COMMENT: Taliban vs India —Rafia Zakaria (Who is the worse enemy?)

[pak-marine]

Pakistan faced even worse insurgency during 90's in Karachi.

are you calling that stupid production Jinnahpur drama Insurgency ?

 

[PostColonial]

First of all TTP isnt taliban, they are just wanna be who are using the word called taliban as its a popular norm.

Haha. I guess you're the authority who decides who is Taliban and who isn't? They say they're Taliban, the behave like Taliban. Ergo, they are Taliban.

The real taliban were the ones under Mullah Omer and Mullah Omer have clearly stated that TTP is not one of them and certainly their agenda is different.

Of course. Their agenda is to do to Pakistan what they did to Afghanistan. Not very nice when it happens to you eh?

Pakistan will and should support factions which will provide us with a friendly neighbor in Afghanistan while on the other hand should take concrete steps against TTP and its ilks.

Translation: Pakistan will support any sick regime that keeps Afghanistan a failed state with a government that can't act for its own interests.

The option of a Islamic state in Pakistan does not stand valid as Taliban remained the rulers of Afghanistan for many years and never ever did such a situation arose and there wont be one in the near future if Mullah omer comes to power in Afghanistan.
As for the US well the time for the US to depart is pretty near and so is India who with the behest of the US is enjoying poking others.

Pakistan is already "Islamic Republic". You can't blame them for saying "Hey - walk the talk".

Anyways, Afghans who want their country to have a decent democratic government will be damned pleased to hear that you would rather support the worst fundamentalist like Mullah Omar in their country, while killing the people who try to do the same in yours. Pathetic hypocrisy

 

[Stumper]

They have for decades allowed themselves to be led like a herd of sheep and been so gullible that they have been led up a gum tree by the Army & Religious Fundamentalist - all the while believing that the decisions taken by them were right & in the best interests of them & the nation.
.

Are we any different sir? .... Pray tell me, what have our politician done differently? Haven't we been fed the same caster fodder? Haven't they divided us for our votes?. Haven't they been feeding us the same anti-pak pill for all the attacks on us?.

Us and Pak, have ourself, the people to blame. We have always kept our personal gain ahead of national interest's. We have let this daemon's to shepherd us. We have always believed, someone will clean the sh1t, never realizing that "Someone" needs to be us the people. We stink sir. We do.

 

[Panditji]

Stumper bhai, you don't make sense.

Are we any different sir? .... Pray tell me, what have our politician done differently? Haven't we been fed the same caster fodder? Haven't they divided us for our votes?.

OK till this point.

Haven't they been feeding us the same anti-pak pill for all the attacks on us?.

The attacks are not a natural phenomenon like floods and earthquakes, and people do not grow AK47s and ammunition in their backyards. It has to come from somewhere. I am actually amazed you make this argument.

Us and Pak, have ourself, the people to blame. We have always kept our personal gain ahead of national interest's.

How does India figure in the equation?

We have let this daemon's to shepherd us. We have always believed, someone will clean the sh1t, never realizing that "Someone" needs to be us the people. We stink sir. We do.

Methinks there is some identification problem here.. could you check and confirm you reside in India? Because this statement clearly is from somebody in Pakistan, because of the 'cleaning of the sh!t' comment. An Indian would have had no reason to make such a statement.

 

[IceCold]

Haha. I guess you're the authority who decides who is Taliban and who isn't? They say they're Taliban, the behave like Taliban. Ergo, they are Taliban.

I am not the authority, its common sense something which you seem to be deprived off.

Of course. Their agenda is to do to Pakistan what they did to Afghanistan. Not very nice when it happens to you eh?

That is only the agenda of the TTP and that too not to make Pakistan an Islamic state(thats just a cover up) but to terrorize it and that is exactly what they are paid for.

Translation: Pakistan will support any sick regime that keeps Afghanistan a failed state with a government that can't act for its own interests.

So do you think Karzai has turned afghanistan into a superpower. Mind you today Afghanistan is more failed as a state and there is more poppy growth and you name it as compared to it ever was during taliban rule. Heck Karzai cant excute its power out side Kabul and that is exactly why he is called the mayor of kabul.

Pakistan is already "Islamic Republic". You can't blame them for saying "Hey - walk the talk".

I have already answered. Being an Islamic state or not has nothing to do with TTP agenda, it wants to put the entire country hostage and thats what they are trying. And this by the way is the agenda of TTP and not what were the real taliban.

Anyways, Afghans who want their country to have a decent democratic government will be damned pleased to hear that you would rather support the worst fundamentalist like Mullah Omar in their country, while killing the people who try to do the same in yours. Pathetic hypocrisy

So who do you think taliban are? Are they not afghans. Lol. Do you realize that even Karzai is asking Omer to sit down with him and talk, what in the hell are you babbling about.
The only pathetic hypocrisy at display here is what India is trying to do in the name of building roads, schools etc. Even the americans have started to admit the same. Better late then never.

 

[IceCold]

Other than allegations, should you not have one proof about the incident which can be verified by an external country, even China.

One press reporter says India is using Afghanistan to encircle Pakistan. Other allege that Taliban and India are same. Infact, India is paying Taliban money to do so. During all this allegations, no one wonders what will India benefit in having a paranoid and unstable Pakistan. Wont India fear that nuclear weapons may fall into Taliban hands or that Pakistan would use that on India in haste.

Pakistan views Afghanistan as its backyard. India's friendly relationship with Afghanistan got to be directed against Pakistan. Why this paranoia ? In couple of years, India and China will conclude the border arrangement. Would you still say that, there India goes again encircling Pakistan via China.

All the previous wars we had, the one except 1971, Pakistan aggressed w.r.t to India. Even in the most recent case as Kargil, which I still fail to conceive the objective of the mission.

I cannot understand how Pakistan still prefers Taliban over India. Taliban is blowing up GHQ, whereas Indians still waiting for a positive development for their Mumbai incident orchestrated by Pakistanis.

I dont even wont to comment on this. Allegations yeah right.
The reason you never hear from us is not because we dont have the damn proofs, but because we have sell outs in the GOP and i have stated the same on numerous occasions.

 

[pakomar]

Personally, I think there is no greater enemy of Pk then the ppl of Pk themselves.

They have for decades allowed themselves to be led like a herd of sheep and been so gullible that they have been led up a gum tree by the Army & Religious Fundamentalist - all the while believing that the decisions taken by them were right & in the best interests of them & the nation.

Sadly, they have had no voice in anything. The money being spent is from the taxes they pay, aid alone cannot run a country.

Till they do not stand up to be counted those at the helm will do as they myopic brains tell them while the nation suffers.

come to Pakistan and say in fount of Pakistani people you will get your answer.
what about Hindus Fundamentalist

 

[third eye]

come to Pakistan and say in fount of Pakistani people you will get your answer.
what about Hindus Fundamentalist
PDkc1sD0E5k[/media] - The men who killed Gandhi - Hindu Fundamentalist

Every pakistani I have spoken to has agreed on this. National pride precludes them from admitting this in public.

As rgds India & Hindu Fundamentalists, Yes India is no different from the world. Yet, the election process helps moderate suchsentiments. The BJP felt it could do no wrong & called for elections ahead of schedule in the vain hope that their majority would improve - they were soundly defeated never to recover.

The issue my friend is to take everyone along & not have a select group to run thr country ham handedly - always . The select group stays insulated, the ppl bear the consequences.

@ Stumper, you are right. Centuries of mind sets cannot go in 60 yrs. A beginning & more importantly a realisation is there... and there is light albeit dim.

 

[Stumper]

and people do not grow AK47s and ammunition in their backyards.

Sure they do sir. You would be surprised by what you can buy in that small shanty in Bihar. Anyway, coming to the point, aint you fed of hearing our politician repeat the same old Pak story whenever we get attacked? Dont you want to know about that corrupt customs official's who allowed such contraband to be smuggled in?.. Wont you want to know what steps will my government take to prevent such attacks in future? Wont you want to question the CM and ask him his role during the whole episode? . No sir, we don't want to ask nasty questions. Why should we, when it is a simple matter of blaming everything on thy neighbor.

How does India figure in the equation?

By "Us" i meant we (Indians).

Methinks there is some identification problem here.. could you check and confirm you reside in India? Because this statement clearly is from somebody in Pakistan, because of the 'cleaning of the sh!t' comment. An Indian would have had no reason to make such a statement.

Yeh right, how imaginative of you. I'm a Pakistani who fancies speaking to himself on such forums. You busted me Sherlock.

 

[PostColonial]

Stumper - India sucks in a wide variety of ways but that is not our topic of discussion..

Anyways, Here's an excerpt of a PBS Frontline interview with Steve Coll

President and CEO of New America Foundation, Coll is also a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author six books, including Ghost Wars and The Bin Ladens. This is the edited transcript of an interview conducted on Sept. 14, 2009.

FRONTLINE: obama's war: interviews: steve coll | PBS


It is a debate about assessing what our objectives are and whether troops on the ground in Afghanistan are going to get us there, and what corresponding sort of aid package or pressure we put on Pakistan --

Right. The questions at the heart of the debate begin with what are our objectives and then flow to what are the role of troops in pursing those objectives. And I think there are lots of points of view about both questions.

I don't think there's an enormous divergence of opinion about what American objectives are. Everyone agrees that Al Qaeda is unfinished business and requires diligent American resources and attention.

I think if you argue that a second vital American national security interest beyond Al Qaeda is the stability and perspective normalization of Pakistan in South Asia broadly, then you regard the Taliban as a serious obstacle to that vital interest.

Then you recognize that reversing the Taliban's momentum, preventing them from taking power in either Afghanistan or in Pakistan, is a vital American interest. And you also recognize that this is not a conventional war. You're not sending in more troops in order to get them, the Taliban, to a surrender ceremony.

You're engaging in a complicated struggle in two countries, some of which involve direct military combat, some of which involves regional coercion, diplomacy, economic development, all kinds of political components. And it's also eventually going to involve negotiations with elements of the Taliban.

So if that's the goal, then you have to go back to this basic question: Are 20,000 or 30,000 more troops advancing that objective or not? And if you want to argue that they're advancing the objective, then tell me why. This is the critical question. More troops have to serve strategic objectives.

It's not just about stabilizing a plurality of Afghan provinces. That's not the strategic objective. The strategic objective is to marginalize the Taliban to such an extent that threats to the integrity of the government of Afghanistan and the government of Pakistan recede and can no longer recur in any foreseeable future.

And play host --

And play host to Al Qaeda and other networked groups, such as those responsible for Mumbai last year and so forth. Look, South Asia as a region needs some breathing space. India is on the cusp of a transformation in national wealth and political importance and stability.

Pakistan has an opportunity to take the same journey if it can make peace with India. Pakistan is still struggling to become a normal country, but it is not without hope. It's a constitutional democracy with a robust civil society and a middle class.

The role of the United States in defeating the Taliban is not just to take a bunch of obscurantists out of villages. It is to create strategic breathing space so that South Asia can join Southeast Asia and Latin America on a march to prosperity and modernity. And it is in the vital interests of the United States to see that happen, not only because a very unstable part of the world will gradually become stable, prosperous and aligned with American interests, but also because the alternative is unthinkable: a nuclear-armed standoff descending increasingly into political violence influenced by radical guerrilla groups with an anti-American agenda. This cannot be allowed.

So that's why the Taliban matter. But that's, I think, a somewhat different way of stating the problem than just talking about stability in Helmand or counternarcotics in Waziristan.

Can we talk about the basics concerning the relationship between the Taliban and Pakistan?

The Taliban's bid for national power in Afghanistan is inseparable from their historical relationship with the Pakistani security services. Even today, the Taliban in Afghanistan are taking direction from leaders who are almost certainly living in Pakistani cities, may very well be known to the Pakistani security.

And why is the government of Pakistan -- our ally -- possibly tolerating the presence of these Afghan Taliban? Because they're not certain about where Afghanistan is going. They see the Taliban as a potential hedge against their enemies in Afghanistan, so they're sort of sitting on their hands.

This could not be a more complicated war. If you think about it, the United States is essentially waging a proxy war against its own ally. The Taliban are a proxy of the government of Pakistan. We are an ally of the government of Pakistan. We are fighting the Taliban. In the end, the Taliban will be defeated strategically when the government of Pakistan makes a strategic decision that its future does not lie in partnership with Islamic extremists.

What progress is being made on that front?

It's going in the right direction, but it's a long struggle. And that's why this set of decisions matters so much. The decisions that the Obama administration makes about what to do in Afghanistan are inseparable from the struggle that we continue in a nonmilitary fashion to undertake in Pakistan to persuade that government to unplug itself from Islamic extremists.

From my point of view, it seems they are very willing to go after [Pakistani Taliban leader Maulana] Fazlullah in Swat, perhaps contribute to providing intelligence for taking a drone strike on --

[Pakistani Taliban leader] Baitullah Mehsud. That's right.

Is there any evidence that you see that they're willing to go after Mullah Omar or the Haqqani network?

I don't see any clear evidence that they're willing to go after the Afghan Taliban, whether that's Mullah Omar or the Haqqani network. I don't think that the decision is final and irrevocable, however.

I think that the various elites that make up the Pakistani government, the military, the security services and the civilians and the political parties, are struggling with the basic question of where Pakistan's interests lie in this complicated, multi-sided contest.

And there are some of them who believe strongly that Pakistan ought to break with the Islamic extremists, make peace with India and enjoy economic prosperity for the next 40 years. Those are the groups in Pakistan that are aligned with American interests.

And American policy ought to be constructed to do everything it possibly can to help those people succeed. We can't win the argument for them, but we can pressure their opponents and enhance their potential. And we have to create conditions in the region where normal politics and economic integration, among all of the countries -- Afghanistan, Pakistan and India -- are not impeded by chronic revolutionary violence from Islamic obscurantists like the Taliban.

That doesn't mean that it's our job to go in there as foreign troops and kill every last Taliban. It means that we ought to construct policies that have that strategic goal clearly in mind.

If there's no evidence yet that they're going after the Afghan Taliban, isn't that key?

It is.

And so what does Obama's new strategy have in it that addresses that issue?

It has the potential of leverage that if properly applied in private could push the Pakistan government to make a decision about which side of this war they're on.

Hasn't that always been there?

We hadn't really had the kind of aid packages and the kind of influence in Pakistan over the last five or 10 years. Or if we've had it, we haven't the will or the political intention to connect that aid to this decision. During the Bush administration, we wrote them a blank check.

During the Obama administration, there is the potential not only to increase the size of the check but to connect that check to American strategic objectives, and, frankly, Pakistani interests, too. Pakistanis recognize that they don't want to live in a society run or even influenced by Islamic extremists. They don't want to go to the market and fear the next bomb. They want a normal country.

America has leverage in Pakistan, but it has to be employed successfully to achieve these results. It's also in our own interests because the Afghanistan Taliban are headquartered in Pakistan, and it's very difficult to imagine how the United States can prevail over the Taliban in Afghanistan without addressing the role of their leadership in Pakistan.

 

[Comet]

India should understand that Pakistan is the last line of defense for them as well.
If Pakistan fall( God forbid), who would stop Taliban, LeT, etc etc to attack India?

 

[rajeev]

India should understand that Pakistan is the last line of defense for them as well.
If Pakistan fall( God forbid), who would stop Taliban, LeT, etc etc to attack India?

That is exactly most Indians are saying. Among all the conspiracy theories, dont you think any one would have thought of that?

India wants a stable non-aggressive partner that allow it to grow its own economy. In my opinion, the only way stability comes to Pakistan during a military rule when there is less military aggression towards India and stability of economy in Pakistan and there is some clamp down on intruders.

I hope you guys see that India has nothing to gain. Show me anytime other than 1971, India was the aggressor. But you can see see many times when Pakistan is the aggressor.

I think most of us in forum believe that India and Pakistan cannot go on fighting and leave our people in poverty. We have to grow fast and provide most of the people(except this suicide bombers) to enjoy their life.

I am surprised that there is a thread called "Taliban vs India", when most people can see India has done nothing eventhough some Pakistanis have attacked India, whereas Taliban is attacking not just the cities but even the GHQ and still there is a question whether Taliban has to be eliminated?

Conspiracy theories goes on and claims about strategic depth, India coercing with Taliban, India joining Baluchistan movement, India being controlled by RAW, or by fundamentalists, RAW exploding bombs in Pakistan, Indians involved in managing the American money (aka aid) paid to Pakistan but people are refusing to see the most obvious things that is happening their own country. Even when Taliban claims that they exploded the bombs, some Pakistanis suspect India. I hope leaders in Pakistan have some form of introspection ability.

 

[Javed3]

India needs a Pakistan that is as tame as Bhutan. Thanks to your friend Musharraf, India is now at the former status of USA, and the USA has been elevated to an Almighty status.
With 1/3rd of strength busy with internal strife, we are about half way there.

 

[rajeev]

India needs a Pakistan that is as tame as Bhutan. Thanks to your friend Musharraf, India is now at the former status of USA, and the USA has been elevated to an Almighty status.
With 1/3rd of strength busy with internal strife, we are about half way there.

India does not need a tamed country. India needs a friendly neighbor that is stable - if it cant be friendly atleast not attacking India by sending terrorists to India. Is that too much to expect?

In most recent memory, I saw stability when Musharraf was in power and the same general who ventured during Kargil was more or less peaceful for eight years.

India is not USA, not by a long shot. India is a poor country and we need to raise the rest 25% of the population from poverty.

Do you think constant war with Pakistan does serve India in any positive way? The govt attention is moved from reform projects to war and future defense budgets gets larger and larger. India spends the lowest on defense living in a hostile neighbor with five major wars and countless skirmishes and almost near-major war scenarios.

 

[rskmanju]

Get off from the moral high horse of yours and this self righteousness. We know what India in reality is doing in Afghanistan and for what reasons.

we also know what pakistan is doing in pakistan occupied kashmir. same is india doing in afgan