First of all, I cant believe that the last 9 years have failed to come up with an o-plan for how to engage the Pakistani populace. At this point, I fear it may be too late, since the oppos have 8 years in advance prep of hearts and minds. A couple of ideas, though:
* Use the film and media industrial might of the west. Finance bollywood style romances where the brave lad (who is a member of the frontier corps)has to rescue the beautiful girl from the bad mujahedin, aided by the good mujahedin of course, while being opposed by the bad army people and being helped by the good army people.
* Use the soft power of computation and get a freaking low budget high-yield education program going. At the moment, the madrassas are the sole alternative to education for lots and lots of folks, give em an alternative.
* Engage the muslim part of the coalition of the willing. It may be too late now for Afghan, but where o where is the western financed muslim peace corps? WHy havent we focused much more on five-10 years plans to build sustainable infrastructures (that includes human resources)? To me, that is the great mindboggling question of the 2001-2005 period when Afghanistan was relatively quiet, why wasnt there an equal amount of effort put into educating midlevel buerocracy as there was into building security forces?
* Reexamine the concepts of aid. Currently way way way to much is redirected back into western contractors pockets. Microfinance, Unix computers, easy irrigation, these are things that are needed on base level. Thats how you build trust.

But I fear its too late.