Debate in Pak Army over OBL raid

[SQ8]

I dont know how come you couldnot see fatman's statement



whats wrong with my statement that fatman cannot reply in a civilized manner ???



though I was in good mood, and didnt follow the strategy I used upon you.

anyways, thanxs for another muft mashwara.

I see you have different standards for civilized for yourself.. and for others..
Best to put you in the ignore list.

 

[MastanKhan]

Here is what I heard----the plane didnot have any adnvance navigation equipment----the trip was running late----the skies were cloudy----major visibility issues---the pilot supposedly took a short cut or didnot judge the position of the mountain---thus smashing into it.

It doesnot bode well for the image of the air force to take its top man out by smashing into the mountain side----if the pilot had previous issues----he should have been taken out at the first oppurtune moment after the first instance---and given different assignment. Pilots that fly high ranking officials are top notch operators and known to go by the book kind of pilots, who are more conscious of delivering the merchandise in one piece rather rather than showing off their flying skills.

And leader---sir stop with this comment 'muft mashwara'---it sounds tacky. Thank you for your consideration

 

[Mav3rick]

military is not the ruler of this country. dont make it look like Pakistan army vs pakistan Nation. our enemies want that...

My intention is to pit the military against all threats.......foreign & domestic, well domestic more then anything else. Enemies within are eating us away and I am not speaking about militants but our own bureaucracy, our own political leadership, our very own judiciary and finally the media but to do that the military first has to get rid of generals who allow foreign attacks on our soil, who do not challenge the terrorists (USA/NATO) who threaten our stability and our sovereignty every other day. What's the difference b/w a US/NATO attack and a suicide attack when both kill innocents! And finally what's the point of a military that does not intend to defend us against threats?

 

[Aamir Hussain]

An enemy within is more dangerous than an enemy without. Therefore, let us the change the Generals when we have sorted out the enemy within.

 

[araz]

okay genius for muft mashwara !

I have reported your post as it is in clear violation of the forum rules.You should not show disrespect to a senior think tank member. Either behave and apologize or prepare to go down the toilet
Araz

 

[araz]

Here is what I heard----the plane didnot have any adnvance navigation equipment----the trip was running late----the skies were cloudy----major visibility issues---the pilot supposedly took a short cut or didnot judge the position of the mountain---thus smashing into it.

It doesnot bode well for the image of the air force to take its top man out by smashing into the mountain side----if the pilot had previous issues----he should have been taken out at the first oppurtune moment after the first instance---and given different assignment. Pilots that fly high ranking officials are top notch operators and known to go by the book kind of pilots, who are more conscious of delivering the merchandise in one piece rather rather than showing off their flying skills.

And leader---sir stop with this comment 'muft mashwara'---it sounds tacky. Thank you for your consideration

I think the version reported by Sir Muradk was similar.There has been an enquiry within the PAF on the matter and the inference was that this was an accident.
Araz

 

[Leader]

My intention is to pit the military against all threats.......foreign & domestic, well domestic more then anything else. Enemies within are eating us away and I am not speaking about militants but our own bureaucracy, our own political leadership, our very own judiciary and finally the media but to do that the military first has to get rid of generals who allow foreign attacks on our soil, who do not challenge the terrorists (USA/NATO) who threaten our stability and our sovereignty every other day. What's the difference b/w a US/NATO attack and a suicide attack when both kill innocents! And finally what's the point of a military that does not intend to defend us against threats?

who is to do this great mission clean sweep?

lets just start this from ourselves by telling ourselves that speaking against the state is treason and rest are difference of opinion, having which contains no harm to the STATE itself !!!!

 

[araz]

I thought when I first read the article that this was contrary to the general drift of the Army's thinking. If you remember the Gen Petreus incidence, it showed that world over Generals are not supposed to speak against the authority. The fact that Kiyani disagreed with Musharraf on many jkey issues but kept his reservations to himself is well known. It gives you an idea that at least at senior level disagreement is seen as a big No No! However what goes on at NCO and CO (upto Lt Col) is another thing andpeople do voice their opinions publically if they are unhappy with their seniors.Mind you it still does not go down well and you often end up with a sore butt.
Araz

 

[fatman17]

revolt = rise in rebellion against authority, feel strong disgust. state of insurrection.. a mood of protest or defiance.

the two meanings underlined are thought to have happened during CoAS visits to the various Corps HQ's after OBL operation but NO revolt.

 

[Jango]

I thought when I first read the article that this was contrary to the general drift of the Army's thinking. If you remember the Gen Petreus incidence, it showed that world over Generals are not supposed to speak against the authority. The fact that Kiyani disagreed with Musharraf on many jkey issues but kept his reservations to himself is well known. It gives you an idea that at least at senior level disagreement is seen as a big No No! However what goes on at NCO and CO (upto Lt Col) is another thing andpeople do voice their opinions publically if they are unhappy with their seniors.Mind you it still does not go down well and you often end up with a sore butt.
Araz

CO's do disagree sometimes but they just discuss it with their 2IC or junior offciers in the mess or he ante room, not in the face of their comander or in the media, hence everything is kept under control. You can compare it a bit with PMA. the senior cadets are constantly bullying with the juniors but you dont see a revolt

 

[Aamir Hussain]

revolt = rise in rebellion against authority, feel strong disgust. state of insurrection.. a mood of protest or defiance.

the two meanings underlined are thought to have happened during CoAS visits to the various Corps HQ's after OBL operation but NO revolt.

I heard the same. The mood was sullen and highly Anti-America.

 

[GOD OF WAR]

our army, our government believes that it was OBL that was killed in Abattabad.

Sir, our government is just towing the US line, they dare not say anything different. as far as the army is concerned. I feel they are staying quite for a reason concerned with National Security.

OBL dead and his body buried at sea is tantamount to the boy saying to his teacher that the dog ate my homewrk.


Teacher: tommy did u do ur homework??
Tommy: Yes
Teacher: Show me
Tommy, I cant. the dog ate it

THE OBL VERSION

Obama: OBL is Dead
Pakistanis: Where is the body?
Obama: I cant, we threw it in the sea.

I also recall in the first meeting of the Armed forces that they said that a detailed investigation must go on about the matter. in my opinion, you INVESTIGATE a matter where u have doubts about the facts. No body took notice of that?!?!?

 

[monitor]

Civilian supremacy over military: a process, not a transaction
June 16, 2011

Dr Mohammad Taqi

Wherever and whenever nation-states make the transition towards a democratic form of government, the question about civilian supremacy over the military is bound to come up. In stable western democracies, such as the US and Japan, both convention and the constitution provide well-established safeguards against the military’s encroachment on the civilian power to oversee and control it. But in budding democracies, and especially countries like Pakistan that go through praetorian autocracy and democracy in a cyclical fashion, the issue of civil-military balance of power remains highly complex, unresolved and pernicious.

It was this struggle for power that Samuel Adams — one of the US’s founding fathers — had warned against, in a letter to James Warren: “A standing army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the liberties of the people. Soldiers are apt to consider themselves as a body distinct from the rest of the citizens. They have their arms always in their hands…Such a power should be watched with a jealous eye.”

Standing armies have nonetheless become a norm and the citizens’ militias, looked upon favourably by Adams and the legendary Baloch leader Sher Muhammad Marri, as a bulwark against martial law, have survived just in theory. Since the Portuguese Carnation revolution of 1974, ironically led by the military, a series of new democratic dispensations — the so-called third wave democracies — have continued to grapple with the issue of consolidating civilian control over the military, as part of the overall cementing of democratic change. The quest for fledgling democracies has been not only to oust the military from power but also to prevent it from staging another outright coup d’état as well as an indirect intervention in or competition with civilian power.

In the political scenario evolving in Pakistan after the US took out Osama bin Laden, the security establishment has found its chokehold on power to be in mortal danger. The façade of the military’s organisation and invincibility, nay infallibility, has been lifted, tilting the balance of power against it internationally, but more importantly, domestically. It is this exposed domestic flank that is really worrisome for the establishment, as a potential civilian compact could emerge and dislodge it from the direct and indirect role of control over the state that it is accustomed to exercising. The Latin American and Southeast Asian models of the juntas defanged and sent packing by the united political elite are not completely lost on the Pakistani deep state.

It is in this context that a chorus of voices is now being heard about civilian supremacy. A careful reading of the ISPR statements and speeches made by General Ashfaq Kayani right up to May 2, 2011 gives no impression at all that they were in any mood to take the civilians onboard on national security and foreign policy matters. So is it out of sheer altruism that the junta purportedly is conceding to civilian authority or is there more to it than meets the eye? Again, a careful look at the post-Abbottabad events and close scrutiny of the security establishment’s statements indicates that while, prima facie, the right noises are being made about accepting civilian supremacy, the gimmick is really designed to gain a reprieve only to regroup and reassert.

The voices coming directly from the military itself, like the recent ISI and ISPR communiqués, were reflective of anger, denial and an attempt to drive a wedge between not just civilian political leaders but the populace at large. Pointing fingers at the media critics of the military’s hegemony and Mian Nawaz Sharif is not an indication of an institution ready and willing to change. And the not-so-veiled threats to the media about consequences and legal repercussions, especially through the ‘unknown soldier’s’ press release after Syed Saleem Shahzad’s murder, were downright pathetic. Equally pitiful are the media musings by retired military officers in defence of their former institution.

In a recent op-ed piece for an English-language contemporary, General (retd) Jehangir Karamat, who interestingly introduces himself as “a former Pakistan Army Chief who resigned during the second Nawaz Sharif government”, asserts that the army has indeed accepted civilian supremacy. He makes a lengthy case for a paradigm shift ostensibly taking place within the army. The general, however, continues to share his institution’s denial about their disastrous policies and the blowback that is ravaging Pakistan and Afghanistan. In an NPR interview with Steve Inskeep, aired a couple of days before his article was published, the general was responding to a question whether a number of retired officers have gone on to careers as militants. He said: “I am saying retired members, once they are retired, go back to their villages and they are living there. Anybody can approach them. You have a lot of people. This is an army, which has been in existence for 60 years. You have got highly trained people who eventually retire and go back on civilian streets, and then they are free to do whatever they like.”

That simple, eh? If decades of service have had no effect on these soldiers then something is fundamentally wrong with whatever training the military imparted to them. But the reality remains that it is years of on-the-job indoctrination against the Indo-Zionist (the US being a recent addition to the list) enemy, and not a few weeks back in the village, that produces zealots. This lack of insight is not unique to General Karamat. Two weeks ago, Brigadier (retd) Shaukat Qadir wrote a newspaper article in praise and defence of the Haqqani terrorist network and subsequently went on to declare the US as the “world’s greatest terrorist” on a television show.

In post-bin Laden Pakistan, a unique prospect exists for the civilian leadership to neutralise the establishment and literally reverse the power equation. The socio-political changes that weaken the grip of military regimes have already been set in motion and the international milieu is also conducive to a realignment of the power structures in Pakistan. Such a constellation of events does not happen often and the agents of the status quo are hard at work to quickly close this small window of opportunity.

For the civilian leaders to act as agents of change, they have to look beyond the term of the present assemblies and the next elections. The PPP and ANP are six weeks too late in joining hands with Nawaz Sharif and Asma Jahangir. The security establishment has yielded a transactional and utilitarian subservience to civilian control; it is imperative that the civilian leadership turns this into a process and takes the brass up on its offer.

The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com
-Daily Times

 

[muse]

A fear, an apprehension, has begun to sink in in some quarters about the possible strategy the Pakistan Army will use to justify not going after the Islamist enemy, an enemy that the army itself created in the first place -- but why would the army not want to go up against the islamist? Possibly because they have a great deal of support within the armed forces?? :



A wearily familiar bag of tricks
Cyril Almeida
(13 hours ago) Today

ONE set of rules for themselves. Another set for the people they rule over, or who dare cross them. The army has been busy rounding up the OBL support network.

But not the network which helped the world’s most wanted terrorist hide a stone’s throw from where the army chief boasted his forces had broken the backbone of the terrorists.

No, the army has gone after the support network that helped capture and eliminate the world’s most wanted terrorist. You couldn’t make this stuff up — unless you knew what makes the army tick in the first place.

The army high command has two constituencies: the public at large and the military rank and file. With those two constituencies won over, and with their rear and flanks thus covered, the army high command is able to do what’s necessary to retain its internal predominance.

Since May, however, those two constituencies — so key to the army high command’s image of itself and what it’s able to get away with at home and outside — have been up in arms.

Perhaps most critically, the army rank and file (the ones at the top have more to lose and so are less inclined to criticise openly) has expressed deep unhappiness with the policies of their institution, increasingly exposed by events as duplicitous.Which leaves Gen K and his diminishing band of supporters in desperate need of something to stop the haemorrhaging of support accumulated through a combination of serendipity and shrewdness since the end of the Musharraf era.

No brilliant thinkers or strategists among them, they have turned to the obvious: pander to the populist tripe they have helped perpetuate and which has become an article of faith for people in uniform — that the US ultimately seeks to harm Pakistan and we must wriggle away from its deadly embrace.

Kicking out the Raymond Davis clones, arresting anyone remotely western-looking on an expired visa, detaining the people who helped piece together the goings-on in the OBL compound — all is meant to try and send a message that the army knows who the enemy is and is willing to take them on.

There is also signalling at another level. The infamous corps commanders’ statement was more carefully crafted than first recognised. “It needs to be clarified that Army had never accepted any training assistance from the US except for training on the newly inducted weapons and some training assistance for the Frontier Corps only. Even that has ceased now.”

See what that does, bold typeface and all? It says, the army is a self-sufficient fighting machine and doesn’t need Americans to teach it how to fight. In the macho world of soldiering, nothing is worse than having to rely on others to defend oneself.

In fact, the entire statement can be read as a point-by-point rebuttal to and reassurance on issues raised during Kayani’s town hall-style meetings with his troops. Faced with a choice — do you put some daylight between the US and the army to appease the rank and file or do you locate the relationship with the US in a necessary and pivotal fight against terrorism and extremism? — the army high command appears to have decided to appease its core constituency, the rank and file.

The path chosen shouldn’t come as a surprise. While the ability for this institution to self-reflect or course correct is non-existent, the survival instinct is well-entrenched. A disgruntled rank and file is never a recipe for survival.

The trouble is, attempting to win back the affections of the rank and file and the admiration of the public at large in this way means pushing the US further away — but that comes at a great cost and in any case, the US has developed a few tricks of its own to hit back.

Since May 2, the media has been used with great success by American officials to keep the squeeze on the army and prevent it from wriggling away.

After the OBL raid, the army was forced to keep changing its account of the American operation almost on the hour. What was initially spun as a ‘joint operation’ eventually became a humiliating admission of failure to detect the US intrusion into Pakistani airspace. Then, when Hillary Clinton presented a list of demands to the generals, American officials made sure those demands were leaked to the media one by one, forcing the generals here to deny yet more secret deals were in the works.

Soon, the North Waziristan bomb factories made their way into the news, ostensibly once again exposing the army’s perfidy and earning it a fresh round of criticism from the US. Now, we are told the local CIA spy network which helped capture OBL is in the army’s bad books — embarrassing the army by making it look petty and vindictive, or worse.

Weak, stupid, vulnerable, secretive, duplicitous — with each successive media leak, the US is chipping away at the army’s self-belief, eroding the space for it to convincingly vilify the US while further vilifying the army in the minds of many who already regarded it with suspicion.

(Of course, this being Pakistan, where things are never simple, the Americans may be being too clever by half. The campaign of embarrassing media leaks may actually be making it more difficult for the army high command to do anything but embrace anti-Americanism further, rendering the anyway likely into the certain.)

All the while, the public at large — the army’s second core constituency and internal line of defence — has been looking on in bewilderment, unsure of what it all means but pretty sure they have been lied to at all times.

What comes next? Unhappily, more of the same for now, it seems.

But at least this army high command won’t be able to argue, after it, the deluge. The deluge is already here.

 

[unicorn]

A fear, an apprehension, has begun to sink in in some quarters about the possible strategy the Pakistan Army will use to justify not going after the Islamist enemy, an enemy that the army itself created in the first place -- but why would the army not want to go up against the islamist? Possibly because they have a great deal of support within the armed forces?? :

How you are promoting this thought of yours if you are unsure of yourself.If some one intentions are really true he does not require analysis of others to back his point he just flawlessly present his own thought provoking ideas.If your cake is delicious than it does not requires cherries on top.It will still be eaten without cherries.So the verdict is you will not make a slightest of change with this approach.The question in your mind will definitely be why I am bothered?I am bothered not because of your argument but because of this small stage of ours where we are presenting our part.