Ex CIA station Chief for Kabul: Pakistan elections—may be good news for Pakistan, but not for U.S.

[fitpOsitive]

How many fingers am I holding up? it is not a bad gesture, but may be a message, if you see more then one, it's a concussion and you should seek medical help immediately.

And how does that relate to the topic?

 

[Super Falcon]

Who care idiot it is our election we choose what good for us not your pupoet show anymore

 

[RoadRunner401]

And how does that relate to the topic?

It does, but It's more complex than neural networks within Human brains, That's why you don't get it.

 

[Max]

[QUOTE="PaklovesTurkiye, post: 10706112, member: 173770"]And then there is geopolitics with India. Already hugely outweighed and outgunned by a huge and powerful Indian state on Pakistan’s eastern border, Pakistan’s geopolitics dictates that it can never allow its geographically narrow state to be simultaneously threatened by a pro-Indian government on Pakistan’s western border in Afghanistan. Yet India has hugely invested—financially, politically and in terms of intelligence presence in Afghanistan with US blessing—perceived by Islamabad as a deadly geopolitical threat. Pakistan will do all it can to ensure that Afghanistan does not fall under Indian political domination. That also means deep involvement in Afghan Pashtun politics (that include Taliban).[/QUOTE]

So even Yankee ex officials are admitting they facilitated gangadeshi swines for covert activities in our west yet Pakistan should look for their interests..

 

[PAKISTANFOREVER]

Graham E. Fuller
August 11, 2018

A bold new political face has come to power in the recent Pakistani elections, possibly offering the US a new opportunity in that country. Sadly the opportunity will likely be squandered—again. There’s something about Pakistani and US interests that seem doomed to collision course—mainly because Pakistan’s national interests are rarely what the US thinks they should be.

Pakistanis themselves can be pleased the country has just experienced for only the second time in its history a democratic electoral transition from one political party to another. Over long decades democratically-elected governments have been routinely dethroned by the all-powerful Pakistani military-dominated intelligence service ISI.

The stated US agenda in Afghanistan now is to prevent the Taliban, who are conducting a fairly successful insurgency against the US-backed government in Kabul, from coming to power.

A key problem is that American interests in Pakistan have had little to do with Pakistan itself, but have been the function of other American interests—China, fighting the Soviet Union, al-Qaeda, and trying to win an ongoing—and losing—17-year US war in Afghanistan. Once about eliminating al-Qaeda, Washington today hopes the war in Afghanistan will eliminate the often violent fundamentalist Pashtun movement (Taliban) and enable the US to impose its strategic agenda upon Afghanistan.

And over decades the US has alternately cajoled but mostly threatened Pakistan to do US bidding in Afghanistan. (A former Deputy Secretary of the Pentagon, in the months after 9/11, threatened to “bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age” if it didn’t fully get on board and support the new US invasion of Afghanistan.)

In an earlier decade, after the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to prop up a failing Afghan communist regime, the US had recruited the Pakistani government to take the lead in organizing a new anti-Soviet “jihad” through supporting new mujahedin groups in Afghanistan.

Read more: Elections 2018: Pakistan’s dirtiest elections or the fairest? – Moeed Pirzada

It was a fateful moment: this anti-Soviet jihad represented the first time that Islamist warriors, recruited from around the world in a joint US-Saudi-Pakistani strategy, became a powerful battle-hardened jihadi force that would later go on to fight new wars in the Middle East—and against US interests. As one of the mujahideen told me at the time, they had “defeated a superpower”—the USSR—and driven Soviet troops out of Afghanistan. What would be the implications for the future?

Then, after 9/11, the US invaded Afghanistan in order to overthrow the ruling Taliban—who had taken over the country and restored order after a devastating. nine-year Afghan civil war following the Soviet withdrawal. The Taliban actually represent a home-grown movement—they had no interest in international terrorism. But they made one disastrous mistake: they allowed Osama Bin Laden to stay on in Afghanistan after he had played a small role in supporting the Taliban in achieving power in 1996. The US invasion ensued.

The thing to be remembered is that the Taliban are primarily a Pashtun movement; Pashtuns constitute the single largest ethnic group in multi-ethnic Afghanistan and have traditionally dominated national Afghan politics over several hundred years. While unquestionably following a kind of Wahhabi-style Islamic rule, they also represent a powerful Pashtun ethnic impulse. Many Afghan Pashtuns dislike the Taliban but they generally also wish to see Pashtuns maintain power in Afghanistan. This same ethnic issue matters a lot when it comes to Pakistan.

The stated US agenda in Afghanistan now is to prevent the Taliban, who are conducting a fairly successful insurgency against the US-backed government in Kabul, from coming to power. Yet there is no way the Taliban can be decisively defeated, while the US may yet opt to move into its third decade of war there in trying to keep them out of power. While Taliban theology and policies are fairly Wahhabi in character, is it worth the longest war in American history to struggle on to keep them out?

The powerful Pakistan military also supports him. It is hard to imagine how the US will not continue to lose even more traction in the Pakistan-Afghan morass short of undertaking a major US shift away from its military-driven foreign policy.

(There are a few encouraging signs that the US may be actually trying to reach some negotiated back-door deal with the Taliban for future power-sharing, but the Taliban may just decide to wait for the US out.) What Washington doesn’t talk about is its long, strategic ambition to maintain military bases in Afghanistan, right in the heart of Central Asia in close proximity to Russia and China—very much out of the US Cold War playbook. But is it worth this costly and losing game?

Here’s where Pakistan comes in. In the Pak-Afghan border region, there are twice as many Pashtuns living in Pakistan as there are in Afghanistan. They represent a powerful force in Pakistani politics—and that’s where Imran Khan, Pakistan’s new president from the heart of Pashtun territory, also comes in.

Bottom line: the US has consistently attempted to enlist Pakistan into rescuing America’s losing war in Afghanistan; a key US demand has been for the Pakistanis to sever ties between Pakistani and Afghan Taliban movements and crush all radical Islamist groups in the border region. There is no doubt Pakistan has indeed helped the Afghan Taliban (Pashtuns) to fight on in Afghanistan. Pakistan has a deep interest, domestic and foreign, in keeping close ties with all Pashtuns, Taliban or not. (The Pakistani Taliban movement is more violent than the Afghan one but cannot be easily crushed —perhaps only tamed—even by the Pakistani government.)

And the power base of Pakistan’s new Premier Imran Khan lies precisely in this Pashtun region of the country. He will not likely agree to any policy pressures from the US to crush Taliban cross-border ties; he favors a strong Pashtun/Taliban presence in any Afghan government. Imran Khan has also been outspokenly critical of the US role in Pakistan and he will guard Pakistani sovereignty more jealously than his predecessors.

And then there is geopolitics with India. Already hugely outweighed and outgunned by a huge and powerful Indian state on Pakistan’s eastern border, Pakistan’s geopolitics dictates that it can never allow its geographically narrow state to be simultaneously threatened by a pro-Indian government on Pakistan’s western border in Afghanistan. Yet India has hugely invested—financially, politically and in terms of intelligence presence in Afghanistan with US blessing—perceived by Islamabad as a deadly geopolitical threat. Pakistan will do all it can to ensure that Afghanistan does not fall under Indian political domination. That also means deep involvement in Afghan Pashtun politics (that include Taliban).

The US has consistently run roughshod over Pakistani sovereignty throughout its war in Afghanistan, thereby generating strong anti-US feelings in Pakistan. (My first novel: “Breaking Faith: An American’s Crisis of Conscience in Pakistan,” deals heavily with these issues, including the CIA and American military presence in Pakistan, as well as the complicated range of Pakistani Islamist movements at the human level of a Pakistani family.)

And finally, we have the ever-growing China factor. Pakistan has long been China’s closest ally and considers Beijing to be an “all-weather friend”— in pointed distinction to perceived US opportunism in Pakistan. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan are now integral elements in China’s sweeping new economic and infrastructural Eurasian development plan “One Bridge One Road.” (Iran too, incidentally, is linked into the same Chinese vision.) There is no way Pakistan will ever choose close ties with Washington over ties with China, for a dozen good reasons, including shared mutual distrust of India.

In short, Imran Khan may well bring some fresh air into Pakistani politics, including a declared willingness to clamp down on the country’s rampant corruption. The powerful Pakistan military also supports him. It is hard to imagine how the US will not continue to lose even more traction in the Pakistan-Afghan morass short of undertaking a major US shift away from its military-driven foreign policy. That US policy and style seems totally ever less with the interests of most states of the region.

Graham E. Fuller is a former senior CIA official, author of numerous books on the Muslim World; his latest book is BEAR, a novel of the Great Bear Rainforest and Eco-Terrorism. This article was first published on grahamefuller.com and has been republished with author’s permission.

https://www.globalvillagespace.com/pakistan-elections-may-be-good-news-for-pakistan-but-not-for-u-s/

@Oscar @waz @Indus Pakistan @HRK @fatman17

Go F**k your mama america!...............stuff like this really makes my blood boil........this guy is indirectly stating that a successful, safe and prosperous Pakistan is not good for america and that it must be scuttled.........it's this mentality that has lead to the deaths of millions of Iraqis, Afghans, Libyans, Syrians etc. I hope the blacks and Hispanics outbreed White Americans before 2040. That will give traditional White America something BIG to think about.............that will surely cause the decline of america as a superpower.................they need to worry about that rather than Pakistan.......Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor say HI......

 

[PAKISTANFOREVER]

[QUOTE="PaklovesTurkiye, post: 10706112, member: 173770"]And then there is geopolitics with India. Already hugely outweighed and outgunned by a huge and powerful Indian state on Pakistan’s eastern border, Pakistan’s geopolitics dictates that it can never allow its geographically narrow state to be simultaneously threatened by a pro-Indian government on Pakistan’s western border in Afghanistan. Yet India has hugely invested—financially, politically and in terms of intelligence presence in Afghanistan with US blessing—perceived by Islamabad as a deadly geopolitical threat. Pakistan will do all it can to ensure that Afghanistan does not fall under Indian political domination. That also means deep involvement in Afghan Pashtun politics (that include Taliban).

So even Yankee ex officials are admitting they facilitated gangadeshi swines for covert activities in our west yet Pakistan should look for their interests..[/QUOTE]




Sure they do. It looks like this american is getting his info. from the same source that vehemently proclaimed that Iraq had WMD that can destroy Europe in 30 mins.......
This is Pakistan not america. We don't go around killing millions of innocent unarmed poor men, women and children across the globe. Rather, we stand up to enemies that are more than 7× bigger than us and have abundant access to the world's most advanced weapons systems whilst we are denied this privilige for over 70 years.......

 

[Psychic]

Graham E. Fuller
August 11, 2018

A bold new political face has come to power in the recent Pakistani elections, possibly offering the US a new opportunity in that country. Sadly the opportunity will likely be squandered—again. There’s something about Pakistani and US interests that seem doomed to collision course—mainly because Pakistan’s national interests are rarely what the US thinks they should be.

Pakistanis themselves can be pleased the country has just experienced for only the second time in its history a democratic electoral transition from one political party to another. Over long decades democratically-elected governments have been routinely dethroned by the all-powerful Pakistani military-dominated intelligence service ISI.

The stated US agenda in Afghanistan now is to prevent the Taliban, who are conducting a fairly successful insurgency against the US-backed government in Kabul, from coming to power.

A key problem is that American interests in Pakistan have had little to do with Pakistan itself, but have been the function of other American interests—China, fighting the Soviet Union, al-Qaeda, and trying to win an ongoing—and losing—17-year US war in Afghanistan. Once about eliminating al-Qaeda, Washington today hopes the war in Afghanistan will eliminate the often violent fundamentalist Pashtun movement (Taliban) and enable the US to impose its strategic agenda upon Afghanistan.

And over decades the US has alternately cajoled but mostly threatened Pakistan to do US bidding in Afghanistan. (A former Deputy Secretary of the Pentagon, in the months after 9/11, threatened to “bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age” if it didn’t fully get on board and support the new US invasion of Afghanistan.)

In an earlier decade, after the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to prop up a failing Afghan communist regime, the US had recruited the Pakistani government to take the lead in organizing a new anti-Soviet “jihad” through supporting new mujahedin groups in Afghanistan.

Read more: Elections 2018: Pakistan’s dirtiest elections or the fairest? – Moeed Pirzada

It was a fateful moment: this anti-Soviet jihad represented the first time that Islamist warriors, recruited from around the world in a joint US-Saudi-Pakistani strategy, became a powerful battle-hardened jihadi force that would later go on to fight new wars in the Middle East—and against US interests. As one of the mujahideen told me at the time, they had “defeated a superpower”—the USSR—and driven Soviet troops out of Afghanistan. What would be the implications for the future?

Then, after 9/11, the US invaded Afghanistan in order to overthrow the ruling Taliban—who had taken over the country and restored order after a devastating. nine-year Afghan civil war following the Soviet withdrawal. The Taliban actually represent a home-grown movement—they had no interest in international terrorism. But they made one disastrous mistake: they allowed Osama Bin Laden to stay on in Afghanistan after he had played a small role in supporting the Taliban in achieving power in 1996. The US invasion ensued.

The thing to be remembered is that the Taliban are primarily a Pashtun movement; Pashtuns constitute the single largest ethnic group in multi-ethnic Afghanistan and have traditionally dominated national Afghan politics over several hundred years. While unquestionably following a kind of Wahhabi-style Islamic rule, they also represent a powerful Pashtun ethnic impulse. Many Afghan Pashtuns dislike the Taliban but they generally also wish to see Pashtuns maintain power in Afghanistan. This same ethnic issue matters a lot when it comes to Pakistan.

The stated US agenda in Afghanistan now is to prevent the Taliban, who are conducting a fairly successful insurgency against the US-backed government in Kabul, from coming to power. Yet there is no way the Taliban can be decisively defeated, while the US may yet opt to move into its third decade of war there in trying to keep them out of power. While Taliban theology and policies are fairly Wahhabi in character, is it worth the longest war in American history to struggle on to keep them out?

The powerful Pakistan military also supports him. It is hard to imagine how the US will not continue to lose even more traction in the Pakistan-Afghan morass short of undertaking a major US shift away from its military-driven foreign policy.

(There are a few encouraging signs that the US may be actually trying to reach some negotiated back-door deal with the Taliban for future power-sharing, but the Taliban may just decide to wait for the US out.) What Washington doesn’t talk about is its long, strategic ambition to maintain military bases in Afghanistan, right in the heart of Central Asia in close proximity to Russia and China—very much out of the US Cold War playbook. But is it worth this costly and losing game?

Here’s where Pakistan comes in. In the Pak-Afghan border region, there are twice as many Pashtuns living in Pakistan as there are in Afghanistan. They represent a powerful force in Pakistani politics—and that’s where Imran Khan, Pakistan’s new president from the heart of Pashtun territory, also comes in.

Bottom line: the US has consistently attempted to enlist Pakistan into rescuing America’s losing war in Afghanistan; a key US demand has been for the Pakistanis to sever ties between Pakistani and Afghan Taliban movements and crush all radical Islamist groups in the border region. There is no doubt Pakistan has indeed helped the Afghan Taliban (Pashtuns) to fight on in Afghanistan. Pakistan has a deep interest, domestic and foreign, in keeping close ties with all Pashtuns, Taliban or not. (The Pakistani Taliban movement is more violent than the Afghan one but cannot be easily crushed —perhaps only tamed—even by the Pakistani government.)

And the power base of Pakistan’s new Premier Imran Khan lies precisely in this Pashtun region of the country. He will not likely agree to any policy pressures from the US to crush Taliban cross-border ties; he favors a strong Pashtun/Taliban presence in any Afghan government. Imran Khan has also been outspokenly critical of the US role in Pakistan and he will guard Pakistani sovereignty more jealously than his predecessors.

And then there is geopolitics with India. Already hugely outweighed and outgunned by a huge and powerful Indian state on Pakistan’s eastern border, Pakistan’s geopolitics dictates that it can never allow its geographically narrow state to be simultaneously threatened by a pro-Indian government on Pakistan’s western border in Afghanistan. Yet India has hugely invested—financially, politically and in terms of intelligence presence in Afghanistan with US blessing—perceived by Islamabad as a deadly geopolitical threat. Pakistan will do all it can to ensure that Afghanistan does not fall under Indian political domination. That also means deep involvement in Afghan Pashtun politics (that include Taliban).

The US has consistently run roughshod over Pakistani sovereignty throughout its war in Afghanistan, thereby generating strong anti-US feelings in Pakistan. (My first novel: “Breaking Faith: An American’s Crisis of Conscience in Pakistan,” deals heavily with these issues, including the CIA and American military presence in Pakistan, as well as the complicated range of Pakistani Islamist movements at the human level of a Pakistani family.)

And finally, we have the ever-growing China factor. Pakistan has long been China’s closest ally and considers Beijing to be an “all-weather friend”— in pointed distinction to perceived US opportunism in Pakistan. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan are now integral elements in China’s sweeping new economic and infrastructural Eurasian development plan “One Bridge One Road.” (Iran too, incidentally, is linked into the same Chinese vision.) There is no way Pakistan will ever choose close ties with Washington over ties with China, for a dozen good reasons, including shared mutual distrust of India.

In short, Imran Khan may well bring some fresh air into Pakistani politics, including a declared willingness to clamp down on the country’s rampant corruption. The powerful Pakistan military also supports him. It is hard to imagine how the US will not continue to lose even more traction in the Pakistan-Afghan morass short of undertaking a major US shift away from its military-driven foreign policy. That US policy and style seems totally ever less with the interests of most states of the region.

Graham E. Fuller is a former senior CIA official, author of numerous books on the Muslim World; his latest book is BEAR, a novel of the Great Bear Rainforest and Eco-Terrorism. This article was first published on grahamefuller.com and has been republished with author’s permission.

https://www.globalvillagespace.com/pakistan-elections-may-be-good-news-for-pakistan-but-not-for-u-s/

@Oscar @waz @Indus Pakistan @HRK @fatman17

Unfortunately there are some defeatist Pakistanis on pdf who want our state to become America's b*tch....and in the process, start the mechanism to undo Pakistan.

What they don't realize is that one-sided love never works, and it's not us who broke the relationship... it's them, they don't want it anymore so be it. [I m not takin bout cutting off each and every relationship tho...the ones which can be maintained without undermining our interests should be]

Pakistan’s geopolitics dictates that it can never allow its geographically narrow state to be simultaneously threatened by a pro-Indian government on Pakistan’s western border in Afghanistan. Yet India has hugely invested—financially, politically and in terms of intelligence presence in Afghanistan with US blessing—perceived by Islamabad as a deadly geopolitical threat. Pakistan will do all it can to ensure that Afghanistan does not fall under Indian political domination.

Above should serve as an eye opener for those who think that Pakistan should be chums with the US. "Intelligence presence in Afghanistan with US blessing" ---and they still think they are our "friends"---as if any such thing exists between states.

They want Indian "role" in Afghanistan whereas we want zero Indian presence there---that is itself one of the many divergences of national interests of the two countries. Unless you bow down to each and every one of their demands which include acceptance of Indian hegemony, you will not be in their good books , ever. Even if you become their slave, then you will be treated as such and nothing good will come out of it.

Lessons must be learned---when we were handing over AQ leadership and helping their stooge come into power, they were helping our enemy India to establish it's roots firmly in Afghanistan---that was the first stab in the back.

 

[Hakikat ve Hikmet]

Which US policy has become successful in the long run so the one regarding Pak will be different?????

 

[somebozo]

They have already obligated Afghanistan - have done carpet bombings, dropped MOB. They can even drop nuclear bombs, but what after that? Ultimate reality is that Uncle Sam along with his puppy have to get their asses out of Afghanistan one way or other way, the earlier they leave, less costly it will be for them.

Perhaps there was no equal war in US history that WW2 which pitted an industrial and scientific power against each other. The US did not get out early from Germany and certainly it did not take any long term losses either.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

 

[Sugarcane]

Perhaps there was no equal war in US history that WW2 which pitted an industrial and scientific power against each other. The US did not get out early from Germany and certainly it did not take any long term losses either.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

Poor Hitler had to fight with whole world combined, but now US is loosing influence with every passing year.

 

[YeBeWarned]

real delusions...America an obliterate entire Afghanistan if it wants it..

and What will America achieve by Obliterating Afghanistan ? AQ leadership is most likely in North Africa or ME .. ISIS is still in Syria and Iraq .. Americans are limited to Kabul and soon that too will overrun ..