A New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan

[Edevelop]

Karzai is an Indian/Western Puppet and he is not making both of us move forward. There is nothing major he did in the last 8 years, so now what special thing can we expect?

Pakistan should just give a set of conditions for all to follow:

1) No Supply line if U.S forces continue Drone strikes.
2) Seal Afghan-Pakistan border completely if India is sitting there.
3) Border firing that will see killing of a Pakistani will see twice as much action and destruction from Pakistani forces.
4) No Immigration/Refugees/Aid if they don't hand over Pakistan's most wanted terrorists.

 

[batmannow]

Karzai is an Indian/Western Puppet and he is not making both of us move forward. There is nothing major he did in the last 8 years, so now what special thing can we expect?

Pakistan should just give a set of conditions for all to follow:

1) No Supply line if U.S forces continue Drone strikes.
2) Seal Afghan-Pakistan border completely if India is sitting there.
3) Border firing that will see killing of a Pakistani will see twice as much action and destruction from Pakistani forces.
4) No Immigration/Refugees/Aid if they don't hand over Pakistan's most wanted terrorists.

everything is perfect in your post, bt drones!
drones are the real edge, best is give pakistan to use them by themselves ?

 

[Edevelop]

everything is perfect in your post, bt drones!
drones are the real edge, best is give pakistan to use them by themselves ?

The drone condition should be for the U.S. Remember when we stopped their supply line for months? That was the period where Pakistan saw the most peaceful period in the last 10 years.

 

[batmannow]

The drone condition should be for the U.S. Remember when we stopped their supply line for months? That was the period where Pakistan saw the most peaceful period in the last 10 years.

but again we cant just let these stupids(talibans) off the hook!
we can teach them (mulla-ummer) how to run a country , how to deal with world nt just with guns but with love & diplomcy!
but for those who thought that they can cut pakistan by playing in anti-pakistan hands, we should use these drones brutly?

 

[RabzonKhan]

The drone condition should be for the U.S. Remember when we stopped their supply line for months? That was the period where Pakistan saw the most peaceful period in the last 10 years.

Cb4, do you have any data to support your claim?

 

[RabzonKhan]

Gen Kayani makes Afghan peace 'top priority'


By Reuters
Dec 23, 2012

WANA: Pakistan’s powerful army chief has made reconciling warring factions in Afghanistan a top priority, military officials and Western diplomats say, the newest and clearest sign yet that Islamabad means business in promoting peace with the Taliban.

General Ashfaq Kayani is backing dialogue partly due to fears that the end of the US combat mission in Afghanistan in 2014 could energise a resilient insurgency straddling the shared frontier, according to commanders deployed in the region.

“There was a time when we used to think we were the masters of Afghanistan. Now we just want them to be masters of themselves so we can concentrate on our own problems,” said a senior military officer stationed in South Waziristan, part of the tribal belt that hugs the Afghan border.

“Pakistan has the power to create the environment in which a grand reconciliation in Afghanistan can take place,” he said, speaking in the gritty town of Wana. “We have to rise to the challenge. And we are doing it, at the highest level possible.”

On December 7, Kayani hammered home his determination to support a negotiated end to the war in Afghanistan at a meeting of top commanders at the army headquarters in Rawalpindi.

“He (Kayani) said Afghan reconciliation is our top priority,” said a Pakistani intelligence official, who was briefed about the meeting.

Major progress with Kayani’s help could enable US President Barack Obama to say his administration managed to sway Pakistan – often seen as an unreliable ally – to help achieve a top US foreign policy goal.

Afghan officials, who have long suspected Pakistan of funding and arming the Taliban, question whether Kayani genuinely supports dialogue or is merely making token moves to deflect Western criticism of Pakistan’s record in Afghanistan.

Taliban’s rise to power in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s and is seen as a crucial gatekeeper in attempts by the US and Afghan governments to reach out to insurgent leaders who fled to Pakistan after their 2001 ouster.

Relations between Taliban commanders and Pakistan’s security establishment have increasingly been poisoned by mistrust, however, raising questions over whether Kayani’s spymasters wield enough influence to nudge them towards the table.

Nevertheless, diplomats in Islamabad argue that Pakistan has begun to show markedly greater enthusiasm for Western-backed attempts to engage with Taliban leaders. Western diplomats, who for years were sceptical about Pakistani promises, say Islamabad is serious about promoting stability in Afghanistan.

“They seem to genuinely want to move towards a political solution,” said an official from an EU country. “We’ve seen a real shift in their game-plan at every level. Everyone involved seems to want to get something going.”

 

[RabzonKhan]

Choices on Afghanistan

The New York Times
Editorial
Jan 7, 2013


President Obama will soon make critical choices on Afghanistan, including how fast to withdraw 66,000 American troops and whether to keep a small residual force there once the NATO combat mission concludes at the end of 2014. His talks with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, this week will be an important marker in that process.

A lot has happened since the two men met in Kabul last May and signed a strategic partnership agreement. Some developments, like signs of an incipient peace process between the Taliban and the Afghan government, are promising. But many are not. The Afghan Army and police forces have taken responsibility for securing larger and larger swaths of the country, but the Pentagon has admitted that only 1 of 23 NATO-trained brigades can operate without American assistance. The recent alarming rise in fatal attacks by Afghan forces on their American military mentors has crushed whatever was left of America’s appetite for the costly conflict.

Ideally, the 66,000 American troops would already be leaving, and all of them would be out as soon as safely possible; by our estimate, that would be the end of this year. The war that started after Sept. 11, 2001, would be over and securing the country would be up to Afghanistan’s 350,000-member security force, including the army and police, which the United States has spent $39 billion to train and equip over a decade.

But there is a conflict between the ideal and the political reality. Mr. Obama has yet to decide how fast he will withdraw the remaining troops, and the longer he delays, the more he enables military commanders who inevitably want to keep the maximum number of troops in Afghanistan for the maximum amount of time.

Another matter of concern is that Mr. Obama is seriously considering keeping a residual military force for an indefinite period after 2014. He needs to think carefully about what its mission would be and make his case to the public. Gen. John Allen, the commander in Afghanistan, had provided the White House with options for an enduring presence that went as high as 20,000 troops. That was an alarmingly big number, but fortunately now seems to be a nonstarter. American officials on Saturday said the administration is considering a much smaller force of 3,000 to 9,000.

If Mr. Obama cannot find a way to go to zero troops, he should approve only the minimum number needed, of mostly Special Operations commandos, to hunt down insurgents and serve as a deterrent against the Taliban retaking Kabul and Al Qaeda re-establishing a safe haven in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama will want to discuss all these issues with Mr. Karzai. The United States cannot go forward if Afghanistan opposes a residual force or puts undue restrictions on those troops.

Mr. Karzai, a deeply flawed leader who is expected to leave office next year, has his own agenda, which includes requests for updated American aircraft, surveillance equipment and longer-range artillery to modernize his army. Those requests cannot be taken seriously when Afghan security forces are increasingly murdering Americans and the Afghan government remains so profoundly corrupt.

 

[RabzonKhan]

America's non-committal relationship with Afghanistan

By Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
January 23, 2013

"A decade of war is now ending," the president announced in his inaugural address Monday, even as soldiers continue to prepare for nine-month deployments to destinations including Uruzgan and Kandahar.

The White House has long talked in the abstract about bringing a ‘responsible' end to the war President Obama once called the fight ‘we have to win.' What has been less clear is what the U.S. government has in mind regarding the very critical details concerning its commitment to Afghanistan post-2014. Among the central questions: how many U.S. troops will remain on in Afghanistan, and what size Afghan force will the U.S. push for and fund?

"I can't, sitting here, tell you whether I believe that this administration is actually committed to trying to make the Afghan Army as good as it can be in the next two years or whether we're simply trying to look for a decent interval while we dump that," former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald Neumann recently said at the Brookings Institution.

"The fact is we have a policy. What we are not clear about is whether we're serious about that policy and what the policy requires," Neumann said. "We need a discussion that is more articulated about missions, both military missions and others, and one can take different positions on whether you should advise in the field or not, or whether you're going to provide air support and some other key things, at least for a limited period while the Afghans finish development of those."

The American people, for their part, seem to have amnesia when it comes to recent conflicts. Iraq is a faint though bloody memory, and only for a fighting sliver of our country is Afghanistan a war that is still being fought.

Even as the battle in Afghanistan begins its slow wind down, America and its leaders still struggle to engage with it in a serious way.

That is why it is not terribly surprising to see Zero Dark Thirty disturb so many. It was not a glorification of torture, or a justification of its horrors and the consequences of it. Instead the film offered a well-lit snapshot of a fight and a war that few in this country have acknowledged more than momentarily, let alone debated. The film reminds viewers of battles most have not wanted to see or speak of beyond perfunctory praise for America's troops fighting and dying in places their countrymen will never know.

When war does not intrude on Americans' daily life, even in news headlines, it is easy to understand why colliding with the brutality of its reality is shocking. America has forcefully avoided engaging with a war fought by less than one percent of its population, and its leaders have shrunk at explaining either the stakes or the mission at hand in Afghanistan. The closest that many have come to reading about the Afghanistan war of late is probably coverage of the scandal surrounding former Gen. David Petraeus' resignation.

With Afghan President Hamid Karzai's visit to Washington earlier this month comes another step on the path to closing out this war with which Americans long ago grew tired. Multiple U.S. troop deployments, deadly ‘green on blue' attacks on American soldiers, and Afghan government corruption account for much of the exhaustion. But a lack of leadership from Washington is also worth noting.

In his book tour interviews former Gen. Stanley McChrystal nearly pleaded with the American public to care about its longest-ever war. He also argued that not all is lost.

"I believe Afghanistan can be stable," McChrystal said on CBS. "I think they must take responsibility for their security, the vast lion's share, but I think the strategic partnership that President Obama offered to President Karzai is critical. Not just physically. It's not how many troops and how much money, it's the idea in the minds of Afghans that they have a reliable partner."

And as former Sen. Chuck Hagel seeks to become Defense Secretary Hagel the details and durability of that partnership is on the minds of others who have served in Afghanistan on the diplomatic side.

"We have the structures in place, both bilaterally, through our strategic partnership agreement that carries on to 2024, and internationally, through the Chicago agreements to fund Afghan security forces into the out years, as well as the Tokyo ministerial from July that pledged the international community to something like $16 billion in economic support on terms of conditionality, again over the next three to four years. So the architecture is there," said former Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker last month. "What is critical is American will -- because again, let me tell you something learned through hard experience: If we don't lead, others are going to wander away too, and those pledges will vanish like smoke. Absolutely guarantee it."

Crocker argued for an American wallet that remains open to support Afghan forces and a fledgling civil society.

"We will wind up paying about $2.5 billion a year to support -- as our share of support for Afghan security forces totaling 230,000. That sounds like a lot of money until you consider that we're paying about $110 billion a year now. So this is pretty cheap insurance," Crocker said. "And I have argued and will argue, that support for Afghan women, for civil society, for social and economic development is also pretty cheap insurance to prevent a spirit of hopelessness from taking hold among the general population that makes it easy for the Taliban."

Unfortunately, a spirit of hopelessness already has taken hold among the American public.

Whether the country's leaders decide to challenge that despair and dig into the details of and the rationale behind America's involvement in Afghanistan after next year remains an unanswered question. But the past few years leave little reason to think that Washington will soon open up and start talking about the war and its goals. And an exhausted American public is unlikely to push them to do so.

For America the war may be over, but men and women in uniform continue to fight it.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The Dressmaker of Khair Khana.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Tragedies tied to Taliban commander Maulana Fazlullah link girls a world apart

Washington Post
By Dana Priest and Haq Nawaz Khan,
1/27/2013

December Stets was just 18 when several stoic soldiers arrived at her family’s door in North Carolina three years ago with a message that demolished her world: Her father, Army Staff Sgt. Mark Stets Jr., 39, had been killed by a car bomb outside a girls school in northwest Pakistan.

“I wanted to cry, but I was in shock,” said December Stets, who recalled holding her sobbing mother in her arms.

In the chaos that follows most such attacks, it is not usually possible to finger those responsible. But U.S. intelligence officers have done just that, they said recently, linking a bushy-bearded regional Pakistani Taliban commander, Maulana Fazlullah, to the February 2010 school bombing that killed Stets and two other Special Forces soldiers.

Fazlullah is notorious for murdering and maiming schoolgirls as part of his vicious campaign to impose Taliban rule on Pakistan. He also is behind the assassination attempt last fall against 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani advocate for girls education who lived in the same unruly frontier area as the schoolhouse bombing that killed the U.S. soldiers and three Pakistani girls.

The link between the violent episodes illuminates the transnational grief that one chronic terrorist figure can cause. December Stets’s life was upended, as were the lives of four other daughters, most living near Fort Bragg, N.C., where their fathers were posted. Half a world away, Malala was shot in the head and left for dead and two of her schoolmates were wounded. And survivors of the 2010 school blast, like Sara Ali, 14, who suffered major back injuries, live in fear of another attack.

Pakistan officials complained for years, and again after the attack on Malala in October, that U.S. forces were doing too little to stop Fazlullah. But that has changed. A senior U.S. Special Operations official said recently that Fazlullah is a priority — stalked by spies on the ground and squarely in the sights of armed drones.

“He is very high on the leader board,” said the senior official, referring to a list of Special Operations targets. “We have assets focused on killing him.”

Feb. 3, 2010, was supposed to be a day of celebration in the village of Shahi Koto in the Lower Dir district of northwestern Pakistan. The modest school had been rebuilt with U.S. and international donations after extremists opposed to educating girls blew it up. Pakistani and U.S. dignitaries were on their way to an opening ceremony. Its corridors and classrooms bustled with activity.

Just before 11 a.m., as the armored vehicle carrying December Stets’s father and four other Army Special Forces soldiers approached in a convoy of Pakistani security vans, the bomb was detonated. The blast killed three schoolgirls and wounded more than 100 students and teachers, some of whom were trapped for hours under slabs of concrete and steel rebar. It blew down the new schoolyard walls, turned the refurbished classrooms into rubble and twisted cars into mangled heaps.

The explosion killed Stets, as well as Sgt. 1st Class Matthew S. Sluss-Tiller, 35, and Sgt. 1st Class David J. Hartman, 27. Two other Special Forces soldiers were badly wounded.

The Pakistan military had recently concluded a surge in nearby Swat Valley to shut down Fazlullah’s regional Pakistani Taliban, which had carried out a brutal years-long campaign that included beheadings and the execution of civilians as well as Pakistani soldiers and police. But the leader had eluded them.

Fazlullah remained little known outside Pakistan until this past October, when a gunman boarded a bus carrying girls home from their school in Swat’s largest city, Mingora. He called out for Malala, who had achieved a measure of fame as an advocate for educating girls, and opened fire. Miraculously, Malala survived. She has recently left a Birmingham, England, hospital and is recuperating with her family in Britain.

The attempted assassination of a 15-year-old girl made headlines worldwide, focusing new attention on the difficulties of educating girls and young women in parts of Pakistan. Less attention has been paid to Fazlullah’s impact on the lives of young women in the United States whose lived have been changed by the loss of their fathers.

Among them, Sluss-Tiller, Stets and Hartman had five daughters and one young son. Like the survivors of other U.S. troops who were killed in action over the past decade, these children and their mothers have struggled to deal with their losses. Some have fallen into deep depression, four relatives said in interviews recently.

Stets’s wife, Nina, moved from near Fort Bragg to Las Vegas for a while last year. She said she hoped not seeing men in uniform every day would give her some relief.

“It really helped me feel better to move away,” she said. “I don’t stay in my room all day anymore with the TV on.”

Around Christmas she and December moved back to North Carolina and in with her two other daughters who were living in the family home near the Army post. On Jan. 4, Mark Stets’s birthday, they celebrated with a trip to his favorite Mexican restaurant and a round of his favorite Mexican beer. “It’s not easier for any of us,” said Nina Stets. “We just learn to live with our situation.”

Halfway around the globe, life for Fazlullah’s Pakistani victims is considerably less hopeful.

The 10-room maroon-colored school has been rebuilt, except for one feature: its boundary wall, which students and teachers say would provide a measure of defense against another attack.

Even today they are wary of talking about the bombing. Some fear Taliban retribution, and others are reluctant to stir traumatic memories.

“Another blast may happen anytime,” said ninth-grader Sara Ali, whose back injuries have required multiple surgeries. While other girls’ parents pulled their children from school for good, Sara said her parents encouraged her to resume classes after her recovery.

Still, she lives in fear. “I am scared in darkness and sometimes in dreams,” said the teenager, who wore a blue and white school uniform and covered her face with a black shawl.

For girls here, 10th grade is usually the highest level of education they can achieve, before families send them off to be wed. Once that happens, a girl’s options are narrowed because of a conservative religious culture in the frontier and tribal areas that keeps them at home. Some go on to become teachers, but increasing Talibanization is likely to make girls reluctant even to teach. “There is always fear of an attack on the schools, especially the female schools,” said a teacher in her 40s who asked that her name not be used.

Malik Ulfat Hayat, 42, a political worker in Temergarah, the major town in Lower Dir district, said education levels were increasing before extremism took hold. Not anymore: “Militancy has pushed us almost a decade backward in education,” he said.

Conflicting reports from the region said a recent U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan’s Nuristan province might have killed Fazlullah. Neither U.S. nor Pakistan officials have been able to confirm his death. Some of his followers assert that he is still alive.

Stets’s wife and daughter said they have not spent much time wondering about the identity of the person responsible for Stets’s death.

“I thought about it for a second,” said December Stets, who described herself as religious. “But it’s not going to bring him back. If we can’t get him here, he’ll be got when he’s gone. He’s not going to get away with it.”


Priest reported from Washington; Khan from Pakistan. Julie Tate in Washington and Richard Leiby in Islamabad contributed to this report.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Exclusive interview: A peek into the Afghan Taliban mind

The Express Tribune
By Munizae Jahangir
February 28, 2013

KABUL: Nine years ago he was sentenced to 16 years in jail for kidnapping three United Nations workers in Afghanistan. However, he was pardoned by President Hamid Karzai in 2009 and subsequently released. Today, he lives in a mansion in an upscale neighbourhood of the Afghan capital. Meet Syed Muhammad Akbar Agha, a former leader of the ultraorthodox Taliban militia.

Born in the birthplace of the Taliban movement, Akbar Agha is a cousin of Mullah Muhammad Syed Tayyab Agha, former chief of staff of elusive Taliban supremo Mullah Omar and currently the chief peace negotiator of the militia. In 2004, Akbar Agha formed the breakaway Taliban faction of Jaishul Muslemeen which carried out frequent attacks on Nato supplies.

He believes the US military wants talks with their boots on the Taliban’s neck. “Peace negotiations can begin only if all international troops pull out of Afghanistan,” he told ExpressNews anchor Munizae Jahangir in an exclusive interview. He added that enforcement of the Taliban’s hard-line version of Islamic shariah was “not negotiable”. Akbar Agha frequently churns out statements for the media on behalf of the Taliban militia.

Recently, Taliban negotiators met with Afghan interlocutors in the Qatari capital of Doha as part of a fledgling peace and reconciliation process sanctioned by President Karzai — with US blessings, needless to say. Officially, the militia denies any contact with emissaries of President Karzai who, they say, is a “US puppet”.

However, the Afghan government spokesperson, Aimal Faizi, has claimed that Taliban representatives are willing to hold talks with the Karzai administration as they travelled to Paris last December on official Afghan passports to take part in a conference organised by a French think-tank.

Agha Akbar rejects the claims. He said the Taliban representatives travelled using the same passports they used before the overthrow of their regime in late 2001. He added that the Taliban were reluctant to use Pakistani passports because it would reinforce the general impression in Afghanistan that the militia was under Pakistan’s tutelage.

Akbar Agha echoed an oft-repeated statement by Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid that they would only talk to the United States. “We have never invited Pakistan or Afghanistan for talks. Afghan Taliban are a reality and we do not feel a need to sit across the table with Pakistan. We will hold peace talks with the US. The Afghan people or government can be taken on board at a later stage,” he added.

Influential Pakistan politico-religious leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman travelled to the Qatari capital earlier this month to facilitate talks with the Taliban, albeit the two sides officially denied the Doha rendezvous. Akbar Agha also had a word of advice for Islamabad. “Pakistan should keep itself away from it [peace talks] because the Taliban are blamed for having Pakistan’s patronage.”

He made it clear that the Taliban would only negotiate with the US after it built trust by releasing their prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention centre and giving guarantees that no criminal cases would be pursued against them.

Of late, Pakistan released several mid-ranking Taliban cadres at the request of the Afghan High Peace Council as part of its efforts to facilitate the nascent peace process. However, Akbar Agha claimed that as an Islamic state, it was Pakistan’s obligation to free the Taliban prisoners and that it was an un-Islamic move on Islamabad’s part to arrest those “waging a jihad and hand them over to the United States for money”.

He accused Pakistan of deceiving the Taliban and said that it should release all Taliban prisoners unconditionally, consider Afghanistan as a brotherly country and make sincere efforts to solve its problems.

Akbar Agha also indirectly condoned the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)’s bloody insurgency. Pakistani Taliban only retaliate against their government in support of their Afghan namesakes, he said, adding that the Afghan Taliban would always support them. While he condoned TTP attacks against Pakistani government, he condemned those targeting innocent civilians.

He said the Afghan Taliban resented that the Pakistani government arrested TTP militants and forced them to agree on certain points at the behest of the Americans. In a quick rejoinder, Akbar Agha, however added that the Afghan Taliban do not blame the people of Pakistan for their government’s policies. (The interview will be aired on ExpressNews tomorrow at 4pm)

 

[RazPaK]

This just a ploy by Karzai and his corrupt government.

Karzai: Please don't throw me to the dogs.

 

[RabzonKhan]

This just a ploy by Karzai and his corrupt government.

Karzai: Please don't throw me to the dogs.

Just wait and see, as the Afghan endgame is drawing closer, more truth will come out, and people who believe that Afghan- Taliban's are our friends are living in fool's paradise.

 

[Capt.Popeye]

Just wait and see, as the Afghan endgame is drawing closer, more truth will come out, and people who believe that Afghan- Taliban's are our friends are living in fool's paradise.

@Rabzon; there are still some souls who think that Cobras can make good "friends" or "pets".
Let us just watch the fun when they get bitten !

 

[RabzonKhan]

Pakistan required something like Marshal Plan: HolBrooke

By APP
March 6, 2013


WASHINGTON: The late US special envoy to Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, wanted Washington and the international community to commit $ 50 billion to stimulate Pakistan’s economic development and convinced former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of forging a strategic partnership with the country, says a new book by a former American official.

The book “The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat”, by Vali Nasr, who served as advisor to Holbrooke at the State Department, offers a critique of the White House’s handling of the foreign policy issues under President Barack Obama’s first administration.

To create a new narrative in US-Pakistan relations, Nasr writes, Holbrooke started by calling together a meeting in Tokyo of the newly created Friends of Democratic Pakistan, an international gathering to help Pakistan rebuild its economy and strengthen democratic politics.

He got $5 billion in pledges to assist Pakistan. Nasr, who worked with Holbrooke until his death in December 2010, says Holbrooke hoped that the opening would garner even more by way of capital investment in Pakistan’s future. But if we wanted to change Pakistan, Holbrooke thought, we had to think even bigger, in terms of a Marshall Plan, Nasr recalls.

After a journalist asked him whether the $5 billion in aid was too much for Pakistan, Holbrooke answered, “Pakistan needs $50 billion, not $5 billion.”

For the White House the idea meant a fight with Congress and spending political capital to convince the American people, Nasr argues.

“Above all else, it required an audacious foreign-policy gambit for which the Obama administration was simply not ready,” he claims.

Nasr also points out in the book that in reality the United States was spending much more on Afghanistan that it devoted to Pakistan.

“For every dollar we gave Pakistan in aid, we gave $20 to Afghanistan. That money did not go very far; it was like pouring water into sand. Even General Petraeus understood this. I recall him saying at a Pakistan meeting: “You get what you pay for. We have not paid much for much of anything in Pakistan.” In the end, Nasr says the U.S. settled for far more modest assistance.

The 2009 Kerry-Lugar-Berman legislation earmarked $7.5 billion in aid to Pakistan over five years, the first long-term civilian aid package.

“It was no Marshall Plan,” Nasr remarks. Holbrooke also believed the U.S. needed more aggressive diplomacy.

“America had to talk to Pakistan frequently and not just about security issues that concerned the United States, but also about economic and social issues the Pakistanis cared about. So Holbrooke convinced Clinton that America had to offer a strategic partnership to Pakistan, built around a formal ‘strategic dialogue’ the kind of forum that America holds with a number of countries, including China and India,” he argues.

Nasr, who is the dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, writes that the US National Security Council at that time “wanted to do the State Department’s job but was not up to the task. It was no surprise that our AfPak policy took one step forward and two steps back.” He says despite efforts by Hillary Clinton, the US foreign policy was shaped by the security institutions who had a “predictably narrow and terrorism-focused” approach.

A spokesperson described the relations between the State Department and the White House as excellent, when the issue was raised in the light of the book at the daily briefing. The spokesperson also defended progress made in Afghanistan.

“We have an excellent working relationship with our White House and interagency colleagues and let me just tell you a little bit about where we are in Afghanistan, because some of the thrust of the book is talking about policy development on Afghanistan.

” We’ve increased the capacity of Afghan security forces to fight insurgents, transitioning Afghan security lead transitioning to an Afghan security lead, building an enduring partnership with Afghanistan,” acting deputy spokesman Patrick Ventrell told journalists.

“We now have Afghan forces leading nearly 90 percent of operations across the country. We’ve signed the Strategic Partnership Agreement. We’re working on a new negotiating a new bilateral security agreement,” he added.

“We’re working on preparations for a free, inclusive, and transparent election in 2014. So we really stand behind the record of the progress we’ve made in Afghanistan, but beyond that i’m not going to get into inter-agency discussions,” he said.

Ventrell said the State Department regularly gives its input on foreign policy issues but added he would not characterize some sort of historical discussion about what happened in years past.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Drones: Myths and Reality in Pakistan

International Crisis Group

Islamabad/Washington/Brussels | 21 May 2013

Drone strikes alone will not eliminate the ****** threat in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Extension of Pakistani law and full constitutional rights to the region is the only long-term solution.

In its latest report, Drones: Myths and Reality in Pakistan, the International Crisis Group examines the extensive CIA-led program of drone strikes in Pakistan. The report argues that the U.S. needs to be transparent about its drone policies and bring them in accord with legality and enhanced congressional oversight and judicial accountability, while Pakistan must live up to its responsibility for governance and security in FATA.

The report’s major findings and recommendations are:

•Pakistan’s new civilian leadership under PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif must make the extension of the state’s writ in FATA the centrepiece of its counter-terrorism agenda, bringing violent extremists to justice and thus diminishing Washington’s perceived need to conduct drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal belt.

• Drones are not a long-term solution to the problem they are being deployed to address, since the ****** groups in FATA will continue to recruit as long as the region remains an ungoverned no-man’s land.

• The U.S., while pressuring the Pakistan military to end all support to violent extremists, should also support civilian efforts to bring FATA into the constitutional and legal mainstream.

• The lack of candour from the U.S. and Pakistan governments on the drone program undermines efforts to assess its legality or its full impact on FATA’s population. The U.S. refuses to officially acknowledge the program; Pakistan portrays it as a violation of national sovereignty, but ample evidence exists of tacit Pakistani consent and, at times, active cooperation.

• Pakistan must ensure that its actions and those of the U.S. comply with the principles of distinction and proportionality under international humanitarian law. Independent observers should have access to targeted areas, where significant military and militant-imposed barriers have made accurate assessments of the program’s impact, including collateral damage, nearly impossible.

• The U.S. should cease any practices, such as “signature strikes”, that do not comply with international humanitarian law. The U.S. should develop a legal framework that defines clear roles for the executive, legislative and judicial branches, converting the drone program from a covert CIA operation to a military-run program with a meaningful level of judicial and Congressional oversight.

“The core of any Pakistani counter-terrorism strategy in this area should be to incorporate FATA into the country’s legal and constitutional mainstream”, says Samina Ahmed, Crisis Group’s Senior Asia Adviser. “For Pakistan, the solution lies in overhauling an anachronistic governance system so as to establish fundamental constitutional rights and genuine political enfranchisement in FATA, along with a state apparatus capable of upholding the rule of law and bringing violent extremists to justice”.




EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Nine years after the first U.S. drone strike in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in 2004, the U.S. refuses to officially acknowledge the CIA-run program, while Pakistan denies consenting to it. This secrecy undermines efforts to assess the program’s legality or its full impact on FATA’s population. It also diverts attention from a candid examination of the roots of militancy in the poorly governed tribal belt bordering southern and eastern Afghanistan and how best to address them. Drone strikes may disrupt FATA-based militant groups’ capacity to plan and execute cross-border attacks on NATO troops and to plot attacks against the U.S. homeland, but they cannot solve the fundamental problem. The ability of those groups to regroup, rearm and recruit will remain intact so long as they enjoy safe havens on Pakistani territory and efforts to incorporate FATA into the constitutional mainstream are stifled.

Since 2004, there have been at least 350 drone strikes in FATA, mostly in North Waziristan, South Waziristan and Kurram agencies. These have killed significant numbers of al-Qaeda leaders and senior militant commanders of both the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, but also scores of innocent civilians, in part because of so-called “signature” strikes that target groups of men based on behaviour patterns associated with terrorist activity rather than known identities.

Even with so-called “personality” strikes in which the individual has been targeted based on evidence of identity, accurate assessments of collateral damage are impossible. Independent researchers, facing significant military and militant-imposed barriers to access in FATA, rely primarily on media reports that depend largely on anonymous U.S. government and/or Pakistani military sources – each with a vested interest in under- or over-reporting civilian casualties.

Neither is it possible to gauge the real feelings of civilians who live in the areas of drone operations. Fearing retaliation from the militants or the military, respondents choose their words carefully. For the same reasons, it is hard to determine with any precision the strategic impact of the drone campaign. While reported signature strikes may in particular fuel local alienation, at the same time, the deaths of senior, highly experienced commanders are certainly a hard blow for the militants.

Pakistan’s attitude towards drones borders on the schizophrenic. Rather than inherently opposing the strikes, its leadership, in particular its military, seeks greater control over target selection. This is often to punish enemies, but sometimes, allegedly, to protect militants who enjoy good relations with, or support from, the military – leaders of the Haqqani network, for example, or some Pakistani Taliban groups with whom the military has made peace deals.

Ample evidence exists of tacit Pakistani consent and active cooperation with the drone program, contradicting the official posture that it violates the country’s sovereignty. This includes acknowledgements by former President Pervez Musharraf in April 2013 and by then-Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in 2008 and 2010. After the October 2001 U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan, Musharraf’s military regime permitted a substantial CIA presence in at least two airbases, Shamsi in southern Balochistan and Shahbaz in Sindh’s Jacobabad district, for intelligence gathering and collaboration; both were used to gather intelligence for drone strikes and possibly even to conduct them. This cooperation and collaboration signified Pakistan’s assent to the program. It was not until the November 2011 NATO air raid that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border and months after the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, vitiating relations with Washington, that Islamabad demanded the U.S. vacate one of the bases.

While drones have not themselves caused the political falling out between Washington and Islamabad, the Pakistani military has attempted to take advantage of downturns in the relationship to leverage greater control over drone targets. Even after the U.S. vacated the Shamsi base in December 2011, some level of Pakistani sanction for the strikes continues. While condemning attacks against its anti-Afghanistan-oriented ****** allies, such as the August 2012 killing of Badruddin Haqqani, the Haqqani network’s third in command, it supports strikes against its internal enemies, such as Maulvi Dadullah, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban in Bajaur Agency, killed in a drone strike in Afghanistan’s Kunar province that same month. The U.S. hit list now reportedly includes Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of a Pakistani Taliban faction in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s (KPK’s) Malakand region, ousted in a military operation in 2009, and now operating out of Afghanistan’s Nuristan province.

The legal debate does not pivot only on Pakistani consent. Both countries are subject to numerous obligations under international law and their respective domestic legislation. Islamabad has a constitutional and international obligation to protect the lives of citizens and non-citizens alike on its territory. Even if it seeks U.S. assistance against individuals and groups at war with the state, Pakistan is still obliged to ensure that its actions and those of the U.S. comply with the principles, among others, of distinction and proportionality under International Humanitarian Law, and ideally to give independent observers unhindered access to the areas targeted.

The Obama administration should terminate any practice, such as the reported signature strikes, that does not comply with principles of international humanitarian and human rights law. It must also introduce transparency to the drone program, including its governing rules, how targets are selected and how civilian damage is weighed. By transferring its management from the CIA to the Defense Department, the administration would establish clearer lines of authority and accountability, including greater congressional and judicial oversight.

Distorted through hyper-nationalistic segments of the Pakistani media and hi-jacked by political hardliners, the domestic Pakistani debate on the impact of drone operations has overshadowed a more urgent discussion about the state’s obligation to its citizens in FATA, who are denied constitutional rights and protections. In the absence of formal courts and law enforcement institutions, the state fails to protect FATA’s residents from ****** and other criminal groups.

The core of any Pakistani counter-terrorism strategy in this area should be to incorporate FATA into the country’s legal and constitutional mainstream. This should be accompanied by a national counter-terrorism policy that prioritises the modernisation of a failing criminal justice sector, thus enabling the state to bring violent extremists to justice.

While the U.S. and international debate over legitimacy and control of drone strikes is highly important, drones are not a long-term solution to the problem they are being deployed to solve – destruction of local, regional and wider transnational jihadis who operate out of Pakistan’s tribal belt.

The U.S. policy should be two-fold: pressuring the Pakistan military to abandon any logistical or other support to violent extremists, including by more rigorously applying existing conditions on security assistance; and encouraging and supporting efforts by the elected leadership in Islamabad to extend the state’s writ to FATA. Similarly, if Pakistan is genuinely committed to ending strikes on its territory, it should realise that its strongest case against the U.S. drone program lies in overhauling an anachronistic governance system so as to establish fundamental constitutional rights and genuine political enfranchisement in FATA, along with a state apparatus capable of upholding the rule of law and bringing violent extremists to justice.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To introduce transparency to the U.S. drone program in Pakistan and ensure it is consistent with key principles of International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law

To the Federal Government of Pakistan:

1. Enable independent assessment of drone strike casualties and impact on FATA by:


a) lifting all travel and other restrictions on independent observers, national and foreign, to the targeted areas in FATA; and

b) conditioning any ongoing consent of drone strikes on the institution of transparent U.S. policies and practices that respect international humanitarian law principles of humanity, distinction, proportionality and military necessity, and ending any active or tacit support should the U.S. program violate those principles.

To the U.S. Government:

2. Demonstrate respect for the international humanitarian law principles of humanity, distinction, proportionality and military necessity, including by:


a) halting reported signature strikes that target groups of men based on behaviour patterns that may be associated with terrorist activity rather than known identities; and

b) ending the reported practice of counting all military-aged men in a strike zone as combatants unless sufficient evidence proves them innocent posthumously.

3. Develop a rigorous legal framework for the use of drones that defines clear roles for the executive, legislative and judicial branches and introduces a meaningful level of regular judicial and congressional oversight.

4. Convert the drone program from a covert CIA operation to a military-run program overseen by the Defense Department, with oversight by the Senate and House Armed Services Committees and appropriate judicial review.

To bolster the Pakistani civilian government’s ability to protect its citizens and bring violent extremists to justice

To the Federal Government of Pakistan:

5. Ensure that the federal cabinet takes the lead in formulating comprehensive, nationwide and civilian-led counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency policies, centred on enhancing rule-of-law institutions, with input from and oversight by the legislature, particularly the parliamentary committee on national security and the Senate committee on defence and defence production.

6. Make the extension of the state’s writ in FATA the centrepiece of the counter-terrorism agenda by:


a) extending the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and Peshawar High Court to FATA, as authorised by Article 247 of the constitution;

b) abolishing the FATA secretariat, established by the Musharraf military regime in 2006, and returning its responsibilities to the relevant Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province (KPK) line ministries;

c) incorporating FATA into the constitutional mainstream, abolishing the Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR, 1901) and replacing it by the Pakistan Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Code and Evidence Act.

d) replacing tribal jirgas (councils of elders) with district and sub-district courts, manned by judges, and extending the jurisdiction of the KPK police to FATA;

e) repealing the Actions (in Aid of Civil Power) Regulations 2011 for FATA; and

f) enhancing border management cooperation with Afghanistan to contain and prevent militant cross border movement.

7. Establish clear guidelines for remedial action if and when innocent civilians are injured or killed, whether by U.S. drones or the Pakistani military, and create a compensation fund for such victims.

To the U.S. Government:

8. Implement existing conditions on military aid if the Pakistan military or elements within it do not take concrete steps to end support to the Haqqani network, the Quetta Shura, the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and other extremist groups, including factions of the Pakistani Taliban; and consider as a last resort imposing targeted and incremental sanctions, including travel and visa bans and the freezing of financial assets of key military leaders and military-controlled intelligence agencies responsible for supporting extremist elements that plan and conduct attacks from Pakistani territory against its neighbourhood and beyond.

9. Shift the priority of security assistance to making Pakistan a strong criminal justice partner by supporting the modernisation and enhancing the counter-terrorism capacity of the police and civilian law enforcement agencies.

10. Condition FATA aid on tangible steps by Pakistan’s federal government to extend the state’s writ in the tribal belt and implement political reforms – including by abolishing the FATA secretariat and returning its responsibilities to KPK line ministries and instituting an effective law enforcement apparatus – and then provide technical, financial and other support to that new system.