Solomon2
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India-Pakistan: First We Must Kill All The Lawyers
August 25, 2016: Pakistan continues to resist foreign (especially American) pressure to halt its decade’s long practice of secretly supporting Islamic terrorist groups. The United States openly accuses Pakistan of lying about shutting down some key Islamic terrorist groups (like the Haqqani Network, al Qaeda and several that operate against India) in Pakistan. This pressure is nothing new and has led to a sharp (73 percent) drop in American military assistance since 2011. That is now costing Pakistan over a billion dollars a year as well as access to high-tech American military equipment. The U.S. has also cut economic assistance by about half since 2011 and that is costing Pakistan another half billion dollars a year. Now the United States threatens to cut all aid and impose sanctions if Pakistan does not act. The main sore point here is continued Pakistani support for the Afghan Taliban (and their Baluchistan sanctuary), various Islamic terror groups that concentrate on India (with bases throughout Pakistan but especially in the north, near the border with Indian Kashmir) and the Haqqani Network. This last group was supposedly driven out of its longtime sanctuary in North Waziristan by a 2014 Pakistani military offensive but is still seen operating in northwest Pakistan on both sides of the Afghan border. The Haqqani Network has survived since the 1980s by being very much an obedient servant of Pakistan. That meant no terror attacks in Pakistan and, when called on, carrying out specific attacks that Pakistani intelligence (ISI) wanted (usually in Afghanistan). Unlike the Afghan Taliban, Haqqani keeps most of its operations in Pakistan and operates in Afghanistan (mainly between the border and Kabul) to carry out attacks and run their various criminal activities (for raising cash). Founder Jalaluddin Haqqani died in 2o14 and his successor (Siraj Haqqani) continued to cooperate with the Taliban and maintain subservience to ISI. Because Jalaluddin Haqqani helped Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders escape Afghanistan in 2001 there has always been a sense of mutual dependence. For that reason Haqqani leaders were able to help fix the mid-2015 power struggle within the Taliban and thwart the recruiting efforts of ISIL. Given that Haqqani works for ISI, Pakistan is believed to have played a role in this new arrangement. The Afghan government protested to Pakistan about this but, as usual, Pakistan insisted it had nothing to do with Haqqani, the Taliban or supporting Islamic terrorism of any kind. The Taliban reconciliation deal appears to have involved an understanding, by the end of 2015, that if anything happened to Monsour a powerless figurehead would be appointed the new leader and Siraj Haqqani would officially run the Haqqani Network and unofficially call the shots for the Afghan Taliban. That’s what happened in late May after Monsour was killed by an American UAV missile attack. Now the Haqqani Network and its leader is seen as the most powerful Pakistani sponsored Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan.
Decades of Pakistani efforts to gain a degree of control over Afghanistan have backfired, especially inside Afghanistan. There the primary Pakistani allies are drug gangs, corrupt politicians and Islamic terrorists. Not surprisingly these three groups are the most hated inside Afghanistan and despite death threats and bribes the Afghan media and a growing number of usually quiet (out of fear) politicians, prominent preachers and tribal leaders are speaking out. This was mostly out of self-interest as most of Afghanistan’s worst problems could be traced back to Pakistan. The biggest problem is illegal drugs, mainly opium and heroin. Pakistan drove the drug gangs out of its own tribal territories in the 1980s but the drug business simply moved to Afghanistan and both countries now suffer from widespread addiction and the growing financial and political (via bribes) power of gangsters thriving on drug profits. Afghanistan is the largest producer of heroin in the world and drugs are a major part of the economy, especially in the south (Kandahar and Helmand provinces). This is where most of the Taliban leadership and manpower came (and still come) from. Pakistan admit they created the Taliban, but only to stop the 1990s civil war in Afghanistan. That wasn’t true. Pakistan expected the Taliban to ensure that whatever government was running Afghanistan, Pakistani needs would be tended to. That meant tolerance for the drug trade (which made many Pakistanis rich), no contacts with India and no criticism of the Pakistani military or its intelligence branch (the ISI). But the Taliban and the drug gangs have been tearing Afghanistan apart ever since. Only about ten percent of Afghans got any economic benefit out of the drug business and millions of Afghans, Pakistanis and people throughout the region have become drug addicts. Afghan leaders also noted that more and more of the most talented and promising young Afghans were leaving. They would work hard as long as it took to raise enough money to hire people smugglers to get them to someplace safer and more promising. Afghan was neither, even if you had a lot of money. The problem is that entrenched and well financed problems are difficult to change. Corruption is particularly difficult to reduce (you never completely eliminate it).
One thing that finally turned Afghan leadership against Pakistan was the realization that ISI was even willing to support ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) suicide bombing in Afghanistan. The destruction of ISIL is one thing all Moslem nations (not to mention the non-Moslem world) can agree on. Because of the ISIL connection most Afghans now agree Pakistan is the biggest threat to Afghanistan. A growing number of Pakistanis believe this as well, which alarms the Pakistani military than anything the Afghans might say...
...August 24, 2016: In northwest Pakistan (Khyber) the army has been searching the sparsely populate Afghan border area to find Islamic terrorists hideouts and set up outposts to block trails and passes Islamic terrorists use to move between Pakistan and Afghanistan. After about a week of efforts 43 hideouts and weapons caches (hidden storage sites) had been found and destroyed. In most cases the Islamic terrorists detected the approach of the soldiers and fled but there were some clashes and 40 Islamic terrorists were killed and 21 wounded. A lot of the searching and attacking was done from the air using helicopters, UAVs and F-16s armed with smart bombs. The troops on the ground were crucial for searching camps and storage sites to find documents and other information about Islamic terrorist organizations and plans. Some of the storage sites contained lots of ammo and bomb making components. Some completed bombs were found as well.
In southwest Pakistan (Baluchistan) someone (Islamic terrorists, gangsters or tribal separatists) set off a bomb near a bus stop and wounded eleven people. Elsewhere in the area troops clashed with tribal separatists and killed five of them. Near this clash police arrested two suspected tribal separatists.
Across the border in Afghanistan (Khost province, adjacent to North Waziristan) an American UAV missile attack killed Inayat Shah, a much wanted (by just about everyone) Pakistan Taliban leader and three of his followers. Shah was also believed to be a key liaison between the Pakistani Taliban and the local (Afghanistan, Pakistan. India) branch of ISIL...
...In southwest Pakistan (Baluchistan) the Chamman border crossing was closed by the Pakistanis because Afghanistan refused to punish civilians who had demonstrated against Pakistan at Chamman on the 19th and burned a Pakistani flag. Chamman is the second most active border crossing with Afghanistan. The most active crossing is Torkham Gate in northwest Pakistan. That one was closed several times this year because of ongoing border disputes between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The violence has been going on for years and is more about unresolved border disputes than anything else. Torkham is the main border crossing with Pakistan because on the Pakistani side is the Khyber Pass which has long been the easiest way to get from northern Afghanistan to the lowlands (most of Pakistan and all of India) beyond. Most of the Afghan-Pakistani border is still called the “Durand Line.” This was an impromptu, pre-independence invention of British colonial authorities and was always considered temporary (or at least negotiable) by locals. This was mainly because the line often went right through Pushtun tribal territories. However, the Afghans are more inclined to accept the Durand Line, and fight to maintain it. Thus recent Pakistani efforts to build more fences and other structures on their side of the border as an attempt to make the Durand line permanent. Afghans who use the border are also angry at a new Pakistani visa policy, which requires regular users of the crossings to get a visa. Officially this is a security measure, but given the rampant corruption in Pakistan Afghans see this as another opportunity for Pakistani border officials to demand bribes...
...August 11, 2016: In southwest Pakistan (Quetta) an Islamic terrorist suicide bomber tried to kill a judge. The attack failed but 14 others (security personnel and civilians) were wounded. Lawyers in Pakistan have been under increasing attack by Islamic terrorists and since 2004 these attacks have left 114 lawyers and several prominent judges dead. Much of this violence against lawyers and judges is to get imprisoned Islamic terrorists freed or to prevent Islamic terrorists from being convicted and executed. Tribal separatists, the Pakistani military and local gangsters also make similar threats to journalists, lawyers and judges in Baluchistan.
August 9, 2016: In Iran Afghan and Iranian officials signed the agreements which enable foreign cargo delivered to the port of Chabahar (in southeastern Iran) to enter Afghanistan without any additional tax problems or other restrictions. Iran and India are building the 1,300 kilometer long rail line from the port to the Afghan border in the north. Ultimately the Indians will provide over two billions dollars’ worth of investments for this project. That includes work on the port and new roads and railroads to Afghanistan and Central Asia. Because of the 2015 treaty that lifted economic sanctions on Iran India can now legally become a major investor. This project obviously helps Afghanistan but also hurts Pakistan, which currently monopolizes the movement of most Afghan imports and exports. This new agreement means a lot for India which is spending over $100 million to extend an Afghan highway to the Iranian border where the new rail link from Chabahar will end. This link will make possible Indian trade with Afghanistan, something long blocked by Pakistan. The port of Chabahar and its links to Afghanistan are to be operational by the end of the decade.
August 8, 2016: In southwest Pakistan (Quetta) Islamic terrorists shot dead the head of the Baluchistan Bar Association. Later in the day, as over 200 judges and lawyers gathered near a hospital to mourn the death of their colleague a suicide bomber attacked killing 74 people and wounding several dozen. Most of the victims were judges and lawyers.
