Karzai: I'll send troops to Pakistan

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Editorial from the Dawn, one of the more centrist newspapers in Pakistan:

Karzai of Afghanistan​

DOES President Hamid Karzai realise the harm he is causing to the war on terror by spewing venom against Pakistan? The threat to send Afghan troops into Pakistan, coming on the heels of the Mohmand incident, will surely vitiate the geopolitical atmosphere in the region and play into the hands of those who stand to profit from such a scenario. What is shocking is the scurrilous nature of Mr Karzai’s harangue at his Sunday’s press conference. He should know that it is not Afghan blood alone that is being shed; Pakistan has suffered no less at the Taliban’s hands. If he is angry at ‘Mullah Omar of Pakistan’, Pakistanis are angrier with him. Karzai has been at the helm now for nearly eight years but has done pretty little to give peace and security to his people and improve their wretched economic lot. In fact he himself has had to depend on the US-backed international forces for his personal security and to sustain himself in office. In such circumstances it does not pay to blame Pakistan and rely on blind force rather than develop an internal consensus to end the war and focus on Afghanistan’s economic reconstruction.

Things are not going to improve by mutual mudslinging. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s response to the Karzai tirade, while showing restraint in spite of the vitriol in the Afghan chief’s tone, made clear Pakistan would not tolerate any violation of its territorial sovereignty. Pakistan is doing its level best to check the militants operating on its side of the Durand Line. True, Pakistan has had a history of close cooperation with the Taliban. But that is a thing of the past. Now the Pakistan Army has been waging a war against them and has suffered heavy casualties in the process. If its strategy has not proved to be effective, it must be given a chance to work out a new carrot and stick approach that might work this time since an elected government is in office and carries more credibility with the people living in the border regions. But for Pakistan’s policy to have a minimum chance of success it is important that Afghanistan and the United States should work in tandem with Islamabad.

Unfortunately, this is not happening. On Sunday a US helicopter intruded into the Khyber Agency, though mercifully neither side opened fire. To avoid such incidents, the tripartite commission ought to do its job more thoroughly. Given the tone and tenor of Mr Karzai’s language, it appears unlikely that the two sides will reach a level of cooperation where President Bush will have the satisfaction of declaring a successful close to the war on terror.

DAWN - Editorial; June 17, 2008

 

[Tiki Tam Tam]

What ever the intentions must be, nobody in pakistan gives a damn about specially to what karzai has to say. One thing is for sure all military activities in our area will be conducted by the PA or the drone attack. If NATO and Afghan forces will attack pakistani area it will be considered as an act of war and PA will respond. This has been cleared to all parties involved.

The interesting part is that when Karzai speaks, it is obviously with the knowledge that it is what the Americans intend to do.

The US has undertaken enough of acts of war as you call it, but it will be a tough call to react with a full offensive since, pragmatically seen, the geopolitics negate such a scenario.

 

[Tiki Tam Tam]

The Dawn is mistaken on one count.

It is true that Pakistan is suffering at the hands of the same terrorists who are plaguing Afghanistan.

However, while Afghanistan (ISAF and US to be precise) is waging war against the terrorists, Pakistan is more keen to buy peace at all cost with the terrorists. Peace cannot be bought with the terrorists. They are after power and it is sham that they use Islam to cover their temporal agenda. Peace is only a interim tactical pause to regroup, refit and reorganise and then strike back with more vigour. And hence, Pakistanis are dying!

Not only Karzai, many are in office due to the munificence of the US as are many nations that are propped up with US and its allied agencies aid. Therefore, why single out Karzai?

The Pakistan military is taking on the terrorist, while the govt is doing the opposite and the poor soldiers are caught between the Devil and the Deep Sea!

Only if there is a two pronged well coordinated onslaught on these terrorists from both the sides, will these terrorist be defanged for a longer time and with relentless pressure of coordinated offensive, there maybe good reasons to believe that this scourge can be wiped out.

However, the problem is that a majority of Pakistanis do not accept any actions on these terrorists, who they feel are the sword arm of Islam, and more so, since it will be in the interest of the infidels that the faithful will perish!!

 

[MWASEEMT6]

Well Karzai is just a chicken and what he said he cant do that because he is a American puppet thats y. Pakistan's army is strong and can face and country in the world for its challenge. We are strong people with a great nation. May Allah keep safe from all of our enemies and give us the power to challenge them.

 

[Tiki Tam Tam]

Well Karzai is just a chicken and what he said he cant do that because he is a American puppet thats y. Pakistan's army is strong and can face and country in the world for its challenge. We are strong people with a great nation. May Allah keep safe from all of our enemies and give us the power to challenge them.

But these sentiments,that are indeed laudable do not change the situation.

What is the concrete solution beyond mere words to boost the morale?

PA is strong. It can face the world. Karzai is chicken and a puppet. Pakistan has strong people and is a great nation and yet the Americans are doing what they want and inspite of what you have stated that should be able to take on the situation, nothing has changed!!

Something has to happen and this just can't go on forever!

Some solution is needed.

What is that?

 

[maqsad]

According to this website there are some Pakistani politicians who are lending support to Karzai and saying it is OK for him to invade Pakistan. Can anyone confirm if this news report is legitimate? Isn't there some kind of law that governs politician's behaviour relating to treason and inciting anarchy, violent revolution etc etc?

Pakistan’s Pashtun MPs rally to Karzai’s side
Written by Quqnoos.com
Tuesday, 17 June 2008 14:03


Afghan president’s threat to send in troops receives Pashtun support

PAKISTAN’S Pashtun politicians have rallied behind President Hamid Karzai after he threatened to send Afghan troops into Pakistan to wipe out Taliban rebels based in the country’s tribal areas.

Politicians from Pakistan’s Pashtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party (PMAP) and Awami National Party (ANP) said Karzai had every right to protect his own people from rebels who launch cross-border attacks into Afghanistan, killing Afghan civilians, police and soldiers.

A member of PMAP, Afzal Khan La La, said: "Pakistanis have no right to cross into Afghanistan and kill innocent people."

Another PMAP member in Baluchistan and former Member of Parliament, Abdul Rahim Mandukhil, said: "We want to know if the tribal regions belong to Pakistan or not.

"If they do belong to Pakistan, then Pakistan must control these areas otherwise Afghanistan will always remain unstable."

On Sunday, Karzai said Afghanistan had the right to launch cross-border raids on militant hideouts in Pakistan as long as the rebels continued to attack Afghan and coalition soldiers in his country.

The next day, the Pakistani government warned other countries against meddling in Pakistan's internal affairs.

The country’s prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, promised Karzai that Pakistan was doing everything in its power to defeat the Pakistani Taliban.

The government has called in Afghanistan’s ambassador in Pakistan to explain Karzai’s belligerent comments.

But Pakistani ANP member Reza Mohammad Reza said Pakistan had adopted "bad policies" towards the Pakistani Taliban.

After its election in February, the government started to negotiate with the Taliban, including the notorious rebel leader Baitullah Mehsud.

Mehsud, who the UN accuses of carrying out eight out of every 10 "terror" attack in Afghanistan, has vowed to continue his Jihad in Afghanistan despite the peace-talks.

Recent deals between Pakistani rebels and the government have seen the withdrawal of Pakistani troops from tribal regions close to the Afghan border.

NATO-led forces in Afghanistan say the talks have increased insurgent attacks in Afghanistan, especially in provinces that border Pakistan.

Diplomatic relations between Pakistan and American took a nose dive last week when Pakistan accused US-led troops in Afghanistan of killing 11 of its border police in an air-strike on the Pakistani side of the border.

 

[amna]

well that just makes my blood boil!

 

[BanglaBhoot]

War Against Pakistan

Pakistani military should have launched a retaliatory strike targeting the nearby Afghan army posts. The prime minister could have sanctioned the attack after seeking, and receiving, parliament’s consent on urgent basis, even after the operation. If a war is being imposed on Pakistan – and all indications are that this is the case – then Islamabad should retaliate. No more appeasement to Washington. Let Karzai and the rest of the Indian agents in Kabul help America in Central Asia.

By AHMED QURAISHI

Tuesday, 17 June 2008.

Ahmed Quraishi-Pakistan/Middle East politics, Iraq war, lebanon war, India Pakistan relations

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—Now the Mayor of Kabul wants to invade Pakistan. Six years of Pakistani appeasement in the face of gradual loss of our legitimate security interests in the region have come down to this: the weakest leader in modern Afghan history warns Islamabad he will not only invade Pakistan but will also “rescue” the Pakistani Pashtun population—a thinly veiled threat to claim our northwestern regions as part of Afghanistan.

Hamid Karzai should not be blamed for making statements that far exceed his status as a weak ruler propped up by warlords and a foreign power, and whose authority hardly surpasses the city where he is bunkered.

Islamabad’s real problem lies not with him. It’s with Washington, whose military sided last week with Mr. Karzai’s ragtag army in a border dispute where it used massive aerial power to pound a Pakistani border post and kill eleven of our soldiers. This disproportionate use of power was so senseless it could only be a deliberate hostile act against Pakistan. The explanation given by Dr. Condoleezza Rice to our foreign minister – whom she tried to convince this was a case of friendly-fire – has no buyers in Pakistan.

If a war is being imposed on Pakistan – and all indications are that this is the case – then Islamabad should retaliate. To regain respect, Pakistani military should henceforth hold the government in Kabul and the Afghan military directly responsible for any act of aggression emanating from Afghan soil. In last week’s case, Pakistani military should have launched a retaliatory strike targeting the nearby Afghan army posts. The prime minister could have sanctioned the attack after seeking, and receiving, parliament’s consent on urgent basis, even after the operation.

A Pakistani counterstrike would have tested and exposed the intentions of the American-led NATO troops. A subsequent attack on Pakistan would have confirmed this was no misunderstanding. The Americans have been saber-rattling for months now and the June 10 attack fitted a pattern of U.S. official statements, media leaks, and cross-border violations.

In every sense of the word, an undeclared war is being waged against Pakistan from the Afghan soil since 2004. Islamabad is in possession of plenty of real and circumstantial evidence to this effect. The purpose of this war is to set off ethnic and religious wars inside Pakistan to weaken the country and precipitate its disintegration. In the past four years, separatist activity in the entire Pakistani region next to Afghanistan jumped from nil to levels not seen since the 1980s, when the Soviets used Afghan soil for the same purpose.
Afghanistan has a political problem that the U.S. and its puppet regime in Kabul have been unable to resolve for the past seven years. This U.S.-Karzai failure is destabilizing Pakistan, not the other way around. The Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi should have used the Afghan donor conference in Paris last week to capture the international media attention and make it clear that Islamabad – and NATO for that matter – cannot be held responsible for Washington and Kabul’s inability to end the Afghan civil conflict.

It’s also time to turn the tables. Pakistan should issue a list of demands to the regime in Kabul. The list should ask for a halt in all cross-border terrorism originating from Afghan soil into Pakistan. This includes the closure of training camps for terrorists who are sent into our provinces of Balochistan and NWFP, an end to the activities of Indian intelligence posts operating under the guise of diplomatic missions near the Pakistani border, and the expulsion of all terrorist elements recruited from Pakistan and sheltered at safe houses provided by the Afghan government.

Failure to meet these legitimate demands should result in punitive measures; including restricting both Afghanistan’s overland trade and U.S. fuel supplies through Pakistani land and airspace.

[UPDATE: If we have any self respect, we should expel Mr. Anwar Anwarzai, the Karzai ambassador in Islamabad, from Pakistan. Far from being apologetic, he came out today to justify Mr. Karzai’s statement, asking Pakistanis why no single Pakistani official has condemned terrorist Baitullah Mehsud’s call for jihad in Afghanistan. Since when Mr. Mehsud became representative of Pakistan or Pakistanis for us to deny his blabber?]

Washington has been double-crossing Pakistan from the moment Islamabad joined America’s war on terror. In the seven years since 9/11, Washington has deliberately ignored Pakistan’s legitimate security needs and concerns in Afghanistan on every count. Under American watch, rabidly anti-Pakistan warlords and exiled elements with Indian connections going back to the days of the Soviets have been encouraged to wield influence in Kabul. The narcotic trade has been allowed to recover from near-total eradication under the previous regime, giving a boost to organized crime affecting both Pakistan and Iran.

Pakistani officials have long been suspecting that some Indian and Afghan elements operating in Afghanistan have an interest in inciting a confrontation between Pakistan and the United States. But it is also true that Washington has accorded little importance, by design or by coincidence, to the legitimate security and strategic interests of its Pakistani ally.

We should win together in Afghanistan. Washington’s victory should not become a Pakistani loss.

 

[ejaz007]

Taliban capture US helicopter parts
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Parts filmed and CDs released to media
By Hamid Mir

ISLAMABAD: In a startling operation that shook the Pentagon, the White House and the US administration some weeks back, the Taliban in the tribal areas captured parts of three US helicopters — Chinook, Black Hawk and Cobra — while they were being shipped in huge containers from Peshawar to Jalalabad in Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials have confirmed the capture while the US diplomats stationed in Islamabad are trying to fudge the issue without denying it outright. US embassy spokesperson Elizabeth Colton commented: "The embassy has no comment on this as the information appears to be only hearsay."

When this correspondent informed the embassy spokesperson that he had seen pictures of the stolen parts of helicopters, she again said "no comment". Some diplomats in Islamabad are very much aware of this recent Taliban operation but they were not ready to speak on record.

Diplomatic sources say the recent US air strike in the tribal areas was actually an attack on the location where the unassembled parts of the two helicopters, owned by the US armed forces, were stored by the Taliban.

Sources told The News US Assistant Secretary Richard Boucher was to visit Pakistan and Afghanistan soon in view of the situation in the region. What is shocking is the revelation that the US forces were transporting helicopters in unassembled form in containers, which landed at the Karachi Port and travelled all the way by road to Peshawar and then entered the tribal areas for onward journey to Afghanistan.

When these containers entered the Khyber Agency at Jamrud, the Taliban stopped the convoys and took away the helicopter parts. Pakistani paramilitary forces in the area tried to confront the Taliban but they suffered heavy losses due to darkness. This happened in the same area where Pakistan's Ambassador to Afghanistan Tariq Azizuddin was kidnapped in February this year.

Chinook and Black Hawk were captured recently while the Cobra was hijacked some weeks back. When the Taliban first captured the Cobra helicopter, they filmed all the stolen parts and supplied the CD to their allies in Afghanistan.

Some people in the Farah province of western Afghanistan showed interest in purchasing the Cobra helicopter and subsequently its parts were smuggled to Farah. Taliban sold this Cobra to an unidentified customer for several hundred thousand dollars.

Following the latest ground hijacking, the Taliban have again filmed all the stolen parts of CH-47 Chinook and Black Hawk choppers. Chinook is a versatile twin-engine helicopter that was also used to help the earthquake victims in Kashmir in October 2005 by the US Army.

The Taliban have again sent the CD to people for attracting customers from neighbouring countries of Afghanistan. They do not seem to have hit any customer as the stolen parts with extra engines are still in their custody.

The Taliban captured some unexploded Tomahawk missiles in the Khost area of eastern Afghanistan in 1998. These missiles were fired on al-Qaeda hideouts after attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The Taliban handed over some of the unexploded US missiles to the Chinese in 1998.

Top US military officials have demanded recently from Pakistan to start an operation in the tribal areas for the recovery of their stolen helicopters. They have expressed concern that instead of initiating an operation against the Taliban, the new government is negotiating peace with the Taliban.

Concerned officials in the Foreign Office were of the opinion that the Taliban had increased their attacks in Afghanistan recently due to the incompetence of the Afghan National Army and the Nato forces.

The Taliban used a fuel tanker packed with 1800 kg of explosives a few days ago to break a jail in Kandahar. They got released their 400 comrades along with 1,100 other prisoners in that operation.

On Tuesday, the Taliban captured Arghundab district of Kandahar province. It was also a big blow to the credibility of Nato and the Karzai government but now both of them are trying to divert the international attention by threatening to attack the Pakistani border areas.

The Taliban have recently conducted bloody operations against the Nato forces in Shenwro district of Parwaon province in the north, Taren Kot city of Uruzgan province in the south and Poli Alm city of Logar province close to Kabul.

All these are not close to the Pakistani borders and the Taliban were attacking the Nato with the help of the local population.

It was learnt that the high command of Pakistani security forces has requested the government for permission to respond in a hard-hitting manner to any attack from Afghanistan in future.

Meanwhile, US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher would visit Pakistan and Afghanistan shortly. It is expected that he would try to narrow down the differences between Islamabad and Kabul.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=15419

 

[ejaz007]

No threat of war with Pakistan: Kabul

* Spokesman says militant attacks from Pakistan should be stopped

KABUL: A spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday downplayed the threat to attack militants in Pakistan, saying that there was no intention to start a war.

Karzai said this weekend that his war-ravaged country would be justified in striking at Taliban insurgents in Pakistan in what he called self-defence.

“The president is not announcing that we are going to war with Pakistan. We do not intend to go to war with Pakistan. We believe in good relations,” Karzai’s spokesman Homayun Hamidzada told reporters in Kabul.

“The president used stern language to convey a message. Pakistan is a sovereign state and should behave responsibly,” he added.

Pakistani territory: Hamidzada said Kabul expected the US ally in the war on terror to stop Taliban militants using its territory as a safe haven for plotting attacks on Afghans and crossing the border into Afghanistan.

“As a sovereign nation you would not allow any other elements to use your territory against another sovereign state and Pakistan is a sovereign state,” Hamidzada said.

He added that, “Pakistan needs to make sure that their territory is not used by terrorist elements against Afghanistan.”

Pakistan had summoned the Afghan ambassador to the Foreign Office on Monday to lodge a strong protest over Karzai’s comments. It had also pledged to defend its sovereignty. afp

Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan

 

[muse]

As is clear from the article below, both Pakistan and the US mistrust each other - therefore no no basis for "alliance -- Pakistanis think the US has screwed up and made Pakistan the fal guy, the US thinks Pakistan owes it to the US to sacrifice Pakistani lives for American objectives and Advantages.



From today's IHT
Pakistani anger over U.S. airstrike remains
By Jane Perlez

Tuesday, June 17, 2008
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani military is so angry over the U.S. airstrikes here last week that it is threatening to postpone or cancel an American program to train a paramilitary force in counterinsurgency for combating Islamic militants, two Pakistani government officials said.

The U.S. alliance with Pakistan - born after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as an important vehicle for the fight against terrorism - now stands deeply scarred by the June 10 airstrikes, Pakistani officials and Western diplomats said. In fact, some Pakistani officials are accusing the United States of purposefully firing on their military, an accusation the Americans deny.

"This is the first time the United States has deliberately targeted cooperating Pakistani forces," said Jehangir Karamat, a former chief of the Pakistani Army and a former ambassador to the United States. "There has been no statement by the United States that this was 'friendly fire' and that the intention was not to target Pakistani forces."

The Pakistanis continue to dispute key parts of the American account of the airstrikes, which killed 11 soldiers from the Frontier Corps, the very paramilitary force Washington has already begun spending $400 million to train.

The recriminations have exposed the underlying mistrust in the alliance, which has been held together in large part by the personal relationship between President Pervez Musharraf and President George W. Bush, the Pakistani officials and diplomats said.

As the two men fade from power, the alliance is finding it difficult to quell the threat to the United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan from a growing array of Taliban and Al Qaeda cells that are dug into Pakistan's tribal areas, they said.

A senior Pakistani government official with long experience in military affairs, one of the two Pakistani officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, summed up the feeling of many in the Pakistani military, saying the strikes appeared deliberate and were intended to "punish" Pakistan for not stopping Islamic militants from crossing into Afghanistan to attack U.S. and NATO forces.

"Such types of incidents may affect the training program by the United States for the Frontier Corps," Athar Abbas, the spokesman for the Pakistani Army, said Monday.

The U.S. and Pakistani militaries have agreed in principle to hold a joint investigation into the airstrikes. That inquiry will now have to sort out the conflicting accounts in an extremely charged atmosphere.

The Americans assert that strikes were carried out in self-defense after U.S. forces in Afghanistan were attacked by militants who retreated over the disputed border that straddles Kunar Province in Afghanistan and the Mohmand tribal region in Pakistan.

The Pakistanis say the U.S. bombs were not dropped in self-defense but targeted a Frontier Corps post at Gora Parai, a beak of land that thrusts into Afghanistan, about 160 kilometers, or 100 miles, northwest of the town of Ghalani.

A stone hut and seven of nine bunkers in which the soldiers were seeking cover were destroyed, the Pakistanis said. The coordinates of the post were clearly marked and were known to NATO and American forces, they said.

Spokesmen for the U.S. military said a Pakistani liaison officer had been informed of the plan to strike. But the Pakistanis vehemently deny the claim. The senior Pakistani government official with military experience said the strikes were "too accurate and too intense" to have been an accident.

The other Pakistani government official acknowledged that the area around the Frontier Corps post had been under the control of the Pakistani Taliban since 2006, which could have fueled American anger over the rising number of cross-border attacks this year.

The fury over the airstrikes was such that General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani - the new army chief of staff, whom the Americans had hoped would be a dependable successor to Musharraf - personally approved the unusually strong statement last week from the military, which called the strikes "cowardly and unprovoked," the Pakistani officials said.

Kayani has refused every suggestion that U.S. forces be permitted to operate in the tribal areas, including on an advisory basis, U.S. officials said. A plan for trainers to accompany Pakistani troops on missions to root out insurgents in the tribal areas was ruled out completely, a senior Pakistani military official said.

The plan for U.S. military advisers to instruct Pakistani trainers, who would in turn train Frontier Corps units in counterinsurgency tactics, was accepted by Kayani as the least-intrusive alternative, U.S. officials have said.

Now the U.S. military may be denied even that fallback option, which many on the U.S. side were not enamored of in the first place.

Although the Americans have already moved ahead with parts of the $400 million program - mostly with the delivery of some equipment - there is considerable skepticism in Washington and among U.S. military commanders about the value of the training.

Privately, U.S. officials have also put growing pressure on the Pakistanis to do more in the tribal areas. The rupture in relations caused by the airstrikes has now brought into the open blunt expressions of dissatisfaction with the Pakistanis that officials had kept mostly private.

General Dan McNeill, the American commander who stepped down as head of NATO forces in Afghanistan this month, said Friday that the Frontier Corps was not up to the job of fighting Pakistan's Islamic militants, a feeling that is widely shared in Washington.

"My experience is it takes well-trained, well-equipped forces - disciplined - to take this thing on," McNeill said.

He described the corps as "pretty much tribals themselves," a reference to the fact that the Frontier Corps men are recruited from among the Pashtuns, the dominant tribe that lives in Pakistan's tribal areas and across the border in southern Afghanistan.

Much of the American grievances about the Frontier Corps, which is under the overall command of the Pakistani Army, is based on the conviction that the corps allows Islamic militants to cross the porous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan with impunity and fight NATO forces there.

There were 50 percent more cross-border attacks in April compared with a year before. The increase was "directly attributable to the lack of pressure on the other side of the border," McNeill said, referring to the fact that the Pakistani Army was now observing a cease-fire with the militants and leaving the prime responsibilities to the Frontier Corps.

Two American counterinsurgency experts - Bruce Hoffman, a professor at Georgetown University, and Seth Jones, a political scientist at the Rand Corporation - write in an upcoming article in The National Interest that "a concatenation of at least 14 different terrorist and insurgent groups based in Pakistan regularly traverse the border to target Afghan security forces and the American and NATO military units stationed there." Both men visited southern Afghanistan under the auspices of U.S. troops stationed there.

After a visit to Pakistan in late May, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, raised questions about whether the Frontier Corps was reliable enough to bother training, given what he called its poor record in defending the 2,500-kilometer frontier and the apparent affinity of some of the Frontier Corps with the extremists.

In a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Levin said he wanted financing for the Frontier Corps to be made dependent on an "explicit commitment" by the Pakistanis to "halt cross-border attacks by Taliban militants and Al Qaeda terrorists into Afghanistan."

Pakistani officials said Sunday that such a commitment was included in the peace deal with the militant leader, Baitullah Mehsud. But Levin said "it remains to be seen if this is more than words, especially in light of previous unkept commitments along this line."

The U.S. ambassador in Islamabad, Anne Patterson, declined a request to be interviewed for this article. An embassy spokeswoman asked that The New York Times seek permission for an interview from the State Department. Sean McCormick, the spokesman for the department, gave the go-ahead. But Patterson declined.

One of the senior Pakistani government officials said the alliance forged between Washington and Islamabad immediately after 9/11 had been imbued with mutual suspicion "since Day One."

A major reason for the distrust of the Americans among the Pakistani military came from the belief that Pakistan was unfairly blamed by Washington for the American and NATO difficulties in the war in Afghanistan.

The struggle against the Taliban in Afghanistan was not faltering just because Taliban from Pakistan were crossing the border into Afghanistan to fight American and NATO forces, the Pakistani government official said.

"Pakistan thinks you have screwed up in Afghanistan and made Pakistan the fall guy," the official said.

The official then listed the various factors the Pakistanis believe accounted for the problems the United States and NATO face against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Among them, he said, were a weak central government in Kabul and the lack of sufficient coalition forces.

Now the deaths of the 11 Pakistanis have sent new ripples of recriminations from the top to the bottom of the military, as well as among many Pakistanis.

In Ziarat Kale, a village that adjoins the Mohmand tribal region, an elderly man, Fazle Rabbani, the father of one of the dead, received mourners in the garden of the family home.

Rabbani said he was furious at the United States, NATO and his own country for what he called its impotence.

"This is the government," he said, "and if they cannot protest it, then I am ready to go and become a Taliban and fight them."

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Maqsad,

There are other Pashtun politicians who have criticized Karzai.

‘Karzai should apologise to Pakistan’​

Staff Report

PESHAWAR: Afghan President Hamid Karzai should apologise for his “irresponsible statement” against Pakistan, a country that provided refuge to millions of Afghans for several decades, NWFP Labour Minister Sher Azam Wazir said on Tuesday.

In an official statement, the minister said Pakistan was a sovereign country and had the capability to defend itself. The minister said Karzai’s statement would have a negative affect on the relations between the two neighbouring countries. He said Pakistan had always considered Afghanistan as a brother Muslim country and had helped it in difficult times, giving asylum to millions of Afghans during the soviet invasion.
Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan

Any statements from the top ANP leadership (CM etc.)?

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

General Dan McNeill, the American commander who stepped down as head of NATO forces in Afghanistan this month, said Friday that the Frontier Corps was not up to the job of fighting Pakistan's Islamic militants, a feeling that is widely shared in Washington.

Shocking!

One would have thought that was what the 400 million dollar capacity building program was for.

Only a few months ago both Pakistani and US military officials admitted that we were looking at 3 to 5 years before the FC could reach a point where it was capable enough to stand on its own against the Taliban.

Why the pretense of a "Eureka moment" when making the same point a few months later?

Short term objectives and a lack of patience.

"My experience is it takes well-trained, well-equipped forces - disciplined - to take this thing on," McNeill said.

That is precisely what the FC training program is designed to try and accomplish.

Given the sudden infatuation and urgency with which the US wants the Pakistani military to redeploy on the Western Front, and the reported blatant refusal of Kiyani to even train and equip the regular army for CI purposes, let alone redeploy it, I wonder how much this has to do with freeing up India's hands as the US moves to bolster it as a counterweight to China?

 

[maqsad]

Maqsad,

There are other Pashtun politicians who have criticized Karzai.



Any statements from the top ANP leadership (CM etc.)?

I'm sure the majority of Pashtun politicians have criticized him, I just posted that link because it was so utterly bizzare. I have no idea who from ANP made what statements, I got this story from here:

quqnoos.com - Pakistan’s Pashtun MPs rally to Karzai’s side

Those two are probably separatist sympathisers who dream about being annexxed by Afghanistan or forming a greater "pashtukhwa". People like these should be taken very seriously if another 1971 is to be avoided, just my personal feeling. The good news is that most of the people in FATA and Khyber liked things the way they have been. But still this is not an issue to brush aside.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Maqsad,

The ANP is close to Karzai, so expect criticism from them to be muted, if any.

One thing I cannot fault them for however is their criticism of Pakistan's Taliban policy. I agree we should not have intervened. They share that with Karzai, and that is why you have some of their leaders saying that Karzai is only responding to Mehsud's comments of crossing into Afghanistan to attack NATO and Afghan troops.

The ANP has also been asking to be included in the FATA talks, since it deems itself to have been successful in negotiating in Swat with Mullah FM. I think it would be a good idea to do so.