So I wanted to relive my formative days and started going through Steve Colls book, Ghost Wars, which has something to say on the events leading up to coup. Apparently, without the knowledge of Pak army chief, CIA had helped the head of ISI to set up an armed unit that was to go and take out OBL. Needless to say, ISI head was a Sharif family flunkey who was double crossing CIA as well Pak army high command! See for yourself:
"At the same time Sharif appointed General Khwaja Ziauddin as the new chief of Pakistani intelligence. This, too, was an overtly political decision. Ziauddin had made his career in the engineering corps, a section of the military that rarely produced army leaders. But he had married into a wealthy, connected family in Lahore, and he was a frequent social visitor at the sprawling Model Town estate of Nawaz Sharif’s influential father. It was a violation of army protocol for a rising general to allow himself to become visible socially, especially under the wing of a civilian political family like the Sharifs. Still, Sharif’s father tapped Ziauddin as a favored brigadier, and he won an appointment to army headquarters, where he worked with the country’s top-secret nuclear program. When Sharif sent him in the fall of 1998 to run ISI, Ziauddin was widely regarded as an emissary and protector of the prime minister.
....But many of Clinton’s senior aides and diplomats, especially those who knew Pakistan well, regarded Sharif as an unusually dull, muddled politician. He seemed to offer a bovine, placid gaze in private meetings where he sometimes read awkwardly from note cards. Still, Sharif tried to make himself indispensable in continuing American-led talks over the region’s nuclear crisis. Now there was suddenly another way for Sharif to make himself useful to the Americans: He could aid the secret effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden.
....CIA would be out a few hundred thousand dollars on salaries for some retired Pakistani soldiers plus the costs of training and equipment—small change. The commando project could provide a vehicle for deepening contacts and trust among CIA officers, Ziauddin, and other officers in Pakistani intelligence. This could be useful for intelligence collection and, potentially, unilateral recruitments by the CIA. And even if the chances that the commando team would be deployed against bin Laden were very small—less than 1 percent, the most cynical of the Americans estimated—they had to try every conceivable path.18 The White House approved the plan some months later. Through the Islamabad station, the CIA paid salaries and supplied communications and other gear, as directed by Ziauddin. As it turned out, even the most cynical Americans were perhaps not cynical enough about Ziauddin’s motivations. On paper the CIA-funded secret commando team was being trained for action against bin Laden in Afghanistan. But Ziauddin later demonstrated that he saw another role for the unit: as a small, elite strike force loyal to Pakistan’s prime minister and his intelligence chief. If the army ever moved against Sharif, the prime minister would have a secret bodyguard that might be called in to help defend him..."
This account is corroborated by Ayaz Amir in a column for Dawn:
"...It is now coming out in the American press that during their visits
to Washington Shahbaz Sharif and Gen Ziauddin had informed the
Americans about the action contemplated against Gen Parvez
Musharraf. Had the coup against Musharraf succeeded, the Americans,
who consider the Pakistan army an obstacle to how they want to see
Pakistan behave, would not have been displeased. The successful
sacking of Musharraf would have diminished the army by dealing it a
blow to its self-esteem and confidence. No wonder the Americans
seem unhappy with the coup. This is not what they had been banking
on...."
With the appointment of Bajwa, Sharifs finally got their wish which apparently is what all the Mumtaz Qadri and Asma Jehangir fanbois want.
Army has now been converted to Punjab police. Rangeela and Modi will make quite a pairing
