A two card trick: How Pakistan’s crypto gambit and Nobel ploy turned Trump
The TOI correspondent from Washington: The ploy was plain and didn’t cost Pakistan a cent. By the simple expedient of massaging Donald Trump’s ego and playing on the US President’s long-stated desire for a Nobel Peace Prize as a “peace-maker,” Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir has manoevered his country back into the US calculus.In the process, he has trumped both his domestic rivals and Pakistan’s civilian leadership — by gaining recognition as the country’s de facto ruler — and New Delhi, which holds him responsible for triggering war with India by initiating the Pahalgam terrorist attack following an incendiary speech. “I was honored to meet him today,” Trump gushed after a private lunch he hosted for Munir in the White House….
