The way American officials are running their campaign against Taliban reminds me of a similar campaign they once ran against the communists, appropriately titled Reds under the bed which meant that they feared a communist presence almost everywhere, even under their own beds. The American Ambassador in Pakistan Mrs. Anne Patterson was the first to have hurled accusations about presence of Taliban and Al-Qaeda (the so-called Quetta Shoora) in the capital of Balochistan. Now the mission has been taken up by the US Consul General Stephen. G. Fakan who recently (October 15), warned the government of Pakistan of a Waziristan-like situation developing in Balochistan unless the government took the necessary action. Not many countries in the world allow foreign envoys to make utterances against their state with such impunity but Pakistan does. The way things are going, we would next have the security guards posted at the American Embassy offering us their valuable advice on how to run our government. There is a very simple mechanism to deal effectively with situations like these; lets declare a couple of them persona-non-grata and ask them to leave the country within 48 (or preferably 24) hours. -S.R.H. HASMI, Karachi, October 16.