Enemy's enemies make friends

Pakistan's English newspaper Dawn has a lovely story about an aspect of the stand-off between Nawaz Sharif on one side and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's Imran Khan and Pakistan Awami Tehreek's Tahir-ul-Qadri on the other. On Tuesday, when Qadri took the stage to speak to his and Khan's supporters on Islamabad's Constitution Avenue, the sound system failed. As engineers struggled to fix it, Qadri regretted that his party had not been able to arrange a better public address system after security forces had destroyed the first one. In an unprecedented move, Khan invited Qadri to address his supporters from Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's stage. Qadri accepted with alacrity - and then proceeded to speak for nearly half an hour. In the throes of his firebrand oratory, he also managed to make a faux pas against his host. He referred to Interior Minister and Sharif's right-hand man Chaudhry Nisar as "Khan sahib's close friend", to which Imran was constrained to clarify, "Was. Was a close friend."