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Chief of Army Staff | General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

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I have a question, but I am not sure whether this is the right thread to ask it:

What are the reasons and the implications of the three year extension granted to Gen. Kayani?
 
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Somebody has been drinking a lot lately..or not sleeping enough.
 
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Somebody has been drinking a lot lately..or not sleeping enough.

or both? :lol:

PS added via edit:

Are you referring to yourself, or me, or Herr General? :D
 
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or both? :lol:

PS added via edit:

Are you referring to yourself, or me, or Herr General? :D

Im being a little paranoid these days.. I wont say.. lest my knowledge of how much soda goes into what whiskey for whom gets me a nights stay at the hotel unknown courtesy of those that must not be named :rofl:
 
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Im being a little paranoid these days.. I wont say.. lest my knowledge of how much soda goes into what whiskey for whom gets me a nights stay at the hotel unknown courtesy of those that must not be named :rofl:

:lol:

ALL the voices in my head agree with your post!
 
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Pakistan General Calls Leaked Diplomatic Cables ‘Disinformation’

By Vivian Salama - Dec 3, 2010

Pakistan’s chief of general staff, Lieutenant General Waheed Arshad, said confidential diplomatic cables released on the website WikiLeaks contained “nonsense” and their credibility should be questioned.

Pakistan’s military chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, told the U.S. ambassador to the country in March 2009 that he would be prepared to force out President Asif Ali Zardari to safeguard political stability, the U.K.’s Guardian reported Dec. 1, citing a cable provided to the newspaper by WikiLeaks.

“This is all nonsense,” Arshad said today in an interview at the annual Manama Dialogue, a security conference in Bahrain. “I think the credibility is quite questionable, frankly. It is disinformation.”

WikiLeaks.org receives documents that governments and businesses seek to keep secret and publishes them. On Nov. 28, the non-profit group began releasing more than 250,000 U.S. State Department documents that officials wanted to keep confidential.

The first round of WikiLeaks, published in July, prompted Pakistan to summon the U.K.’s top envoy to the nation after Prime Minister David Cameron accused elements of the South Asian country of exporting terrorism. The British leader’s comments followed the release by WikiLeaks of military documents suggesting Pakistan’s main intelligence agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, secretly aided the Taliban and other militant groups that NATO forces are trying to defeat in neighboring Afghanistan.

To contact the reporter on this story: Vivian Salama in Manama through the Abu Dhabi bureau at vsalama@bloomberg.net.
 
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Army chief holds all national leaders in esteem: ISPR

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s army stressed its loyalty to civilian politics after diplomatic correspondence leaked by whistleblowers WikiLeaks said the military had considered deposing the country’s president.

Cables from the US embassy in Islamabad obtained by WikiLeaks and reported in The New York Times and The Guardian newspapers this week also said President Asif Ali Zardari had made preparations for a coup.

One cable cited by both newspapers quoted US Vice-President Joe Biden recounting to Britain’s then prime minister Gordon Brown a conversation with Zardari last year, in which Zardari told Biden he feared assassination.

Zardari, the cable said, had told the US vice-president that Pakistan’s army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, and the Inter-Services Intelligence agency “will take me out”.

In the military’s first response to the allegations, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said Saturday “the army has a demonstrated policy of supporting the political process within the confines of constitution of Pakistan”.

Abbas also said that Kayani “holds all national leaders in esteem,” including the main opposition leader Nawaz Sharif.

Zardari is the widower of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in December 2007. He took power in 2008, returning Pakistan to civilian rule after nearly a decade under former general Pervez Musharraf.

According to a cable quoted by The New York Times, Kayani told the US ambassador during a March 2009 meeting that he “might, however reluctantly,” pressure Zardari to resign.

Kayani was quoted as saying that he might support Asfandyar Wali Khan, leader of the opposition Awami National League Party, as the new president — but not Sharif.

Army chief holds all national leaders in esteem: ISPR | Pakistan | DAWN.COM
 
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Army supports political setup within constitutional limits: ISPR

RAWALPINDI: Pakistan Army is “pro-democracy” and will continue to remain so within ambit ofthe Constitution, Inter Services Public Relations Director General (ISPR) Major General Athar Abbas said Saturday.

He said Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani respects the country’s political leadership and other national leaders.

Responding to a question about WikeLeaks disclosures, DG ISPR said the armed forces give preference to national interests in dealing with the challenges confronting Pakistan.

Army supports political setup within constitutional limits: ISPR - GEO.tv
 
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......... and the desperate whitewashing begins in earnest. :lol:
 
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COMMENT: Beware, General Kayani —Shahzad Chaudhry

Pakistan has explicitly stated that any parleys to settle the Afghan imbroglio must have Pakistani participation. Kayani also feels that while the US charts its own course of a political resolution, it pushes Pakistan on the warpath

Julian Assange has stirred quite a storm, and it may not remain restricted to the teacup. He is introduced variously: primarily, a hacker, a peace activist or an anti-war lobbyist, someone who is leading the drive for a transparent government in democracies, and who is keen to expose duplicity in state affairs. He is also a lot more: a cyber-warrior who has got his role cut out as the world goes increasingly digital and, therefore, liable to intervention. He has a team of around 30, all of the same vein, ready to assist him chart a new dynamic that will increasingly determine the nature of the Westphalian nation state and how it may conduct affairs in the future. Assange is also a useful conduit to, well, stir a few storms.

But I rush too far ahead. Let us go back to the NATO violations of Pakistani borders in September 2010, and Pakistan’s reaction of suspending supplies through Torkham, the major supply route carrying almost 65 percent of NATO supplies. A two-week closure caused a proportionate reduction in stocks, forcing either a pause or further lowering of reserves — both significantly raising US/NATO forces’ index of vulnerability. The US, the sole superpower, to some the only imperialist power of modern times, had to swallow its pride and apologise publicly to Pakistan — a state virtually dependent on the US for its political, economic and (somewhat) security survival. General Kayani would have had something to do with the decision. Elephantine memories are long.

NATO assembled in Lisbon in November to validate NATO in the 21st century. On the side, it conducted two other important summits: NATO Afghanistan and NATO Russia. At the NATO Afghanistan summit, other than NATO’s 28 members, another 20 nations that are part of the 48-nation International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) stationed in Afghanistan too were invited, as was Afghanistan. Their subject of discussion — US/NATO’s exit from Afghanistan. Pakistan was omitted from this meeting. Having spent nine years as the frontline state fighting this global war on terror, losing some 13,000 men, women and children in the blowback suicide vengeance unleashed by the Taliban on Pakistani cities, as indeed the 3,000 uniformed men who lost their lives fighting this war on the frontline, this has been quite an omission. Pakistan’s stability is linked to what happens in Afghanistan; Pakistan’s society and state are both tenuously suspended in thin air, unsure how the Afghan labyrinth will resolve itself. And Pakistan gets conveniently excluded from important deliberations. Come to think of it, if Haqqani indeed resides in North Waziristan, if the Quetta Shura has its headquarters amorphously dilated from anywhere between north of Quetta to the port city of Karachi, and Pakistan’s ISI holds the key to how these groups will respond within Afghanistan, not having Pakistan in the meeting must have a tale attached. Soon something will have to give.

I did ask in an earlier column if Afghanistan was what Obama bartered with India for a strategic relationship with multifarious political and economic dividends for the US during his November visit to India. Perhaps the easier way out was to exclude Pakistan from considerations in Lisbon when the curtain is about to draw down on Afghanistan rather than confronting an immediate first test of not including a pretentious ‘superpower’ India in such an important gathering. Call the US a superpower in decay. But there are other things too.

The Petraeus-Kayani relationship has not been too cosy. They happen to be the two fighting generals on either side of the Pak-Afghan border. And Petraeus has been carrying that sharp edge to his generalship. He may have difficulties with the administration in Washington too but tends to wash those away with an aggressive demeanour. He does not get along well with Karzai. He actually does not get along well with anyone who wishes to tell him that there is no military solution to Afghanistan. He is a desperate, frustrated commander whose COIN strategy, which he claimed had seen success in Iraq, is being blown to smithereens by these half-savage, half-nomad vagabonds of the Taliban. Petraeus is unwilling to let politics take precedence in the endgame. Kayani is all about politics as the only means to bring both peace and stability.

In the October strategic dialogue between Pakistan and the US, Kayani was frustrated that Pakistan’s preferred plan of options was not reaching the highest leadership in the US. He handed President Obama, when he dropped in on the Pakistani principals of the dialogue, a14-page document detailing precisely what Pakistan thought that the US needed to hear. Obama’s December review of Afghanistan would hopefully reflect what those with their ear to the ground in Afghanistan can suggest as the graceful way out. Petraeus would not be too pleased with that; he wants to fight his way out.

As with Petraeus, many in the American system now view Kayani as the stumbling block. They quote the army’s effort to scuttle the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Law, the suspension of supplies through Pakistan, the reluctance of the Pakistani army to begin operations in North Waziristan, Kayani’s alleged reservations on enabling a direct contact between Karzai and Mullah Baradar without including Pakistan in the discussions, and so on. Pakistan has explicitly stated that any parleys to settle the Afghan imbroglio must have Pakistani participation. Kayani also feels that while the US charts its own course of a political resolution, it pushes Pakistan on the warpath. Pakistan’s stability and survival is linked to the Afghan endgame; it at the least deserves a ringside seat when decisions impacting its own future are taken.

Enter Mr Assange, the WikiLeaks man. His leaks show Kayani showing consternation at the political leadership’s inability and incapacity to govern. That sets the scene to sow further divisions in Pakistan’s already frayed and tenuous domestic mosaic. Zardari, in his initial days of insecure existence, had already indicated his almost paranoid obsession with the non-political forces (read the army and the ISI) taking him out. Frayed civil-military relations are poised to hit further lows.

Is this stringing of apparently unrelated events an exaggerated conspiratorial enunciation or simply an unfolding process built around an evolving consequence? If Pakistan’s leadership fails to see through the making of perhaps the final challenge, succumbing to a coercive environment for short-term personal considerations, it may just prove to be the last straw on this camel’s back. Anne Patterson may be out, but the US’s games in our midst go on unabated. General Kayani and our leadership need to beware of Assange and his ilk.

The writer is a retired air vice marshal and a former ambassador
 
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National Army better option for talks on nuclear issue:

WikiLeaks

Updated at 1530 PST Monday, December 06, 2010

KARACHI: Former US ambassador to Pakistan Anne W Patterson had said that it would be better to have dialogue on nuclear issue with Pak Army instead of foreign office, revealed the cables disclosed by the WikiLeaks.

Patterson, in a cable sent to Washington ahead of Arms Reduction conference in Russia, on November 24, 2009, stated that talks on nuclear reduction with foreign office will be fruitless, adding if US army engage itself with COAS General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and DG MO Major General Javed Iqball it will have not only positive impacts but will also satisfy the army.
 
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Chinese Envoy meets Gen. Kayani

RAWALPINDI, Dec 6 (APP): Ambassador of China, Liu Jain on Monday called on Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani at General Headquarters. The visiting dignitary remained with him for some time and discussed the matters of mutual interest.
 
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Mr Liu Jain, Ambassador of China called on Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani at General Headquarters on Monday
 
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