Spring Onion
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Out of reality not enthusiasm
Pakistan forcing Taliban militants to keep fighting, Karzai says
- Thread starter Musafar
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Out of reality not enthusiasm
TechLahore
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No. There was a tremendous sense of enthusiasm, from what I witnessed myself, when Gen. Musharraf took over. The referendum he conducted - which by most accounts is not seen as unfair - also demonstrated that he had the majority firmly behind him.
Search the web, you'll find tons of images of people dancing in the streets and distributing sweets when Musharraf took over from Nawaz Sharif.
Democracy is one way. But there are tons of variations to this model. And there are altogether other models too. China's approach has been incredibly successful for example. Personally, I think a heavily tailored form of Democracy will take root in Pakistan.
T-Faz
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Well, look at it this way, a politician (Bhutto) tarnished Ayubs rule by giving terrible advice and then using the same against him.
Musharraf similarly got into a mess because of people such as the Choudhries of Punjab (or is it Gujrat?).
Zia on the other hand made politicians such as Nawaz Sharif and political parties like MQM.
KS
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Democracy needs time to mature Jana --- you dont get results overnight.
See we toiled with democracy for 45 years til 1992 with no significant results and in the process almost going bankrupt.
But then definitely a leader will come who will then take the ountry to a bigger growth path and that's when you get to enjoy the fruits of it.
Any way I going offtopic and since I got my answer from TF and TL,I'll leave it here as ultimately its your country and if you guys are satisfied then who cares abt outsiders?
Spring Onion
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You are very right. But who said Pakistani public is against democracy ? this is a flawed notion some people assume about us because respecting or trusting our army does not mean that we are against democracy.
we praise army and stand by it because of its commitment to the work which is otherwise responsibility of the civilian administration as disaster managment and other public services.
KS
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No I did not say respecting Army is a bad thing and against democracy .They can exist together --- In India we love,respect our Services except some Left-wing nutjobs but that doesnt mean we will let them rule our country.
Anyways as TL said Democracy is only a way and not the only way.!
CaptainPrice
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Seriously.Us should admit it failed and get out of pakistan.Or get more men and airforce to afghanistan.
The Clarifier
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They won't do neither... hence their blame game.
AgNoStiC MuSliM
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How can an allegation 'add evidence'? It is just that, an allegation, like many of the other unsubstantiated and unverified allegations also propagated and concocted by Afghan intelligence. Karzai gets his information/opinion from the same intelligence, he doesn't go out and collect it himself - so this is in fact just another individual regurgitating the same unsubstantiated canards.
An allegation is substantiated with evidence, an allegation does not on its own become evidence. You can take a million allegations reiterating the same thing, but without evidence verifying them they are just that, unsubstantiated allegations.
BTW, even the article points to a lack of substantiation for these allegations by inserting the qualifier 'if true'.
AgNoStiC MuSliM
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Please stick to the topic. This is not a thread about Pakistani opinion on democracy vs military rule.
AgNoStiC MuSliM
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On the issue of 'intelligence reports' lets not forget what a lot of analysts said about the infamous wikileaks of the Afghan war logs detailing a lot of the field intelligence that propagates rumors such as these (from the Guardian report on the Afghan war logs when first released):
A retired senior American officer said ground-level reports were considered to be a mixture of "rumours, bullshit and second-hand information" and were weeded out as they passed up the chain of command. "As someone who had to sift through thousands of these reports, I can say that the chances of finding any real information are pretty slim," said the officer, who has years of experience in the region.
If anything, the jumble of allegations highlights the perils of collecting accurate intelligence in a complex arena where all sides have an interest in distorting the truth.
"The fog of war is particularly dense in Afghanistan," said Michael Semple, a former deputy head of the EU mission there. "A barrage of false information is being passed off as intelligence and anyone who wants to operate there needs to be able to sift through it. The opportunities to be misled are innumerable." ...
...But many of the 180 reports appear to betray as much about the motivation of the sources than those of the alleged foreign puppet-masters. Some US officers were aware of this. One report from 2006 notes that an informant "divulges information for monetary remuneration and likely fabricated or exaggerated the above report for just that reason".
Some of the most striking claims come from the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan's foremost spy agency and a bitter rival to the ISI.
In July and August 2008 the NDS passed information to the US that three Pakistan-trained militants plotting to kill Karzai had been groomed by a named ISI officer and had trained at the Zarb Momen camp outside Karachi. The attackers were Palestinian and Arab, the report said, and intended to strike during a visit by Karzai to a Kabul mosque or the luxury Serena hotel.
But the report's strong assertions fade under retrospective scrutiny. The predicted assault on Karzai never took place (the last reported attempt was in April 2008, four months earlier), and there is no known militant camp called Zarb Momen in Karachi, a city with hundreds of hardline madrasas. The al-Rashid Trust, a charity with militant links, publishes a magazine by the same name, said Amir Rana, an Islamabad-based militancy expert.
The miltiary's grading system offers one way of sifting the ISI file. Some 27 of the 180 reports are graded as C3 and above, meaning they come from a "fairly reliable source" and are "possibly true".
But many such reports appear highly implausible. In February 2007 the ISI and insurgents planned "to buy alcoholic drinks from markets in Miranshah [in Pakistan's tribal belt] and Peshawar [in order to] mix them with poison and use them for poisoning ANSF and ISAF troops" according to a C3 report. The Karzai plot is assessed to be "probably true".
Apparently more credible reports of ISI skulduggery are marked SEWOC, or Signals Intelligence Electronic Warfare Operations Centre, signifying they come from intercepted communications. One SEWOC report, in December 2007, accused the ISI of deploying children as suicide bombers. But the military source said that such intelligence was also prone to distortion, and that its value depended on whose conversation was being eavesdropped. "If we ever found out anything that the ISI or Pakistani military were somehow complicit in the insurgency, it never came from these sources. Never," he said.
One name that frequently surfaces is that of General Hamid Gul, director general of the ISI between 1987 and 1989, who is referenced in eight reports. One has him smuggling magnetic mines into Afghanistan to attack Nato troops; in another he is plotting to kidnap United Nations staff to bargain for imprisoned Pakistani militants. A report from January 2009 has Gul meeting Arab militants in Pakistan's tribal belt to send suicide vehicles into Afghanistan. "It was not known whether Hamid Gul was acting with the knowledge or consent of the ISI," the report states.
But while Gul, 73, is a well-known fundamentalist ideologue in Pakistan, experts say he is unlikely to play a frontline role in the fighting. Afghan informers may have used his name – he is notorious in Afghanistan – to spice up their stories, said Semple.
"There's a pattern of using a dramatis personae of famous ISI officers and Afghan commanders, and recurring reports of dramatic developments such as the delivery of surface-to-air missiles, to give these reports credibility," he said. "But most of them are simply fabricated."
Afghanistan has a long history of intelligence intrigues that stretches back to the early 19th century. Afghans have learned to use intelligence as a tool to influence the foreign powers occupying their land. In the past quarter century it has become a lucrative source of income in a country with few employment opportunities.
Since 2001 intelligence has become a tool to influence US policymakers, who enjoy the greatest military clout in the region but are poorly informed about its intricacies. The retired US officer said some NDS officials "wanted to create the impression that Pakistani complicity was a threat to the US". And more broadly speaking, "there's an Afghan prejudice that wants to see an ISI agent under every rock".
US generals are aware of the problem. In January Major General Michael Flynn said foreign newspaper articles about Afghanistan were more useful than the information collected by his own soldiers in the field. The huge intelligence apparatus in Afghanistan was "only marginally relevant" to Nato's overall war plan, he said. "We're no more than fingernail-deep in our understanding of the environment."
A retired senior American officer said ground-level reports were considered to be a mixture of "rumours, bullshit and second-hand information" and were weeded out as they passed up the chain of command. "As someone who had to sift through thousands of these reports, I can say that the chances of finding any real information are pretty slim," said the officer, who has years of experience in the region.
If anything, the jumble of allegations highlights the perils of collecting accurate intelligence in a complex arena where all sides have an interest in distorting the truth.
"The fog of war is particularly dense in Afghanistan," said Michael Semple, a former deputy head of the EU mission there. "A barrage of false information is being passed off as intelligence and anyone who wants to operate there needs to be able to sift through it. The opportunities to be misled are innumerable." ...
...But many of the 180 reports appear to betray as much about the motivation of the sources than those of the alleged foreign puppet-masters. Some US officers were aware of this. One report from 2006 notes that an informant "divulges information for monetary remuneration and likely fabricated or exaggerated the above report for just that reason".
Some of the most striking claims come from the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan's foremost spy agency and a bitter rival to the ISI.
In July and August 2008 the NDS passed information to the US that three Pakistan-trained militants plotting to kill Karzai had been groomed by a named ISI officer and had trained at the Zarb Momen camp outside Karachi. The attackers were Palestinian and Arab, the report said, and intended to strike during a visit by Karzai to a Kabul mosque or the luxury Serena hotel.
But the report's strong assertions fade under retrospective scrutiny. The predicted assault on Karzai never took place (the last reported attempt was in April 2008, four months earlier), and there is no known militant camp called Zarb Momen in Karachi, a city with hundreds of hardline madrasas. The al-Rashid Trust, a charity with militant links, publishes a magazine by the same name, said Amir Rana, an Islamabad-based militancy expert.
The miltiary's grading system offers one way of sifting the ISI file. Some 27 of the 180 reports are graded as C3 and above, meaning they come from a "fairly reliable source" and are "possibly true".
But many such reports appear highly implausible. In February 2007 the ISI and insurgents planned "to buy alcoholic drinks from markets in Miranshah [in Pakistan's tribal belt] and Peshawar [in order to] mix them with poison and use them for poisoning ANSF and ISAF troops" according to a C3 report. The Karzai plot is assessed to be "probably true".
Apparently more credible reports of ISI skulduggery are marked SEWOC, or Signals Intelligence Electronic Warfare Operations Centre, signifying they come from intercepted communications. One SEWOC report, in December 2007, accused the ISI of deploying children as suicide bombers. But the military source said that such intelligence was also prone to distortion, and that its value depended on whose conversation was being eavesdropped. "If we ever found out anything that the ISI or Pakistani military were somehow complicit in the insurgency, it never came from these sources. Never," he said.
One name that frequently surfaces is that of General Hamid Gul, director general of the ISI between 1987 and 1989, who is referenced in eight reports. One has him smuggling magnetic mines into Afghanistan to attack Nato troops; in another he is plotting to kidnap United Nations staff to bargain for imprisoned Pakistani militants. A report from January 2009 has Gul meeting Arab militants in Pakistan's tribal belt to send suicide vehicles into Afghanistan. "It was not known whether Hamid Gul was acting with the knowledge or consent of the ISI," the report states.
But while Gul, 73, is a well-known fundamentalist ideologue in Pakistan, experts say he is unlikely to play a frontline role in the fighting. Afghan informers may have used his name – he is notorious in Afghanistan – to spice up their stories, said Semple.
"There's a pattern of using a dramatis personae of famous ISI officers and Afghan commanders, and recurring reports of dramatic developments such as the delivery of surface-to-air missiles, to give these reports credibility," he said. "But most of them are simply fabricated."
Afghanistan has a long history of intelligence intrigues that stretches back to the early 19th century. Afghans have learned to use intelligence as a tool to influence the foreign powers occupying their land. In the past quarter century it has become a lucrative source of income in a country with few employment opportunities.
Since 2001 intelligence has become a tool to influence US policymakers, who enjoy the greatest military clout in the region but are poorly informed about its intricacies. The retired US officer said some NDS officials "wanted to create the impression that Pakistani complicity was a threat to the US". And more broadly speaking, "there's an Afghan prejudice that wants to see an ISI agent under every rock".
US generals are aware of the problem. In January Major General Michael Flynn said foreign newspaper articles about Afghanistan were more useful than the information collected by his own soldiers in the field. The huge intelligence apparatus in Afghanistan was "only marginally relevant" to Nato's overall war plan, he said. "We're no more than fingernail-deep in our understanding of the environment."
AgNoStiC MuSliM
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Pakistan and Afghanistan: interdependent, distrustful neighbours
The relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan is a lot more complex than described in the stories of ISI goons
Michael Semple guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 27 July 2010 11.15 BST
No one should be surprised that 180 of the leaked intelligence reports sound alarm bells about the involvement of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service in Afghan insurgency. Plenty such alarm bells have been sounded in the public domain already. But it is important that policymakers draw the right conclusions.
During the period covered by these reports, I sat in on one of the first national workshops of the Afghan reconciliation commission, headed by former president, Sebghatullah Mojadedi. Provincial police chiefs and governors and other officials split into small groups to discuss the causes of ongoing conflict. Encouraged by Mojadedi himself, every single working group fed back the conclusion that Pakistani ISI interference was the prime cause of conflict in the country.
This was more an article of faith than an empirical finding. Assembled Afghan officialdom simply worked on the basis that Pakistan had supported the Taliban, was opposed to the post-Taliban set-up and must be behind any resistance to this new setup.
In an even more blatant fashion, while visiting one of the Afghan provinces bordering Pakistan I asked the provincial intelligence chief to explain his role. He described his main function as being to inculcate in the people of the province a belief that Pakistan could never tolerate a stable Afghanistan, so that they would always be on their guard to check ISI interference.
The point is that Afghanistan and Pakistan are countries with a complex history of interdependence. Although most of Afghanistan's trade comes through Pakistan and Pakistan was the main place of refuge for Afghan refugees during the 1980s, the most popular way of establishing credentials as an Afghan nationalist has long been to denounce Pakistan as the enemy.
Among the 180 reports of ISI interference, most are drawn from informants or briefings from the Afghan intelligence service, who describe in lurid detail direct involvement of ISI officers in trying to wreak havoc inside Afghanistan. The bulk of them can now be dismissed as unreliable either with the benefit of hindsight (they warn of impending disasters which never happened) or on the basis of implausibility (conveying details the source could not have known) and because they fit in with a pattern of disinformation (stories constructed from recurrent themes and familiar characters).
One set of informants most likely passed on these reports because they found there was a market for them. More politically motivated informants, such as those Afghan officials who supplied briefings which US personnel later wrote up as intelligence, probably wanted to strengthen US backing by turning the US against Pakistan.
If you try and understand the Pakistan-Afghanistan links in the Afghan insurgency without the benefit of the largely concocted reports supplied to the US military, you still conclude that the insurgency depends upon a safe haven in Pakistan. All the commander networks which actually do the fighting in Afghanistan maintain a presence in Pakistan and use this to support their war effort. This is hardly surprising given the length of border, the amount of civilian movement, the tribal relationships and the intricate commercial links, even before you factor in a pre-2001 history of covert actions across the border. The relationship is a lot more complex than described in the crude stories of ISI goons.
Most Taliban I have talked to regarding the role of Pakistan make three broad points. They say that they require some degree of official blessing to be able to operate from Pakistan. They say that this blessing is never assured – it is an uncomfortable relationship. And they say that any solution to the insurgency must have Pakistan's blessing.
The conclusion I draw from the intelligence controversy is that anyone charged with negotiating an end to the conflict in Afghanistan will have to guard that process from exactly the kind of disinformation we have all been studying. They will need to keep Pakistan, the insurgents and the various parts of today's Afghan establishment on board, and overcome a high degree of distrust which years of disinformation have contributed to.
Pakistan and Afghanistan: interdependent, distrustful neighbours | Michael Semple | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
The relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan is a lot more complex than described in the stories of ISI goons
Michael Semple guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 27 July 2010 11.15 BST
No one should be surprised that 180 of the leaked intelligence reports sound alarm bells about the involvement of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service in Afghan insurgency. Plenty such alarm bells have been sounded in the public domain already. But it is important that policymakers draw the right conclusions.
During the period covered by these reports, I sat in on one of the first national workshops of the Afghan reconciliation commission, headed by former president, Sebghatullah Mojadedi. Provincial police chiefs and governors and other officials split into small groups to discuss the causes of ongoing conflict. Encouraged by Mojadedi himself, every single working group fed back the conclusion that Pakistani ISI interference was the prime cause of conflict in the country.
This was more an article of faith than an empirical finding. Assembled Afghan officialdom simply worked on the basis that Pakistan had supported the Taliban, was opposed to the post-Taliban set-up and must be behind any resistance to this new setup.
In an even more blatant fashion, while visiting one of the Afghan provinces bordering Pakistan I asked the provincial intelligence chief to explain his role. He described his main function as being to inculcate in the people of the province a belief that Pakistan could never tolerate a stable Afghanistan, so that they would always be on their guard to check ISI interference.
The point is that Afghanistan and Pakistan are countries with a complex history of interdependence. Although most of Afghanistan's trade comes through Pakistan and Pakistan was the main place of refuge for Afghan refugees during the 1980s, the most popular way of establishing credentials as an Afghan nationalist has long been to denounce Pakistan as the enemy.
Among the 180 reports of ISI interference, most are drawn from informants or briefings from the Afghan intelligence service, who describe in lurid detail direct involvement of ISI officers in trying to wreak havoc inside Afghanistan. The bulk of them can now be dismissed as unreliable either with the benefit of hindsight (they warn of impending disasters which never happened) or on the basis of implausibility (conveying details the source could not have known) and because they fit in with a pattern of disinformation (stories constructed from recurrent themes and familiar characters).
One set of informants most likely passed on these reports because they found there was a market for them. More politically motivated informants, such as those Afghan officials who supplied briefings which US personnel later wrote up as intelligence, probably wanted to strengthen US backing by turning the US against Pakistan.
If you try and understand the Pakistan-Afghanistan links in the Afghan insurgency without the benefit of the largely concocted reports supplied to the US military, you still conclude that the insurgency depends upon a safe haven in Pakistan. All the commander networks which actually do the fighting in Afghanistan maintain a presence in Pakistan and use this to support their war effort. This is hardly surprising given the length of border, the amount of civilian movement, the tribal relationships and the intricate commercial links, even before you factor in a pre-2001 history of covert actions across the border. The relationship is a lot more complex than described in the crude stories of ISI goons.
Most Taliban I have talked to regarding the role of Pakistan make three broad points. They say that they require some degree of official blessing to be able to operate from Pakistan. They say that this blessing is never assured – it is an uncomfortable relationship. And they say that any solution to the insurgency must have Pakistan's blessing.
The conclusion I draw from the intelligence controversy is that anyone charged with negotiating an end to the conflict in Afghanistan will have to guard that process from exactly the kind of disinformation we have all been studying. They will need to keep Pakistan, the insurgents and the various parts of today's Afghan establishment on board, and overcome a high degree of distrust which years of disinformation have contributed to.
Pakistan and Afghanistan: interdependent, distrustful neighbours | Michael Semple | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
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