Suits him?

Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz finds himself in a bit of an embarrassing spotlight. In his biography of the US secretary of state, Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to Power, Marcus Mabry 8212; a journalist with Newsweek 8212; recounts Aziz8217;s failed attempts to charm Rice a couple of years ago. Mabry claims that Aziz was given to bragging to Western diplomats about his ability to 8220;conquer8221; any woman in a matter of minutes. So when he hosted Rice in Pakistan, he turned on the charm 8212; and as it8217;s been written up by Mabry, 8220;she stared him down8221;, and reduced him to 8220;babbling8221;. Poor Shaukat Aziz. What was a dapper and smooth-talking man like him to do when enrolled in Pakistani diplomacy8217;s revival as a frontline state? What was he to do when faced with a woman who relaxes by playing piano concertos?

After all, a rugged masculinity has always attached to Pakistan8217;s top-level diplomacy. Their allies in the Middle East have been kept interested by being enticed into setting up luxury camps in the Baloch desert to shoot the endangered houbara bustard. Zia-ul-Haq in the eighties plotted against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan with the rakish American congressman, Charlie Wilson. His successor of sorts as army dictator, Pervez Musharraf, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 fielded Richard Armitage 8212; the then American deputy secretary of state was still a threatening physical presence long after his boxing skills had waned. Armitage thundered that he8217;d send Pakistan back to the stone age if Musharraf did not cooperate with the US. Or so went the recollection Musharraf slipped into his memoirs a few years later by way of payback.

With his international banking background and his custom-fitted suits, Aziz does not exactly fit into this image of the Frontiersman playing to an older warrior code. As he seems to be finding out in more ways than just his hospitality bloomer. Having been inducted into government with the vote gathering skills of the PML-Q, the king8217;s faction carved out of Nawaz Sharif8217;s Muslim League, his isolation has of late been accentuated. The wily men from West Punjab8217;s Gujrat region who run the party are now isolating him for the misguided advice to Musharraf on the reference against the chief justice. Blame it on Saville Row.