The recent "Pakistan is a failed state" meme, heavily promoted by the Obama administration and its friends, had some of the intended results.

Pakistan's army is bombing and shelling some places in Lower Dir and Buner where the huge and fearsome TALIBOTHRA made an attempt to replace the hapless local government. The army will waste a lot of ammunition, many civilians and a few Pashtun fighters who never posed a real threat to Pakistan's Punjabi majority and the central government. After some fighting and reporting of big enemies-killed numbers to the U.S. the central government will agree to another deal with the locals there.

But the "failed state" meme certainly had an additional effect, likely unintended, to increase the believability of anti-U.S. conspiracy theories.

Yesterday the upper house of Pakistan's parliament discussed the current political situation:

PML-N Senator Raja Zafar-ul-Haq while taking part in the debate said that an anti-Pakistan environment was being created in the world with an impression that the nuclear assets were not in safe hands and that the country is an irresponsible state to pave way for depriving Pakistan from its nuclear assets. “A situation is being created so as to find an excuse to take control of the nuclear assets of the country”, the Senator said, adding that US had also said that Pakistan could be deprived of the nuclear programme if the situation worsened.

Zafar-ul-Haq is leader of the PML-N, the main-opposition party, not a backbencher. The fear of a U.S./Indian plot to get hands on Pakistan's (and Saudi Arabia's) nukes now seems to be a well established thought in Pakistan and certainly not without reason.

I am still unconvinced that it is the real intent behind the recent scare mongering. But who knows? The U.S. military certainly has plans for an 'emergency rescue' of Pakistan's nukes. But the chance of such an operation to be successful, even with some inside help, seems slim to me. Whether successful or not, the consequences would be huge, deadly and not restricted to Pakistan.

Let's hope that Obama does not fall for funny ideas over this issue.