Developing Ties Between Pak, Russia, China, Iran & the CARS

[lem34]

the following draws on a post i put up when cheng was suggesting afghanis support the american proposal

Cheng you taking the mick again mate. Americans have gone to afghanistan. At great cost to them they have introduced their way of life and democracy and values. That has resulted in fair democratic representation for afghanis we have Karzai who represnts afgahanis. What more does an avarage pathan want? They have kaarzai and americans as the occupying force they have more than enough representations. Lets just concentrate on what Indians and americans can get out of it. After all Americans are on the same planet as afghanistan and as such they deserve a piece of the action, and india although no border with afghanistan their needs and interests must be taken into account because america says so.

Dont bring what those afghanis want again on this thread. They want what america and india want after all three countries have democracy and respect and american way of life

---------- Post added at 12:58 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:55 PM ----------

Commenting on cheng/american proposal and the one suggested here I posted elsewher:

Bottom line this deal suits india and america, nothing in it for pakistan. I think both pakistan and india are starting to move anyway. India has started activity in afghanistan, pakistan has started moves towards Iran. Pakistan will not fall in line with american and or indian plans unless approprietly incentivised its simple as that. I think once iran pakistan pipeline is in place if iran wants india or china to join it will simply reduce price and india and or china will join and we will have a fait accompli. India could end up being marginalised

---------- Post added at 01:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:58 PM ----------

another post in resp to chengs/americans proposal and supporting what i and others have suggested:

^^^^^^^^ India and america can want what they want? Your op and deal that you postulated is a non starter. It ignores afghanis, pakistanis, iranians who must be part of the deal. Why are you ignoring the fact that strategic location has a part to play? Why america and india must be happy but ignore china? Why simply why?

We keep going around the bushes. No no the deal you have put forward is crap for the neighbourhood and is not thought provoking but s-i-m-p-l-y flawed for the reasons that I and others have put forward. Even santro told you to go back to the drawing board.

You state you are secure in your loyalty, you do not need anybody's approval of it. Well thats good because you are not going to get that approval from others

---------- Post added at 01:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:00 PM ----------

very good post on another thread but relevant here by develop i thought:

For Pakistanis mired in a defeatist attitude, it is important to remember that India is not becoming the superpower like America. At most, it is going to be one of a multitude of major players -- most likely a junior player -- and there is going to be plenty of rivalry and politics at the top. With new power come new enemies (and friends).

So far, India has been the darling of the West because it is not taken seriously as a threat to their hegemony like China is. That calculation can change real fast.

Pakistan doesn't need to defeat India militarily, nor does it need to sacrifice its national interests in a panic to cosy up to India. It only needs to attain sufficient strength to be a credible and valued partner to any of the other major powers. That means focussing on our economy and foreign relations. It means forging new partnerships, but never at the expense of our existing allies.

The show hasn't even started yet. There is no need to panic and sacrifice our national interests. We need to focus on strengthening Pakistan.

And keep the popcorn handy.

 

[VCheng]

.......................The estimated cost is $1.5 billion, but it will be firmed up after completion of a bankable feasibility study. Initial information for financing the project has been exchanged with international investors from China, Russia and the Middle East, he added. The Turkmenistan gas pipeline project has also taken a great leap forward after nearly a decade and the gas supply and purchase agreement will be signed on November 15. Major components of the project including tender for pipes and compressors will be floated this month, said the petroleum minister............................

So, a feasibility study is still to be completed for the IP line? With nothing firmed up for financing, how can the project be completed in 2013?

For the Turkmenistan line, nothing has happened for a decade, and now tenders will be floated next month? At that rate of progress, when can this project be expected to really get off the ground?

 

[lem34]

America/cheng ignore ignore actors like iran anyone ignoring iran needs to go back to the drawing board. the ameican suggestion postulated is flawed . Agno or some other poster comes along and states that india pakistan trade is good etc cheng then thanks them and go off on one as if thats what cheng suggested. No thats not what cheng suggested. cheng suggested that America fund a regional economic block of india afghanistan and india. Ignoring the fact that america would have to borrow that money from china that has an interest which they have shown by paying for Gwador, making a large investment in afghanistan. Ignoring the fact that iran just happens to have a border with afghanistan who america wants to damage. ignoring the fact that Pakistan would have to say good bye to any aspiration of a deal on kashmir as the deal america postulates would simply reinforce the status quo. Oh and of course ignore afghanis

---------- Post added at 01:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:08 PM ----------

Istanbul: The Search for Consensus

Posted: 01 Nov 2011 06:06 AM PDT

An orderly ‘transition’ in 2014, when American and Nato combat forces pull out from Afghanistan, rests on progress towards a negotiated political settlement. But a serious peace process to advance Afghan national ‘reconciliation’ has yet to get off the ground.

That is why a regional conference that will convene in Istanbul on November 2 will focus less on this pivotal issue than on how regional states will assist Afghanistan’s stabilisation. If the joint hosts of the conference, Turkey and Afghanistan, backed by the US, have their way – as they will – this summit will be as much about the region as about Afghanistan.

The conference marks a curious reversal of the order of business necessary to establish peace and security in Afghanistan. Progress in the process of reconciliation with the insurgency ought to have preceded declarations of support and cooperation by regional states. Instead the Istanbul conference is set to shift the emphasis beyond Afghanistan to the broader region. The region is defined for the purposes of the Istanbul initiative as consisting of fourteen so-called ‘Heart of Asia’ countries. Apart from Afghanistan’s immediate neighbours they include India, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE, and the Central Asian republics.

Istanbul is the venue for the first of three conferences intended to erect a framework of international support and cooperation for Afghanistan during and after the planned transition in 2014. The Istanbul conference has been billed as an initiative ‘to promote regional security and cooperation in the heart of Asia for a secure and stable Afghanistan’. The Bonn and Chicago conferences will follow this December and May next year.

Had the Istanbul conference set its sights from the outset on eliciting the endorsement by regional states for the 2014 transition and Afghan reconciliation as well as affirmation of broad principles including mutual undertakings of non-interference, it would have been easy to mobilise a strong consensus and produce a successful outcome with no glitches along the way.

But the initiative’s backers and sponsors started by wanting much more. They sought to establish a new security architecture, complete with an institutional mechanism and a ‘contact group’ charged with implementing an ambitious set of confidence building measures. These were outlined in the draft outcome document originally drawn up for the conference.

This sparked contention rather than help to promote a consensus. The sponsors were urged by this to trim their ambition and give up the idea of having a signed and binding document adopted by the conference. Whether the document under negotiation will now turn out to be a declaration or an undertaking is unclear. More importantly last minute efforts are on to secure agreement on its content.

In two preparatory meetings held in Oslo on September 30 and Kabul on October 22, the main disagreement swirled around the attempt to create a regional security structure. Russia, Pakistan, China and Iran among others, objected to establishing any security apparatus or a new regional organisation. As delegates pointed out at the Kabul meeting, establishing another organisation would duplicate the work of at least ten other existing organisations. Others pointed to the fact that there were several mechanisms and trilateral or bilateral forums already available that could be utilised or strengthened for the same purpose.

Meanwhile the Russians tabled their own draft, essentially a statement of principles of regional cooperation, which listed a number of political, economic and other measures to build confidence and encourage collaboration. The Russian text won support from the Central Asian states and came closest to Pakistan’s position. But lack of agreement at the Kabul meeting meant that contentious issues were referred back to the participating states’ capitals for further consideration. Since then behind-the-scenes consultations have been underway with Washington playing a key role in trying to reconcile differences.

Although Islamabad has not made its reservations public, they were clearly conveyed by its diplomats in the meetings at Oslo and Kabul. They now relate mainly to the operative clauses in the revised Turkish-Afghan draft, which provide for a regional security process. Even though the word ‘mechanism’ has been dropped to meet objections from many countries, the document retains its ingredients. The “follow up” steps specified in these clauses that are to be pursued after the Istanbul conference reflect an effort to institutionalise meetings of “senior officials” from the Heart of Asia countries. They will be expected to start applying CBMs through ‘working groups’, if necessary.

These and other provisions that envisage a ‘structured’ level of regional collaboration are seen by Islamabad and other objecting countries as an effort that continues to aim at a regional security arrangement in all but name. If these clauses are not deleted or significantly modified to accommodate the views of Moscow, Islamabad and Beijing among others, they could be later taken up at Bonn and Chicago and given more concrete shape to eventually set up a full fledged security apparatus.

Some diplomats from certain western countries have invoked a Helsinki-type process as the template for regional cooperation i.e. a security-oriented conference leading to a more permanent regional structure to stabilise Afghanistan. The Helsinki process refers to the multilateral forum that was created in the 1970s to improve relations between the West and Eastern Europe and which eventually transformed, with the end of the cold war, into the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

To apply the Helsinki example to the region is to ignore fundamentally different contexts, issues and realities. The Helsinki process was an arrangement forged between two rival blocs during the cold war. It was aimed at sanctifying the territorial status quo already in existence for four decades. Here that process is being advocated by some as a way of pacifying a country in the throes of a raging insurgency, which is motivated by the presence of foreign ‘occupation’ troops. The contrast between the two situations cannot be starker.

The OSCE in any case took decades to evolve and this evolution was impelled by seminal developments including the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is a profoundly mistaken view that the Istanbul conference could emulate and telescope that process through one document and that too without a buy-in by the major regional states.

With the conference only a day away the draft document will have to be amended to accommodate the views and interests of all the regional countries to ensure that the declaration at Istanbul is backed by consensus. If that is not done and a document is rammed through it will only run aground of complex and fraught regional realities. This will hardly be an auspicious start to an international effort to support and stabilise Afghanistan.

The way forward at Istanbul is to adopt an agreed document that enunciates practical principles to promote Afghanistan’s stability in line with the UN charter and supports a common vision for economic collaboration. The 2002 Kabul declaration on Good-Neighbourly Relations sets out many of these principles including non-interference in each other’s internal affairs and respect for Afghanistan’s territorial integrity. Supplemented by the commitment to support Afghan reconciliation as well as the economic agenda outlined in the ‘New Silk Road’ concept, this can provide a robust foundation for future cooperation.

But participating states at Istanbul will also need to acknowledge that Afghanistan’s stabilisation lies principally and fundamentally in actions taken within that country. That means stepping up efforts to spur the process of reconciliation with the Afghan insurgency and accelerating the search for a political solution to end a war that has brought so much grief to Afghanistan, the region and its people.

Dr. Maleeha Lodhi is a former Pakistani Ambassador to the United States and special adviser to the Jang Group/GEO

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---------- Post added at 01:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:09 PM ----------

The following post was put up by muse which i think is relevant:

Allow me to explain two very interesting and diametrically opposed ideas and their implications:

The Afghans, under tutelage (read US) argue that there are no problems in Afghanistan, All of Afghanistan's problems are manufactured in Pakistan -- The implication of course is that if you want to fix Afghanistan, you really have to be focused on Pakistan as as the source and location of the problem -- The US in these last 10 or 12 years has lost problem solving tools with the exception of it's hammer (military)

Now when Dr. Lodhi advises that Afghanistan’s stabilisation lies principally and fundamentally in actions taken within that country, you and I and most non-US readers will of course say, "well, that's obvious, why is she stating the obvious?" ---- Except that point 1 of this post is being and has been for the last 10 years pushed hard, for some it's Gospel -it's their "Aha, it all clicks" moment.

If point one makes it into any international agreement or undertaking, one of two things will have to happen, Pakistan as a serious player in the South/central Asia region, will simply be meaningless - and if it resists this, it will of course leave itself open to any number of sanctions --

See, the US don't want, do not seek, what you and I may understand as "withdrawal" , they are seeking a diplomatic mechanism that one, institutionalizes their Chaudry, institutionalizes Afghanistan as Tajik domain and ensures the Pakistan will be embroiled in conflict, this of course is an invitation for the US to re-enter as a "stabilizing" force, read (lets do Iran, while we are it) -

The role of our brother Turkiye's diplomacy is most disappointing.

 

[lem34]

Iraq pullout threatens US Afghan presence
By Barbara Slavin

WASHINGTON - Washington's failure to gain Iraqi approval for a significant United States military presence in that country beyond December could make it harder for Afghanistan to agree to a similar deployment beyond 2014.

Vali Nasr, a former senior adviser to the State Department on Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the Iraq experience could be a "model" for Afghanistan. "Nobody thought the US could go completely out [of Iraq]," he told Inter Press Service (IPS) on Tuesday. "Now they have."

Frank Ruggiero, the deputy special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told IPS, "I'm not aware of a spillover" from the Iraq negotiations, which foundered over Iraqi refusal to grant US forces immunity from local prosecution.

But he acknowledged that negotiations on a so-called strategic framework between the US and the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai are not proceeding quickly. He said that the Afghans are focusing on issues such as US night raids and detention practices rather than the question of how many US forces remain in the country long-term.

Nasr and Ruggiero spoke on the sidelines of a symposium at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars that posed the question of whether there is "a regional endgame" for the decade-old US-led war in Afghanistan. Participants, who included former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, were subdued in their assessments, noting that Afghanistan's neighbors have different priorities and have already begun to hedge their behavior in anticipation of a US withdrawal.

The Barack Obama administration is hoping that regional representatives, meeting Wednesday in Istanbul, will sign onto a series of principles declaring "full respect for Afghan sovereignty and territory", according to a State Department official who briefed reporters on Monday and asked not to be named.

The official said that diplomats are also being asked to endorse a gradual transition from US security leadership to Afghan control, a political solution to the war and a so-called "New Silk Road" vision for regional economic prosperity.

Such declarations cannot paper over the real challenges Afghanistan faces in trying to build a stable future in an unsettled neighborhood.

Kissinger, speaking in his distinctive German-accented rumbling baritone, said that US administrations historically have gotten into wars with "objectives beyond the capacity of the US domestic consensus required to support and implement" them. In Afghanistan's case, he said, this included implanting a government "whose writ ran all over the country" and that would "represent some fundamental democratic principles such as women's rights and education".

Afghanistan, he said, "is a particularly difficult country to attempt this because it isn't really a state [but] a nation that comes together primarily to expel foreigners."

United States hopes to "win" the war are unrealistic, Kissinger suggested, given Pakistan's harboring of Taliban fighters. "I know of no guerrilla war that was won when there were sanctuaries within reach," he said.

He said the Obama administration should postpone major troop withdrawals as long as possible to maintain maximum leverage and should warn the neighbors that if they do not cooperate as the US withdraws, "You'll have to take the consequences on your own."

However, Afghanistan's two key neighbors - Pakistan and Iran - appear to prefer those consequences to a continued US military presence on their borders.

Iran has reportedly sent arms to the Taliban and cultivated an economic relationship with India that will allow both to trade with Afghanistan and Central Asia by circumventing Pakistan.

Pakistan, meanwhile, is believed to be harboring the Afghan militants with the most US blood on their hands, the Haqqani network, which is said to be responsible for a series of spectacular attacks in Kabul including attacks on the Intercontinental Hotel and US Embassy and a weekend suicide bombing that killed a dozen US soldiers.

A story in the New York Times on Tuesday quoted unnamed Western analysts as saying that senior members of the Haqqani family, including brothers and children of patriarch Jalaluddin Haqqani, had been spotted recently in Islamabad.

Given that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was found and killed by US forces in May in a nearby resort for retired military, Abbottabad, a senior Haqqani presence in the Pakistani capital would suggest that the Pakistani government is actively aiding the enemies of the United States while accepting billions in US military and economic aid.

Charges that Pakistan's intelligence services, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), were working with the Haqqani network first surfaced publicly in September when outgoing chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, told congress that the Taliban leadership known as the Quetta shura and the Haqqanis "operate from Pakistan with impunity. attacking Afghan troops and civilians as well as US soldiers". Mullen went on to call the Haqqani network "a strategic arm" of the ISI.

The Obama administration subsequently tried a softer approach. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led a high-profile inter-agency delegation to Pakistan last month which urged Pakistani officials to cooperate with the US in reining in the Haqqanis and bringing them to the negotiating table. That visit preceded last weekend's suicide bombing.

Nasr, who left the State Department earlier this year, said that US relations with "the two countries that are really important - Iran and Pakistan" - had steadily worsened while the US had the best relations with the countries "that matter the least" in terms of Afghanistan's long-term future.

Iran and the US are at odds over multiple issues, including Iran's nuclear program and alleged support for terrorism.

Anti-US sentiment in Pakistan is at historic highs since the killing of Bin Laden. Politician and former cricket star Imran Khan attracted over 100,000 people to a recent rally in Lahore at which he said that Pakistan would not allow itself to be "enslaved" by the United States or attack Pakistani militants at US bidding.

Pakistan and Iran "are very happy to help us leave but they are not necessarily going to support our vision for Afghanistan which includes (a continued US military) footprint," Nasr told the Wilson Center audience.

United States officials have spoken of leaving 20,000-25,000 US troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014 to shore up the Afghan government and continue counter-terrorism operations against al-Qaeda and its Pakistani allies. However, the appetite for the war has waned as US casualties rise beyond 1,800 killed and 15,000 wounded.

Kissinger, who served during Republican administrations that first widened the Vietnam War and then ended it through a peace deal that swiftly crumbled in a communist victory, warned against treating the Afghan conflict as a partisan issue.

"What this country really needs is a reconciliation at home," he said, speaking of the United States. "The national interest of the US doesn't change" with every election.

---------- Post added at 01:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:16 PM ----------

A russian view

Clinton's Dubious Plan to Save Afghanistan With a 'New Silk Road'
By Joshua Kucera

Nov 2 2011, 11:05 AM ET

Most analysts seem to agree that the antiquity-era trade route is never coming back, so why is it America's new favorite idea for Central Asia?

When foreign ministers from Afghanistan, its neighbors, and several European countries meet today in Istanbul, U.S. diplomats will be pushing them to sign on to an ambitious plan for the future of Central Asia. The "New Silk Road," as the State Department is calling their strategy, would link the infrastructure -- roads, railways, power lines -- of the 'Stans of post-Soviet Central Asia southward through Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. At the same time, they would work with the governments to reduce legal and bureaucratic impediments to trade, like corrupt border crossings.

The hope is that this would produce a flowering of East-West overland trade akin to the original Silk Road, by which China traded with the Middle East via Central Asian trade centers like Kashgar, Bukhara, and Samarkand. "Turkmen gas fields could help meet both Pakistan's and India's growing energy needs and provide significant transit revenues for both Afghanistan and Pakistan," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a speech outlining the vision. "Tajik cotton could be turned into Indian linens. Furniture and fruit from Afghanistan could find its way to the markets of Astana or Mumbai and beyond." (Clinton was originally scheduled to pitch her counterparts in Istanbul, but the death of her mother forced her to cancel the trip.)

If this is the best Washington can come up with, the future for Afghanistan looks bleak

But hope may be the only thing driving on the New Silk Road. The State Department has few good options in Afghanistan, and the U.S. doesn't want to leave (or at least wants to seem like they won't leave) a disaster behind once it starts pulling troops out in 2014. So it cast about for ideas and found the New Silk Road proposal, which had been bouncing around the post-Soviet think tank circuit in Washington since the mid-oughts.

The plan's architect is Fred Starr, the chair of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, a small Washington, D.C. think tank, with the backing of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. State Department officials have long been wary of the plan, initially dismissing it as unworkable. But it began to gain favor last year at U.S. Central Command, and with its commander at the time, General David Petraeus. Since Marc Grossman became President Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan earlier this year, replacing the late Richard Holbrooke, the State Department has come around to support the strategy. And Clinton has appeared to embrace it as the economic foundation of the U.S.'s post-2014 strategy for Afghanistan, promoting it in her meetings last month with the presidents of three of Afghanistan's neighbors: Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

The origins of the plan, however, lie in geopolitics rather than economics. In the mid-oughts, there were a variety of programs by which the U.S. tried to unite South and Central Asia, including an effort to tie together the electrical grids of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan with those of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Authority for the Central Asian countries were also moved under a new State Department bureau, taking them out of the Europen bureau with the rest of the post-Soviet republics and connecting them with South Asia. What these schemes all have in common is that they attempt to weaken the economic (and as a result, political) monopoly that Russia, by dint of the centralized Soviet infrastructure, has on these countries.
As Marlene Laruelle writes in a new book, Mapping Central Asia, which includes a great chapter on the revived metaphor of the New Silk Road: "The underlying geo-economic rationales of these Roads is to exclude Moscow from new geopolitical configurations."

The State Department doesn't say this, of course, and it's possible (even likely) that the people now implementing the strategy don't think of it as such. Clinton even implied that there could be some sort of connection with the Russia-led Customs Union with Kazakhstan and Belarus, which is the basis for Vladimir Putin's notorious Eurasian Union.

But this geopolitical vestige lives on in the current iteration of the New Silk Road. Look at a map of South and Central Asia -- ideally, one where you can see topography and the quality of roads -- and it's apparent that the most sensible way to ship goods from India west is not the northern route over the massive mountain passes and crumbling roads of Central Asia. It's the southern route, through Iran and Turkey. But, obviously, a U.S.-backed plan can't include Iran.

There are also political barriers to inter-Central Asian trade. George Gavrilis, an expert on Central Asia and borders, described them in a recent piece in Foreign Affairs. Many of the countries in the region, he notes, have persistent problems with their neighbors: Pakistan with Afghanistan and India, Uzbekistan with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Trade agreements are fragile and susceptible to political difficulties; the border between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan was closed for 18 months following last summer's violence in southern Kyrgyzstan. More fundamentally, a region-wide strategy would be unlikely to work because the countries that surround Afghanistan -- China, Pakistan, Iran and the 'stans -- all have very different interests and little desire to cooperate with one another. "I love the idea," Gavrilis told me when I asked about the New Silk Road. "But I just don't see how it can be implemented,"

Notwithstanding the romance of the original Silk Road, Laruelle notes in her book, the geopolitical situation has changed quite a bit in the centuries since. "The border divisions of the 20th century have transformed these ancient trans-continental routes into cul-de-sacs of nation-states and no simple political will to declare a zone a 'crossroads' can suffice to influence the reality of being in the margins," she writes.

And the reason the first Silk Road died out? Sea transport became much cheaper, which is still true today. So plans, she continues, "to modify in depth the status quo of global trade, three-quarters of which is carried out by sea, by replacing it with continental trade on the pretext that, once upon a time, caravans used to travel along these routes, can not be taken seriously."

The State Department, in its public statements on the plan, highlights a handful of existing or proposed projects on which the New Silk Road could be modeled, including a free-trade agreement signed last year between Pakistan and Afghanistan and the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline. But they give little reason for optimism. The Pakistan-Afghanistan agreement was laboriously, personally brokered by Holbrooke but has yet to be implemented, and with relations between the two countries suffering, may never actually happen.

The TAPI pipeline has been discussed since the 1990s, but as with similar schemes, insecurity in Afghanistan has scared away companies that might have the capital to build such a pipeline. With U.S. and NATO troops departing, the security situation is likely to decline even further, a problem that the plan's boosters acknowledge. "We have continued insecurity and instability in Afghanistan," Sham Bathija, senior economic adviser to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, said at a recent conference in Washington on the strategy. "Yet we have no choice but to forge ahead."

It's not clear what eventually convinced the State Department to embrace the New Silk Road. Starr is an eloquent proponent, and his enthusiasm can be infectious. But more than anything, the adoption of the plan speaks, as Bathija suggests, to the lack of good options for post-2014 Afghanistan. If this is the best Washington can come up with, the future for Afghanistan looks bleak.

But that's not to say that there are no other choices. Instead of pushing an ambitious multilateral plan for Afghanistan, Gavrilis' article suggests the U.S. should work with the countries it can actually do something with, tailoring individual strategies to each particular country's interest: "Resuscitating region-wide approaches is a fool's errand that will not save Afghanistan. It is time for the international community to dump diplomatic niceties and work with those neighbors whose policies could be molded to Afghanistan's benefit."

This lacks the romance of the Silk Road and the ambitious vision of a thriving Europe-Asia trade corridor. But it has a lot better chance of succeeding.


Well Russians are going to need convincing and Putin who is about to make a comeback is a little more cynical about america than his medewhateva mate

 

[VCheng]

America/cheng ignore ignore actors like iran anyone ignoring iran needs to go back to the drawing board. the ameican suggestion postulated is flawed . Agno or some other poster comes along and states that india pakistan trade is good etc cheng then thanks them and go off on o.....................

Iran is not being ignored; it is under strict sanctions for good reasons. From Pakistan's PoV, cosying up to Iran will immediately invite ire from its Saudi benefactors. That complication on its own is enough to prevent any real improvement.

 

[lem34]

And now we have a Chinese view

China takes higher-profile role in Afghan diplomacy - diplomats
Reuters | 01:17 AM,Nov 03,2011

By Jonathon Burch and Myra MacDonald ISTANBUL (Reuters) - China called on Wednesday for an independent and stable Afghanistan free from outside interference, in what diplomats interpreted as a new, higher-profile effort by Asia's largest economy to take a more active role in its neighbour's future. Speaking at a conference on Afghanistan in Istanbul, Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin urged the international community to respect Afghanistan's sovereignty and said Afghans must rally behind a national reconciliation. "The international community must support an Afghanistan run by the Afghans," Liu said. "We must pledge to respect Afghanistan's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, to respect the dignity and rights of its government and people to be masters of their own country." China has previously steered well clear of any serious political engagement in Afghanistan, focusing instead on investing billions of dollars in the Central Asian country as it hunts precious resources and profit. But senior Western diplomats said China's position in Istanbul reflected a positive move away from Beijing's wait-and-see stance when it came to Afghanistan's politics and security. "They realise that a policy of further being on the wings, watching what goes on and ready to pick up things, isn't good enough," said one senior diplomat. For the first time, diplomats said, the Chinese had taken an active role in the drafting of the conference communique mapping out regional cooperation on Afghanistan's security. "They were very vocal and raised several issues during the drafting. We weren't even allowed to begin the final version until the Chinese delegation had arrived," another Western diplomat said, adding that the final version was not finished until early on Wednesday. "Before, you would attend meetings on Afghanistan and the neighbours would be silent, and here you have them taking a lead and that's what it is all about," said another diplomat. "The Chinese for the first time were very comprehensive and constructive, you could really see an elevated role of China in the region and more outspoken than ever before," he said. All the diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity so they could speak freely on the subject. A senior member of China's delegation in Istanbul, who also wanted to remain anonymous, said: "The communique reflects the consensus of the regional countries". FOREIGN TROOPS LEAVING China has watched the Soviet Union and the United States struggle in Afghanistan, which has largely shaped Beijing's more reticent approach -- investing billions of dollars in the country but shying away from political or military influence. But China also fears the spread of Islamic militancy from Afghanistan into its restive Western Xinjiang region, home to millions of Uighur Muslims, and a new stance by Beijing may signal a fear of what will happen after 2014 when most Western forces will have left Afghanistan. "They understand the footprint of the international community, especially of international forces, will be reduced, if not all, to a very minimum," said one diplomat. "Attention is moving elsewhere and there is also increasing recognition that what this country (Afghanistan) needs is a serious security dialogue among the countries involved." China's ties with Afghanistan have long been strongly influenced by the powerful bonds that tie Beijing and Islamabad. China supplies finance and weapons to Pakistan and the two are also bound by mistrust of neighbouring India. "The West will also need to engage China to talk about the region and Afghanistan, especially bearing in mind China's close relations with Pakistan, and I don't think we have done that," said the same diplomat. "It's just a gentle reminder by China that the West has to talk to China and not only to India or Pakistan when it comes to Afghanistan and the region." Expectations were low before the Istanbul conference, with violence in Afghanistan at its worst levels after more than 10 years of war and with Afghan-Pakistani ties at a new low since the murder of the chief Afghan peace envoy in September. But delegates were upbeat at the end of Wednesday's talks, agreeing to a series of wide-ranging commitments in the 12-page communique. Among those were "resolutely combating and eliminating terrorism", preventing safe havens for terrorists and terrorism in the region", and "dismantling terrorist sanctuaries". "It's a very complex gathering of countries with very different, sometimes conflicting national agendas but if we can move forward in facilitating the birth of regional dialogue on security matters, that's what I think Istanbul is all about," said a Western diplomat after the conference. "But what is going to be most important is what will be the follow-up. Will they retain the momentum? Will they deliver with deeds and not only words?" (Editing by Tim Pearce)

Hey Muse what do you reckon. China will speak and will not be bullied by america nor desert pakistan. I have seen past articles when chinese say reconciliation in afghanistan they mean all parties including taleban. Hope those tossers realise they have to fall in line

 

[lem34]

the following substancive is drawn from a post on another thread by develop that is relevant with the american proposal

Nobody's suggesting that India and the US are 'friends', but it's hard to deny that they share some common interests in containing China and emasculating Pakistan's army.

As for India being the darling of the West, of course we know it's a recent phenomenon. The point was that India is brimming with self-confidence and has America's backing; this is precisely the wrong time to negotiate with India -- and certainly not with American involvement! Contrary to Indian belief, this self-assertiveness is not a one way street and will be tempered with time. As India's energy needs get more acute, let mainstream Indian businesses be forced to chose between Kashmir and their own business interests. They will make sure the Indian media -- and consequently the government -- sings the right tune on being 'pragmatic'. All Pakistan needs to do is to stand its ground and focus on Iran, Afghanistan, China, etc. to improve its economy. India is not a priority.

Finally, I still haven't seen anyone address the two central points:

A- What does India bring to the american deal that Pakistan can't get elsewhere? We know Pakistan brings its unique geographical location.

B- Since this american/cheng proposal is specifically designed to undermine China's interests in the region, why should Pakistan be a part of it?

---------- Post added at 01:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:22 PM ----------

a post from muse from amother thread that is relevant here

Aryan, Agnostic various


Chinese are very delicate and firm - our issue is day by day, Pakistan has to earn or lose it's relevance - it can't seem to come up with a position around which it can garner more and more support, even Indian support, after the Indians are not congenitally opposed to a Pakistani solution, so long as their interests get a fair hearing and fair consideration.

Agno points to what should be a no-brainer - Bonn in 2001 cut out all players who did not take US money, therefore this mistake should be remedied but that presupposes that the government of Afghanistan and the US want ot see reconciliation and not just surrender of the "terrorists", right?? And since the Pakistani, the Chinese and Russian and Iranian statements are all singing the same tune, namely solve the problem inside Afghanistan and the Afghan president choose to talk about "safe havens" and "terrorists" suggests that he remains unpersuaded (translation US military does not think that is a way forward)

So Istanbul fizzled, but this only means that the arm twisting and deal making will go in high gear, you haven't heard the last word from the US --

Aryan, sincerely appreciated the pieces about the Russian and Chinese view points and I have included below the piece the Russian article references - so it may help us understand further -This "heat of Asia" stuff is a dagger in the back of the powers in the region and to muscle into the region with military force, this idea is not new, recall that in the past the Chaudry was Pakistan till the Talib told the Pakistanis and Unocal and Gov Bush to take jump in the lake or come up with a better dea, now there is a new chaudry aspirant, will they fare better? Well, lok, so long as Pakistan is following her interets, why should it concern itself if there is a old or a new chaudry or no chaudry at all? :



October 18, 2011
SNAPSHOT
Why Regional Solutions Won't Help Afghanistan

The Myth of Neighborly Harmony
George Gavrilis

GEORGE GAVRILIS is Executive Director of the Hollings Center for International Dialogue [1]and the author of The Dynamics of Interstate Boundaries [2].

Determined to get out of Afghanistan sooner rather than later, Washington, the United Nations, and NATO have been hunting for a multilateral regional approach to the country's woes. U.S. officials have called for neighboring countries to pitch in ahead of the drawdown and have urged Afghanistan's neighbors to develop strategic partnerships to build up infrastructure, boost trade, increase investment, and fight extremism. In effect, the move is a recognition that during its ten years in Afghanistan, the United States has handed off too little of the task of stabilizing the country to Kabul's neighbors. As U.S. General John Allen recently indicated [3], there are many issues that cannot be solved out of Kabul, and Afghanistan needs a regional, not a national solution. Now, the United Nations is working on a plan for a joint security arrangement in the region based on the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe of the 1970s. And until September, NATO had been working on a cooperative security and development initiative that was to be unveiled at the May 2012 summit on Afghanistan.

At first glance, the region's governments seem to be on board with long-term neighborly solutions. In 2010, Turkmen officials brokered an agreement to construct a natural gas pipeline through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. This year, the Uzbek government inaugurated a rail line that connects the north of Afghanistan to Uzbekistan. Not to be outdone, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari proposed developing a fast cargo train line to connect Pakistan to Iran via Afghanistan. He billed it as a win-win-win megaproject that would boost the economy of every country involved.

But if a harmonious regional solution seems too good to be true, that is because it is. In the past decade, several multilateral initiatives have flopped. At an economic summit in 2005, upbeat delegates from six of Afghanistan's neighboring states pledged to support Afghanistan's reconstruction with mutual initiatives on trade, energy, security, and counternarcotics. Privately, UN officials admitted that backroom discussions were tense and unproductive. The Uzbek delegation left after the first session, the Iranians kept a low profile, and a Chinese diplomat described the proposed regional partnerships as "hackneyed."

Everyone got together again in Paris three years later. The agenda was a carbon copy of the 2005 proceedings, and what little cooperative spirit existed dissipated once ministers returned to their capitals. Uzbek diplomats, who had informally agreed to strengthen regional trade and multilateral counternarcotics efforts, did an about-face and spent much of the rest of the year accusing Afghanistan of narco-aggression. They insisted that they would stick to unilateral measures to combat the drug trade in the future. At recent high-level meetings in Islamabad, London, and Lisbon, much energy was squandered ensuring that the region's diplomats did not take offense to one another or the discussions. In the end, other than the usual hollow calls to "facilitate," "strengthen," "look closely," and "work together" regionally, little was actually achieved.

In reality, the region's accomplishments on Afghanistan have had little to do with multilateral summitry. To be sure, regional cooperation has been credited with bringing Central Asian electricity to Kabul. Yet, out of its own national interest, Uzbekistan was providing electricity to northern Afghanistan well before the past decade's summits. The most consequential agreement for the region's economy, a bilateral free-trade agreement between Afghanistan and Pakistan, came about because of protracted arm twisting by Richard Holbrooke, the late U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now, with the recent deterioration in relations between Kabul and Islamabad over allegations that Pakistan's security agencies have aided the Taliban in several high-profile attacks and assassinations, the longevity of the agreement cannot be taken for granted.

The real problem is the fact that, at best, Afghanistan's neighbors are strange bedfellows -- Iran, China, and Uzbekistan are anything but models of multilateralism. As Afghanistan's insurgency worsened in 2006, for example, Iran ratcheted up its war on drugs at the Afghan border and sent legions of intelligence operatives into Afghanistan. The enhanced border controls were helpful in putting pressure on Afghanistan's illicit opiate trade and making up for the Afghan government's lackluster counternarcotics initiatives. But they hardly made the case for multilateralism; Iranian officials regularly complained that their efforts saw little follow-up from Pakistan and Afghanistan. Turkmenistan's government paid lip service to multilateral peace initiatives, but, at one point in 2007, it might have secretly donated food, clothes, and fuel to Taliban fighters in return for their moving further into Afghanistan's interior and away from the Turkmen border. Finally, China will not increase its economic and political footprint in Afghanistan as long as it means becoming an insurgent target. Indeed, the vast majority of China's billions of dollars' worth of investment in Afghanistan is sunk in the Mes Aynak copper mine, south of Kabul, where the U.S. military provides free security.

And those are the better cases. Pakistan and Tajikistan are directly invested in Afghanistan's failure. For years, Pakistan's security agencies have fomented chaos in Afghanistan to maintain strategic depth against India. And Tajikistan's ability to collect lucrative international development aid is greatly owed to its proximity to dysfunctional Afghanistan. Tajik officials regularly present international donors with long lists of "win-win" cross-border development projects that, they insist, must be built on their side of the border. This means that Afghanistan accrues no benefits until much later, if at all. So even as Afghanistan's neighbors eagerly talk up solving common problems such as the drug trade, extremism, and poverty together, they have each found ways to live with and even profit from Afghanistan's debilitated state.

Rather than expecting Afghanistan's region to band together to help the country succeed, the United States, NATO, and the UN should focus on deflecting Afghanistan's most difficult neighbors so that the country can survive on its own. Two very recent developments suggest that the time for such a policy switch may be ripe, at least on the part of the United States. First, the U.S. military is toying with the idea of shifting troops from southern Afghanistan to a buffer zone between Kabul and the frontier with Pakistan, to deter cross-border movement of Taliban operatives. This is an admission that the region is more of a problem than an opportunity for Afghanistan.

Second, at a recent meeting over Libya, U.S. State Department officials engaged in side conversations to prod NATO representatives to halt work on a regional strategy and suggested that it may be more prudent to consider how Arab states might contribute more to Afghanistan. Growing private skepticism about regionalism is likely driven by a desire to scare Pakistan into behaving better; as such, it sheds little light on how regional approaches can be replaced with less untenable initiatives.

Ultimately, the solution may lie in pursuing bilateral initiatives with the more agreeable of Afghanistan's neighbors. This would mean working closely over the medium term with authoritarian governments such as Uzbekistan and Iran. Despite Uzbekistan's disappointing unilateralism, it does at least allow electricity and nonlethal supplies to transit across its territory en route to Afghanistan. Uzbekistan's role after the U.S. troop drawdown in 2014 is undefined, and the United States should encourage it to relax its notoriously closed borders so that Afghan goods have ready access to Eurasian markets.

Iran already gives Afghanistan access to valuable trade corridors, yet Iranian-Afghan relations have cooled recently. It is important to ensure that Tehran keeps its roads and ports open to Afghan goods to reduce Islamabad's ability to use future trade spats and border closures against Kabul. After the recent scandal over Iran's apparent plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Washington is even more likely to isolate Iran, so the UN would conceivably have to take the lead in engaging Tehran.

China might also be encouraged to offset Pakistan's role. China and Pakistan enjoy relatively good relations, but these will inevitably come under strain if Pakistan-funded Taliban extremists in Afghanistan threaten Chinese mining investments, or destabilize Afghanistan's economy and thereby China's ability to export goods there. Rather than giving China the comfort of waiting until the 2014 troop drawdown to reassess its role, U.S. officials must start publicly and privately pressuring Beijing to act as a true stakeholder in Afghanistan -- reining in Pakistan and increasing its development and security aid to Afghanistan.

Resuscitating region-wide approaches is a fool's errand that will not save Afghanistan. It is time for the international community to dump diplomatic niceties and work with those neighbors whose policies could be molded to Afghanistan's benefit.

 

[lem34]

It is accepted that Americans have been unsuccessful in their attempt to defeat the Taleban militarily. The Americans themselves are stating that they wish to withdraw and at the very least will reduce their troops in Afghanistan.

The American’s proposal is simply a way of denying the wishes of Afghanis. Whoever else’s wishes are taken into account it must a least include the wishes of Afghanis. America insists that Karzai is democratically elected representative of the Afghani people. However international observers stated categorically that his election was rigged.

We need free and fair elections supervised and monitored by the international community in particular Russia, China and other neighbors in Afghanistan but exclude Americans as they are participants in war with one of the components of Afghani society.

We need to encourage all parties within Afghanistan’s to go to the ballot box. We must not forget that Americans Pakistanis and Saudis have sponsored Taleban militants in the past. In this Pakistan can encourage all to participate? Saudis can be asked to provide money for financing infrastructure in Afghanistan and also encourage their co religionists to go to the ballot box.

Americans and Saudis should be asked to pour money into Afghanistan and visibly be seen to be making the life of the average Afghanis bearable.

Only once we have genuine representatives of Afghanis only then can the international community assist them in security.

Any alternative to the above will not work. What do Americans want Pakistan and the rest of the neighborhood to do? Destroy Taleban when they couldn’t? Commit genocide?


It is suggested that if Pakistan does not participate in american option then it may be put under sanctions. I don’t really see how when the likes of Russia China and Iran are unlikely to be convinced of american proposal. But Pakistan is no stranger to sanctions and it’s likely that China and certainly Iran would be supportive of Pakistan’s position. Further how would India benefit? How would the region benefit. What have Indians got that Americans haven’t? Why should or how could they succeed when America has failed?

There are no simple solutions but ignoring Afghanis is very naïve stupid and unhelpful to anyone american option is fatally flawed because it assumes Pakistani compliance.

---------- Post added at 01:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:28 PM ----------

South Asia
Nov 4, 2011




US's post-2014 Afghan agenda falters
By M K Bhadrakumar

There couldn't have been a more appropriate venue than the old Byzantine capital on the Bosphorus to hold a regional conference on Afghanistan at the present juncture. The conference at Istanbul on Thursday carried an impressive title - "Security and Cooperation in the Heart of Asia". The "heart" had 14 chambers - Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The conference was packed with high drama, which was unsurprising, since its "brain" - the United States - acted almost imperviously to the beatings of the heart.

Intrigue and counter-intrigue dogged the conference from the


outset to such an extent that its eventual failure was a forgone conclusion.

The US and its Western allies began with high hopes that North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) partner Turkey would secure from the conference a declaration - preferably signed by the "14 heartland" states - that would prepare the ground for establishing a regional security and integration mechanism on the pattern of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In turn, this declaration would take wing at the forthcoming Bonn II conference in December (to which Germany has invited 90 countries and 15 international organizations).

In the event, Thursday ended on a somewhat miserable note in Istanbul, the heart of Asia having suffered even a minor rupture. Uzbekistan broke loose and stayed away at the last minute, with the remaining 13 countries finally settling for an anodyne joint statement that will become the latest in a series of platitudes and good intentions since the US invaded Afghanistan.

Bound to crash-land
The conference agenda was lop-sided in the first instance. Instead of focusing on the pivotal issue of a viable Afghan national reconciliation, how to set up such a process and how to secure it as "Afghan-led" and genuinely "Afghan-owned", the masterminds of the conference - the United States in particular - loaded it with geopolitics.

The conference was burdened with an ambitious agenda of imposing on the region under Western leadership a mechanism to mediate in a host of intra-regional disputes and differences which are, arguably, tangential issues that could have a bearing on Afghanistan's stabilization but are not the greatest concern today.
This was, to put mildly, like putting the cart before the horse. The Western masterminds needlessly introduced a controversial template for a new security architecture for Central and South Asia, complete with an institutional mechanism and a "contact group" for monitoring the implementation of a matrix of "confidence-building measures".

This was an idea that was bound to crash-land, given the deep suspicions about the US's intentions in the "war on terror" in Afghanistan and the unwillingness of the regional states to accept the permanent habitation of the West as the arbiter-cum-moderator-cum-mediator in their region.

During the preparatory stages at official meetings in Oslo, Norway and Kabul through September and October, it became evident that there were no takers in the region for a new regional security organization presided over by the West. Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan and most of the Central Asian countries demurred on the US proposal for a new regional security architecture. India, which resents outside mediation on its disputes, kept quiet so as not to offend the US, while probably remaining confident that Pakistan would do its job anyway.

Moscow came up with its own counterproposal in the shape of a statement of principles of regional cooperation listing political, economic and other measures to build confidence and encourage cooperation among the countries neighboring Afghanistan. The Russian approach found favor with China, Pakistan and Iran, and being unexceptional in any case, it gained traction and ultimately seems to have paved the way for Thursday's joint statement at Istanbul.

However, Washington (and Ankara) continued efforts until the last minute to somehow institutionalize a regional process through "working groups" and a "structured" form of consultations. But Pakistan would appear to have put its foot firmly down on these ideas, pointing out that an OSCE-type security related conference or a full-fledged security apparatus would be completely unacceptable since there was a world of difference between the Cold-War compulsions which initiated the Helsinki process and the prevailing Afghan situation.

Pakistan's contention is that Afghanistan's neighboring countries could at best have a supportive role in ensuring the peace, security and territorial integrity of that country and instead of proposing new mechanisms, the focus should be on implementation of the existing mechanisms for peace, security and development.

The US game plan served four objectives. One, Washington hoped to "shackle" Pakistan within the four walls of a regional security mechanism dominated by the West so that it becomes one protagonist among equals and its claim to an eminent status in any Afghan peace process gets diluted.

Two, the regional mechanism would give the US and its allies a handle to retain the lead role in the search for an Afghan settlement and also beyond during the post 2014 period. Three, Washington estimated that the regional security apparatus would inevitably come to overshadow the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as the number one regional security process in Central Asia and South Asia which, in turn, would erode the dominant influence of Russia and China in Central Asia.

Finally, the US envisaged the regional mechanism to provide the security underpinning for its "New Silk Road" project, which is running on a parallel track - quintessentially a modern version of its "Greater Central Asia strategy" dating back to the George W Bush presidency. The New Silk Road proposes Afghanistan as a regional hub to bring Central Asia and South Asia closer together under the garb of regional development and integration.

Its real intent, however, is to roll back the pre-eminent position of Russia and China in Central Asia and to gain direct access to the vast mineral resources of the region through communication links that bypass Russia and Iran. The US's agenda included gaining for NATO some sort of formal, institutional role in regional security in Central Asia. (Safeguarding the energy pipelines is a newfound 21st century "challenge" that NATO proposes to assume.)

Conceivably, Moscow and Beijing spotted a red herring from day one. The most significant outcome of the Istanbul Conference, therefore, might turn out to be that the SCO will hasten its decision-making process and swiftly steer through the applications of Pakistan and India for membership of that organization.

A Russian statement issued on Monday following Foreign Ministry-level political consultations with China in Moscow stated that the two countries discussed the modalities of finalization of the membership of the two South Asian countries in SCO and "spoke of expediting the process" of membership of India and Pakistan (and Afghanistan's status as an SCO "Observer"). The likelihood is that a decision in this regard might even be formalized at the SCO Heads of Governments meeting due in St Petersburg on Monday.

Note of triumphalism
Underlying all this high drama has been the realization in Washington (and the regional capitals) that the political-military situation in Afghanistan is decisively shifting in Pakistan's favor, prompting a desperate Western attempt to ensure the US and NATO's permanent military presence in the strategic Hindu Kush.

Without doubt, a dangerous period lies ahead for the US and its NATO allies with the strong possibility of Mullah Omar's forces and the Haqqani network openly collaborating with a view to intensifying the insurgent activities.

The devastating suicide car bomb attack in Kabul killing 13 American and 3 Australian soldiers may well be the harbinger of a new offensive. Its timing - on the eve of the Istanbul conference - carried a barely-disguised message to the US administration that crunch time has come and the US strategy to degrade the Taliban and force them to come to the negotiating has not only failed, but the Taliban seem more than ever convinced that they are inching toward conclusive victory.

Clearly, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton's visit to Islamabad 10 days ago has not helped reduce the huge trust deficit in the US-Pakistan relationship. The Pakistani military seems amused that Clinton made a virtue out of dire necessity by graciously "offering" to Islamabad the "primacy" to "squeeze" the Haqqanis and bring them to the negotiating table.

Whereas, the heart of the matter is that the US's covert attempts in the recent months to gain direct access to the Taliban leadership and to suo moto initiate a peace process from a position of strength lie in shambles today.

On the other hand, Pakistan's estimation is that US President Barack Obama is going to find himself more and more on the defensive as next year's election approaches, lessening even further the US's capacity to pressure Islamabad. A tone of triumphalism is appearing in the Pakistani discourses.

Indeed, the Obama administration, too, would sense that the factors of advantage are incrementally tilting in Pakistan's favor and that the US lacks any real leverage to influence the Pakistani military. The US roped in Turkey to push the agenda of the Istanbul Conference, given its traditionally warm and friendly relations with Pakistan. The Saudi and United Arab Emirates presence in Istanbul was also expected to influence Pakistan. But the Istanbul Conference may have resulted in causing some injury to Turkish-Pakistani ties. A Turkish observer wrote:

Cold winds have started to blow between the two [Turkey and Pakistan] due to the Afghan problem ... Islamabad is quite annoyed at Turkey for its role in the conference ... Basically, Pakistan is angry at Turkey and the US, which want a result oriented conference. For the conference to bear fruit an institutionalization of the process is a must. In other words in the absence of some kind of a mechanism, to monitor the process that might include implementing confidence-building measures, everything said in Istanbul will stay on paper.

Turkish diplomacy has tried to calm down the Pakistanis, telling them that the presence of Turkey in the regional framework should alleviate the concerns of Pakistanis vis-a-vis other players. After all the Turks do not have a secret agenda of strengthening the hands of India at the expense of Pakistan but I am doubtful that they succeeded in reassuring Pakistan.

All in all, from the Russian and Chinese point of view, it becomes desirable - almost imperative - from now onward while looking ahead, that Pakistan is enabled to have strategic autonomy to withstand the US pressure. Most certainly, they would appreciate Pakistan's steadfast role in frustrating the US design to install a regional security mechanism for continued interference in the Central Asian region.

On balance, the petering out of the Istanbul Conference constitutes a grave setback for the upcoming Bonn Conference II in December. With the Istanbul Conference failing to erect an institutionalized framework of regional cooperation, Bonn Conference II lacks a viable agenda except that 2011 happens to provide a great photo-op, being the 10th anniversary of the first conference in December 2001.

The original intent was to ensure that the Taliban representatives attended the Bonn Conference. But short of a miracle, that is not going to happen. That leaves the US and its NATO allies to work out the planned transition in Afghanistan in 2014 in isolation, as they gather for the alliance's summit in May in Chicago.

In sum, the regional powers are unwilling to collaborate with the US and its allies to choreograph the post-2014 regional security scenario. Russia and China insist that the central role of the international community in Afghanistan should be of the United Nations once the US and NATO's transition is completed in 2014.

Evidently, they would hope for the SCO to take a lead role in the stabilization of Afghanistan. Afghanistan's expeditious admission as an SCO observer alongside Pakistan's induction as a full member conveys a loud message that regional security is best handled by the countries of the region, while extra-regional powers can act as facilitators. That is also the final message of the Istanbul conference.

---------- Post added at 01:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:30 PM ----------

South Asia
Nov 4, 2011




US's post-2014 Afghan agenda falters
By M K Bhadrakumar

There couldn't have been a more appropriate venue than the old Byzantine capital on the Bosphorus to hold a regional conference on Afghanistan at the present juncture. The conference at Istanbul on Thursday carried an impressive title - "Security and Cooperation in the Heart of Asia". The "heart" had 14 chambers - Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The conference was packed with high drama, which was unsurprising, since its "brain" - the United States - acted almost imperviously to the beatings of the heart.

Intrigue and counter-intrigue dogged the conference from the


outset to such an extent that its eventual failure was a forgone conclusion.

The US and its Western allies began with high hopes that North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) partner Turkey would secure from the conference a declaration - preferably signed by the "14 heartland" states - that would prepare the ground for establishing a regional security and integration mechanism on the pattern of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In turn, this declaration would take wing at the forthcoming Bonn II conference in December (to which Germany has invited 90 countries and 15 international organizations).

In the event, Thursday ended on a somewhat miserable note in Istanbul, the heart of Asia having suffered even a minor rupture. Uzbekistan broke loose and stayed away at the last minute, with the remaining 13 countries finally settling for an anodyne joint statement that will become the latest in a series of platitudes and good intentions since the US invaded Afghanistan.

Bound to crash-land
The conference agenda was lop-sided in the first instance. Instead of focusing on the pivotal issue of a viable Afghan national reconciliation, how to set up such a process and how to secure it as "Afghan-led" and genuinely "Afghan-owned", the masterminds of the conference - the United States in particular - loaded it with geopolitics.

The conference was burdened with an ambitious agenda of imposing on the region under Western leadership a mechanism to mediate in a host of intra-regional disputes and differences which are, arguably, tangential issues that could have a bearing on Afghanistan's stabilization but are not the greatest concern today.
This was, to put mildly, like putting the cart before the horse. The Western masterminds needlessly introduced a controversial template for a new security architecture for Central and South Asia, complete with an institutional mechanism and a "contact group" for monitoring the implementation of a matrix of "confidence-building measures".

This was an idea that was bound to crash-land, given the deep suspicions about the US's intentions in the "war on terror" in Afghanistan and the unwillingness of the regional states to accept the permanent habitation of the West as the arbiter-cum-moderator-cum-mediator in their region.

During the preparatory stages at official meetings in Oslo, Norway and Kabul through September and October, it became evident that there were no takers in the region for a new regional security organization presided over by the West. Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan and most of the Central Asian countries demurred on the US proposal for a new regional security architecture. India, which resents outside mediation on its disputes, kept quiet so as not to offend the US, while probably remaining confident that Pakistan would do its job anyway.

Moscow came up with its own counterproposal in the shape of a statement of principles of regional cooperation listing political, economic and other measures to build confidence and encourage cooperation among the countries neighboring Afghanistan. The Russian approach found favor with China, Pakistan and Iran, and being unexceptional in any case, it gained traction and ultimately seems to have paved the way for Thursday's joint statement at Istanbul.

However, Washington (and Ankara) continued efforts until the last minute to somehow institutionalize a regional process through "working groups" and a "structured" form of consultations. But Pakistan would appear to have put its foot firmly down on these ideas, pointing out that an OSCE-type security related conference or a full-fledged security apparatus would be completely unacceptable since there was a world of difference between the Cold-War compulsions which initiated the Helsinki process and the prevailing Afghan situation.

Pakistan's contention is that Afghanistan's neighboring countries could at best have a supportive role in ensuring the peace, security and territorial integrity of that country and instead of proposing new mechanisms, the focus should be on implementation of the existing mechanisms for peace, security and development.

The US game plan served four objectives. One, Washington hoped to "shackle" Pakistan within the four walls of a regional security mechanism dominated by the West so that it becomes one protagonist among equals and its claim to an eminent status in any Afghan peace process gets diluted.

Two, the regional mechanism would give the US and its allies a handle to retain the lead role in the search for an Afghan settlement and also beyond during the post 2014 period. Three, Washington estimated that the regional security apparatus would inevitably come to overshadow the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as the number one regional security process in Central Asia and South Asia which, in turn, would erode the dominant influence of Russia and China in Central Asia.

Finally, the US envisaged the regional mechanism to provide the security underpinning for its "New Silk Road" project, which is running on a parallel track - quintessentially a modern version of its "Greater Central Asia strategy" dating back to the George W Bush presidency. The New Silk Road proposes Afghanistan as a regional hub to bring Central Asia and South Asia closer together under the garb of regional development and integration.

Its real intent, however, is to roll back the pre-eminent position of Russia and China in Central Asia and to gain direct access to the vast mineral resources of the region through communication links that bypass Russia and Iran. The US's agenda included gaining for NATO some sort of formal, institutional role in regional security in Central Asia. (Safeguarding the energy pipelines is a newfound 21st century "challenge" that NATO proposes to assume.)

Conceivably, Moscow and Beijing spotted a red herring from day one. The most significant outcome of the Istanbul Conference, therefore, might turn out to be that the SCO will hasten its decision-making process and swiftly steer through the applications of Pakistan and India for membership of that organization.

A Russian statement issued on Monday following Foreign Ministry-level political consultations with China in Moscow stated that the two countries discussed the modalities of finalization of the membership of the two South Asian countries in SCO and "spoke of expediting the process" of membership of India and Pakistan (and Afghanistan's status as an SCO "Observer"). The likelihood is that a decision in this regard might even be formalized at the SCO Heads of Governments meeting due in St Petersburg on Monday.

Note of triumphalism
Underlying all this high drama has been the realization in Washington (and the regional capitals) that the political-military situation in Afghanistan is decisively shifting in Pakistan's favor, prompting a desperate Western attempt to ensure the US and NATO's permanent military presence in the strategic Hindu Kush.

Without doubt, a dangerous period lies ahead for the US and its NATO allies with the strong possibility of Mullah Omar's forces and the Haqqani network openly collaborating with a view to intensifying the insurgent activities.

The devastating suicide car bomb attack in Kabul killing 13 American and 3 Australian soldiers may well be the harbinger of a new offensive. Its timing - on the eve of the Istanbul conference - carried a barely-disguised message to the US administration that crunch time has come and the US strategy to degrade the Taliban and force them to come to the negotiating has not only failed, but the Taliban seem more than ever convinced that they are inching toward conclusive victory.

Clearly, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton's visit to Islamabad 10 days ago has not helped reduce the huge trust deficit in the US-Pakistan relationship. The Pakistani military seems amused that Clinton made a virtue out of dire necessity by graciously "offering" to Islamabad the "primacy" to "squeeze" the Haqqanis and bring them to the negotiating table.

Whereas, the heart of the matter is that the US's covert attempts in the recent months to gain direct access to the Taliban leadership and to suo moto initiate a peace process from a position of strength lie in shambles today.

On the other hand, Pakistan's estimation is that US President Barack Obama is going to find himself more and more on the defensive as next year's election approaches, lessening even further the US's capacity to pressure Islamabad. A tone of triumphalism is appearing in the Pakistani discourses.

Indeed, the Obama administration, too, would sense that the factors of advantage are incrementally tilting in Pakistan's favor and that the US lacks any real leverage to influence the Pakistani military. The US roped in Turkey to push the agenda of the Istanbul Conference, given its traditionally warm and friendly relations with Pakistan. The Saudi and United Arab Emirates presence in Istanbul was also expected to influence Pakistan. But the Istanbul Conference may have resulted in causing some injury to Turkish-Pakistani ties. A Turkish observer wrote:

Cold winds have started to blow between the two [Turkey and Pakistan] due to the Afghan problem ... Islamabad is quite annoyed at Turkey for its role in the conference ... Basically, Pakistan is angry at Turkey and the US, which want a result oriented conference. For the conference to bear fruit an institutionalization of the process is a must. In other words in the absence of some kind of a mechanism, to monitor the process that might include implementing confidence-building measures, everything said in Istanbul will stay on paper.

Turkish diplomacy has tried to calm down the Pakistanis, telling them that the presence of Turkey in the regional framework should alleviate the concerns of Pakistanis vis-a-vis other players. After all the Turks do not have a secret agenda of strengthening the hands of India at the expense of Pakistan but I am doubtful that they succeeded in reassuring Pakistan.

All in all, from the Russian and Chinese point of view, it becomes desirable - almost imperative - from now onward while looking ahead, that Pakistan is enabled to have strategic autonomy to withstand the US pressure. Most certainly, they would appreciate Pakistan's steadfast role in frustrating the US design to install a regional security mechanism for continued interference in the Central Asian region.

On balance, the petering out of the Istanbul Conference constitutes a grave setback for the upcoming Bonn Conference II in December. With the Istanbul Conference failing to erect an institutionalized framework of regional cooperation, Bonn Conference II lacks a viable agenda except that 2011 happens to provide a great photo-op, being the 10th anniversary of the first conference in December 2001.

The original intent was to ensure that the Taliban representatives attended the Bonn Conference. But short of a miracle, that is not going to happen. That leaves the US and its NATO allies to work out the planned transition in Afghanistan in 2014 in isolation, as they gather for the alliance's summit in May in Chicago.

In sum, the regional powers are unwilling to collaborate with the US and its allies to choreograph the post-2014 regional security scenario. Russia and China insist that the central role of the international community in Afghanistan should be of the United Nations once the US and NATO's transition is completed in 2014.

Evidently, they would hope for the SCO to take a lead role in the stabilization of Afghanistan. Afghanistan's expeditious admission as an SCO observer alongside Pakistan's induction as a full member conveys a loud message that regional security is best handled by the countries of the region, while extra-regional powers can act as facilitators. That is also the final message of the Istanbul conference.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Okay, let's see: What you refer to is an "idea", that is furthered by planning and development, and then to fruition through hard work. What is being argued of a partnering bloc consisting of CAR-Russia-China to Pakistan's advantage may be fine as a flight of fancy, but to use you own standard, what realistic planning and/or development is being contemplated to make it a reality?

As Aryan has pointed out several times, the 'planning/development' (hiccups and all) has been referred to in previous posts multiple times - fore example:

1. Continued development of the Gwadar port and highway infrastructure linking Gwadar to Karachi, Quetta, Chaman ..
2. Negotiations and planning on both the IP and TAP gas pipelines as well as negotiations on power grids transferring power to Pakistan from Iran and the CAR's
3. Continued cooperation and expansion of relations (military and non-military) between Pakistan and Russia and Pakistan and the CAR's (see recent Russian statements supportive of Pakistan as well as Pakistan's agreement with Tajikistan to train the Tajik army)
4. Continued negotiations and engagement between Pakistan, Iran and Russia (which brings in the CAR's) to come to an agreement on the future of Afghanistan. Agreement already that the interests of the region supersede the interests of the US.

etc. etc....

To your second point, Pakistan largest trading partners are USA, EU and Middle East. In order to build up trade with this new bloc, Pakistan will need to export what it can produce to meet their needs. I used textile products as an example; what else can Pakistan trade with this new bloc in volumes that will replace the inevitable loss of trade as it shifts allegiances? Do you really think USA/EU/ME will not seek to replace Pakistani products to leverage their hold on it's policies?

Sorry, but I just don't see that happening, like I present above.

Why would there be a loss of trade as 'Pakistan shifts alliances'? Has China seen a loss of trade through 'not being in an alliance with the US'?

I don't see the US and EU extending Pakistan any greater market access than they have already, despite Pakistan lobbying for it for years now, even when it was considered extremely necessary to the US war effort in Afghanistan and enjoyed a large degree of support in the US legislature.

So unless you wish to argue that the US/EU/Arabs will sanction Pakistan for merely developing relations with Russia and the CAR's, I don't see how you justify your argument of 'inevitable loss of trade'.

 

[VCheng]

...................

So unless you wish to argue that the US/EU/Arabs will sanction Pakistan for merely developing relations with Russia and the CAR's, I don't see how you justify your argument of 'inevitable loss of trade'.

Okay, I concede this discussion: I am now convinced that the type of progress being suggested is a reality or will be a reality. Let time decide this one. Fair enough?

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Okay, I concede this discussion: I am now convinced that the type of progress being suggested is a reality or will be a reality. Let time decide this one. Fair enough?

Any actual 'progress' can only be measured with the passage of time - that is true of anything, it does not have to apply merely to this particular discussion.

But in the mean time, we can explore the developments taking place and the direction/future those developments point to ...

If you wish to bow out of such a discussion, that is your choice, but if you wish to restrict yourself to only discussing that which has actually happened, rather than that which is to come or could come, then the history section would probably be the only place where you can remain pure to your decision.

 

[VCheng]

.........

But in the mean time, we can explore the developments taking place and the direction/future those developments point to ...

......................

Given the importance of meeting Pakistan's energy needs, has financing been secured for the Pakistan side of the IP line yet? We have lots of encouraging news links posted above, but when is the financing contract actually going to be signed?

 

[lem34]

Given the importance of meeting Pakistan's energy needs, has financing been secured for the Pakistan side of the IP line yet? We have lots of encouraging news links posted above, but when is the financing contract actually going to be signed?

I think it significant that even before the recent deterioration in relationship between america and pakistan. pakistan govt civilan or otherwise never shirked from signing the deal with iran in the first place even with american opposition and pressure. the same pressur on india made indians move back a little from the project.

I am not surprised that chinese have stepped forward as being a lead towards financing the pakistan. I am surprised the iranians are not offering to fund th remaining part.

As an interseting side note something that might help the chinese and or iranians to be more amenable to financing the pakistan leg of the pipeline (which all parties know pakistan dont have funds for) is the anouncement by Munter on 25th Nov that they would finance 7.5 bill to fund tapi

Wielding soft power: US offers to finance TAPI gas pipeline – The Express Tribune

Funny if both deals were signed lol, could both deals be signed???

 

[VCheng]

I think it significant that even before the recent deterioration in relationship between america and pakistan. pakistan govt civilan or otherwise never shirked from signing the deal with iran in the first place even with american opposition and pressure. the same pressur on india made indians move back a little from the project.

I am not surprised that chinese have stepped forward as being a lead towards financing the pakistan. I am surprised the iranians are not offering to fund th remaining part.

As an interseting side note something that might help the chinese and or iranians to be more amenable to financing the pakistan leg of the pipeline (which all parties know pakistan dont have funds for) is the anouncement by Munter on 25th Nov that they would finance 7.5 bill to fund tapi

Wielding soft power: US offers to finance TAPI gas pipeline – The Express Tribune

Funny if both deals were signed lol, could both deals be signed???

I think Pakistan should decide for whatever pipeline meets its energy needs and national interests the best, no matter which one it is, and whichever one it can realistically finance.

 

[lem34]

I think Pakistan should decide for whatever pipeline meets its energy needs and national interests the best, no matter which one it is, and whichever one it can realistically finance.

thats the point pakistan cant finance either. but the benfit or added value is that pakistan would get transit fees whether that be from china and or india. the politics come in as a negative really america wants to isolate iran as well?

The other machinations that we dont get to see is the actual price the oil is being offered to pakistan, china and india. I think in ironic way the american pressure/sanctions on iran may encourage iranians to sell at lower price. At the end of the day there must be a price at which chinese pakistanis and indians would throw caution to the wind and totally disregard american sensitivities. So how much does iran want to do the deal??? May be thats the question we should ask??