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Karzai castigates Pakistan for providing refuge to terrorists

Karzai never ceases to amaze me.. Pakistan has given refuge to about 2 million Afghan refugees in the last decade. Karzai never ever acknowledges that, constantly critical of a few dozen Taliban guys who come through. If we weren't so nice we should have just put them back in Kabul. Let Karzai have 2 million more mouths to feed.

Ironically few thousand talibans also emerged from their 2 million refugees we hosted. Karzai needs to stop being a bigot and address their own stone age afghan culture which gives rise to millitant be it under the name of tribal warfare or talibans. The problem lies in Afghan culture which signifies superiority of a tribe, matrydom, fighting till the last man and relying on metal more than mind to solve disputes.
 
But I never refer to my version of reality as THE reality. You'll never see me do that, unless my version has been unambiguously proven to be true. There is only one 'THE reality', but there are millions of 'my version of the reality'. You see what I am getting at? It just pisses me off to no end when some of these guys refer to what they believe is the reality (i.e. their opinion) as the reality - and especially when their version of reality has not been proven.

As far as perception is concerned, as long as the perception has not been proven, I couldn't care less what it is.

And finally, as far as Taliban are concerned, well Pakistan didn't create them. It was the Mujhaideen after the Soviet invasion that decided to create the Taliban.

But as long as one believes his version of reality to be the reality that guides his actions, its fine because what may be uncertain for you, could be certain for another individual. But I agree that one should not try and shove that version down someone else's throat

On Taliban, well, Pakistan was the country that nurtured Mujahids on behest of USA. So may be not directly, but indirectly Pakistan was instrumental in the rise of Taliban. Considering it was one of the few who recognized their govt as well
 
Karzai never ceases to amaze me.. Pakistan has given refuge to about 2 million Afghan refugees in the last decade. Karzai never ever acknowledges that, constantly critical of a few dozen Taliban guys who come through. If we weren't so nice we should have just put them back in Kabul. Let Karzai have 2 million more mouths to feed.
The 2 Million was in last decade......Now most of the families are setteled and we know afghan families usually have 8 to 10 kids each....So the figure is about 10 to 15 million now.....2 Million was long long time ago.....
 
Karzai never ceases to amaze me.. Pakistan has given refuge to about 2 million Afghan refugees in the last decade. Karzai never ever acknowledges that, constantly critical of a few dozen Taliban guys who come through. If we weren't so nice we should have just put them back in Kabul. Let Karzai have 2 million more mouths to feed.

See... the problem is that Karzai (as do most Afghans and a large part of the world) holds Pakistan responsble for the events that resulted in those refugees in the 1st place. Hence no thought of being thankful at all

And sending 2 million afghans back is just a khokli Dhamki.. Relocating 2 million pathans forcefully is not something any security force would want to attempt anyway...
 
See... the problem is that Karzai (as do most Afghans and a large part of the world) holds Pakistan responsble for the events that resulted in those refugees in the 1st place. Hence no thought of being thankful at all

And sending 2 million afghans back is just a khokli Dhamki.. Relocating 2 million pathans forcefully is not something any security force would want to attempt anyway...
First the thankful matters come because we let them do whatever they want.....If we go like other countries they might still be in barbed refugee camps....Not spreaded all over the country....Thats why THEY SHOULD BE THANKFUL. They enjoy the benefit Pakistani citizen enjoy without paying tax....


2nd 2millions are not pathans only.....They include from almost all ethnic groups.
 
make of it what you will


NATO in Afghanistan: Perception and Reality
James Joyner | September 13, 2010


Anatol Lieven, the eminent journalist and now professor at the King's College Department of War Studies, argues that the NATO effort in Afghanistan suffers from disparate and implausible motives and a profound lack of understanding of Afghanistan and the Taliban.

In a very long book review essay at Current Intelligence, Lieven offers this assessment of the Alliance:

European NATO governments have had to tell their populations that their troops are in Afghanistan because Afghanistan is a threat to them – something that Richard Barrett, former head of counter-terrorism at the Secret Intelligence Service, has now declared is “nonsense”. More candid British and European officials and generals have always admitted in private that the only really important reason is to help maintain the alliance with the US because Europeans are incapable of guaranteeing their own defence against a future resurgent Russia, or even the peace of the Balkans. This dependency-driven contribution is publicly called “saving NATO”, and in turn logically justifies Europeans doing the absolute minimum necessary in Afghanistan to keep the US committed to Europe.

The British military is also fighting for the sake of American patronage, to which it attaches an almost sacred importance (while complaining about its patrons all the time). In the British military’s case, however, there is another important motive with no necessary connection to Afghanistan: the maintenance of its own self-image as a fighting force, and the prestige of the military in British public life. This in turn feeds into a wider British obsession with great power status, derived above all from the enduring sense of loss of the empire.

Unlike the Georgian and Victorian builders of that empire, however, their descendants in the British elites have shown little desire to back up their desire for a great national role with personal commitment or sacrifice. This is not of course true of the British Army – but its gallant sacrifices have been made as part of what overall is a profoundly decadent national spectacle. It is not that the British military and their reputation for courage and endurance are unimportant; but if these assets are to be tailored to our real resources and collective national will, then they are assets that can only be used in Europe or in small scale expeditionary operations like Sierra Leone. As Afghanistan has demonstrated, any other large-scale operations demand a degree of commitment of which the British public today is not capable.

The Obama administration and US military for their part are fighting above all. as a senior officer told me, “not to win, but not to lose”. In other words, not for real victory, which neither they nor anyone else can define, but for anything that can be presented as victory, so as to avoid the humiliation of defeat, the consequent emboldening of all America’s enemies, and – not least – a potential Democratic loss in the next Presidential election. And the US Republicans are doing just the same in reverse, seeking to turn Afghanistan into a US political battlefield on which the Democrats’ hopes of re-election can be crushed.



While there are huge kernels of truth in all that, it's on the whole nonsense.

Do the soldiers and marines doing the fighting and dying there want their sacrifice to count for something? And do their leaders wish to avoid the psychic costs of failure for reasons aside from Realist calculations of the national interest? Are politicians cynically exploiting the debate for partisan advantage? Of course. But these aren't the reasons we're there but rather consequences of our presence.


The Brits are fighting in Afghanistan for the same reason we are: it was the country from which the 9/11 attacks where supported and they assess the risks of allowing the Taliban back in power to be quite high. Additionally, various actors within our societies -- and those of the other Allies -- have varying level of commitments to democratization, women's rights, development, and other humanitarian agendas.

As regular readers are by now perhaps tired of hearing, I've become skeptical of our ability to achieve these aims. Most signs point to the consensus moving in that direction in most NATO capitals. But whatever one might think of the wisdom of the war effort and the strategy being employed to advance it, it's simply not the case that there's a dark, hidden agenda behind it.

This, however, rings mostly true:


If our allies in this war are so complicated and unreliable, what of the Taliban? What are the chances of the US being able to split them, and make peace with their “moderate” elements? Can there be a settlement with the movement as a whole, involving the exclusion of at least an open presence of Al Qaeda from areas controlled by the Taliban, and some kind of division of Afghanistan into spheres of influence? Failing that, when the US withdraws, will the Afghan National Army be able to beat them back from the main towns, as it did with Soviet backing in 1989-92? Or will the Taliban sweep to power in the Pashtun areas, or even the whole country?

These are the questions on which the whole future of Afghanistan, and perhaps the political future of the United States will hinge; yet our governments and militaries lack the knowledge of the Taliban that would be necessary to start formulating even tentative answers to them. Having roundly blamed the West for a lack of real interest in the subject, it is only fair to add that another reason for our lack of knowledge is that the Taliban are not at all easy to know. They do not exactly encourage research by journalists and scholars. Exceptionally dedicated journalists like David Loyn and Christian Parenti have managed to interview some of their commanders, and Graeme Smith of the Globe and Mail organised a very interesting opinion survey of several dozen ordinary fighters, but such efforts have been rare and partial. As for the Taliban’s own statements, both their style and content are rhetorical, hortatory and formulaic, making it extremely hard even for Afghans, let alone Westerners to detect whether they might all the same contain the possible seeds of compromise.



Now, as Christian Bleuer points to almost embarrassing detail, there has been a virtual cottage industry in producing high quality academic works on Afghanistan and the Taliban in the years following 9/11. And, one would presume, some of them have actually been read. But it remains true that, nearly a decade in, our high level decision-makers (by which I mean field grade and flag officers and their equivalent in the diplomatic and intelligence communities, not politicians and political appointees) still have very little in the way of cultural and regional expertise. Nor have we corrected our woeful lack of investment in language proficiency.

Beyond that, we almost certainly don't have the foggiest clue what the ramifications of decisions we have taken or might take will have on the Taliban. Indeed, we're only finally figuring out that there are multiple Talibans, which have very different agendas and relationships with regional governments and sub-governments. Are they mostly, as David Kilkullen argues, "accidental guerrillas" who have banded together in response to foreign invaders, motivated by a combination of tribal pride, a sense of adventure, and monetary reward? Or would they soon be back in charge in Kabul if we weren't there to keep them in check? And what about al Qaeda? Would they come back to the other side of the border and resume their old safe haven, growing back to something like their former self? Or is that version of the group gone forever, replaced by fractured cells that can operate anywhere but incapable of planning 9/11-scale operations?

There are a lot of guesses on those front, some more educated than others. But we really don't know. And that's a very scary position from which to make strategic decisions.

James Joyner is managing editor of the Atlantic Council.
 
On Taliban, well, Pakistan was the country that nurtured Mujahids on behest of USA. So may be not directly, but indirectly Pakistan was instrumental in the rise of Taliban.

Going by your logic, Governments of US, UK, France, Soviet Union, Middle East and half the modern world should also be held responsible for not only nurturing the Mujahideen but also for indirectly being instrumental in the rise of Taliban and the Al-Qaeda. Not to mention, dumping more arms and ammo in Afghanistan than in whole of South Asia combined.
 
And sending 2 million afghans back is just a khokli Dhamki.. Relocating 2 million pathans forcefully is not something any security force would want to attempt anyway...


Nope.... I can tell you first hand, Pashtuns hate these Afghan refugees, they aren't Pashtuns, if they were they wouldn't be refugees. The only reason we are keeping them in is because we are inclined to tolerate them because of Pashtunwali, but since it was Pakistan who put them in under our protection, if Pakistan wants them out we will be happy to oblige.
 
On Taliban, well, Pakistan was the country that nurtured Mujahids on behest of USA. So may be not directly, but indirectly Pakistan was instrumental in the rise of Taliban. Considering it was one of the few who recognized their govt as well



The Mujaheddin Pakistan nurtured were, as some one else has already pointed out, the same ones that Britain, France, North America etc. nurtured, giving them money and ammunition.

Pakistan did support and recognize the Taliban government, this was after the Afghan civil war that was escalated because a lot of tribal Mujaheddin who became warlords. While this happened the organized Taliban were the only ones who were able to check the rampant pillaging by war lords. The Taliban Pakistan supported was one that brought Afghanistan into a relative state of stability.
 
But as long as one believes his version of reality to be the reality that guides his actions, its fine because what may be uncertain for you, could be certain for another individual. But I agree that one should not try and shove that version down someone else's throat

On Taliban, well, Pakistan was the country that nurtured Mujahids on behest of USA. So may be not directly, but indirectly Pakistan was instrumental in the rise of Taliban. Considering it was one of the few who recognized their govt as well

I am talking about things which are proven unambiguously true. See, I am certain that India is supporting terrorism in Pakistan based on what I know that most people don't know, but I still don't call it THE reality because I am shoving my opinion down your throat.

That's the problem with using phrases such as "THE reality". When you use the phrase "THE reality", you're suggesting that your view of the reality is THE reality, i.e. the one and only reality, i.e. what you know is EXACTLY what happened unambiguously. In other words, you're forcing your view down someone else's throat since your version is THE reality and any other view is false.
 
Ah noticed karakul karazi kashkol was turning away from NATO/US was becoming a trouble with his daily statements and now he is a changed man again. Fed with more $$ belly filled the dog won't bark for a year.
 
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Karan to me an allegation from Manmohan Singh carries more weight than this guy and it is not because he is speaking out against Pakistan..He is just publicisizing a bit to gain momentum in the election

And even then he says something and then goes around and does something completely different, point here being how he fired his top most anti-Pakistan Intelligence chiefs right after his last visit yet at the same time continued to make statements like these. And whats more is that he is meeting with the same ISI chief on his trip and General Kayani too

As far as we are concerned he can make these statements all he wants, bad rep doesnt bother us as long as whats being done on the ground is in our favour and he knows that and understands that. Tell me one thing he has actually "done" to turn the heat on Pakistan amid all the statements he has made ? And look at what has been "happenning"

1. Intel chief gone
2. 3 Visits to pakistan in little less than 6 months
3. A trip to Pakistan right before the election, tell me where does a politician go right before the election ? to a place where he knows is his only chance to remain in power

We are, atleast i am not in the least bit bothered or annoyed by these statements for as long his actual policies and decisions are favourable to us. ISI has no desire of becoming a " Red Cross ", rather its only concern is getting the job done and as long as thats being done to hell with the bad rep
 
Going by your logic, Governments of US, UK, France, Soviet Union, Middle East and half the modern world should also be held responsible for not only nurturing the Mujahideen but also for indirectly being instrumental in the rise of Taliban and the Al-Qaeda. Not to mention, dumping more arms and ammo in Afghanistan than in whole of South Asia combined.

I agree on the US and NATO being responsible as well. But unforutunately, Pakistan was the tip of the spear that was used. So while it was money from all over in NATO, it was Pakistan that got its hands dirty.
 
I am talking about things which are proven unambiguously true. See, I am certain that India is supporting terrorism in Pakistan based on what I know that most people don't know, but I still don't call it THE reality because I am shoving my opinion down your throat.

That's the problem with using phrases such as "THE reality". When you use the phrase "THE reality", you're suggesting that your view of the reality is THE reality, i.e. the one and only reality, i.e. what you know is EXACTLY what happened unambiguously. In other words, you're forcing your view down someone else's throat since your version is THE reality and any other view is false.

And I dont disagree to that. As an individual, whether someone like you and me, or as a leader of a nation, a person is free to perceive reality as he may. And let his actions be guided by that. Whether that perception is correct or not, may or may not impact the end result, but the person will go in believing that his perception is the reality.

However, unless there is absolute proof, it still stays as a perception and even though that particular individual may not be able to distinguish between his perception and reality, others, with a different POV may

The problem occurs when one forces the other to accept one's POV as absolute
 
Karan to me an allegation from Manmohan Singh carries more weight than this guy and it is not because he is speaking out against Pakistan..He is just publicisizing a bit to gain momentum in the election

And even then he says something and then goes around and does something completely different, point here being how he fired his top most anti-Pakistan Intelligence chiefs right after his last visit yet at the same time continued to make statements like these. And whats more is that he is meeting with the same ISI chief on his trip and General Kayani too

As far as we are concerned he can make these statements all he wants, bad rep doesnt bother us as long as whats being done on the ground is in our favour and he knows that and understands that. Tell me one thing he has actually "done" to turn the heat on Pakistan amid all the statements he has made ? And look at what has been "happenning"

1. Intel chief gone
2. 3 Visits to pakistan in little less than 6 months
3. A trip to Pakistan right before the election, tell me where does a politician go right before the election ? to a place where he knows is his only chance to remain in power

We are, atleast i am not in the least bit bothered or annoyed by these statements for as long his actual policies and decisions are favourable to us. ISI has no desire of becoming a " Red Cross ", rather its only concern is getting the job done and as long as thats being done to hell with the bad rep


So I dont disagree that what really matters is the situation on ground.

However, such statements along with the ones that we saw from France and UK create a different sort of problem for Pakistan. We saw a great example on how reluctant rest of the world was to help Pakistan fight floods. Compare that with the attitude towards Haiti and you will know what I mean. While the perception of Pakistan as a haven for terrorists was not the only factor, it played a large role in why rest of the world was not as forthcoming with help.

And such statements dont help. There is a reason why slander is considered a sueable action. Unfortunately, does not apply in international politics.
 
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