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A New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan

When Pakistan Says No to the C.I.A.

NY Times
April 12, 2011

Introduction

With tensions high between the Pakistani spy agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, Pakistan has demanded that 335 American intelligence officers, contractors and Special Operations forces leave the country, and that the U.S. scale back drone attacks on tribal areas there.

The demand, officials from both countries said, is a response to the arrest of Raymond A. Davis, a C.I.A. security officer who killed two men in Lahore in January during what he said was a robbery attempt. Mr. Davis has since been released after the U.S. government agreed to reimburse the Pakistani government $2.3 million that it paid as compensation to the men's families.

Can -- or will -- the U.S. abide by Pakistan's demand that the C.I.A. curtail its activities? Could this be a serious blow to American efforts to control its enemies in the region?

Feeding Pakistan's Paranoia

Shuja Nawaz is director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington. He is the author of "Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within" and “Learning by Doing: the Pakistan Army’s Experience with Counterinsurgency."

Behind all the talk of a strategic dialogue and strategic partnership between the United States and Pakistan lurks the reality of a persistent transactional relationship, based on short-term objectives that intrude rudely into the limelight every time a drone attack kills civilians inside Pakistan or in the instance when an American “operative” is caught by the Pakistanis after killing two people on the streets of Lahore.

In “Paranoidistan,” as the historian Ayesha Jalal has called Pakistan, the public and the authorities are prepared to believe the worst. Conspiracy theories abound, involving the C.I.A., Israel and India, in various permutations.

So, it is not surprising that the Raymond Davis case has left mistrust in its wake. Unanswered questions abound: What was he doing driving alone in an unmarked car in the heart of Lahore’s bazaar district? Why did he shoot to kill two youths, and then step outside his car to finish them off, and photograph them again? And why was he photographing religious seminaries and bunkers, as leaked Pakistani information indicates?

Apart from allowing the extremist Pakistani right-wingers to capture the public space with their anti-American propaganda, this case left the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate embarrassed and angry. And it has sent friends of the United States into sullen silence. Then, as soon as Davis was released in a shadowy deal involving “blood money,” came the drone attack on Datta Khel in the border region of Pakistan that killed some 40 people.

Senior Pakistani military and intelligence officials maintain this was a “normal” jirga of peaceful tribesmen. U.S. officials say that it was designed to fool the C.I.A. and that the real purpose of the open-air gathering was to conduct business harmful to the coalition’s interests in Afghanistan. Regardless, the Pakistani army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, cut whole categories of U.S. military personnel based in Pakistan and privately warned the U.S. that he will “react” if the attacks continue. His intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, recently in Washington to discuss the issue with his C.I.A. counterpart, echoed that hard line. Hence, the report of a senior military official raising the possibility of shooting down the drones.

The Pakistani military and government do cooperate with the C.I.A. and U.S. military in the border region, but they will not acknowledge this openly. Both countries need to address their concerns frankly and in detail rather than continue a charade that misinforms their own people about what they are doing and why.

The United States needs to stop paying the Pakistan army with coalition support funds to fight in the border region and instead provide it adequate military aid in kind, as part of a carefully structured cooperative program to build its mobility and firepower against the militants.

Money cannot buy love. It is more likely to generate contempt among the rank and file of the Pakistani military. If the ultimate objective is to stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan, then economic and peaceful political means, and talks with the militants to bring them into the fold of normal political discourse, are also needed. Not drone attacks. Nor trigger-happy cowboys in the heartland of Pakistan.




On a Collision Course

C. Christine Fair is an assistant professor in the Center for Peace and Security Studies at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown. She served as a political officer to the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan.

Now that Pakistan has made its red lines clear, how will Washington respond? No doubt the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI, has concluded that the United States needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs the United States and thus is loath to cut off security or economic assistance. No doubt the ISI reckons that the C.I.A. will grudgingly accept these limitations while seeking to develop alternatives, however constrained. No doubt, the ISI is confident it will win this game of chicken. Pakistan’s spooks may well be right.

The ball is now in Washington’s court to lay down its own red lines, likely pertaining to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Haqqani group, the Afghan Taliban and nuclear proliferation. But, with the U.S. reliance on Pakistan to resupply the war in Afghanistan and lingering U.S. concerns about Pakistan’s growing nuclear weapons program, will it and with what consequences?

The head of the ISI, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, came to the United States to deliver the stark demands that included scaling back the successful drone program and withdrawing some 335 American personnel, including C.I.A. officers and contractors and Special Operations forces, from Pakistan. This was both expected and oddly refreshing.

It was expected because the break was long in the brewing. For at least a year, the United States has been increasing the size of its presence in Pakistan. Pakistan was suspicious of the growing U.S. presence and looming agenda and slowed the processing of American official visas to a sluggish grind.

I have argued elsewhere that the Raymond Davis affair was not an accidental precipitant of this impasse; rather, an event that the ISI successfully calibrated to bring about this very confrontation. Davis was protecting a cell that was trying to collect information on the Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of the ISI's chief assets in its proxy war with India.

The two men that Davis killed are alleged by Pakistani sources to have been tied to the ISI, likely as contractors. The two Pakistanis did not target the case officers Davis was protecting. Had they done so, things would have been even more combustible. Thus the Davis affair was not only spook on spook, but spook-contractor on spook-contractor. Davis was released after “blood money” was paid and after weeks of political brinkmanship, amid well-orchestrated Pakistani public outrage.

The incident succeeded in creating the strategic space that the ISI needed to reset relations and regain control over the U.S. operations in Pakistan. The increasing autonomy would have vexed any sovereign country — Pakistan or otherwise.

The ISI's straightforward declaration that the American activities in Pakistan are unacceptable is also oddly refreshing. Typically, both Washington and Langley, on the one hand, and Islamabad and Rawalpindi, on the other, avoid straightforward talk in public. Both sides make various disingenuous proclamations in public while reviling the other privately. Both sides have long concluded that the other is perfidious and operating to undermine the other’s interests. Both are right.

But Pasha’s bold move is a significant departure from the routinized method of circumlocuting the simple fact that the United States and Pakistan have strategic interests that are increasingly on a collision course.





No Return to 'Reagan Rules'

Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer, is a senior fellow in the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. He was chairman of President Obama’s strategic review of United States policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2009.

The Pakistani army has grown increasingly angry with American intelligence operations in Pakistan over the last two years. The army leadership, including Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the director general of Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, want a return to what they remember as "Reagan rules.” By this they mean a C.I.A.-ISI relationship like that of the 1980s when the agency provided the Pakistani intelligence agency with money and arms to aid the mujahedeen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan but left administration of the program and the running of the war to the ISI. A very small agency footprint -- fewer than 100 officers ran the entire program in Washington, Islamabad and Riyadh -- never threatened Pakistani sovereignty or dignity.

Reagan rules also meant that the U.S. ignored Pakistan’s nuclear program. Every year the president certified to Congress that Pakistan’s nuclear efforts were incomplete, allowing U.S. assistance to continue to flow to Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq’s dictatorship.

The problem today is we can’t go back to this rosy world. The Pakistani army and the ISI cannot be relied on to fight the jihadi Frankenstein they have built over the last three decades. Pakistan’s own president, Asif Ali Zardari, has accused the army of playing on both sides of the war on terror, and there is abundant evidence to back him up. The terror group that attacked Mumbai in 2008 continues to enjoy army patronage. And Pakistan today has the fastest growing nuclear arsenal in the world, soon to be the fifth-largest just behind that of the U.S., Russia, China and France.

So the frustration level on both sides is likely to grow as trust between Washington and Islamabad erodes. We may be able to paper it over in public but behind the scenes the tension is unlikely to go away.







Bad for the U.S. and Pakistan

Reza Nasim Jan is a research analyst and the Pakistan team leader for the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute.

Pakistani demands to suspend the drone campaign and curtail the presence of American operatives in Pakistan will degrade U.S. efforts in the region — and harm Pakistani efforts as well. Drone attacks have been a vital tool against Al Qaeda and its affiliates there, especially given Pakistan’s public refusal to take on these groups.

Suspending the drone strikes will provide breathing room to insurgents and Al Qaeda affiliates attacking both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. Such a respite as the summer fighting season ramps up in Afghanistan could be particularly harmful to coalition efforts there.

The Pakistani demand to end the Special Forces-Frontier Corps training relationship, presumably out of fear that U.S. trainers are spying, is the unfortunate result of paranoia and public posturing. U.S. trainers are far too closely watched for that to be a legitimate concern. This demand will deprive the Frontier Corps of a program that has facilitated recent improvements in training and access to equipment, and hurt U.S. attempts to develop contacts with the corps, which has been on the front lines of counterinsurgency efforts in Pakistan.

That said, the game is not yet played out.

We need to see how negotiations progress. Pakistan’s leaders seem to think they have the advantage and are therefore making extravagant demands, no doubt partly for public consumption. Although the U.S. can push back against Pakistani demands, even cut off aid to the country, which would be devastating to Pakistan, America's interests in the region would ill-served by such overt hostility. The end result is likely to reflect the fact that neither side possesses a viable alternative to begrudging cooperation.

Painful as it may be, a patient attempt at resolving the current crisis is the only sound course to pursue at this time.





It Will Get Worse, if the U.S. Leaves

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former case officer in the C.I.A., is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is the author of the forthcoming "The Wave: Man, God, and the Ballot Box in the Middle East."

It is entirely possible that the Central Intelligence Agency may have been a bit heavy-handed with the Pakistani military, as with the “unauthorized” drone attacks (the vast majority of these missile strikes inside Pakistan have unquestionably been coordinated and cleared by Islamabad). But it is increasingly clear that the primary problem between the two countries is the stubborn Pakistani dream that time can be reversed.

The Pakistani military liked the 1990s. Virulent anti-regime Islamic militancy was rare; Pashtun Islamic fervor, the spiritual backbone of both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban movements, was aimed at the conquest of Afghanistan; the North-West Frontier Province and its all-important trade hub Peshawar were peaceful and were pleasant weekend escapes for the elite of Islamabad; the economy was decent; and the nation became a nuclear power. The rise of Al Qaeda and its marriage to the Pakistani-supported Afghan Taliban movement weren’t Islamabad’s problems -- they were ours.

Since 2001, in Pakistani eyes things have gone seriously downhill. Islamic militancy is now a threat in the Punjab and the Sindh, the two all-critical provinces. Peshawar and large swaths of the North-West Frontier Province have become dangerous for those with open allegiances to the central government. Thousands of Pakistanis — hundreds of soldiers and intelligence officers — have died in the fight against the country’s homegrown holy warriors, some of whom had a fraternal relationship with the Pakistani army. Even though many Pakistanis may realize that the government’s aid to the Afghan Taliban was profoundly counterproductive, it’s still extremely difficult to give up the belief that Americans — not the Taliban — are the primary problem.

And the intelligence contretemps between the two countries will likely get much worse if Islamabad senses that the Obama administration really does intend to draw down troops in Afghanistan. It will feed the dream that the Americans will be gone (much of their financial and military aid, inshallah, will remain), the Afghan Taliban will again gain ground, and Pakistan’s increasingly violent jihadists will calm down and aim their hatred toward their primary targets: Afghanistan’s non-Pashtun minorities, American soldiers and a C.I.A. officer now and then.
 
Thank you Rabzon for posting the above piece - an excellent brief of informed opinion - It provides insight into facets of the kinds of thinking that animate US policy and policy managers (fanatics, to me).

That this forum's servers are in the US doesn't have anything to do with the scarcity of posts in response does it?? Will they really come to get you if speak your conscience in the republic of fear??
 
Readers are invited to review the interesting answers the President of Turkiye and Pakistan have provided - it seems that US plans to create multiple states in Afghanistan is a now threat that is being recognized even in NATO countries:


Turkey, Pakistan vow support for Afghan dialogue


ANKARA: Turkey and Pakistan Wednesday voiced support for initiatives to stabilise conflict-torn Afghanistan, including efforts for dialogue with the Taliban.

Presidents Abdullah Gul of Turkey and Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan made the pledges in response to a question on whether Ankara had agreed to host a representation office for the Taliban and whether Islamabad would be ready to to help any dialogue process.

“2011 is a very critical year for Afghanistan… as the foreign troops will begin to withdraw… We are using all our capabilities to secure Afghanistan’s unity and integrity,” Gul told a joint press conference.

“We are doing this in cooperation with Afghan President (Hamid) Karzai and all Afghan authorities… We will be part of any activity (aimed at) making further contributions to secure durable peace,” he said.

He would not comment directly on the possible opening of a Taliban office in Turkey.

Zardari, on an official visit to Turkey, said Pakistan “believes in a peaceful transition and dialogue” in Afganistan, its western neighbour with whom relations have often been strained over insecurity plaguing their border.

“We’ll be facilitators to any format that leads to peace… Whatever needs to be done, Pakistan will be playing a positive role and hoping to facilitate the transition and dialogue,” he said.

In December, Karzai spoke of suggestions that the Taliban open a representation office in Turkey or another impartial country “to facilitate reconciliation” in Afghanistan, saying he would be happy if Turkey could provide such a venue.

In February, Turkey pledged to help Afghanistan’s High Council For Peace (HCP), a body tasked with seeking dialogue with the Taliban, following talks with its chairman.

Karzai set up the HCP last year to pursue talks with the Taliban in return for them laying down arms and accepting the constitution. The Taliban have publicly rejected the peace overtures.

Turkey, NATO’s sole Muslim-majority member, has also organised talks between leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2007 to push them to cooperate against Islamist insurgents.

Afghanistan has been in the grip of a deadly insurgency waged by remnants of the Taliban since their regime was toppled in a US-led invasion in 2001, with the militants holding rear bases in Pakistan.

There are around 140,000 international troops in Afghanistan, including a Turkish contingent. They are due to start limited withdrawals from July with the Afghan police and army scheduled to take full control of security by 2014.
 
Thank you Rabzon for posting the above piece - an excellent brief of informed opinion - It provides insight into facets of the kinds of thinking that animate US policy and policy managers (fanatics, to me).

That this forum's servers are in the US doesn't have anything to do with the scarcity of posts in response does it?? Will they really come to get you if speak your conscience in the republic of fear??
Muse, my friend if the US was such an intolerant country, than Bilal Haider, Omar and many others (no offence guys) would long have been deported, or worse. :D
 
Indeed, and I understand many have been so expelled. The Us we imagine and the US as it is, alas, have turned out to be very different. But anyway, they can be what they want to be, so long as it does not effect others negatively.
 
Friends, the recent report released by the White House claiming Pakistan has no strategy to defeat insurgency and we have expressed outrage and indignation in varying degrees and forms about it - But are there perspective other than indignation? In what other light can we see the ideas released in the report? And how can we respond to these? readers will enjoy the piece below:


View from Washington
By Tanvir Ahmad Khan
Published: April 15, 2011

The writer was foreign secretary from 1989-90 and is a former chairman of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad

Writing in this column on the situation in Afghanistan, I had expressed the opinion that the United States and Pakistan still needed to harmonise their ideas on the future of that country as well as Pakistan. The recently published report of the White House to Congress on Pakistan and Afghanistan, a requirement to be fulfilled at 180-day intervals, confirms this perception. The critical observations made on Pakistan, both in the domain of governance and counter-insurgency operations, have evoked a sharp reaction in the country with government officials and the media ‘rejecting’ the contents of the report in forceful terms.

Notwithstanding such emotive factors as the Raymond Davis affair, which could have affected the tone and tenor of the report and the reaction in Pakistan, the contents of this third attempt at measuring progress in terms of benchmarks — metrics — should be seen calmly, in its proper perspective. As this newspaper pointed out, the report is by no means a one-sided narrative. Far more important than angry protests is the need to draw the right lessons and formulate a response in the best interest of the nation.

First, the context has to be understood. The evaluation coincides with US President Barack Obama’s launching of the campaign for a second term. Wherever warranted, political expediency has trumped the facts of the situation. In the highly complex relationship between the White House and Congress, the facts have to be a spun into a narrative that strengthens the president’s hands; this task becomes particularly difficult in the case of America’s foreign wars which are not being won. The war in Afghanistan has lost much of the optimism of the early Obama years. The US bombing of Libya did not have Congressional approval and could still become an election issue. In the last week of February, Defence Secretary Robert Gates told a West Point audience that “any future defence secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined”. He has since tried to put a gloss on this candid comment but he had already implicitly underlined the challenge of extricating 100,000 American troops from Afghanistan without a clear victory. Regrettably, former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf’s policy of playing the frontline state, followed blindly by the elected government, has made it virtually impossible to prevent a fallout on Pakistan as the United States struggles to perform this great feat. In fact, the present government has fewer options than Musharraf as the battle with our indigenous militancy has intensified. Washington knows Pakistan’s Achilles heel and will not hesitate to apply the ‘metrics’ to it to explain its own failures in Afghanistan.

Secondly, there is no gainsaying that the United States wants a stable and economically viable Pakistan conforming to Washington’s design for its state and society. Many elements of that design, such as purging extremism and violence from our body politic, are shared by a vast majority of our people. For years, the US just demanded greater use of force, though the Obama administration has generally taken a more holistic view of the situation. The US agenda includes transformation of Pakistan’s armed forces, their sense of mission and the means that they should have to fulfil it. Here, the two allies are not always on the same page. There is perpetual irritation in Washington that a government in the creation of which the United States had played a key role, has not been able to deliver. This frustration is writ large into the White House report.

The report is also an abbreviated chronicle of significant events in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The narration of Pakistan Army’s counter-insurgency operations acknowledges improved coordination across the border; it also notes the heavy casualties (2,575 killed in action and over 8,500 wounded since 2001) suffered by it. This is, however, subject to the following carping criticism: “What remains vexing is the lack of any indication of ‘hold’ and ‘build’ planning or staging efforts to complement ongoing clearing operations.” And then comes a verdict out of the blue: “As such, there remains no clear path towards defeating the insurgency in Pakistan despite the deployment 147,000 troops.” Numerous colour-coded maps exist which vividly show how fragile the Nato-Isaf hold on Afghanistan is, after a decade of war. One cannot help feeling that the report reflects the pique caused by Pakistan’s resolve to undertake a major operation against North Waziristan only at a time of its own choosing.

The political government is assessed negatively; the areas flagged include underperformance by it during the great flood, a stagnant and fragile economic situation, a political gridlock in which the government is unable to develop consensus on difficult economic and fiscal reforms and tensions between the Supreme Court and President Asif Ali Zardari. We cannot protest too much as it is a report written to serve the national interest of the United States. Insofar as it generates pressure on Pakistan, we will have to simply put our own house in order. Washington criticises the government for its failure to achieve consensus on national strategies. Ironically, a major reason why it lacks mass support is that people think of it as an alien transplant that has a permanent disconnect with them. Pakistan is likely to have coalition governments for a long time to come. The manner in which the present coalition works baffles the nation; it cannot judge where political leadership ends and the entrenched mafiosi take over. The Americans complain that the Pakistani government has no coherent design that would serve their war objectives, the people of Pakistan lament that it has no blueprint for their survival and development. Many differences between the premier intelligence organisations of the two countries might, indeed, have been resolved during the recent visit to Washington of DG ISI, leading to better intelligence and operational coordination. But the path to national salvation will continue to be as uncertain as before. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s government has, as the report insinuates, simply run out of steam
.
 
Hillary Clinton has a strategy; she will negotiate with the taleban. Soon the media will play a role to paint them as nationalists. Karzai will probably be the scapegoat and we all know what happens to that convenient country Pakistan --- the most dangerous place in the world, that horrible horrible ally that killed and captured more terrorists and lost thousands of soldiers over the years fighting them

when they negotiate with their adversary or establish contact with them, they are saving lives and promoting stability and long-term peace


of course when we do it, it makes the front page of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Slimes.......i'm sorry, Times.

and not all for the right reasons :):)
 
Afghanistan, Pakistan upgrade peace efforts

By Reuters
April 16 2011

KABUL:
Afghanistan and Pakistan agreed on Saturday to add top military and intelligence officials to a joint commission seeking peace with the Taliban, a measure they said would improve cooperation and bring peace closer.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said he and former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who heads Afghanistan’s efforts to reach out to the Taliban, would bring security chiefs into the joint commission.

The commission was originally set up in January to include foreign ministers from the two countries.

“Today’s visit, I believe has been one of the most historical and unprecedented meetings, because all the stakeholders were with us,” Gilani said at a news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai at Karzai’s garden palace in Kabul after a fleeting one-day visit.

Pakistan, which backed the Taliban government that ruled Afghanistan during the 1990s, will be crucial to any attempts to stabilise its western neighbour, although the two countries have had an uneasy relationship.

Islamabad’s intelligence services are still believed to have close links with many of the insurgent groups they funded and supported during and after the war against the Soviet Union, including the Taliban leadership which is based in Quetta.

Afghan government officials have frequently accused Pakistan’s military and its influential spy agency of trying to derail peace negotiations with Taliban leaders.

Many lower level insurgents also find safe haven in Pakistan’s lawless tribal regions, although Gilani denied the mountainous 2,400-kilometre-long border was porous.

Karzai said the meeting with Gilani, which also involved Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and intelligence chief General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, marked an important step forward for both neighbours.

“We today have clarity, which never existed earlier,” he said. He said he had also discussed the move to upgrade the commission with U.S. counterpart Barack Obama during a phone call last week, and it had the full backing of Washington.


The United States contributes two-thirds of the nearly 150,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, who are preparing to hand over security control to Afghan forces by the end of 2014.

“We welcome the participation of the U.S. in this tripartite arrangement… We have recently seen more interest by the U.S. in the peace process,” Karzai told journalists. He and Gilani were both keen to describe the peace and reconciliation process as “Afghan-led and Afghan-owned”.

Talking to Taliban

Acceptance has grown at home and abroad that talks may be the route to peace in Afghanistan, with U.S. and NATO leaders also examining their long term-commitment to the war, which is at its deadliest since the Taliban were ousted in late 2001.

Both Karzai and Gilani said Saudi Arabia and Turkey could be involved in aiding future talks. Turkey is working to open a political office for the Taliban in Istanbul, which could help facilitate negotiations to end the war, a close aide to the Turkish Prime Minister was quoted saying on Friday.

Karzai put Rabbani in charge of a “peace council” in October, after a “peace jirga” assembly meeting of community leaders. His plan includes offering amnesties and jobs to Taliban foot soldiers and asylum in third countries to leaders.

Karzai said talks with the Taliban would be addressed within the framework of the joint commission involving Pakistan.

Pakistan, long blamed for stoking the insurgency in Afghanistan to thwart rival India, is nevertheless seen as an important ally to the United States and other NATO members as they seek to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table.

“We both are suffering, we are brothers, we are neighbours, we should fight a common enemy. Therefore we should have a greater cooperation between both countries,” said Gilani. “There should be no blame game, because we want to stop terrorism.”.
 
EDITORIAL

Daily Times
April 17 2011

Ever since the Raymond Davis debacle, the intelligence agencies of both Pakistan and the US — ISI and CIA — have been at loggerheads over just how to cooperate with each other when both are obviously in conflict over how anti-militant and counter-terrorism activities should be carried out in the country. According to recent reports, Leon Panetta, the CIA Director, has said that the US has no plans to cut down on its operations against the militants within Pakistan’s borders and that his first and foremost priority was ensuring the US’s safety, no matter what the objections. And of objections, there have been plenty. However, somewhat conflicting to Panetta’s statement are recent confirmations by the US on being ready to discuss the element of drone strikes in Pakistan.

Whatever the scenario, the fact remains that lately the drone attacks have been getting some very negative press. Ever since the attack on the jirga that killed some 50 people in Datta Khel immediately after the release of Raymond Davis, there has been the kind of mass hysteria, hardly ever witnessed before, concerning the drone strikes. That the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani voiced, for the first time, apprehension and intolerance for the drones, almost every key public figure has claimed the same — the latest among the haters being Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Ameer Haider Hoti. It is almost like popular demand now for the drone strikes to end.

At such a juncture, the most important question to ask is: are the drone strikes effective or not? There are many who say they are precise, accurate and kill more militants than civilians, while there are others who say that more civilians are killed as collateral damage. All the facts and figures need to be laid out on the table before any dismissal or allowance is vouched for. We are in the midst of a terror war and we must not demand the end of drones if they are effective militant killing machines.

Although highly unlikely, given the mistrust that the Americans have for the Pakistani establishment, if they concede under pressure and end the drone attacks, it is up to the Pakistan Army to take over the reigns in countering the terrorists. The army will be under even more immense pressure by the Americans and will need to step up their game. The real question then is: will they?
 
Afghanistan: No endgame in sight

The key to ending the conflict in Afghanistan may be for us to stop thinking of it as a unified state

Nearly two years ago David Miliband, then foreign secretary, addressed a meeting of Nato confident that the right strategy was being pursued in Afghanistan. They would not force the Taliban to surrender, nor would they convert them. But he went on: "By challenging the insurgency … by building legitimate governance … the Afghan government, with our support, can prevail." Today Mr Miliband, backbench MP, is less certain – on any of those three counts. Last week he said the Taliban's numbers were growing, quoting an Isaf estimate of 35,000 full-time fighters; he challenged the idea that law and order could be delivered by the forces of a central state; and as for legitimate governance, there were two views of Hamid Karzai – a man uniquely qualified to unite his people, or its weakest link, with electoral fraud, corruption, cronyism and caprice sapping the strength of the Afghan government. Mr Miliband did not commit himself, but said it was incontestable that the Taliban are outcompeting the government in too many areas, dispensing their own rough but incorrupt justice. So while the west has set a date for the end of the war in 2014, Mr Miliband concluded that no political strategy yet exists to end the conflict.

Nor is he the only voice to doubt the relentless focus on military operations. A taskforce headed by Lakhdar Brahimi, former UN special representative for Afghanistan, and Thomas Pickering, former US undersecretary of state, said the current policy of reintegration may peel away small units of the Taliban, but would never provide the political resolution that peace would require. That could only be done by a settlement which would allow representation of the Taliban in central and provincial governments; the determination of the proper role of Islamic law in regulating dress, behaviour and the administration of justice; the protection of women's rights; the incorporation of Taliban fighters into the security forces; the severance of their ties with al-Qaida; and a guaranteed withdrawal of foreign forces.

All this comes late in the day. The western intervention is now longer than the Soviet one. But three years from the date set for withdrawal, no political component to that deadline exists. Nor is there a unified view in Washington about how to achieve it. With the Taliban pushed as a major presence out of Helmand and Kandahar, self-congratulation and self-doubt fill the air in roughly equal portions. The surge of US troop numbers is at its peak, but everyone is bracing themselves for another year of ferocious bloodshed, as the Taliban merely switch tactics from roadside bombs to suicide bombings and softer targets. Instead of fighting its way to the negotiating table, the US troop surge may simply be sawing the legs off it.

There is no dearth of creative ideas for an end to this conflict. But Washington may not be as powerful as it thinks in the endgame. A former UN negotiator involved in the Geneva agreements on the Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, Giandomenico Picco, said in a paper that we may have to abandon the idea of Afghanistan as a centrally governed nation state – a fallacy shared by the Soviets, the Taliban and the west. Its porous borders could only be guaranteed by a regional summit of the countries that effect them – Pakistan, India, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Everyone seems to have forgotten Riyadh's influence on Islamabad. And including Iran as a regional power in a forum, unconnected to the nuclear issue, could also be a way of breaking that deadlock.

US generals believe salvation lies in an Afghan National Security Force, 305,000 strong. They cling to the hope that an Afghan state will endure their departure. After decades of war, both remain untested assumptions. Nato could still avoid an ignominious exit, but as things stand the one staged by the Soviets, on whom history has poured such scorn, may end up being veritably ordered in comparison.

Afghanistan: No endgame in sight | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian
 
So while some in Pakistan suggest that Pakistan capitulate to the Talib and focus on Inda and Hindus and such as enemies, this from parts unknown:


Taliban claim training 1,000 bombers at secret camps
By Zia Khan
: April 18, 2011

A purported Taliban associate says ‘we have three facilities exclusively for fidayeen’.
ISLAMABAD:

Pakistani Taliban have claimed that they are running three secret camps in South and North Waziristan tribal regions close to the Afghan border to train potential suicide bombers with their total strength exceeding 1,000.

“We have three facilities exclusively for fidayeen (suicide bombers). Each one has more than 350 men being trained in it,” a purported spokesperson for the little-known Fidayeen-e-Islam Group of the Taliban, told The Express Tribune from a secret location in North Waziristan.

The man, who identified himself as Shakirullah Shakir, added that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) led by Hakimullah Mehsud had recently separated the operations of suicide bombers from the overall activities of the group.

“Fidayeen-e-Islam is a part of the overall chain of command of the TTP but it works separately and has its own structures,” Shakir said but gave little details of the working relationship between the mainstream Taliban leadership and the group handling suicide bombers.

The claim came on the heels of a statement by an alleged teenage suicide bomber who was arrested by the police at the Sakhi Hassan shrine in Dera Ghazi Khan after the vest he was wearing went off only partially, injuring him.

Omar told journalists later at a hospital that he was trained at a camp run by the Taliban with more than 300 people learning how to become the most lethal weapon.

Though there was no way to confirm the claim independently, Shakir said Omar was trained at one of three camps at Mirali town of North Waziristan and what he told the media about the number of under-training bombers was true.

“We own both Omer and his words,” the spokesperson added.

Shakir said one of the biggest camps was in Mirali in the North Waziristan, an agency security and intelligence officials believe was under the control of pro-Pakistan militant groups. He didn’t disclose the locations of two other facilities.

Of the more than 1,000 potential bombers, Shakirullah claimed, a few dozen had already been sent to hit their targets across Pakistan.

He did not say what their targets were but another Taliban associate said the most prominent personalities the terror network now wanted to hit were politicians, some selected people from the media and individuals working with civil society organisations.

Almost a week ago, a spokesperson for the Taliban, Ihsanullah Ihsan, told the Associated Press news agency that both governor and chief minister of Balochistan province were on the hit list of the group.

He did not explain why they were being specifically targeted.
 
"...everyone is bracing themselves for another year of ferocious bloodshed, as the Taliban merely switch tactics from roadside bombs to suicide bombings and softer targets."

Striking civilians and civilian political targets seems a common theme between the afghan taliban and Terek-i-taliban. Only the nations where their targets reside differ. Proximity and a shared centralized training area (FATAville) may facilitate the development of these human bombs. It remains a macabre irony that one group can receive so much support here while their brothers are decidedly loathed.

I suppose it's simply a matter of self-interest.
 
Almost a week ago, a spokesperson for the Taliban, Ihsanullah Ihsan, told the Associated Press news agency that both governor and chief minister of Balochistan province were on the hit list of the group.

He did not explain why they were being specifically targeted.

Curious that Taliban are interested in killing officials in Balochistan?
 
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