A New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan

[Abu Zolfiqar]

fair enough.....except the key to Afghanistan's success or failure is not held entirely in Pakistan's hand. I dont know why the author seems to imply that everything is contingent on what Pakistan does or what policies it enacts or detracts.

the truth is, taleban is more than just a group.....some join it for moral reasons (fighting the perceived occupiers); some do it for purely economical reasons --in a country where unemployment is rife and there are no other opportunities

had all stakeholders had the decency and long-term sightedness to help the mujahideen and general civilian population when the Red army withdrew decades back, many of these problems would not be existing.....

It's very naiive and immature to pin all hopes and shine all spotlight on Pakistan and what she does.

The truth is, Afghanistan is a heavily factionalized country (much to its own peril and making). No single faction or group has its hands clean here. Not the taleban, not the NA or Hazara groups, not HeI-Hekmatyar....etc. etc.


alienate the Pakhtuns in Afghanistan, there is no hope or even a dim spec of chance for success.....unfortunately, in many ways this is what is going on



I'll give credit where it is due --- the current govt. has a much better working relationship with the Afghan (Kabul) govt. than the previous one did; the recent trade accord is definitely a step in the right direction and will benefit both countries.


Afghanistan can not, (read WILL not) be used by rascal/trouble-making elements which can or seek to harm Pakistani Nation.

At the same time, we should ensure that our soil will not be used to destabilize or harm Afghan 'interests' (given status-quo --a difficult thing to qualify or quantify, given the aforementioned factionalization of the country)

 

[RabzonKhan]

COMMENT: US Afghan war review

Daily Times
Dr Mohammad Taqi
December 16, 2010

US president Barack Obama will announce his annual review of the Afghan war today (December 16, 2010). A successful legal challenge to Mr Obama’s healthcare plan and hectic congressional activity to extend the Bush-era income tax cuts had pushed this review off the US media radar, but the death of the Special Representative Richard Holbrooke has managed to put it back in the news-cycle, at least for the time being. What was expected to be a low key affair will still remain a whimper but more questions are being asked about the shape of the things to come as a larger-than-life member of Mr Obama’s Pak-Afghan team made his exit from the diplomatic and world stage.

The Washington Post has reported that Mr Holbrooke’s last words, spoken to his surgeon, were: “You have got to stop this war in Afghanistan.” Incidentally, Mr Holbrooke’s surgeon happened to be a King Edward Medical College-educated Pakistani. Of course, neither the surgeon nor the common Pakistanis have much to do with the war in Afghanistan but given the Pakistani establishment’s massive involvement in favour of the Taliban, Mr Holbrooke’s last words seem almost surreal.

Mr Holbrooke, however, was not the only one calling for ending the war in Afghanistan. On the eve of the Afghan war review, a 25-member group of experts on Afghanistan, which includes respected names like Ahmed Rashid and Professor Antonio Giustozzi, has published an open letter to Mr Obama, calling on him to authorise a formal negotiation with the Afghan Taliban and seek a political settlement. However, buried in the text of the 1,030-word long plea to talk to the Taliban is the key sentence: “With Pakistan’s active support for the Taliban, it is not realistic to bet on a military solution.”

Mr Obama is very likely to claim progress in his statement (no speech is expected) and declare that the strategy he announced a year ago at the West Point Military Academy is working. However, he has very little to show in terms of tangible progress, especially in dealing with the continuous Pakistani intervention in Afghanistan. He may reiterate what he had told the US troops on his recent visit to Afghanistan: “We said we were going to break the Taliban’s momentum. That’s what you’re doing.” The idea being that the use of military force to change the political landscape of Afghanistan will continue as planned. The only addition anticipated is a prominent mention of the year 2014 as the withdrawal date for the NATO troops and security handover to the Afghan national forces. But the start of the troops’ drawdown in July 2011 will still remain as one of the objectives, albeit more as a rest stop rather than a milestone.

However, it is erroneous to make a claim about breaking the Taliban momentum during the winter months, which is literally the ‘down time’ of the war. During the anti-Soviet war of the 1980s one could tell by the drop in price of a Kalashnikov in Peshawar that the winter lull in fighting was about to start. But then again nobody claimed Mr Obama to be an expert on Afghanistan.

In fact Mr Holbrooke, along with his boss Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates, had vociferously criticised the president when the latter was putting together his Afghan strategy, commenting: “It cannot work.” However, all of them and General David Petraeus did sign on to Mr Obama’s flawed plan. At the time I had noted in an article ‘The Alsatia of FATA’ written for the Aryana Institute that “the American and NATO planners need a paradigm shift in their approach to handling the mess in FATA. Without setting up metrics for specifically measuring the Pakistan Army’s efforts in dismantling its jihadist assets, the US will be setting itself up for failure.”

The White House is saying that Mr Obama will talk about the al Qaeda’s senior leadership, Afghanistan and Pakistan and, more specifically, about increasing cooperation with the Pakistani government. How Mr Obama fleshes up this last agenda item is what would determine the future shape of things in Afghanistan — and Pakistan. I agree with Ahmed Rashid and Professor Giustozzi et al that with Pakistan’s active support for the Taliban, a military solution is not possible. However, I maintain that without the US confronting the Pakistani establishment on its continued support for the Taliban, a political solution to the Afghan imbroglio will remain elusive as well. Mr Holbrooke had told Bob Woodward that he saw a 1 in 10 chance of a good outcome in Afghanistan. I would say that it is a safe bet to make it a 1 in 1,000 chance.

The word victory has never featured in Mr Obama’s speeches in the Afghan context and is unlikely to pop up now. We will hear a lot from him about the build-hold-clear-stabilise-handover process and the long term US ‘commitment’, but there will be hardly any reference to nation-building or even sustained counterinsurgency. At the risk of eating crow tomorrow, I submit that there would not be any reference, even in fine print, to setting up any benchmarks for measuring the Pakistani establishment’s cooperation in helping evolve a political solution to the Afghan morass.

With Mr Holbrooke’s demise, General Petraeus will be lugging many aspects of coordination with the civilians in both Afghanistan and Pakistan in the short term. He, along with Robert Gates, has a much more realistic view of the ground realities than their commander-in-chief. In fact, the Lisbon agreement on the 2014 withdrawal timetable was very much a result of their efforts. They are also cognisant of the fact that while al Qaeda has been neutralised in Afghanistan for now, even a semblance of a jihadist victory will effectively revive the Islamists’ fortunes not only there but in Pakistan as well. In fact a US debacle in Afghanistan will give the turban, jeans or khaki-clad Pakistani jihadists a morale boost that will dwarf the post-Soviet withdrawal euphoria.

Like the 25 experts on Afghanistan, Mr Obama’s Afghan war review is likely to miss the potential logarithmic growth of jihadism in Pakistan that a negotiated settlement with the Taliban will entail. This will leave Pakistan’s moderate voices and the centre-left political forces out in the cold. While Petraeus et al will provide a cushion of time to the Pakistani political forces, counting on the US would be a mistake that the latter will regret at their peril. What they need is a Pak-Afghan policy review of their own.

 

[RabzonKhan]

COMMENT: From good Taliban to bad Taliban

Daily Times
Azizullah Khan
December 17, 2010

Nation states resort to different tactics to secure their national interests, ranging from diplomacy to proxies (fighters of state A who secure its interest in host state B). In the real world it is almost considered legitimate to secure a state’s interests through any means. ‘Proxies’ is a common phenomenon, but a major question to be considered is whether the benefits of proxies are worth the costs.

The international community is nearly unanimous on the point that Pakistan is backing some factions of the Taliban, for which they have coined the term ‘good Taliban’. Western analysts and political leaders call Pakistan’s approach a ‘pick-and-choose’ policy. They believe that Pakistan facilitates this faction of the Taliban as it is assumed that it will guard its interests in Afghanistan, i.e. to curtail Indian influence and have safe havens for India-centric jihadis. They are up in arms. British Prime Minister David Cameron’s notorious statement that Pakistan is “exporting terrorism” is probably best representative of what they are thinking about Pakistan. And they are asking us to do more. Recently, David Petraeus, US commander in Afghanistan, in an interview with ABC News said that “more clearly needs to be done in the tribal areas of Pakistan to weed out” terrorists.

‘Good Taliban’ are good, yes, because they are good in fighting, good in exploding themselves in bazaars and at shrines, good in demolishing schools, good in targeting the Pakistan Army and good in kidnapping teachers and doctors. They might be good at these things but not in friendship. The Taliban by their nature are like a snake, which, by its very nature, must bite, and nature cannot be changed.

If (a big if) they come to power in Afghanistan, they will establish a strong nexus between the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and their regime in Afghanistan. Then there will be double route traffic. Herds and herds of Taliban will be moving to and from Pakistan, some will be driven, others will move willingly and they will kill, destroy and pick up whatever will come in their way. There will be pitched battles among them and perhaps we will find ourselves standing in their rows.

In order to get insights about the future, we should take lessons from history. Ahmad Rashid notes in Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia that, as a consequence of its support to the first episode of jihad, which is now known as the ‘Mujahideen era’, “Pakistan which had no heroin addicts in 1979, had 650,000 addicts in 1986, three million by 1992 and an estimated five million in 1999.” Adding to this, we also received the Kalashnikov culture. As a result of Pakistan’s support to the second episode of jihad, which is now known as the ‘Taliban era’, we received TTP, the suicide bombing culture and ended up with large swathes of land out of state control.

And the situation is moving from bad to worse. A couple of weeks ago, a Washington-based NGO, Campaign for Innocent Victims of Conflict (CIVIC) released a report, which notes that there were probably more “civilian casualties — 2,100 deaths — in Pakistan in 2009 than in Afghanistan”. Furthermore, it warns that “losses have a long-lasting and devastating impact on civilians’ lives, provoke anger and undermine legitimacy of the Pakistani government”. “In 2009,” according to the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS), “a total of 2,586 terrorist, insurgent and sectarian related incidents of terrorism were reported across the country that killed 3,021 people and injured 7,334.” In 2010 (until November), according to the same source, a total of 3,137 incidents of the same nature took place, which killed 9,343 people.

Some may argue that, for Pakistan, India’s influence in Afghanistan is tantamount to its encirclement, for which Pakistan has to take a few demanding decisions to secure its legitimate interests over there. An editorial titled ‘Pak-Afghan ties’ (Daily Times, December 7, 2010) brilliantly challenges this point of view: “We have to realise that our ‘assets’, i.e. the Afghan Taliban, are no one’s friends. We may think they are different from the local Taliban who are openly waging a war against Pakistan but the ground reality is that there is no such thing as the ‘good Taliban’. There is no guarantee that once the Taliban are back in power in Afghanistan, they would cooperate with us. After 9/11, we saw that the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden despite Pakistan’s insistence. Terrorists are no respecters of borders but due to our India-phobia, we continue to support them.”

If we want to decrease Indian influence in Afghanistan we have to bring a major shift in our strategic calculus and we have to extend our best possible support to the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Afghanistan.

If we fail to do so, then it is very likely that there will be Lahori Taliban, Peshawari Taliban, Multani Taliban, Gujrati Taliban, Karachi Taliban and Sialkoti Taliban, so on and so forth.

Do you want this to happen?

 

[monitor]

Time to bring in the cavalry?

So the stage seems set for a significant drawdown in the next few years. What is missing is a strategy that will allow this to happen while preserving ? Western interests.

John Chipmanis

It is time for Western governments to develop a new approach to their engagement in Afghanistan.
The present counterinsurgency strategy is too ambitious, too draining and out of proportion to the threat posed by that country. It is well to recall the original purpose of the Western presence there: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda and prevent its return.
War aims traditionally expand, but in Afghanistan they have ballooned since 2001 into a comprehensive strategy to make Afghanistan stable and secure, as well as to develop and modernise the country and its government. This is a case not just of mission creep, but of mission multiplication. Defeat of the Taleban insurgency has been seen as virtually synonymous with the defeat of Al Qaeda, even though much of Al Qaeda's organised capacities have been displaced to Pakistan.
But the two tasks are not the same. The original aim has been achieved: Senior American officials confirm that Al Qaeda is now hardly present in Afghanistan. The campaign against the Taleban, however, promises to remain extremely taxing if it is continued. Yet the Afghan Taleban poses no external threat to the West.
President Barack Obama has announced that the American troop presence will begin to wind down from mid-2011. Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron has said that by 2015 he does not want Britain to have combat troops in Afghanistan. Other contributors of troops will quite naturally take their cue from these.
So the stage seems set for a significant drawdown in the next few years. What is missing is a strategy that will allow this to happen while preserving Western interests.
The best way forward is to adopt a containment and deterrence policy that addresses the international terrorist threat from the Afghanistan/Pakistan border regions. This is a strategy that will in any case need to be implemented whenever combat forces withdraw. But it should be introduced more quickly.
Containing the international threat from the Afghan/Pakistan border and deterring the reconstitution of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan would have political, diplomatic, economic and military elements.
It would require political deals in Afghanistan and among key regional powers, including India, Pakistan, Iran and the Central Asian states. It would entail promises of economic and development support to those who embrace it, as well as the threat of military strikes against any re-concentration of international terrorist elements.
Unlike the present counterinsurgency strategy, this new approach would not be so dependent on orchestrating near-ideal internal political and developmental outcomes in Afghanistan. Nor would it require the degradation of Taleban capacities to the point of near-surrender, a prospect that is by no means immediate.
It would not depend on winning an ever-lengthening succession of local battles against an enemy that is motivated by the presence of foreign forces. Rather than signaling victory for the enemy, it would represent a policy that could meet the principal security goal over a longer period than the current approach, given the low support for the campaign among Western electorates. Indeed, it would underline the fact that the original goal of the combat has already been achieved.
As a first step, foreign forces should be restructured to deter and prevent the reconstitution of a terrorist threat. This would mean redeployment to the north of Afghanistan and the arrangement of a status-of-forces agreement that would allow intervention in the south against any reconstitution of jihadist capacities.
This could involve targeted operations, but not attacks on Taleban forces that posed no extra-provincial threat.
Second, outside powers should seek to orchestrate a more federal Afghanistan, where the provinces accept that formal rule and external authority resides in the capital, and the capital cedes practical sovereignty on most issues to the provinces.
However paradoxical it may sound, a balance of weakness between the capital and the provinces may be more conducive to stability.
International cooperation would continue, but not to the extent of investing more power in a central government ?that cannot deliver.
Third, the new strategy should accept that the Afghan National Army will need to have a federal character, co-opting local forces with local roots.
Coalition military leaders have already discussed with President Hamid Karzai the creation of uniformed local security forces: Afghan Army badging could follow.
Fourth, the United States and others will have to further deepen the engagement with Pakistan, persuading Islamabad that contact with a wide variety of actors in Afghanistan is necessary, and engage more fully with other regional actors, including India.
If the foreign combat presence in the south were removed, it is not obvious that the area would become a magnet for Al Qaeda's reconstruction. Taleban leaders would think twice about inviting it back, given the experience of the last decade. At least they could be made to think twice. An effective containment and deterrence strategy could make sure that this did not occur.


John Chipmanis is director-general of the International Institute for
Strategic Studies.

 

[monitor]

NATO's Afghan dream

The most likely post-war scenario is a partition of Afghanistan, with the Taleban calling the shots in the Pashtun-dominated south and east, and the non-Pashtun northern and western regions retaining their current de facto autonomy.

Brahma Chellaney

The agreement at the NATO summit meeting in Lisbon on a transition plan to help end the war in Afghanistan within the next four years raises troubling questions about regional security and the global fight against transnational terrorism.
As the US and other coalition partners gradually wind down their combat role, Afghan security forces - to number 300,000 after crash training of new recruits - are to take their place. But these local forces are unlikely to be able to hold the country together.
The most likely post-war scenario is a partition of Afghanistan, with the Taleban calling the shots in the Pashtun-dominated south and east, and the non-Pashtun northern and western regions retaining their current de facto autonomy.
Regionally, there is likely to be greater turmoil. The withdrawal of NATO forces before the job is done will leave India on the front lines to face the brunt of greater terror from the Afghanistan-Pakistan belt. In fact, NATO's retreat is expected to embolden jihadists in the region - and beyond it - to stage transnational attacks.
The 2014 withdrawal plan, however, comes as no surprise, given US President Barack Obama's expressed desire to end combat operations in Afghanistan. Indeed, his defense secretary, Robert Gates, made clear last year that the US will now seek to contain terrorism regionally rather than defeat it. The transition plan cements that strategic shift.
The problem, however, is that the US war effort is already faltering, with Afghan President Hamid Karzai exploring the possibility of cutting his own deals with the Taleban and other warlords. And that is largely the result of Obama's botched strategy, whose twin troop surges were designed not to rout the Taleban militarily, but to strike a political deal with them from a position of strength. But, as CIA director Leon Panetta admitted, "We have seen no evidence that [Taleban] are interested in reconciliation."
Why would the Taleban be interested in negotiating a deal with the Americans, given Obama's public declaration, just weeks after coming to office, that he was interested in a military exit from Afghanistan? The Afghan Taleban and their sponsors, the Pakistan military, simply want to wait out the Americans.
Last year, with the stroke of his pen, Obama ended his predecessor's "global war on terror." But renaming it a "struggle" or a "strategic challenge" has not changed the grim realities on the ground.
The US has been lucky to escape further terrorist strikes since September 11, 2001, despite several attempts. By contrast, India's location next to the ****** has left it far more vulnerable, and the country has since suffered a series of major attacks - from the assault on its parliament in December 2001 to the terrorist siege of Mumbai in 2008.
Afghanistan and Pakistan, two artificially created states with no roots in history, have searched endlessly for a national identity. Today, they have emerged as the global epicenter of transnational terrorism and the heroin trade. Although Pakistan is now the largest recipient of US aid in the world, the Failed States Index 2010, created by Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace, ranks the country 10th, between Guinea and Haiti.
To compound the situation, the political border between Afghanistan and Pakistan has now ceased to exist in practice. The 2,640-kilometer Durand Line, a British-colonial invention that divided the large Pashtun community when it was established in 1893 as the border between British-led India and Afghanistan, has long been despised and rejected by Afghanistan.
Today, the Durand Line exists only on maps. On the ground, it has little political, ethnic, or economic relevance, even as the ****** region has become a magnet for the world's jihadists. A de facto Pashtunistan, long sought by Pashtuns, has now grown up on the ruins of an ongoing Islamist militancy, but without any political authority in charge. The disappearance of the ****** political border seems irreversible, undermining Pakistan's own territorial integrity.
Yet, as if the forces of terror could be neatly boxed in, the US has scaled back its objective to contain terrorism regionally - a strategy that promises to keep the ****** problem a festering threat to global security. Indeed, NATO's withdrawal plan is likely to lead to a realignment of ethnic forces, and thus to greater volatility.
Afghanistan is not Vietnam. A withdrawal of US and other NATO troops will not mean the end of the war, because the enemy will continue to target Western interests, wherever they may be. The hope that terrorism can be regionally contained is a dangerous exercise in self-delusion.


Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, is the author, most recently, of Asian Juggernaut?© Project Syndicate

 

[monitor]

Analysis

NATO against ragtag warriors

In fact, the Afghanistan conflict is the first real war that the Western military alliance, set up 61 years ago, has ever fought.

Rahimullah Yusufzai

The 28-member North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) is struggling to achieve victory, or should one say avoid defeat, in its maiden military engagement outside Europe. In fact, the Afghanistan conflict is the first real war that the Western military alliance, set up 61 years ago, has ever fought. Losing it, and that too against the ragtag Taliban fighters, could unravel NATO and raise questions about the strength and morale of the heavily-armed, hi-tech armies comprising the US-led defence bloc.
Meeting in Portugal's capital Lisbon on November 19-20, leaders of NATO member countries and their allies discussed a host of issues, but the one that took up most of their time was the war in Afghanistan. Forty-eight countries that make up the NATO-led International Security Assistance Security Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and represented at the summit signed an agreement with President Hamid Karzai to begin handing over control of the war to his government in early 2011 and cede command also by the end of 2014. Karzai, installed by the US and sustained in power by NATO forces, had little choice in the matter even though he would have liked the Western armies to stay longer in Afghanistan. However, it needs reminding that it was President Karzai who first mentioned 2014 as the deadline for handing over security to the Afghan forces. His Western supporters have gone by his word even though this could turn out to be a misjudgement by Karzai.
Staying beyond 2014 in Afghanistan in a diminished role is indeed the most debated issue in NATO member countries right now. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO's hawkish Danish secretary general, made it clear that the 2014 withdrawal deadline did not mean that the military alliance would leave behind a vacuum in Afghanistan that could be filled by enemies waiting out the exit of NATO forces. Just like Denmark's prime minister who annoyed Muslims worldwide by refusing to condemn the blasphemous cartoons of Holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) published in a Danish newspaper, Rasmussen insisted that NATO would stay committed to Afghanistan as long as it takes to finish the job.
The 'job' at hand, though, has changed over the past nine years when the US invaded Afghanistan to destroy Al-Qaeda and punish the Taliban as a revenge for the 9/11 attacks. Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda have survived the assault despite suffering painful blows and the Taliban are back and in a much stronger position after suffering defeat in 2001. Other aspects of the 'job' that the US-led Western powers took upon themselves were to do some nation-building in Afghanistan and turning it into a democracy. Achieving those goals would require years and a lot more money, some of it lining the pockets of those in power and contributing to making Afghanistan the second most corrupt country in the world.
The 'job' that Rasmussen has in mind right now is to prevent the Taliban from capturing power as NATO believes this would amount to providing safe havens again to Al-Qaeda and other likeminded groups in Afghanistan. The Western leaders have been talking about fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan in places like Helmand to stop them from attacking cities in Europe and Northern America. By drawing such parallels, they at times raise unnecessary alarm and make their own mission even more difficult and unachievable in Afghanistan.
NATO Secretary General Rasmussen, enthusiastic and confident in keeping with the demands of his job and not required to heed the anti-war public opinion in the West as he no longer is contesting elections, is already being contradicted by certain Western government functionaries, more importantly by the US. Among them is Vice President Joe Biden, who has been calling for scaling back the US military involvement in Afghanistan. He described 2014 as the 'drop-dead date' for troops' withdrawal and said it did not mean that the US would still have near 100,000 troops in Afghanistan in 2013. He and President Barack Obama, along with civil and military officials, have been reassuring the American people that their soldiers would start coming home from July 2011 onwards as promised.
There were question marks about the July 2011 date until now due to statements hinting otherwise by certain US officials, particularly the ISAF and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, but the NATO summit's joint communiqué and the deal signed with President Karzai should mostly put those concerns at rest. However, the beginning of the withdrawal of the US troops by July 2011 would still be symbolic instead of substantial and the military authorities could still come up with arguments to delay or alter the manner of the pullout.
More importantly, though, is the fact that the US decision to start withdrawing troops has opened a window of opportunity for its reluctant NATO allies to consider pulling out most of their soldiers from Afghanistan in 2011, or much before the 2014 deadline. Once the principal power, the US, is ready to withdraw, it would become easier for other countries to extricate themselves from a war that has become increasingly unpopular with their electorate. The Dutch have already left, more so due to political compulsions and the force of public opinion than any other reason, and the Canadians are preparing to fully pullout in 2012. Other countries would then come under growing pressure from their citizens to withdraw. Most NATO countries or their ISAF partners are promising to provide military trainers and resources after ending their combat operations to make amends and to quickly train Afghanistan's security forces to take over responsibility from the departing foreign troops.
Here lies the crunch because the biggest challenge now would be training the Afghan national army, police and other security forces not only to reach the targeted strength but also make them capable enough to stop the Taliban and the Hezb-i-Islami (Hekmatyar) fighters from overthrowing the government in Kabul or capturing provinces in the south, east and even the west. The US and NATO military commanders until now are dissatisfied with the performance of the Afghan security forces and it is debatable if they would become satisfied with their capabilities in the remaining three years. The Afghan national army has been suffering from an unusually high rate of desertions and raise in pay might not be enough of an incentive to check this trend. The army has a serious ethnic imbalance due to inadequate Pashtun representation and this cannot be overcome unless a major restructuring is done and more Pashtuns in the officers' ranks are recruited.
The Afghan government would need to win over more Pashtuns and induct them not only into the security forces but also other segments of the administration in order to deny the Taliban the opportunity to recruit from among the ethnic group to which most of them belong. More importantly, the Pashtuns and also sections of the other ethnic groups would have to be convinced that they would have a better future siding with the West-backed Afghan government than the Taliban.
As for the NATO, it cannot afford to lose the war that was a test of its capability to intervene in distant lands to fight potential enemies and bring regime changes to its liking. Its faltering military campaign against the lightly-armed Taliban guerrillas would have to be turned around to avoid defeat and embarrassment. The US is willing to put anything and everything into this war and its recent decisions to send tanks to Afghanistan and build and expand military airbases are indicators that it still believes it can achieve victory in a country that has been described as a graveyard of empires. All this is understandable because some experts think defeat for the US in Afghanistan could well herald the beginning of the end for America as the leading military power in the world.

The writer is resident editor of The News in Peshawar. Email: rahim yusufzai@yahoo.com

 

[RabzonKhan]

EDITORIAL: The great game continues

Daily Times
December 19, 2010


Contrary to the US intelligence assessment of the Afghan war, Washington’s assessment of the situation is rather optimistic. While the intelligence report has labelled the Afghan war as unwinnable, the president has declared “progress” in disrupting the al Qaeda threat. It is the intelligence report that has described Pakistan as being the reason behind what is perceived as the US military’s inevitable doom in the region because of the safe havens provided to the militants in the country’s border areas. Therefore, when Obama says in his assessment that progress is not coming “fast enough” from Pakistan, one begs to ask: was there really any progress to begin with?

It is common knowledge that the Pakistani military and security forces have been nurturing their jihadi strategic assets for perceived strategic depth in Afghanistan once US and NATO forces leave. In the worst possible scenario, our establishment may very well refuse to dismantle the terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan because of the influence they think their militant proxies will exert in Afghanistan. This is enough to eventually earn extreme American ire. If the intelligence report is correct, there are really only two possibilities: If the Obama administration is painting a rosy picture, it is because face-saving (in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election) will enable troop withdrawals to begin, as planned, by July 2011. However, that will leave Afghanistan with an army and police lacking quality and quantity to fight the resurgent Taliban threat. The implication here is that the Taliban may very well go for that final push after the US/Nato withdrawal, whether they are part of a negotiated settlement or not. The second possibility is that the Taliban and al Qaeda resurgence in Afghanistan could become so intense that US and NATO forces are unable to withdraw even by the new 2014 deadline. If things get that bad for the US, they may not be averse to taking out the militants’ Pakistani sanctuaries themselves and less politely than they have been doing till now. In either situation there is danger of a fresh round of civil war in ravaged Afghanistan with a dangerous spillover on the cards for Pakistan or a forceful clash with the US in the case of a threatened Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Either way, it is a no-win situation for Pakistan.

The US never did heed warnings in the run-up to the Afghan war about it never being able to understand Afghanistan and the nature of the warfare employed in that war-ravaged country. Sane voices warned the US of the quagmire that exists in Afghanistan for any occupying force. A US exit was always predicted as being difficult and whenever that is bound to occur, the spillover for Pakistan will be deadly. What is the Pakistani state to do in such precarious conditions?

Pakistan needs to turn a new chapter in its crisis-riddled history. It needs to stop relying on the military and security forces to determine every aspect of policy in this war, where military-nurtured militants have even turned against the state. It needs to wrest decision-making from the military and give it to civilian political forces that understand that political objectives are the determinants of all wars and that, in the end, it is politics that will end this stalemate. Our political class needs to stop appeasing the establishment to remain in office. In essence, Pakistan’s fate needs to be taken back from the generals who have mucked up our state of affairs enough times, and given to a civilian democratic polity that works towards settlements and not delusions of strategic depth. It is time the civilian political institutions stop sleepwalking through this war, one that is being manipulated by the establishment.

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

^^^^^^

a bit shallow in the sense that it provides no solutions or alternative thinking; no new ideas. The civilian govt. is busy in its internal squabbles and cheap politicking instead of spending time addressing the greater national interests, and our interests in the region

 

[Developereo]

Pakistan [...] needs to wrest decision-making from the military and give it to civilian political forces

Which civilian politicians would those be? The American puppets in PPP, the Saudi puppets in PML-N, or the mullah appeasers in various other parties?

 

[RabzonKhan]

Which civilian politicians would those be? The American puppets in PPP, the Saudi puppets in PML-N, or the mullah appeasers in various other parties?

Regardless of whether we like them or not, but let us not forget that they were ELECTED by the people of Pakistan.

 

[bluestocking]

America’s Longest War Gets Worse
By Eric Margolis

After nine years of war in Afghanistan, costing over $100 billion in taxpayer money and 700 American lives, the full truth about this murky conflict remains elusive.

The government and media have colluded to paint the picture of a noble, patriotic, heroic, flag-waving American crusade in Afghanistan that is, alas, very far from reality. As the 19th century cynic Ambrose Bierce pointedly observed of patriots – “the dupe of statesmen; the tool of conquerors.”

And now we are being told by senior administration officials that al-Qaida’s new base and center of activity is…wait for it…in Yemen!

If that’s the case, why are 150,000 US and dragooned NATO troops still in Afghanistan? CIA chief Leon Panetta recently admitted there were no more than 50 al-Qaida personnel in Afghanistan....

America?s Longest War Gets Worse | PK ARTICLES HUB

interesting article

 

[RabzonKhan]

EDITORIAL: More incursions in the offing?

Daily Times
December 23, 2010

Pakistan is already in enough trouble politically and economically. Terrorism has added to our woes and it seems like that in the coming days, more trouble may follow. According to a report published in the New York Times (NYT), “senior American military commanders in Afghanistan are pushing for an expanded campaign of Special Operations ground raids across the border into Pakistan’s tribal areas”. It is plain that this proposal has more to do with military strategy than with politics. Pakistan has been stalling a military operation in North Waziristan for some time now. Our argument is that the military is already stretched in Swat and South Waziristan, that we fear more IDPs, and we do not have enough money to conduct a large-scale operation. This delay has not gone down well with the US military commanders based in Afghanistan. The US-led NATO forces are running out of patience with us because of the safe havens that have been provided to the Afghan Taliban on our soil, particularly in North Waziristan. The military commanders now want to hit the Taliban in their rear base areas to make life difficult for them.

The NYT reports that the “Afghan militias backed by the CIA have carried out a number of secret missions” in our tribal areas. Although NATO forces have denied these reports, Pakistan’s military establishment should understand the gravity of the situation. NATO’s denial is due to the political sensitivity involved. Pakistan is the frontline ally of the US/NATO in the war on terror and the Americans want to keep us on their side rather than push us away. On the one hand the withdrawal date of foreign troops from Afghanistan is looming large and on the other hand, the frustration of military commanders is growing. Will they be held back by political considerations is a question worth pondering. Already there is outrage in Pakistan against the increase in drone attacks, which WikiLeaks has confirmed are with the tacit approval of Pakistan’s government. The political fallout of more clandestine operations can be seriously damaging, but under the circumstances, it cannot be ruled out that the Americans might opt for it if our military establishment keeps up its dual policy.

Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US, Husain Haqqani, has ruled out ground operations and asserted that our military is quite capable of handling the terrorists within our borders. With all due respect to Ambassador Haqqani, our military is definitely capable of doing this, but does it really want to? Our military establishment must understand the limits to which we can push this dual policy because great danger lies ahead now if we keep on with our misadventures.

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

Time for a policy change

The writer holds a BSc (Hons) in economics and maths from LUMS and is a sub-editor on the sports desk of The Express Tribune musab.memon@tribune.com.pk

As the US plans its exit strategy from Afghanistan after a highly contentious nine-year war, there is a major decision that the Pakistani leaders must take. In the battle against terrorists, the US has, more often than not, demanded Pakistani alliance.

Pakistan has complied. Diplomatic manoeuvrings almost made it possible for the Pakistani leadership to fool both the US and the Afghan militia in this convoluted intertwined political wedlock, where India has played an indomitably fundamental role.

Back in the day, Pakistani intelligence was fuelled with the golden currency to provide ‘hush-hush’ training to the Afghan guerrillas to fight the Soviet Union. The US, exogenously, ensured a fruitful and amicable relationship between Pakistan’s government and army and the Afghan mujahideen. One of these groups was later to become the Taliban and fight the Pakistani soldiers who had once trained them to fight the Soviets.

Ironically, the training bolstered and equipped the Afghan insurgency to insurmountable success. The result: An oppressive Afghan government where terrorism finds its breeding grounds.

Meanwhile India has been shaping most of Pakistan’s foreign policy decisions. Pakistan agreed to support the ‘mujahideen’ in 1979 and the decade which followed, keeping the arch-rivalry of India in mind. Pakistan aligned itself with the US, firstly because the US really didn’t give Pakistan an option and, secondly, because Pakistan has since independence been in search of an ally on its western border against a ‘potential’ threat from India.

During the war on terror, the Pakistani leadership was faced with a difficult time: Turn its back on Afghanistan and lose a potential ally and military support or fight America’s war. Pakistan surprised everyone. While some factions supported the US, allowing them to use our naval bases and soldiers, and permitting drones strikes, others continued to protect the safe havens for the terrorists in the region. No one was fooled.

Now, as the deadline approaches for the Obama administration to begin withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan, senior US military commanders are pushing for an expanded campaign of special operations ground raids across the border into Pakistan’s tribal areas. At this time the US will be looking to do all it can to make a lasting impact of its highly unpopular war. This will require unparalleled support from Pakistan.

Pakistan is at a crossroads. The leaders must decide where their alignment lies. Either they can support the US and sever all ties with the militants, risking a long-term threat from both the eastern and western borders or they can continue to facilitate the Afghan-borne militancy and sustain an amicable relationship, which they ‘think’ will come in handy, if India ever decides to attack. The latter decision will bear the cost of the security of their country and the world, but it might just pacify our Indian paranoia.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 29th, 2010.

The Express Tribune

 

[RabzonKhan]

U.S. to offer more support to Pakistan

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 8, 2011

The Obama administration has decided to offer Pakistan more military, intelligence and economic support, and to intensify U.S. efforts to forge a regional peace, despite ongoing frustration that Pakistani officials are not doing enough to combat terrorist groups in the country's tribal areas, officials said.

The decision to double down on Pakistan represents the administration's attempt to call the bluff of Pakistani officials who have long complained that the United States has failed to understand their security priorities or provide adequate support.

That message will be delivered by Vice President Biden, who plans to travel to Pakistan next week for meetings with military chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani and top government leaders. Biden will challenge the Pakistanis to articulate their long-term strategy for the region and indicate exactly what assistance is needed for them to move against Taliban sanctuaries in areas bordering Afghanistan.

The strategy, determined in last month's White House Afghanistan war review, amounts to an intensifying of existing efforts to overcome widespread suspicion and anti-American sentiment in Pakistan, and build trust and stability.

President Obama and his top national security aides rejected proposals, made by some military commanders and intelligence officials who have lost patience with Pakistan, to allow U.S. ground forces to conduct targeted raids against insurgent safe havens, officials said. They concluded that the United States can ill afford to threaten or further alienate a precarious, nuclear-armed country whose cooperation is essential to the administration on several fronts.

The conclusions were referred to in a publicly released, five-page summary of the review as unspecified policy "adjustments." Several administration officials said that the classified review identified areas where stronger effort was needed rather than specific new programs.

The review resolved to "look hard" at what more could be done to improve economic stability, particularly on tax policy and Pakistan's relations with international financial institutions. It directed administration and Pentagon officials to "make sure that our sizeable military assistance programs are properly tailored to what the Pakistanis need, and are targeted on units that will generate the most benefit" for U.S. objectives, said one senior administration official who participated in the review and was authorized to discuss it on condition of anonymity.

Pakistan has complained in the past that promised U.S. aid, currently projected to total more than $3 billion in 2011, has been slow to arrive and that requests for helicopters and other military equipment have remained unfulfilled.

Beginning with Biden's visit, the time may be ripe for a frank exchange of views and priorities between the two sides, another administration official said. The Pakistanis "understand that Afghanistan-Pakistan has become the single most important foreign policy issue to the United States, and their cachet has gone up." But they also realize that they may have reached the point of maximum leverage, this official said, "and things about their region are going to change one way or the other" in the near future, as Congress and the American public grow increasingly disillusioned with the war and a timeline for military withdrawal is set.

"Something is going to give," he said. "There is going to be an end-game scenario and they're trying to guess where we're heading."

On intelligence, the administration plans to address Pakistan's complaints that the Americans have not established enough outposts on the Afghan side of the border to stop insurgent infiltration, while pressing the Pakistanis to allow U.S. and Afghan officials to staff border coordination centers inside Pakistan itself.

The intelligence coordination is part of an effort to build political, trade and security links between Pakistan and Afghanistan as a way of assuaging Pakistan's fears that India, its traditional adversary, is building its own influence in Afghanistan. "We think there's a lot of room for improvement on that front," the senior official said.

The administration also plans "redouble our efforts to look for political approaches" to ending the war, including a recognition that Pakistan "must play an important role" if not a dominant one, in reconciliation talks with the Taliban, he said.

An intelligence estimate prepared for the review concluded that the war in Afghanistan could not be won unless the insurgent sanctuaries were wiped out, and that there was no real indication Pakistan planned to undertake the effort.

But the White House concluded that while Taliban safe havens were "a factor," they were "not the only thing that stands between us and success in Afghanistan," the senior official said.

"We understand the general view a lot of people espouse" in calling for direct U.S. ground attacks, he said of the intelligence estimate. But while the administration's goal is still a Pakistani offensive, the review questioned whether "classic clear, hold and build" operations were the only way to deny the insurgents free access to the borderlands, and asked whether "a range of political, military, counterterrorism and intelligence operations" could achieve the same result.

That view represents a significant shift in administration thinking, perhaps making a virtue of necessity given Pakistani refusal thus far to launch the kind of full-scale ground offensive the United States has sought in North Waziristan.

"The challenge is that when you talk about safe havens in Pakistan, you imagine some traditional military clearing operation that then settles the issue," the official said. While the Pakistani military has cleared insurgents from most of the tribal areas, it remains heavily deployed in those areas, where little building has taken place.

The operations, involving 140,000 Pakistani troops, have pushed concentrations of the Taliban and al-Qaeda into concentrations in North Waziristan, where the United States has launched a withering barrage of missile attacks from remotely piloted drone aircraft, guided in large part by Pakistani intelligence.

Kayani, the Pakistani military chief, has said he will eventually launch an offensive in North Waziristan. But he has told the Americans he cannot spare additional troops from Pakistan's half-million-man army, most of which is deployed along the Indian border, and that he lacks the proper equipment to conduct operations he fears will drive insurgents deeper inside Pakistan's populated areas.

U.S. military commanders have pushed numerous times over the past 18 months for more latitude to allow Special Operations troops to carry out missions across the Pakistan border, officials said. The CIA has similarly sought to expand the territory inside Pakistan it can patrol with armed drones, prodding Pakistan repeatedly for permission to fly drones over Quetta, a city in Baluchistan where the Taliban's political leaders are thought to be based.

The senior administration official, who called the proposals "ideas, not even operational concepts much less plans," said they have were rejected by the White House in the most recent review, as they have repeatedly been in the past, as likely to cause more harm than good.

"We've got to increasingly try to look at this through their lens," the official said of Pakistan, "not because we accept it wholesale, but because their actions are going to continue to be driven by their perspective."

"In the long run," he said, "our objectives have to do with the defeat of al-Qaeda and the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. If you're not careful here . . .you may do something in the short run that makes gains against the policy objective in North Waziristan, but proves self-defeating in the long term."

 

[RabzonKhan]

Pakistan’s Afghan policy flawed, counterproductive, says Ahmed Rashid

Daily Times
Staff Report
January 14, 2011

LAHORE: Pakistan’s Afghan policy is flawed and has proved to be counterproductive for the interests of the country, renowned author Ahmed Rashid said on Thursday.

He was speaking at a roundtable discussion, organised by Individual Land, a non-profit Islamabad-based think-tank, which reviewed the decade-long counter-terrorism struggle.

Journalist Khaled Ahmed, Lt Gen (r) Talat Masood, Imtiaz Gul and Naveed Shinwari also spoke on the occasion. Rashid said it was a time to say good-bye to the ‘double game’ that Pakistan had been playing in Afghanistan for a decade. He said Pakistan should wholeheartedly pursue the counter-terrorism struggle and should not be reluctant to go into North Waziristan. He said a coordinated and concerted political and military strategy was the need of the hour in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). “The problem is that the army is the sole incharge of the policy in FATA whereas there has to be a significant civilian input in the process,” he said.

Lt Gen (r) Masood said Pakistan must decide now that whose war it was fighting. “If it is the US war than we would disengage ourselves from FATA and if it was Pakistan’s war then we must employ a concerted counter-insurgency strategy,” he said.

He said any counter-terrorism measure should be accompanied by a development package, especially for the education and employment sectors. Ahmed said terrorism had damaged the ideology of the state. “There are significant signs of eroding the state’s writ in rural areas of the country and if not stemmed now, this menace of terrorism will win and the country would lose this war,” he said. Ahmed said the Tribal Areas needed heavy investment in infrastructure.

Columnist Wajahat Masood said the country’s priorities as a nation-state had to be redefined. He said the Sri Lankan model of counter-insurgency would prove helpful in Pakistan. He said currently the institutions of the state were very weak to combat the huge challenge ahead. Gul said the consequences of losing this war on terror would be fatal for the country. He said all extremist networks under the guidance of al Qaeda were gaining strength and could only be defeated with a clear-cut vision of the state. The discussion was moderated by Shaukat Ali of Individual land.