I have just heard on TV that Asif Zardari has accorded free access to India for a trade route to Afghanistan. Also he has boasted to the US government that he has done more in seven months than 'their dictator' did in nine years. How very right One, who the hell is he to make such a unilateral decision and then pull it out of the hat on a foreign tour? Only the parliament can take such a decision and that too after detailed deliberations. For sixty years India has been trying for this and Pakistan has been, quite rightly, refusing through out. Now it has been handed to them on a plate, with flowers and candies. It is plain to see that should such trade was allowed, Indian goods would come up to Peshawar, and hence through the rest of Pakistan, customs free. Knowing our people, specially the women folk, this will be the ruin of our local industry as the market will be flooded with duty free Indian goods. Also this will give a free hand to India to fully establish its control over Afghanistan's economy and the markets beyond. Even more dangerously, Afghanistan will soon become a surrogate of India, and by proxy, of the US too. We have been nicely hemmed in by our enemy through the kind courtesy of our President. -AYAZ AHMAD, Rawalpindi, via e-mail, May 7.