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Pakistan being made scapegoat for US failures
Published: December 23, 2010
NEW YORK - A prominent US newspaper columnist has criticised the Obama Administration for blaming Pakistan for its failures in Afghanistan, and called for abandoning any notion of conducting cross-border ground raids on suspected militant sanctuaries in Pakistani tribal areas.
"Too often, the American attitude is master to servant: We give you money now do what we say, and do it right now," HDS Greenway, who served in US military before taking up writing, said in The New York Times after a visit to Pakistan. He wrote that Pakistan had already done a lot for the US.
In his op-ed piece, the columnist suggested that Pakistan was being made scapegoat for US failures in Afghanistan and he reserved his strongest criticism for retired American Gen Jack Keane, who has been making some tough statements against Pakistan, including: "Don't just put a finger in their chest, put a fist in their chest."
"I recently drove past the hulks of burned out oil tankers by the side of the Grand Trunk Road headed to the Khyber Pass, torched by militants when Pakistan temporarily halted the convoys in retaliation for our incursion," Greenway wrote.
"One might ask Gen Keane: What is it you don't understand about closing the Khyber Pass? What chance would you give either the short-term or long-term sustainability of our Afghan effort without Pakistani cooperation? One hundred dollars worth of gasoline passing through Pakistan costs $1,000 to ship through Central Asia.
"So let's stop all this talk of cleaning out the sanctuaries ourselves if the Pakistanis won't. The US doesn't need to get involved militarily in another Muslim country.
"The US is extremely unpopular as it is with the Pakistani public. Do we really think we could prevail in the mountains of the Northwest Frontier with the whole countryside up in arms against us? If you really want to destabilise a nuclear-armed Pakistan, that would be the best way to do it.
"Pakistanis feel, with some justification, that they are being scapegoated," he added.
"I'm not saying we are entirely innocent," the columnist quotes a member of Pakistan's intelligence service as telling him, but after nine years of failing in Afghanistan it is easy to "put all the blame on someone else." Greenway also quotes Lt-Gen Asif Malik, commander of the Pakistani Army, as saying, "Organisations such as the Haqqani group are not completely dependent on Pakistani territory. They, and the rest of the Taliban, can operate quite well in Afghanistan without sanctuaries - to which the deterioration of security in northern Afghanistan attests."
Published: December 23, 2010
NEW YORK - A prominent US newspaper columnist has criticised the Obama Administration for blaming Pakistan for its failures in Afghanistan, and called for abandoning any notion of conducting cross-border ground raids on suspected militant sanctuaries in Pakistani tribal areas.
"Too often, the American attitude is master to servant: We give you money now do what we say, and do it right now," HDS Greenway, who served in US military before taking up writing, said in The New York Times after a visit to Pakistan. He wrote that Pakistan had already done a lot for the US.
In his op-ed piece, the columnist suggested that Pakistan was being made scapegoat for US failures in Afghanistan and he reserved his strongest criticism for retired American Gen Jack Keane, who has been making some tough statements against Pakistan, including: "Don't just put a finger in their chest, put a fist in their chest."
"I recently drove past the hulks of burned out oil tankers by the side of the Grand Trunk Road headed to the Khyber Pass, torched by militants when Pakistan temporarily halted the convoys in retaliation for our incursion," Greenway wrote.
"One might ask Gen Keane: What is it you don't understand about closing the Khyber Pass? What chance would you give either the short-term or long-term sustainability of our Afghan effort without Pakistani cooperation? One hundred dollars worth of gasoline passing through Pakistan costs $1,000 to ship through Central Asia.
"So let's stop all this talk of cleaning out the sanctuaries ourselves if the Pakistanis won't. The US doesn't need to get involved militarily in another Muslim country.
"The US is extremely unpopular as it is with the Pakistani public. Do we really think we could prevail in the mountains of the Northwest Frontier with the whole countryside up in arms against us? If you really want to destabilise a nuclear-armed Pakistan, that would be the best way to do it.
"Pakistanis feel, with some justification, that they are being scapegoated," he added.
"I'm not saying we are entirely innocent," the columnist quotes a member of Pakistan's intelligence service as telling him, but after nine years of failing in Afghanistan it is easy to "put all the blame on someone else." Greenway also quotes Lt-Gen Asif Malik, commander of the Pakistani Army, as saying, "Organisations such as the Haqqani group are not completely dependent on Pakistani territory. They, and the rest of the Taliban, can operate quite well in Afghanistan without sanctuaries - to which the deterioration of security in northern Afghanistan attests."
