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Angry Pakistan threatens to derail Afghan endgame

At some stage the Nato is leaving Afghanistan, if that is 2014 or not Pakistan is going to have to live with what is there for a long time. What has happened is tragic and it is understandable people are angry however the first thoght has to be what is best for Pakistan in the long term not short term revenge.

Yes Pakistan and Russia can between them pretty much make the US mission in Afghanistan impossible but what happens then.
The US pulls out now, leaves a token defence of Kabul and leave the rest of the country to what ever faction has the most guns. Russia get Chechens Uzbeks and Afghans setting off bombs, Pakistan gets peace for a while perhaps, till the taliban descides to try carving pieces off Pakistan for their own little empire and you have not one Swat but three or four.
 
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1 - Not happening.
2 - Each time they dangle the supply line boogeyman, the NATO reduces the dependency.Right now its 35% and is decreasing.

Wrong. This is what the US Army General Barry McCaffrey had to say:

Probably 50% of the tonnage that supports the 150,000 NATO troops 800 miles from the sea comes in through the port of Karachi, and then up through either the Khyber Pass or in through the Southern route. So I do not believe we can sustain a presence, probably more than 90 days, & continue operations at this rate

How badly does US need Pakistan? - Video on mnsbc.com
 
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ALEXANDRIA, Egypt -- A beachside cafe in Alexandria may not seem like a place where you'd find a man who counts among his old friends Taliban leader Mullah Omar, military commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, and past and present leaders of al Qaeda. But that's where I met with Mustafa Hamid, better known as Abu Walid al Masri, a senior mujahidin figure who was among the first Arabs to arrive in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets some 30 years ago, and the first foreigner to swear allegiance to Mullah Omar.

Regarded in the militant milieu as "a school in himself," as the historian Basil Muhammad put it, Hamid is an independent but respected and valued figure. He's also a journalist who worked for the Arabic-language Al Ettihad news during the Soviet-Afghan war and was Al Jazeera's Kandahar bureau chief during the latter years of the Taliban's reign. Hamid has also emerged as a prominent historian of the Afghan jihad, authoring 12 books on this topic. He also serves as a contributing author for the Taliban's flagship publication, al-Samud.

"Iran knows the Taliban is coming back"
Until two months ago, Hamid had spent the better part of the past decade under house arrest in Iran, he said, after being detained entering the country when Afghanistan fell to coalition forces in late 2001. His detention, he told me, "was a very bad experience that affected my family and I greatly in health and morale. But it also had one benefit for me: I was sitting and writing. Without being in jail, I think I would have never finished my books."

Now, after a sustained lobbying campaign by family members, Hamid is free. We met back in his Egyptian homeland nearly two years after we first began talking online, a months-long conversation (and, at times, debate) we had over email about our respective ideas.

"I thought Iran intended to hold me forever," he said when we met at the cafe. "They denied that I was there but after the campaign from my family, my presence became known and if the outside world knows someone is there, then they have a chance of a deal being made for their release."

Hamid knows more than most about the machinations driving Iran's detention and release of foreign fighters who had illegally crossed its borders; he served at times as the unofficial Taliban emissary to the country. But he hotly contests that he represented al Qaeda or its interests to the government in Iran, as is alleged by the United States.

"Al Qaeda did not send me, nobody sent me. I made the proposal to Mullah Omar to reach out to Iran when he came to visit us in the village south of Kandahar airport, in 1997, and he agreed." The proposal Hamid recounts would have been part of efforts aimed at unlocking the Iranian embargo that later intensified after several Iranian diplomats were killed in 1998 by Taliban forces at Mazar-i-Sharif, an event that also led Iranian forces to mass at the border. "The closing of the borders brought great harm to the Afghan people," Hamid says.

"Al Qaeda tried to find its own routes into and out of Afghanistan without the Iranian government"
Hamid suggested to Omar that the Taliban try to normalize relations with Iran as well as Pakistan, he says, which was also "causing problems at the border" at the time. "I told Mullah Omar that he should seek good relations with these countries because Afghanistan had no ports and no sea access, so my argument for reaching out was from the strategic point of view," Hamid says.

Hamid says that Omar agreed, dispatching him to talk to their Iranian counterparts about normalizing relations and opening up cross-border routes for supplies and food. But Hamid failed, and the effort was unpopular among a key constituency. Some within al Qaeda were unhappy that Hamid had talked to Iranian officials and were very aggressive to him when he returned, he told me. Still, al Qaeda also wanted to engage with Iran, Hamid says, but for different purposes. It wanted to establish its own private transit routes through the country, according to Hamid. "Al Qaeda tried to find its own routes into and out of Afghanistan without the Iranian government and tried to do it through Baluchistan," an ethnic region spanning Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

The failed diplomatic mission did not end Hamid's ad-hoc liaison role for the Taliban government. As war loomed in Afghanistan in late 2001, he was again dispatched to reach out to Iran. The Taliban leadership, Hamid says, wanted him to figure out what position Iran would take in the coming U.S. war against the Taliban, and whether the Iranian government might be willing to assist the group. Hamid and a number of Afghan officials met at the border with Iranian counterparts, who suggested the Taliban retreat to the south. "This made the Afghans angry," Hamid remembered. "They realised that Iran would continue to play its own game in Afghanistan, and the region." This led Hamid to believe that the Iranian government, in other words, would not try to help the Taliban retain control over Afghanistan.

When Herat fell unexpectedly to coalition forces the next day, marking the beginnings of the Taliban's collapse, Hamid and the small group with him were trapped and had to cross into Iran. He recalls linking up with some Tajiks from the al Nahda party, formerly a militant group operating in Tajikistan, some of whose members Hamid says he had earlier trained at the famed al Farouq training camp in the mid 1990's. (Al Farouq was destroyed by U.S. cruise missiles targeting al Qaeda following the August 1998 African Embassy bombings). The Tajiks helped the group to cross the border, Hamid remembers, dodging gunfire from Iranian border guards.

When Hamid and the others with him were detained by Iranian authorities, the Tajiks from al-Nahda helped to negotiate their release. They had a presence in Iran, Hamid said of the Tajiks, and "they had some work to do there [in Iran] or some job." " I don't know what kind of job, whether it was political, economical, or for communications with the outside world, but in late 2001 they were still in Iran." Several years earlier, the Tajiks had helped Hamid to resettle his family in Iran using faked documents. In late 2001, after being released from border custody, Hamid made his way to his family in Iran.

Interview with a Taliban Insider: Iran's Game in Afghanistan - Leah Farrall - International - The Atlantic

How many players does this end game need?
 
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Pakistan has reason to feel anger: NYT


Pakistan had reason to feel that the US had violated its sovereignty, says New York Time on Monday.

The leading US Newspaper has also cited a US democratic Senator Richard J. Durbin who said while talking to FOX news, "Imagine how we would feel if it had been 24 American soldiers killed by Pakistani forces at this moment,"

The paper further said the reaction inside Pakistan nonetheless followed a now-familiar pattern of anger and tit-for-tat retaliation. So did the American response of regret laced with frustration and suspicion. Each side's actions reflected a deepening distrust that gets harder to repair with each clash.

The paper also citing Vali Nasr, a former deputy to the administration's regional envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke, and now a professor at Tufts University that the United States effectively has not one but two strategies for winning the war in Afghanistan.

In recent months American forces have complained that they have taken mortar and rocket fire from positions in Pakistani territory, as officials said they did early Saturday in the Mohmand region, just north of the Khyber Pass, prompting American troops to call in airstrikes. "It's a case of the tail wagging the dog," Nasr said. When they respond forcefully along the border, "U.S. commanders on the ground are deciding U.S.-Pakistan policy."


Pakistan has reason to feel anger: NYT | Pakistan | News | Newspaper | Daily | English | Online
 
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Doesn't stand before the figure given by a Gen. under oath in a Senate hearing.

The US officials lied under oath as well when they said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Doesn't mean their word is written in stone.

You will present your one claim, whereas I will quote you numerous highly reputable sources that claim 50% of the supplies go through Pakistan. So let's just leave it at that.
 
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The US officials lied under oath as well when they said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Doesn't mean their word is written in stone.

You will present your one claim, whereas I will quote you numerous sources that claim 50% of the supplies go through Pakistan. So let's just leave it at that.

Yeah fine. Whatever.
 
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ALEXANDRIA, Egypt -- A beachside cafe in Alexandria may not seem like a place where you'd find a man who counts among his old friends Taliban leader Mullah Omar, military commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, and past and present leaders of al Qaeda. But that's where I met with Mustafa Hamid, better known as Abu Walid al Masri, a senior mujahidin figure who was among the first Arabs to arrive in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets some 30 years ago, and the first foreigner to swear allegiance to Mullah Omar.

Regarded in the militant milieu as "a school in himself," as the historian Basil Muhammad put it, Hamid is an independent but respected and valued figure. He's also a journalist who worked for the Arabic-language Al Ettihad news during the Soviet-Afghan war and was Al Jazeera's Kandahar bureau chief during the latter years of the Taliban's reign. Hamid has also emerged as a prominent historian of the Afghan jihad, authoring 12 books on this topic. He also serves as a contributing author for the Taliban's flagship publication, al-Samud.

"Iran knows the Taliban is coming back"
Until two months ago, Hamid had spent the better part of the past decade under house arrest in Iran, he said, after being detained entering the country when Afghanistan fell to coalition forces in late 2001. His detention, he told me, "was a very bad experience that affected my family and I greatly in health and morale. But it also had one benefit for me: I was sitting and writing. Without being in jail, I think I would have never finished my books."

Now, after a sustained lobbying campaign by family members, Hamid is free. We met back in his Egyptian homeland nearly two years after we first began talking online, a months-long conversation (and, at times, debate) we had over email about our respective ideas.

"I thought Iran intended to hold me forever," he said when we met at the cafe. "They denied that I was there but after the campaign from my family, my presence became known and if the outside world knows someone is there, then they have a chance of a deal being made for their release."

Hamid knows more than most about the machinations driving Iran's detention and release of foreign fighters who had illegally crossed its borders; he served at times as the unofficial Taliban emissary to the country. But he hotly contests that he represented al Qaeda or its interests to the government in Iran, as is alleged by the United States.

"Al Qaeda did not send me, nobody sent me. I made the proposal to Mullah Omar to reach out to Iran when he came to visit us in the village south of Kandahar airport, in 1997, and he agreed." The proposal Hamid recounts would have been part of efforts aimed at unlocking the Iranian embargo that later intensified after several Iranian diplomats were killed in 1998 by Taliban forces at Mazar-i-Sharif, an event that also led Iranian forces to mass at the border. "The closing of the borders brought great harm to the Afghan people," Hamid says.

"Al Qaeda tried to find its own routes into and out of Afghanistan without the Iranian government"
Hamid suggested to Omar that the Taliban try to normalize relations with Iran as well as Pakistan, he says, which was also "causing problems at the border" at the time. "I told Mullah Omar that he should seek good relations with these countries because Afghanistan had no ports and no sea access, so my argument for reaching out was from the strategic point of view," Hamid says.

Hamid says that Omar agreed, dispatching him to talk to their Iranian counterparts about normalizing relations and opening up cross-border routes for supplies and food. But Hamid failed, and the effort was unpopular among a key constituency. Some within al Qaeda were unhappy that Hamid had talked to Iranian officials and were very aggressive to him when he returned, he told me. Still, al Qaeda also wanted to engage with Iran, Hamid says, but for different purposes. It wanted to establish its own private transit routes through the country, according to Hamid. "Al Qaeda tried to find its own routes into and out of Afghanistan without the Iranian government and tried to do it through Baluchistan," an ethnic region spanning Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

The failed diplomatic mission did not end Hamid's ad-hoc liaison role for the Taliban government. As war loomed in Afghanistan in late 2001, he was again dispatched to reach out to Iran. The Taliban leadership, Hamid says, wanted him to figure out what position Iran would take in the coming U.S. war against the Taliban, and whether the Iranian government might be willing to assist the group. Hamid and a number of Afghan officials met at the border with Iranian counterparts, who suggested the Taliban retreat to the south. "This made the Afghans angry," Hamid remembered. "They realised that Iran would continue to play its own game in Afghanistan, and the region." This led Hamid to believe that the Iranian government, in other words, would not try to help the Taliban retain control over Afghanistan.

When Herat fell unexpectedly to coalition forces the next day, marking the beginnings of the Taliban's collapse, Hamid and the small group with him were trapped and had to cross into Iran. He recalls linking up with some Tajiks from the al Nahda party, formerly a militant group operating in Tajikistan, some of whose members Hamid says he had earlier trained at the famed al Farouq training camp in the mid 1990's. (Al Farouq was destroyed by U.S. cruise missiles targeting al Qaeda following the August 1998 African Embassy bombings). The Tajiks helped the group to cross the border, Hamid remembers, dodging gunfire from Iranian border guards.

When Hamid and the others with him were detained by Iranian authorities, the Tajiks from al-Nahda helped to negotiate their release. They had a presence in Iran, Hamid said of the Tajiks, and "they had some work to do there [in Iran] or some job." " I don't know what kind of job, whether it was political, economical, or for communications with the outside world, but in late 2001 they were still in Iran." Several years earlier, the Tajiks had helped Hamid to resettle his family in Iran using faked documents. In late 2001, after being released from border custody, Hamid made his way to his family in Iran.

Interview with a Taliban Insider: Iran's Game in Afghanistan - Leah Farrall - International - The Atlantic

How many players does this end game need?

We know India isn't one of them.
 
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Yes Pakistan and Russia can between them pretty much make the US mission in Afghanistan impossible but what happens then.
The US pulls out now, leaves a token defence of Kabul and leave the rest of the country to what ever faction has the most guns. Russia get Chechens Uzbeks and Afghans setting off bombs, Pakistan gets peace for a while perhaps, till the taliban descides to try carving pieces off Pakistan for their own little empire and you have not one Swat but three or four.

At some point, the penny will drop for the Russians and they will start asking the right questions about Afghanistan (ala Iraq): is it really defeating the extremists or providing a recruiting and training ground for them? Despite fancy press releases, anyone with a brain knows NATO is in full retreat and is looking for a face-saving exit, talks with the Taliban and all...
 
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US-Pakistan ties troubled but repairable: US military chief
By Reuters
Published: November 29, 2011
US-Pakistani relations are at one of their worst points in memory after the NATO strike that killed 24 Pakistani troops, but can recover, Washington’s top military officer said on Monday.
General Martin Dempsey said Pakistani anger was justified given the loss of life. But he declined to offer an apology, saying during a trip to London that he did not know enough yet about the weekend incident and that there was a US military investigation.
“They have reason to be furious that they have 24 soldiers that are dead, and that the ordinance that killed them was the ordinance of a partner,” Dempsey, chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Britain’s ITV News.
“I would certainly like to enlist their patience in helping us figure out what happened.” Pakistan’s military said the strike was unprovoked but a Western official and an Afghan security official who both requested anonymity have said Nato troops were responding to fire from the Pakistani side of the Afghan border.
The killings have upended US attempts to ease a crisis in relations with Islamabad, which worsened after the secret US raid into Pakistan to kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May.
The incident also threatened to undermine US efforts to stabilise the region as Washington tries to wind down the war in Afghanistan. Asked about US-Pakistani relations, Dempsey said: “It certainly does look like it’s on about as rocky a road as it has been in my memory. And my memory with Pakistan goes back some 20 years or so.”
Questioned whether the situation was irretrievable, he said: “No. I don’t think so.” Dempsey branded the relationship with Pakistan “troubled” when he addressed a forum in London.
Supply cut-off
Pakistan shut Nato supply routes into Afghanistan in retaliation for the killings. Dempsey said the United States could cope with the cut-off by channeling supplies through alternative routes.
“But I’d like to believe that we could, over time, with Pakistan’s approval, restore those lines of communication,” he said. Pakistan has also said it had ordered the United States to vacate a drone base in the country.
Dempsey, who declined to acknowledge the use of drones at the base, said the move would be a “serious act in terms of our relationship”.
“They want us to close the base in Shamsi, the purpose of which I leave to your imagination. There are other options for stationing aircraft and other resources around the region,” Dempsey said.
Asked whether it was a serious blow, he said: “It’s a serious blow in the sense that the Pakistani government felt that they needed to deny us the use of a base that we’ve been using for many years. “And so it’s serious in that regard. It’s not debilitating militarily.”
Dempsey said ties at senior levels between the two nations’ militaries were still strong at the “person-to-person” level.
He said he had known Pakistan’s army chief General Ashfaq Kayani since the two studied together at the US Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in the late 1980s.
Dempsey refrained from repeating some of the accusations about Pakistani intelligence ties to anti-US militants that were cited by his predecessor, Admiral Mike Mullen.
Mullen, before stepping down in September, called the Haqqani network a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service. “Whether they are acting at the behest or at the direction of the ISI — I’m not prepared to say that,” he said.
 
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Dempsey, who declined to acknowledge the use of drones at the base, said the move would be a “serious act in terms of our relationship”.

@American Official $hits!

YOU $HIT HEAD creatures you feel closing a base is serious and killing soldiers in uniform without any provocation is actually not worth condemning... YOU $HIT PILES MOTHER ***** W4ORES! I Want you be erazed from Pakistan and Afghanistan as if you were never born!
 
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Analysis: Attack hands Pakistan a chance to squeeze US
By Reuters
Published: November 29, 2011
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s military has been handed a rare opportunity to press its strategic ambitions in neighbouring Afghanistan after a cross-border NATO attack that killed 24 of its soldiers over the weekend.

Fury over the incident at home, where anti-American sentiment runs high, makes it likely that both the army chief, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, and the civilian government will play hardball with their ostensible ally, the United States.

“The Pakistan military is clearly very angry at the turn of events and the army’s top leadership is under tremendous pressure from middle-ranking offices and junior officers to react,” said Hasan Abbas at the US National Defense University’s College of International Security Affairs.


That pressure will spur the military to flex its muscles in diplomatic manoeuvring with Washington in the run-up to the exit of US combat troops from Afghanistan in 2014.

Indeed, on Monday, the military’s spokesman threatened to drastically reduce cooperation on peace efforts in Afghanistan, which could complicate US President Barack Obama’s plans to bring the war there to an end.

Analysts said Pakistan will seek concessions from the United States as its price for Saturday’s attack, in which NATO helicopters and fighter jets strafed two military outposts in northwest Pakistan, close to the Afghan border.

The Pakistani military said 24 soldiers were killed and 13 wounded. NATO called it a tragic, unintended incident.

The concessions are likely to include giving Pakistan a greater say in the political settlement to end the war that would cement a role for Islamabad’s allies in a future Kabul government.

A year of bust-ups
“From the military’s point of view, here is a perfect opportunity to try to go on the offensive for a change,” said Kamran Bokhari, vice president for Middle Eastern and South Asian affairs at STRATFOR, a US-based intelligence consultancy.

“The Pakistanis are going to lay their terms out,” Bokhari said. “They’re going to say … whatever you’re doing on that side of the border, we need more input into that and you need us to get you out of there and provide a safe exit.”

The border incident is the latest in a year of bust-ups between Islamabad and Washington – uneasily allied in the war on militancy since the September 11 attacks on the United States a decade ago.

First there was the jailing of a CIA contractor for shooting dead two Pakistanis in the city of Lahore. Then there was the secret US commando raid inside Pakistan that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and then came US accusations that Pakistan was involved in attacks on American targets in Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s room for manoeuvre is usually limited by its mutually dependent relationship with Washington, on which it depends for financial and military support.

“Pakistan is in no position to do something that might lead to open hostilities, to war with the US,” said Shaukat Qadir, a retired brigadier general and analyst.

But this time Islamabad feels justly aggrieved and has several options to pressure the United States.

Influence with militants
Already since Saturday’s incident it has announced that it will review all military and diplomatic ties as well as intelligence sharing, and it has demanded the vacation of Shamsi air base in Balochistan, where some CIA drones used against militants in the tribal areas of Pakistan are reportedly based.

It has also shut down supply routes through Pakistan that account for almost half of the provisions shipped overland to US allied troops fighting in Afghanistan.

Following a similar incident in September 2010 that killed two Pakistani troops, the routes were shut for 10 days.

However, NATO has since pushed to expand a northern route into Afghanistan through Russia and the central Asian countries, which reduces the impact of a blockade through Pakistan.

Pakistan’s ultimate leverage lies in its influence over militant groups, especially the Taliban-linked Haqqani network, which pioneered suicide bombing in Afghanistan and has become one of the most serious threats to NATO troops there.

Pakistan has long-standing ties with the Haqqanis stretching back to the war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and – despite official denials – it is widely suspected that it still supports them.

After an attack on the US embassy in Kabul in September, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, called the Haqqani network a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s intelligence service.

Despite that, in October, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly called on Pakistan to help include the Haqqanis in peace talks with the Afghan Taliban.

Emboldened by the latest events, Pakistan might actually start leaning more heavily on the network as a proxy guerilla force to further its own interests in a post-US Afghanistan. It almost certainly won’t be trying to bring them to the negotiating table.

“I think the message has been conveyed loud and clear,” Qadir said. “We’re not going to do anything to facilitate anything until this problem is solved.”

But there’s only so far Pakistan can lean on the Haqqanis. Any attack in the near term by the group against targets in Afghanistan will be seen as retaliation, even if Pakistan didn’t have anything to do with it.

Pakistan’s been here before. In the 1990s, it was almost labelled by the United States as a state-sponsor of terrorism for its support of militant groups. Such a declaration today would immediately trigger sanctions Pakistan can’t afford.

“Right now, the Pakistanis are playing victims,” Bokhari said. “Do they want to go from being victims to being accused of sponsoring a terrorist attack on US forces?”
 
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Pakistan may boycott Bonn moot: US
Published: November 29, 2011
WASHINGTON (Agencies) The Obama administration says Pakistan is considering pulling out of an international conference on Afghanistan next week as a result of the NATO airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner says Pakistani officials have informed the US they are reviewing their participation. He acknowledged that the weekend incident was a setback for US-Pakistani relations.

The conference next week in Bonn, Germany, seeks a strategy to stabilize Afghanistan a decade after al-Qaida used the country as a base to launch the 9/11 attacks and U.S.-backed forces overthrew the Taliban. Toner urged Pakistan to attend.

He also said Monday that investigations were under way into the NATO strikes. He said Washington and Islamabad will have to work through the difficulties in their “vitally important” relationship.
Maqbool Malik from Islamabad adds: Pakistan has stepped up diplomatic efforts to seek written agreements with the United States as well as NATO/ISAF for future cooperation in the war against terror, sources said on Monday.

“Following the NATO attack, Pakistan will not cooperate with the US and NATO until and unless they sign written agreements on new rules of engagements for cooperation in the war against terror,” a senior government official told The Nation.

The sources requesting not to be named said that Pakistan was also engaged in weighing options as to whether it should participate or boycott the international conference on Afghanistan to be held in Bonn, Germany, from December 5-8.
Pakistan may boycott Bonn moot: US | Pakistan | News | Newspaper | Daily | English | Online
 
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