1,080 Pak soldiers among thousands killed in terror war

[IceCold]

We have lost more number of soldiers then the combine US and NATO has. We have captured more number of AQ operatives then any one of them, yet we hear more then anything " we need to do more" I wonder what this term need to do more means anymore.
IMO the fault lies with our pathetic foreign policy as we were simply unable to portray our image, our sacrifices to the international community, the goals that we achieved and the loss of life that we got as a direct result of this WOT. All our pathetic media ever do was to and still do coverage of the sacked judges as if there is no other story left in Pakistan. All these private TV channels specially Jeo should be banned. All they ever did was to spread hate and nothing more.

 

[muse]

Icecold

Exactly right that the "do more" stuff is old, but we have no ambition to be "praise whores" either - we do what must be done for the sake of Pakistan.

There will be time to deal with the American once we have total control, something we have not had before - but those days are gone and cannot come back, we must have and will have total control of those territories which are Pakistan, nothing more, certainly nothing less!

Our foreign policy a mess? you bet, because their ambitionis indeed to be "praise whores" - they are not clear about what our objectives ought to be or are, nor are they clear about presenting how we are going to get there. A poor job, poorly done.

 

[IceCold]

A poor job, poorly done.

Well said.

 

[Vinod2070]

Well Vinod very typical of you. No surprise at all. I would'nt comment on the whole of your post since i don't want to turn this thread into a kashmir mud slinging thread. However just one thing i would rather comment on is that If Gilani is a traitor, then every kashmiri is because every single one of them sees you guys as an occupier of their territory if not they would have told Pakistan to boot out we are very happy with India. I am amazed to hear how someone who got the area trough occupation calls the resident of that area a traitor just because he raises his voice for a plebiscite and considers Indians as the occupier of his land. Ironic is it.

Same here. So no response in this thread.

 

[muse]

Just the beginning?
Najmuddin A Shaikh



Sitting here in San Francisco, I have been watching the electoral battle between Barack Obama and John McCain. While it is clear that the economy is the prime issue in the minds of the voters, the war in Iraq runs a close second. And not surprisingly, the war in Afghanistan too is receiving a fair share of attention.

As has been the case for the past seven years, the war in Afghanistan is seen as the good war, as the just war, as the war that has to be fought to save America from the threat of a terrorist attack, as the war for which there is bipartisan support.

This has not meant, however, that either of the candidates has presented a clear strategy on how he intends to pursue the war or bring it to a successful conclusion.

It would perhaps be useful for both candidates and for the incumbent albeit lame duck President to read the report on “Counter-Insurgency in Afghanistan” by Dr Seth Jones of the Rand Corporation. In Pakistan this report attracted attention only because of the assertions it made about Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan and about the support that the Taliban were receiving from certain Pakistani quarters.

However, the most interesting parts of the report related not to these accusations that did no more than repeat the allegations that have been appearing in the international press, but to what Dr Jones had learnt from his study of 95 insurgencies.

According to him: “An analysis of all insurgencies since 1945 shows that successful counterinsurgency campaigns last for an average of 14 years, and unsuccessful ones last for an average of 11 years. Many also end in a draw, with neither side winning.”

According to his study, approximately 25 percent of insurgencies won by the government and 11 percent won by insurgents last more than 20 years.

A second point that Dr Jones makes is that it is fallacious to think that foreign forces can defeat insurgencies by winning the sympathy of the population and using unconventional ways of waging war. In his view the quality of indigenous forces and the quality of governance provided has a significant role to play in defeating an insurgency and that most counterinsurgency campaigns are not won or lost by external forces, but by indigenous forces”.

He attributes this partly to the fact that local ownership would give government forces access to information on the insurgents that the local populace would not want to make available to foreign forces.

Lastly, in this context, Dr Jones makes the point that until local capability is built up, the foreign force must maintain a sufficient presence to provide a measure of security.

What does this mean for Afghanistan? In May and June, the losses to coalition forces have been higher in Afghanistan than in Iraq despite the fact that in Iraq, the size of coalition forces is three times that of the forces in Afghanistan. The number of civilian deaths caused by the fighting has risen to 638 in the first five months of this year, which is 62 percent higher than in the comparable period in 2007.

According to media reports there has been a 40 percent increase in Taliban attacks on coalition forces in the provinces bordering Pakistan during the first six months of this year compared to last year, and Afghan and American officials are united in attributing this increase to the sanctuaries in Pakistan. What is not mentioned as prominently is the fact that overall there has been a 25 percent increase in attacks on coalition forces throughout Afghanistan suggesting that the border areas are only marginally worse than the rest of the country.

President Bush has spoken of sending more troops to Afghanistan next year but Admiral Mullen, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, has made it clear that the American armed forces are so overstretched that sending troops to Afghanistan will only be possible if the Iraqis take over some security duties in Iraq and make possible redeployment of forces from that zone.

In the meanwhile, as Dr Jones notes, in Afghanistan, the United States and its coalition partners have one of the lowest per capita deployment levels among all the 17 post-WWII operations that the author had studied and which even included a number of implicitly minor UN operations in Africa and Asia.

The development of local capacity has not progressed. In a report submitted to Congress last month, the Pentagon outlined an elaborate plan for raising the strength of the Afghan National Army to 80,000 and of the police to 82,000, and to take them through various stages of training to enable them to handle the security situation in Afghanistan on their own or with minimal external support.

Yet in the same month, the American General Accounting Office (GAO) — the rough equivalent of our Auditor General’s Office — put out a report that only 2 out of 205 units of the Afghan army were capable of carrying out independent operations. Report after report from the NGO community has highlighted the fact that the police force is more often than not the creature of the local warlord and, instead of providing security, is the most feared source of insecurity for most Afghans.

The Pentagon report also claims that the intention is to have a balanced multi-ethnic force. According to independent analysts however the Afghan army’s recruitment has not been balanced. While official figures have not been released since 2005, it has been estimated that 70 percent of the officer corps is now Tajik and an almost similar disparity exists in the ranks of the NCOs and the jawans. This of course means that the Afghan army will not be seen as an indigenous force when it is operating in Pashtun areas.

It is therefore clear that for many years to come the Afghan National Security Forces — the army and the Police — will not be available in sufficient numbers to handle the deteriorating security situation. In the meanwhile, foreign forces may, by the use of air power and a limited number of boots on the ground, be able to drive the Taliban out of certain areas but they cannot hold these areas.

The recent offensive in Garmser in the Kandahar province was the third time that the coalition forces will have driven the Taliban out only to see them return as soon as the coalition forces withdrew.

Given that adequate foreign and indigenous forces will not be available and that such forces as are there will not be regarded as national in the troubled areas of the country, it is certain the insurgency in Afghanistan is likely to be long drawn. What decisive action will the new American president want to take? How far will the finger point at Pakistan?

The writer is a former foreign secretary

 

[muse]

Be done with this confusion
Ejaz Haider



The Lal Masjid phenomenon manifests the tension and the confusion of this nation as nothing does; and the confusion is confounded by the lies mouthed by all concerned, including the media.

Let’s begin with the bombing of the police contingent in the closing moments of the congregation commemorating the “shuhada” of Lal Masjid.

If the people who were gathered at the mosque to venerate those who resisted the state and rebelled against it were and are right, then the man who blew himself up and killed the policemen and others should be hailed. He gave his life, just like the Lal Masjid rebels, for a higher cause, one, which, as the argument goes, even transcends the state.

By the same logic, those who attacked the mosque were wrong. They represented a state whose writ is unacceptable and, were one to employ the currently reigning exegesis in some circles, which must be fought because it is a battle of Right against Wrong — the faithful against the infidel. The state is apostate.

If, on the other hand, we think that the policemen met “shahadat” while performing their duty, the bombing was a dastardly act, the state is at war with some elements that want to subvert it from inside, then the Lal Masjid cannot be lionised — neither can those who died there fighting the state be considered heroes.

These are two different narratives; they are in conflict. Both cannot be right. One of the two, most definitely, is wrong and misplaced.

My intention here is not to judge either but simply to point to the absurdity of moving from one to the other as if they are compatible and part of a continuum.

What makes it worse is that all of us are making this mistake, some unwittingly, but most deliberately and wittingly. Those who know what they are doing belong to the media and the political leadership. They are mixing up the categories deliberately.

Let’s consider the probity of allowing the Lal Masjid conference to be held. What was the conference about? It was about those who died fighting the state. The current government’s act of allowing this conference to go ahead meant that it (the government) did not think that the act of commemorating those who fought the security forces and died in the mosque was wrong; corollary: those who died were right.

But if Lal Masjid was right and so are those honouring the memory of its heroes, then the current government is wrong too — as much in the wrong and apostate as the one that ordered the raid on the mosque. In which case, the current government should either not have allowed this conference to be held or if, as it did, it should simply step down to make way for the ideology represented by Lal Masjid. It cannot do both things.

The speeches at the conference, especially after the first session, called for acts and actions that go against the grain of state’s policies — for instance, in the tribal areas or in relation to Afghanistan. This means that the congregants actually believed in attacking the writ of the state and called upon all those sympathetic to their cause to do so. The bombing that happened, as it would have, was in keeping with the ideology propounded by the mosque.

Let it also be noted that the mosque has had links with sectarian organisations, the Taliban and Al Qaeda (the presence of cadres of banned sectarian organisations at the conference has been widely reported). It is no coincidence that within 24 hours of the raid on Lal Masjid, Ayman Al Zawahiri called upon the faithful to avenge the action; neither is it a coincidence that within 24 hours of Mr Zawahiri’s warning, security personnel at different points in the NWFP were hit with a spate of suicide bombings spread over almost a week.

So, what was the government thinking when it allowed the conference to be held and also allowed speakers to make speeches that go against the state’s writ? How will these elements challenge the state’s writ if not by attacking security forces and personnel who represent the state’s coercive arm?

The point is simple but I will reiterate it: either the state, as constituted currently, is wrong or the people challenging it are a menace.

The gem delivered by Rehman Malik, who advises the prime minister on internal security, is especially noteworthy for its idiocy. Bragging about security measures he asked the media what might have happened if the bomber had blown himself up among the congregants. Is Mr Malik for real? Does he really think the bomber would have blown himself up among his ideological kin and killed them?

The bomber attacked those he wanted to kill; he was avenging the raid. And, as always with such attacks, he proved deadly. I won’t be surprised if investigations reveal that he peeled off from the congregants to do his work rather than approaching the policemen from outside.

Now, to the media. Again, either the policemen are martyrs, having been killed in the line of duty or those who died in the mosque last year and also the man who blew himself up to kill the policemen. The media (reporters and anchors) cannot move between the two narratives as if they are mutually inclusive. If it was a “shuhada” conference then the man who killed the policemen was righteous and the policemen were representing the apostate state.

Let us decide, once and for all, what we stand for. If the nation really feels that Lal Masjid was right then damn the political parties, the current social contract and the United Nations. Let us lap up the ideology represented by Lal Masjid, sectarian organisations, the Taliban and Al Qaeda — yes, because they are all part of the same string.

If the nation is prepared to do that, nay spoiling to do so, let us chalk a new social contract, pray for the souls of all the suicide bombers, hail those who are fighting the security forces in FATA and the infidels in Afghanistan and be done with the state as it is configured today. The policemen, of course, had died in the wrong and in vain — just like every single security person who has fallen in this conflict has got killed in the wrong cause, defending an apostate state.

Conversely, if we are not prepared for the literalist exegesis that informs the millenarianism of the Taliban-Al Qaeda cadres, let us, for everyone’s sake including our own, stop glorifying them. Let us focus on the soldiers that have fallen rather than going on about the plight of the innocent “shuhada” of Lal Masjid.

We must also then realise that we are under threat; that these people are as much against our way of life as they are against the infidels west of Durand Line.

In which case, need it be said again that the government should not have allowed the crowd sympathetic to Lal Masjid to congregate in Islamabad, the capital city? Because the congregants’ narrative goes against everything the state and, by extension, this society stands for.

Let us decide and be done with this confusion, deliberate or unwitting.

Ejaz Haider is Consulting Editor of The Friday Times and Op-Ed Editor of Daily Times. He can be reached at sapper@dailytimes.com.pk

 

[ejaz007]

An article worth considering and thinking.