury — as a stringer or otherwise. Potopova reported that her thorough search of all Tass branches found no trace of Choudhury or a Tass office in Bangladesh. “

Using the banner of media outlet Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is running his criminal business for years.

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury has coined the falsehood. Weekly blitz is a part of a syndicate of Hindustan times. The propaganda was subsequently reported by Hindustan times and other India media

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury became successful in his plan when it was published in India and then he started lobbying with the friends in Bangladeshi media to get it reported in different media outlets.

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is deliberately running this falsehood against Hina Rabbani Khar and Bilawal Bhutto to be discussed by international media to use that discussion for further criminal business.

William Nicholas Gomes
80/ B Bramon Chiron, Saydabad,
Dhaka-1203, Bangladesh.
Cell: +88 019 7 444 0 666
E-mail:William [at] williamgomes.org,editorbd[at]gmail.com
Skype: William.gomes9

“Mr Speaker, please stop this yellow taxi from leaving the House,” Muslim League MP Sheikh Rashid Ahmed called out, as the then prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, left her seat to go out of Parliament. Benazir, then in her first term as PM (1988-90) and clad in a yellow kamiz shalwar suit with her trademark white duppata over her head, did not bother to respond as she exited.

PPP workers were livid; they worshipped the very ground Benazir walked on, and called her ‘Bibi’ out of reverence. It is another story that later Rashid Ahmed was jailed for possession of unlicensed weapons. At least he was safe from diehard PPP supporters.

Earlier, during the election campaign, the Muslim League had resorted to a ‘dirty tricks’ campaign against Benazir and her mother Nusrat, where their photographs were printed in newspapers in a crude cut-and-paste job. The man who had orchestrated that campaign was Hussain Haqqani, the former Pakistan ambassador to the US.

As coarse attempts are being made to defame foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar and the PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, it is the irresponsible social media that appears to be carrying on a systematic campaign to this end.

Contrarily, latest photographs showing Khar and President Asif Ali Zardari talking relaxedly at the UN General Assembly sessions speak louder than the tasteless stories being bruited around.

The real issue is not about the Bhuttos or Khars. It is that if you are young, beautiful and a high-profile female politician in Pakistan, you are a soft target for sick minds and their ‘dirty tricks’ that seek to damage your  reputation. Social media helps turn malicious gossip into scandals that turn viral on the net. These stories, where no distinction is made between movie stars and politicians, sell internationally. There are even sites dedicated to “beautiful Pakistani female politicians”.

Young and glamorous women politicians in Pakistan have been hounded for years. If it is Khar today and Benazir in the past, ambassador Sherry Rehman, parliamentarian Kashmala Tariq, speaker of the National Assembly Fehmeda Mirza and several others continue to be mired in unwanted gossip. All of these women ignore the rumours and continue to have successful careers.

In fact, when Khar first came into the assembly, she refused to be put into a ‘zanana dabba’ or ‘special women’s compartment’. When asked by Newsline what she would do for women’s rights, an inexperienced Khar said, “My father got me elected from a general seat. In our country, both men and women have issues that need to be resolved. Neither have what you may consider basic rights—the right to clean drinking water, the right to enough water to irrigate their lands, the right to basic health and sanitation facilities, the right to educate themselves, the right to have access to electricity and roads. Let us please try to give them these rights and then we can talk about women’s rights and men’s rights.”

It is common sense that most voters who have reposed their faith in  women leaders in the region are uneducated and illiterate. But at no time have they ever stooped low and spread vile canards about them. Never have they shown such inclination to gossip or scandal.

“In fact, it is this post-modern era, with its high-tech social media, controlled and consumed by the educated and the so-called liberals, that is responsible for targeting high-profile women, whether they are in politics or in other fields. You will not see an ordinary party worker in Pakistan ever discussing such trash. Whether Benazir Bhutto, Indira Gandhi or Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the majority of their supporters were illiterate but had more grace than the class that goes around as the ‘educated’ today,” says TV host and columnist Nusrat Javeed.

Recently, another very young politician, Iman Hazir Mazari, daughter of the well known Dr Shireen Mazari, left Imran Khan’s Tehreek e-Insaf. Amongst other reasons for her resignation is her continuous, abusive hounding in the social media. Mazari is barely 20.

“One thing I have put up with for the past six months is abuse and character assassination. My self-respect and principles are more important to me than a party that continues to attack me. Being called a ‘prostitute’, or hearing/reading insults regarding my late grandfather by PTI workers is unacceptable. Yes, I wear what I want and I live my personal life the way I want to—that is between me and myself; no one…will ever have a right to comment on it. I will never make any apologies for the way I choose to live my personal life,” she wrote on her blog.

The ‘story’ involving Khar and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was first planted in an obscure Bangladeshi publication. Needless to say, the merely dressed up gossip  was handled in an unprofessional manner. No attempts were made to get the viewpoint of the subjects. The publication might have sold well, but in the process the publishers sacrificed and traduced all principles of journalism.

As expected, Indian publications and broadcast media picked the story up, as befits their obsession with Khar’s ‘glamorous looks’. In this case, the ‘glamour’ surrounding the gossip involving Khar and Bilawal was lapped up greedily, as both are highly saleable. It was the Indian media that went berserk over Khar’s looks, apparel and accessories when she visited New Delhi in July 2011.

However, in Pakistan itself, the report has been roundly rubbished. No newspaper or TV channel has touched it. They know fully that it is trash, and have treated it as such. The government so far has not even dignified it with a response. Khar has not only been the country’s youngest and first female foreign minister, but one of the successful ones at that. Her diplomacy and handling of her portfolio has been lauded in the corridors of power in various countries, whether Washington DC, Kabul or Berlin.

It is quite clear that these speculations started when Khar was in New York to represent Pakistan in the UN general assembly, and was designed to divert attention to her equation with Zardari, who is also there as head of state. It’s also significant that her visit as foreign minister comes at a very crucial point in Pakistan-US relations. Also, Khar has recently had a very successful trip to Berlin, and stole the thunder from her Indian counterpart in Islamabad during bilateral talks in early September.

On the eve of the general elections, political opponents know how such a scandal could damage Khar’s image in her conservative constituency. Pakistani foreign ministers have rarely returned to parliament, as they remain out of touch with voters due to constant travel. Khar had an advantage as her father, a seasoned parliamentarian, was doing much of the work at the ground level.

Hina Rabbani Khar Denies Army ISI Role in Foreign Policy Making

by Shehrbano Taseer

The surname of 33-year-old Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar usually walks into the room before she does. She is the niece of Ghulam Mustafa Khar, a colorful former chief minister and governor of thePunjaband one of the founding members of the PPP, to which she now belongs. “He is essentially the whole Khar name,” that, she says, is “obviously misinterpreted” with the concept of feudalism. “I refuse to be hurt by anything which is mine,” she say of her name, “I think one should be proud of whatever they are.”

Khar may hail from a wealthy, politically-connected landowning family, but don’t call her a feudal. “I can tell you that some people who are rural based—I don’t want to call them feudal—are much more sensitive to the needs of people, it’s like a big family. You feel ownership. If they have a problem, it’s your problem.”  “I don’t agree with these stereotypical definitions, the truth is often different.”

The fifth of eight siblings, Khar is closest to her father, Ghulam Rabbani Khar, and describes herself as a Daddy’s Girl.

She has a degree in economics from the Lahore University of Management Sciences and one in hospitality management from U-Mass, Amherst. It was at LUMS where she met her polo-playing textile-scion husband, Feroze Gulzar, with whom she has two daughters she drops at school every morning. “My husband is very good about this,” she says about her decision not to take his name after marriage, “in fact, he was upset when his sister changed hers.”

After college Khar tried her hand at business, but her orchids export business to Germany was short-lived even if it was, she says, a “great experience.” A few years later she set up Lahore’s Polo Lounge with Asma Ramday, daughter-in-law of a recently retired Supreme Court justice. “I was at the Polo Club one day—I used to play polo—and the club’s president was talking about having a restaurant open there. So we bid for it, we lost, and then we rebid.” The venture is doing well and just opened a branch in Islamabad, but Khar has not been greatly involved. “I’ve been busy,” she says. “I was choosing a bit of design stuff, furniture, paint. It’s a 24-hour job running a restaurant and my poor partner has been running the show. I will make up for it when I get the time.”

Her time has been taken up by politics, which, she says, “just happened.” Khar’s father couldn’t contest the 2002 elections because he never went to college—a requirement under the then rules—and tapped her to run. “This common myth, that only if there is no older boy can a daughter emerge politically, doesn’t hold true for my family,” she says. She won her National Assembly seat in 2002 with a small three-figure lead, her father and older brother having stumped in their conservative hometown of Muzaffargarh for her. “I am not hiding that I did not campaign for myself. That’s it. That’s the reality,” she says. Six years later she did campaign, and she won by a 34,082-vote margin—a virtual landslide. “If that isn’t good enough then I don’t know what is,” she says, referring to criticism of her as a privileged political ingénue.

Khar points out that her storied uncle, Mustafa, hasn’t won an election for the past 20 years. “I was not in the PPP before because my uncle was, and politically we had never gotten along, so we almost had to be in a different party from him,” she says. Khar was a member of President Musharraf’s economic team that oversaw a uniquely prosperous five years for Pakistan. She joined the PPP after the pro-Musharraf party, Pakistan Muslim League (now part of the coalition government in Islamabad) denied her a ticket. “The PPP certainly goes out of its way to pick up serious and hardworking women who are qualified and dedicated,” she says, speaking specifically about the National Assembly speaker, Fahmida Mirza.

Khar has focused much of her legislative attention on economic affairs. She has put together a policy framework to narrow the gap between donor demands and the requirements of the government. “Donors must make sure foreign assistance coming intoPakistanis not driven by what the flavor of the month is at their headquarters, but what the government ofPakistanhas outlined,” she says. And she’s lobbied successfully to make the statistics division an autonomous, depoliticized body. “In foreign policy and in economic policy you need a bit of consistency,” she says. For a country that has had five finance ministers over the last three years, this may be a tall order. And she is quick to acknowledge the problem. “International lenders are not exceptionally happy about it, but neither are we,” she says.

She is none too pleased with the off-topic reviews of her first big test as foreign minister either. Khar met her Indian counterpart, S. M. Krishna, inNew Delhilast month in the first formal, minister-level engagement since the 2008 Mumbai attacks. What made headlines, however, were the semiotics, not the substance, of the talks. “Whatever goals and expectations we went with toIndia, we achieved,” she says. This includes a commitment toward facilitating greater trade and travel between Pakistan- and Indian-administered parts ofKashmirand keeping the talks going. Instead, what made headlines on both sides of the border were her accessories: the Cavalli shades, the Mikimoto pearls, the diamond bracelet—and that $10,000 handmade Birkin bag.

“People were calling it the Ministry of Fashion Affairs,” says Khar, “I am very comfortable with the fact that I am much more than that.” Khar defines herself by what she brings to her work as a minister. “You have to work twice as hard being a woman in our society.” Pakistani op-ed writers have used Birkin-gate to paint Khar as an out-of-touch prima donna, criticizing her for being too young, too pampered, too much of an establishment girl. Blogging for Gloria Steinem-founded Ms. magazine, one accused her of “moral profligacy” and for never “advocating for Pakistani women.” The writer went on to dub her ascension to foreign minister, risibly and dramatically, as something that “forever maligns feminism inPakistan and other Muslim countries.”

Does she see herself as a role model for Pakistani women? “I don’t know if I can answer that, others will have to see if I am,” she says. Khar, who is not one for high-decibel publicity, has avoided using sound bites to shine a light on her and her family’s work for women. “I feel what really makes a difference, and this is something I’m proud of, is the school my mother is running for 200 girls in our village,” she says. “I was being interviewed and someone said, ‘Your father is against schools,’ and I started laughing and thought, poor thing, he’s the one who’s managing it.” Khar has also set up a vocational training center to economically empower women in her village. “We sell hand-embroidered work to nationwide labels like Khaadi, the women get great returns,” she says. “For me, that is real societal change.” Khar hopes to expand this not-for-profit business beyond her village.

Khar has also been accused of having been handpicked by Pakistan’s powerful Army, which runs the country’s defense and foreign policies, as a sort of Manchurian foreign minister. “The Army does not run our foreign policy,” she says, firmly. “They are important stakeholders and not an outside force, so we should stop viewing them as such. After all the institutions are taken onboard, a view emerges, and that is the government’s view, which is Pakistan’s view.” What of the Army and Inter-Services Intelligence’s historical ties with militant groups, especially those fighting in Indian-administered Kashmir? “We sometimes overrate the role of the military and overrate their intentions especially when it comes to India,” she says. “Let’s not be burdened by our history. Let’s move forward. I think Pakistan has learnt its lessons.”

Some of those lessons will show in how Khar, as foreign minister, manages relations with Afghanistan, theU.S., andIndia. For her, Afghanistan is the most pressing matter. After the Soviets left in the 1980s, “we were left to pick the pieces, we were left with 3 million-plus Afghan refugees to take care of, who have become a part of our country and system, and there have been so many issues that have erupted as a result,” she says. “Anything that happens there will cross over, just look at how Pakistan has been bogged down by what has been happening in Afghanistan for the past 30 years.” What she would like to see happening alongside theU.S.pullout is for the emergence of a “sovereign, independent Afghanistan at peace with itself no matter who is in power.”

Khar also wants to redefine relations with theU.S., its biggest aid donor. “This aid syndrome is overemphasized, given too much importance and misrepresented,” she says. “It undermines Pakistan’s importance when you say that assistance from theU.S.is all that defines our relationship, there is more to our relationship than just what comes in.” She categorizes the recent up and down in relations with the US as “operational problems” and maintains that things are not as bad as are being reported in the press. “It is important to go through some difficult phases, as we are going through right now, to get some clarity for the future so that your relationship is not forever defined by lack of clarity and lack of understanding of real expectations. We should stop talking about the disappointments, because those are on both sides.”

Khar likes to keep it simple. “We really overcomplicate things for ourselves in this country,” she says. “I tell my people at the Foreign Office that when we enter a meeting we must have two objectives that we want to achieve by the end of it, not 20. If we think everything is a priority then we mean nothing is a priority.” This outlook seems to have served her well on her India visit. “The dialogue process with India should be uninterrupted and uninterruptable, and the environment we found there was exceptionally healthy. That to me was the biggest confidence-building measure.”

The success she finds in her new job will depend on forces beyond her control but not beyond her ken. In her focus and quiet-mannered stride toward the possible, she will have deserved that place on the Foreign Office wall as much if not more than any man before her.

To comment on this article, email letters@newsweek.pk

Why Does Masood Hasan Criticize Hina?

By Masood Hasan      

HRK – Hina Rabbani Khar is drop dead gorgeous.

Her three day fashion onslaught has left the Indians gasping for breath and ambulances howling all over the countryside.

Here we are crooning with delight – the men exchanging high fives, the women – the sensible ones that is, shaking their heads slowly from side to side.

Is HRK the nuclear device that we promised we’d explode over the Indian capital? Have we scored a major diplomatic victory over arch enemyIndia? Is HRK going to lead the country armed with nothing but a Hermes bag and change global policies with a snap of her diamond encrusted fingers? As the euphoria subsides and her Birkin bag is safely stowed away along with her undoubtedly large Hermes collection, we, the ordinary riff-raff of this despondently poor country need to take a good long look at the events surrounding her visit. If we don’t, rest assured the lollypops inIslamabadcertainly won’t. Introspection is not as fashionable as Roberto Cavalli shades.

Let’s get one thing straight. One dresses for the occasion. Anyone recall Angelina Jolie’s ‘designer’ outfits on her many visits to the Afghan camps? There is a time and place for all things. I think HRK didn’t quite get that right. She has many things going for her but maturity and a sense of balance seem to be virtues that Pakistan’s new foreign minister does not care about much.

It is amazing that the old hands at Hotel Scherezade that masquerades as Pakistan’s foreign office thought little of actually ‘briefing’ Lady Bond before she flew in her special aircraft to New Delhi. (No PIA please. That’s for the plebs). Did anyone tell her what precisely was her mission, if any on her maiden voyage to India? I doubt it. While she must have spent an enormous amount of time choosing her wardrobe and accessories – she has a talent for accessories as a gushing designer confided, one wishes there were men or women who could have briefed her on how she must conduct herself – but this is unlikely in a country where ‘yes sir, yes sir, three bags full’, is the most successful strategy.

As it is the ‘success’ of her trip is best summed up in the joint communiqué glued eternally together with Fevikol, the wonder Indian adhesive, that both sides will stick to their points of view. As before one might add. Sure we can talk till the cows come home but that much has more or less been there almost always, so those crooning about a ‘great diplomatic victory’, need a knock on the head administered by Mr Ijaz Butt. Having demolished cricket, he now has the world’s largest bat collection.

Indiamay be many things to many people but even the most vitriolic Indian-haters grudgingly accept that our two countries are now worlds apart – poles apart will no longer do justice to the real on-ground situation.

The Indians are suave diplomats and they manage – with all its warts, the world’s largest democracy.

Whether this is for public consumption or genuinely felt, there is a strong current of simplicity that runs across Indiaand does not require 3-D glasses to see. All of us who have travelled to Indiahave been surprised by their casual attitude to attire given most days. We who are so class and caste conscious on the other hand must display all the banal outer vestments since we value these far more than any principles.

The Indians thus dress so simply that you can mistake them for minions whereas they may be billionaires. They go to work in loose sandals and creased trousers or faded jeans but sit and make strategic decisions that run into billions of dollars and have the power to change the direction of their huge country. Simplicity is not a put on like our constant bowing and scraping to the Maker without any meaning or sincerity. Our rulers and high stake rollers live in mansions of glory. Indians richer than their counterparts here live in modest homes. Retired generals there live in small houses or high rise flats whereas our medal laden over-fed blobs lord it over topping all records of ostentation. Time and again you are flattened by this simplicity on display in India– if it’s a put on, my God they should give a Lifetime Achievement Award to all the affluent and influential people who live there.

It is in this context that one finds HRK’s jaunt into India nauseating and in gross bad taste. Did she go to a tense foreign ministers’ meeting or launch a fashion show? Did she read up on India? She represents an impoverished country, now permanently and shamelessly begging day and night for sustenance, for alms, for mercy to keep Ms Khar and her ilk in clover. She is part of one of the most disastrous governments it has been our misfortune to have – incompetent, brazen, cruel and corrupt. When it is knocked out sooner or later, no one will shed tears for the fallen leaders who have given loot and plunder a new dimension adding to that great robbery repertoire fine tuned to an art by their predecessors.

HRK’s government boasts of a two percent growth rate against India’s nine percent, has no power or gas and soon will have no water. It groans under loans, yet gives walloping funding to keep the ‘khakis’ happy, depriving millions of men, women and children such basics as health, education and sanctity of life yet live like kings. Its representatives like HRK and 24 other ministers in 2010 paid no income tax because they were poor. HRK coughed up Rs 7,500 agricultural tax and declared that she couldn’t even afford a car! I suppose BMWs and Mercs must fall under the ‘donkey’ category.

She should have perhaps studied tapes on Sonia Gandhi who is always in cotton saris, her hair pulled back and with hardly any make up. You would not catch Sonia dead with a garish and ridiculously priced, diamond-laden wrist watch (Arab style) or pricey south sea pearls and $ 900 Jimmy Choo shoes, but then that’s Sonia and this is Hina – chalk and cheese with Devonshire in between. When the PM who spends more time on his clothes than on the pressing needs of his wretched country went to Paris and called upon the French president, he ensured that he was all trussed up in a reportedly $ 10,000 suit. Lady Bond, although it was evening had her designer shades perched on top of her pretty head. Babes out partying might do so for a lark but FMs with feudal blood coursing through their veins should avoid such nonsense. What a fantastic thing it would have been had she chosen to dress most simply, travelled by her national airline and told the Indians that she was here, in all humility and sincerity to move on and build bridges for the generations ahead. She should have said my country is struggling – with terrorism, suicide bombers, law and order, the Afghan problem, a poor economy and so on but that we would prevail if there is peace.

But then this is the stuff dreams are made of. In real life nothing like that happens – not here and we lost yet another opportunity to tell the world we are not shallow buffoons and idiots.

Pakistanis are blaming the Indian media and Ms Khar left Islamabad in a huff, but when you set yourself up as she did, what is the media going to make of that? The ‘fash frat’ as one Indian newspaper said, had a field day and we had the customary egg on our face.