Hillary Clinton came to Pakistan late last month. As US Secretary of State she brought lots of baggage with her.
She worked hard on a three day charm offensive encouraging Pakistanis to engage in a new trusting relationship with the US. She appeared on national television with a panel of four women journalists, answering questions from the all-women audience. She attended town hall meetings and subjected herself to questioning by a university audience described by the local media as 'sceptical (if not borderline hostile)'.
One problem for Obama and Clinton is that Pakistanis cannot trust themselves at the moment, let alone the world superpower which has funded Taliban militants, and then their opponents, depending on the geopolitical reality in Afghanistan.
During the Clinton visit, a car bomb in a bazaar frequented mainly by women shoppers in Peshawar claimed more than 130 lives. The word on the streets was that the terrorists wanted to send a message, not just to the United States but also to the locals, that a woman's place is in the home.
During the last year many girls-schools have been bombed by Taliban members opposed to the education of women. Since Clinton's departure, suicide bombers have been at work in Rawalpindi and Lahore. They have not been targeting foreigners; they have been indiscriminately attacking their own.
All schools in Pakistan are now required to have an armed guard, a metal detector and a security camera. The government has recommended that pre-school for children under five be dropped for security reasons. All over Lahore, school fences are being raised to a minimum of 9 feet in solid brick.
Last Sunday I attended a church service presided over by the Archbishop of Lahore, Lawrence Saldanha. There were armed guards at the entrance to the church, plus nine plain-clothes police placed in the congregation.
Pakistanis do not know who to trust at this time. Christians, who are less than two per cent of the population, have cause to be on edge, for their fears are compounded by ongoing discrimination and a blasphemy law which has had catastrophic consequences.
With coups and increasing Muslim fundamentalism, Pakistan has strayed long past the declaration of its founding father Mohammad Ali Jinnah who proclaimed in 1947, 'You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with