US & Pakistan Dispute and Tensions over Haqqani group

[monitor]

The Mouse That Roared

S.M. Hali

The Mouse That Roared is a 1955 Cold War satirical novel by Irish American writer Leonard Wibberley, in which an impoverished backward nation declares a war on the United States of America, to get out of its economic woes hoping to lose, but things don't go according to plan. The events of the previous week, commencing with Admiral Mike Mullen’s ill founded testimony and US jingoism and concluding with the All Parties’ Conference (APC) reminded me of the above quoted novel, except that in the story, the best laid plans of mice and men go awry and the tiny nation, by a stroke of unforeseen events, wins the war. In our case the mouse did not roar but merely whimpered.

As the contours of endgame in Afghanistan appear to be somewhat perceivable, the pressure on Pakistan mounts with every passing day. Pakistan is paying the price of supporting the US led war on terrorism (WOT) and offering sacrifices in terms of suffering grave losses of human lives, property and drainage of economic resources. Pakistan is still committed to its resolve to fight the menace of terrorism but unfortunately due to divergence of Pak-US national interests, the relations between the two countries have suffered a setback, setting fresh tones to redefine the parameters of cooperation on WOT. Being a super power US is bulldozing its way through coercive methods to get Pakistani cooperation. On the other hand Pakistan’s question of sovereignty, security concerns including sensitivity of nuclear assets, fears from eastern border, US tilt towards India the age old rival of Pakistan, internal political instability and economic/energy crisis, embittering sense of US cold treatment and humiliating attitude towards Pakistan are sufficient for the policy makers to determine fresh lines to adjust policy position for Pakistan.

In the wake of US warnings on Haqqani network, there was a dire need for Pakistani policy makers to project their case not only to US policy makers but to different fora of the world to present the truth about Haqqani network, out-rightly rejecting the US allegations against Pakistan for having links with Haqqani network. In this regard evidence was to be sought from US to prove their allegations against Pakistan.

The much touted APC did take place but the end result was far from the expected results. Whereas the crisis became evident due to the warnings and threats emanating from the US based on false surmise and precepts yet in the resolution released at the end of the APC, the name of US did not even appear in print. The bellows and snarls of all our leaders came to naught when it was time to stand up and be counted. The begging bowl, which has become a millstone around our neck, was to be smashed and foreign aid was to be rejected so that we could make use of this adversity to unite and stand on our own feet but none of it was even pledged. It is remarkable that politicians of various ilk sat and supped together for better than 1/3rd of a day and tried to reach a consensus on providing a roadmap on how take the bull of terrorism and US blackmailing by the horns. However, neither were the terrorist acts condemned, nor a course charted to lead Pakistan out of the shark infested waters and deal with the US.

The undercurrent and general whisperings in Pakistan indicate that the US and India are trying to destabilize Pakistan. The credibility of these undertones can be substantiated by consecutive terror and sectarian attacks taking place in Karachi, Peshawar and Mastung-Quetta, in which precious lives have been lost. Pakistani analysts and commoners openly blame CIA and RAW for their involvement in these terrorist attacks. Sponsoring terrorist activities inside Pakistan by foreign hands is not only painful for Pakistan but is also arousing anti US feelings. People of Pakistan perceive that over the past few years CIA has been able to cultivate its own intelligence sources and have successfully established independent networks of information having intelligence value. These include religious parties, political leaders, social outfits and non-state actors including terrorist organizations. Thus CIA’s meddling in Pakistan’s internal affairs is leading to increased anti US emotions in Pakistan. To improve US image in Pakistan requires winning of hearts and souls which entails US policy review as opposed to use of coercive and reproving approaches to put more pressure on Pakistan. The roar of the mouse unfortunately got drowned in the crescendo of selfish motives of the politicians.

 

[ramu]

Why not tell the world the real reason why U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq?

To catch Osama Bin Laden? I thought he was buried in sea so why still sticking around?
Weapons of mass destruction? Crusade? War on Terror? Lies, Lies, and more Lies.

If this is all known then why is still Pakistan hand in glove to the Americans ? You can do nothing but whine.
To answer your questions : Let us separate objectives of Iraq and Afghanistan. Let us discuss Afghanistan as that is on topic

1. To catch OBL : yes but that was not the only goal.
2. Crusade : Irrelevant in the context of Afghan-Pak
3. War on Terror : Yes

 

[Alchemy]

Pakistan was also similarly "used" by USA to fight its "war on terror" ... but Pak did not realise that it was just a pawn at USA's hand .... Pak should not toe the USA line anymore and think independently !!!!

 

[Alchemy]

Why did Pakistan for 10 years fight America's war on terror then ? why are you realizing all this now ???

 

[Omar1984]

Two weeks after Admiral Mullen's allegations against Pakistan new evidence has emerged that the United States was also in contact with the group. They were accusing Pakistan of contacts with the Haqqani network while being complicit of direct contacts with the group themselves. In searching for an exit strategy the United States is looking for a scapegoat and Pakistan in many ways seems to fit the bill. Why is the Pakistani public relations campaign so poor? Why didn't they call Mullen's bluff right away. Pakistan's response to the allegations was uncoordinated, weak and ineffective. Pakistan's lobbying efforts, their PR campaign and their relationship with the United States is at an all-time low, the divide in the public perception of the other nation continues to widen and yet they need each other to win the war against terror. A new envoy, somebody with stature and credibility needs to be placed in charge of the relationship. Truth Serum reports.

 

[Imran Akhtar]

Pakistan’s Response to the US Blame Game

By Khurram Butt

President Obama is much worried about political stability in Afghanistan; rating of US President has decreased to 38% and presidential elections are also near, there fore she need someone to blame for their failures in Afghanistan. US facing difficult time in Afghanistan, after 10 years of US Invasion in Afghanistan their mission is totally failed, US want to exit from Afghanistan up to 2014 before withdrawal their forces he want to target Haqqani network but it is quite difficult due to circumstances, US military wants to create its own perception in the minds of US public, military and Pentagon has to maintain its credibility among Americans as it spends a lot of US budget on Defence. US telling to its public that Haqqani network is the actual threat and cause behind casualties of US soldiers in Afghanistan, US officials has lack of courage to reveal on its public that she has lost war in Afghanistan, US has put all the blame of terrorism on Pakistan...

Original post..

 

[Bang Galore]

A New Pakistan Policy: Containment

By BRUCE O. RIEDEL

AMERICA needs a new policy for dealing with Pakistan. First, we must recognize that the two countries’ strategic interests are in conflict, not harmony, and will remain that way as long as Pakistan’s army controls Pakistan’s strategic policies. We must contain the Pakistani Army’s ambitions until real civilian rule returns and Pakistanis set a new direction for their foreign policy.

As Adm. Mike Mullen, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate committee last month, Pakistan provides critical sanctuary and support to the Afghan insurgency that we are trying to suppress. Taliban leaders meet under Pakistani protection even as we try to capture or kill them.

In 2009, I led a policy review for President Obama on Pakistan and Afghanistan. At the time, Al Qaeda was operating with virtual impunity in Pakistan, and its ally Lashkar-e-Taiba had just attacked the Indian city of Mumbai and killed at least 163 people, including 6 Americans, with help from Pakistani intelligence. Under no illusions, Mr. Obama tried to improve relations with Pakistan by increasing aid and dialogue; he also expanded drone operations to fight terrorist groups that Pakistan would not fight on its own.

It was right to try engagement, but now the approach needs reshaping. We will have to persevere in Afghanistan in the face of opposition by Pakistan.

The generals who run Pakistan have not abandoned their obsession with challenging India. They tolerate terrorists at home, seek a Taliban victory in Afghanistan and are building the world’s fastest-growing nuclear arsenal. They have sidelined and intimidated civilian leaders elected in 2008. They seem to think Pakistan is invulnerable, because they control NATO’s supply line from Karachi to Kabul and have nuclear weapons.

The generals also think time is on their side — that NATO is doomed to give up in Afghanistan, leaving them free to act as they wish there. So they have concluded that the sooner America leaves, the better it will be for Pakistan. They want Americans and Europeans to believe the war is hopeless, so they encourage the Taliban and other militant groups to speed the withdrawal with spectacular attacks, like the Sept. 13 raid on the United States Embassy in Kabul, which killed 16 Afghan police officers and civilians.

It is time to move to a policy of containment, which would mean a more hostile relationship. But it should be a focused hostility, aimed not at hurting Pakistan’s people but at holding its army and intelligence branches accountable. When we learn that an officer from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, is aiding terrorism, whether in Afghanistan or India, we should put him on wanted lists, sanction him at the United Nations and, if he is dangerous enough, track him down. Putting sanctions on organizations in Pakistan has not worked in the past, but sanctioning individuals has — as the nuclear proliferator Abdul Qadeer Khan could attest.

Offering Pakistan more trade while reducing aid makes sense. When we extend traditional aid, media outlets with ties to the ISI cite the aid to weave conspiracy theories that alienate Pakistanis from us. Mr. Obama should instead announce that he is cutting tariffs on Pakistani textiles to or below the level that India and China enjoy; that would strengthen entrepreneurs and women, two groups who are outside the army’s control and who are interested in peace.

Military assistance to Pakistan should be cut deeply. Regular contacts between our officers and theirs can continue, but under no delusion that we are allies.

Osama bin Laden’s death confirmed that we can’t rely on Pakistan to take out prominent terrorists on its soil. We will still need bases in Afghanistan from which to act when we see a threat in Pakistan. But drones should be used judiciously, for very important targets.

In Afghanistan, we should not have false hopes for a political solution. We can hope that top figures among the Quetta Shura — Afghan Taliban leaders who are sheltered in Quetta, Pakistan — will be delivered to the bargaining table, but that is unlikely, since the Quetta leadership assassinated Burhanuddin Rabbani, the leader of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council and a former Afghan president, last month. The ISI will veto any Taliban peace efforts it opposes, which means any it doesn’t control. Rather than hoping for ISI help, we need to continue to build an Afghan Army that can control the insurgency with long-term NATO assistance and minimal combat troops.

Strategic dialogue with India about Pakistan is essential because it would focus the Pakistani Army’s mind. India and Pakistan are trying to improve trade and transportation links severed after they became independent in 1947, and we should encourage that. We should also increase intelligence cooperation against terrorist targets in Pakistan. And we should encourage India to be more conciliatory on Kashmir, by easing border controls and releasing prisoners.

America and Pakistan have had a tempestuous relationship for decades. For far too long we have banked on the Pakistani Army to protect our interests. Now we need to contain that army’s aggressive instincts, while helping those who want a progressive Pakistan and keeping up the fight against terrorism.


Bruce O. Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is the author of “Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of the Global Jihad.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/opinion/a-new-pakistan-policy-containment.html

 

[Ghost]

Another biased American. Somebody give this guy a cup of coffee.

 

[Salahadin]

Pakistan and America
To the bitter end
Growing concerns about a difficult relationship
Oct 15th 2011 | ISLAMABAD | from the print edition


THOUGH America’s relations with Pakistan grow ever more wretched, it remains hard to imagine either side daring to break them off. Military types, diplomats, analysts and politicians in Islamabad describe a mood more poisonous than at any time for a generation. Links between the intelligence agencies, the core of bilateral relations for six decades, are worst of all, notably since America caught Osama bin Laden hiding amid Pakistan’s apron strings. Pakistan felt humiliated too by the way the al-Qaeda leader was killed.

Yet the ties still bind, amid fears of far worse. Last month, America’s departing chief of staff, Mike Mullen, said Pakistan’s army spies ran the Haqqani network, a militant outfit that has killed American men in Afghanistan and attacked the embassy in Kabul in September. The chatter in Pakistan was of frenzied preparation for military confrontation.

Many Pakistanis seemed jubilant at the idea, with polls suggesting over 80% of them are hostile to their ally, and chat shows competing to pour scorn on America as the root of all evil. Instead relations have been patched up. Last week Barack Obama said mildly that the outside world must “constantly evaluate” Pakistan’s behaviour. In what may signal a conciliation of sorts, a new CIA chief has been installed in Islamabad, the third in a year after Pakistani spies outed his predecessors.

American policy is contradictory. On the one side are defence types, eager to fight jihadists and angry at Pakistani meddling in southern and eastern Afghanistan. On the other side are diplomats, anxious about losing tabs on Pakistani nukes or having to do without Pakistani assistance in stopping terror attacks in the West. Many also fear the spreading failure of the Pakistani state (see article). A senior American official in Islamabad starkly describes how the relationship seemed lost last month, with “huge numbers of people trying not to let it go over the edge”.

For the moment ties persist, though they are loosened. America has suspended military aid, supposedly worth hundreds of millions of dollars (Pakistanis say Americans inflate the figures). It has not paid its agreed dues to Pakistan’s army for several months, nor have its trainers returned. America is also readier than before to back things that Pakistan despises, such as India’s blossoming relations with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, who last week swept through Delhi to laud India’s growing role as a donor.

Pakistan’s army has responded by giving a little ground. It still refuses America’s call for a war on militants in the border area of North Waziristan—“it’s bad strategy to ignite everything at once” sniffs a gloomy Pakistani official—but it has, apparently, nudged Haqqani leaders from their hiding places over the border into Afghanistan. At the same time Pakistanis complain of impossible American demands over jihadists: they say Mr Obama’s strategy of “fight and talk” in Afghanistan requires Pakistan’s army to handle insurgent fighters by killing, capturing and bringing them into negotiations all at the same time.

Afghanistan, where the two countries fumble and fail to accommodate each other, will remain the crux of Pakistan’s relations with America. Pakistan’s leaders long derided what they saw as America’s vain “transformative” struggle to make Afghanistan modern, democratic and united—perhaps they also feared a similar push to refashion the role of the army in Pakistan. The head of Pakistan’s armed forces, General Ashfaq Kayani, in particular, is said to dismiss America’s understanding of the fractured country next door as naive and simplistic, a doomed effort to make Afghanistan into something it is not.

But as America’s ambitions there have shrunk to little more than extracting its soldiers fast and leaving behind a minimally stable territory that is not dominated by Pushtuns, concerns in Pakistan have grown anew. It now fears being abandoned, losing aid and relevance, and becoming encircled by forces allied with its old foe, India. Several commentators in Islamabad suggest that, sooner than have a united neighbour that is pro-India, Pakistan would prefer more war and division in Afghanistan—“let Afghanistan cook its own goose” says an ex-general.

A crunch could come in the next few months, as foreigners gather for a pair of summits on Afghanistan, first in Istanbul in November, then in Bonn in December. What should have been a chance to back domestic peace talks (which have not happened) could instead be a moment for recrimination, with Pakistanis to take the blame. Worse yet for Pakistan would be if its ill-starred performance as an ally becomes a prominent issue in Mr Obama’s presidential re-election campaign. Afghanistan is sure to dominate a NATO summit to be held in Chicago in May.

Afghanistan may, or may not, recede in importance after 2014, when America is due to cut the number of soldiers it has in the region. Yet even without the thorn of Afghanistan, a list of divisive, unattended issues infects Pakistan’s relations with America. On their own they would be more than enough to shake relations between most countries.

Pakistan is a known proliferator, and is more hostile than almost any other country to America’s global efforts to cut nuclear arsenals and prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. America is fast expanding its economic and military ties with Pakistan’s great rival, India. And Pakistan’s domestic rule would set most American diplomats’ hair on end—venal civilian leaders; army men hankering for the next coup and having pesky journalists killed off; Islamists who shoot opponents for being liberal. With a friend like Pakistan, who needs enemies?

from the print edition | Asia

Pakistan and America: To the bitter end | The Economist

 

[Bang Galore]

The Pakistan Illusion

The friend of our enemies is not our friend.

By THOMAS DONNELLY

During his four-year tenure as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen embodied the quiet professionalism of the American officer corps. He had been chief of naval operations, yet became the steward of two difficult and draining counter-insurgency campaigns, freeing generals in the field​—​David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno in Iraq, then Stanley McChrystal and Petraeus in Afghanistan​—​from Washington worries.

But his signature contribution to the wartime effort was trying to cultivate an improved relationship with the military leadership in Pakistan, particularly General Ashfaq Kayani, the Pakistani Army chief of staff. Mullen flattered Kayani in dozens of high-profile visits. In 2009, he convinced Newsweek that the general-to-general chemistry was “the most important relationship in the fraught dynamic between the two countries.” Mullen trumpeted the good news that Kayani “was making promises and keeping them.”

In hindsight, it would seem that Kayani had no intention of promising or delivering anything that mattered to the Pakistani Army and its officer corps. Pakistan’s generals have been masters at playing their American counterparts. A passage from the autobiography of General Tommy Franks, head of U.S. Central Command during the initial invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, gives a hint as to who gets the better of these “relationships.” Recalling his first meeting with one of Kayani’s predecessors, Franks wrote: “It struck me that it was appropriate that we both wore uniforms. For years, American officials and diplomatic envoys in business suits had hectored soldier-politicians such as Pervez Musharraf about human rights and representative government.”

Mullen never quite sank to such romance-novel heavy breathing with Kayani, and by the end of his term as chairman he saw the truth clearly. Osama bin Laden had been living in Abbottabad, Pakistan’s West Point. Mullen publicly has charged Pakistan’s military intelligence agency​—​once commanded by Kayani​—​with supporting attacks by the insurgent Haqqani network, including the September 13 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kabul. In a valedictory interview with columnist David Ignatius, Mullen admitted it took him a long time to appreciate the “trust deficit” with the Pakistani Army. He also worried that they are on a “declining glide slope.”

Plus ça change

The tragedy of American policy is its failure to see that Pakistan has been on a very long downward slope​—​arguably since 1947, when independent Pakistan and India separated from the British Raj. Indeed, Husain Haqqani, currently Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, has described his country as “in some ways a state project gone wrong.”

Pakistan has had a confused and troubled identity. The original idea of Pakistan, as Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution has written, was of an “extraordinary” state, “a homeland for Indian Muslims and an ideological and political leader of the Islamic world.” At the same time, the ideology of the Pakistan founding was opaque and contradictory, with the contradictions seemingly captured in the figure of its leader, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Karachi-born but trained as a lawyer in England and retaining a lifelong affinity for fine English tailoring. Though a partner of Gandhi and Nehru in the India Congress, Jinnah was suspicious of their all-India approach, and as British imperial power on the subcontinent began to wane in the early 20th century, the compact between India’s Hindus and Muslims weakened.

Thus, at the 1928 session of Congress, Jinnah proposed not only guaranteed seats for Indian Muslims in national and provincial legislatures, but the creation of three “designated Islamic states”​—​Sind, Baluchistan, and the Northwest Frontier Province​—​within a future independent Indian federation. In other words, while the subcontinent was still struggling to separate itself from British rule, Jinnah was proposing an ethnic state-within-a-state that held within it the promise of further separation. To Jinnah and his contemporaries, the allegedly inclusive All-India Congress appeared more like a vehicle for Hindu political dominance. And the broad definition of who was a Muslim—mostly in terms of antagonism to Hinduism—elided traditional differences between regions and tribes. The deeply secular Jinnah declared in 1940 that the two communities “are not religious in the strict sense of the word, but are in fact different and distinct social orders. And it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality.”

Jinnah’s own dream, boldly assertive and fundamentally brittle, begat an expansionist tendency. When -Gandhi embarked upon his “Quit India” campaign at the nadir of Britain’s fortunes in World War II, Jinnah seized the moment to double his territorial demands, adding Kashmir, the Punjab, and Bengal to his list of Muslim provinces. He had his way, though it would exacerbate the instability of the Pakistani state: In the dissolution of the Raj, the Punjab and Bengal were split from the central mass of India, inciting massive ethnic cleansing and resulting in the deaths of nearly one million and leaving Kashmir a contested province. The violent but perhaps inevitable result was the 1971 secession of East Pakistan. That the nascent Bangladesh would rely on Hindu India to secure the separation showed the weakness of Jinnah and Pakistan’s ideas of Muslim brotherhood. The bond of Islam was not strong enough to convince Bengalis that they should remain confederate with, and subordinate to, Punjabis.

“Pakistan is a paranoid state that has enemies,” writes Cohen. Pakistani strategists and political elites fear they may become a “West Bangladesh​—​a state denuded of its military power and politically as well as economically subordinated to a hegemonic India.” Yet, somewhat perversely, the result is a strategic “adventurism,” by which Cohen means Pakistan’s ambitions in Kashmir and Afghanistan, but which applies equally to Pakistan’s nuclear program, its relations with China, and its ambiguous stance vis-à-vis the Taliban, al Qaeda, various “associated movements” internationally, and its homegrown radicals.

Paranoia begins at home

The bitter result of the 1971 war and the “second partition” heightened the domestic political contradictions that lie at Pakistan’s heart. In Ambassador Haqqani’s telling, a Jinnah-style “commitment to an ‘ideological state’ gradually evolved into a strategic commitment to jihadi ideology .  .  . then the Pakistani military used Islamist idiom and the help of Islamist groups to keep secular leaders .  .  . out of power.” As their larger ambitions collapsed, Pakistan’s elites​—​the army leaders and Punjabi oligarchs, for all their secular habits​—​became ever more Muslim, solidifying what Haqqani describes as an alliance between mosque and military.

A second-order effect was a widening gap between the U.S. and Pakistani militaries. Strategic and military-to-military ties had been close in the early decades of the Cold War, and many Pakistani officers received both general and professional education in the United States. But the defeats in the 1965 war with India and the 1971 independence of Bangladesh convinced many in Pakistan that the United States was an unreliable partner. In the mid-1970s, the civilian government of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, father of the late Benazir Bhutto, tried to constrain the domestic political power of the Pakistani Army​—​which had been twice bested in the wars with India that supposedly were the justification of the army’s privileges​—​while developing a civilian nuclear weapons program.

But that attempt at “reform” likewise crashed when Bhutto was ousted in a coup (and subsequently executed) and the military assumed control of the government under the dictatorship of Zia ul-Haq. Though Zia died in a 1988 plane crash, he set the course that Pakistan and its security services have followed ever since. Zia broke down the distinction between politicized Islamism and military professionalism, and public displays of Islamic orthodoxy became good for one’s military career. Although continuing to try to build up Pakistan’s conventional military strength​—​and to pry modern weapons like F-16 fighters out of the United States​—​Zia increased the emphasis on irregular and proxy wars, not only in Afghanistan but against India, including providing arms to Sikh separatists. And finally, he both gave the army control over the nuclear program and accelerated it, thanks to the proliferation program of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Despite assertions by many experts in Pakistan and the West that later generations of generals​—​not just Kayani but Musharraf before him​—​are more reform-minded and anxious to get the Islamist elements back under control, it’s hard to detect any significant change of strategic or domestic political course. The Islamist genie has, if anything, increasingly turned on its sponsors. Pakistan has never given up its investment in the Afghan Taliban, either in its Mullah Omar-Quetta shura guise or its regional strongman-Haqqani network manifestation. Proxy groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba conduct spectacular attacks on American, Indian, and other international targets as well as in Pakistan proper; whether such groups are always operating under direction of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency is beside the point. It was the ISI that created them in the first instance. And Pakistan has lately accelerated and expanded its nuclear program, stockpiling materials and building new missiles and warheads. Islamabad likes to live dangerously.

What is to be done?

The temptation for Americans to walk away from Pakistan in frustration and disgust or, alternatively, to administer a stiff spanking is strong, particularly in Congress. But the effects of such acts​—​most notably the 1985 Pressler Amendment​—​are at best partial and at worst counterproductive. In the absence of a long-term, coherent strategy for Pakistan, this amendment pretended to deal with Pakistani nuclear proliferation by banning economic and military aid​—​unless the president “certified” that Pakistan had no nukes. Which President George H.W. Bush proceeded to do annually, despite complaints that it was all a fiction. This had the effect of driving Pakistan into the arms of the Chinese, who were happy to help with sales of ballistic missiles.

The highly touted Lugar-Biden-Kerry “Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009” represents the other congressional extreme. Offering $1.5 billion of economic aid a year for five years, the bill was an effort to help Pakistan’s civilian government and provide an alternative to the strictly military aid that had been offered after 9/11. However, it was so loaded with intrusive “oversight” measures​—​just good government in Washington, but portrayed as an affront to sovereignty in Islamabad​—​that it soured relations even more.

The alternative policy, deeply embedded in the Washington establishment, is that the United States must continue to work with the Pakistani military, because it’s the only institution in Islamabad that works or because Pakistan’s politicians are weak and corrupt. As Richard Haass, former policy director for the State Department and now head of the Council on Foreign Relations, once explained, “The coup that brought Army Chief of Staff Pervez Musharraf to power .  .  . should not be condemned out of hand. And it well may bring stability to a country and a region where stability is in short supply.”

Both these attitudes betray Washington’s lack of long-term interest in Pakistan, and that is the first thing that needs to change. Pakistan’s problems are deep; indeed, they are embedded in the country’s very identity. But our strategic interests are equally deep. The war in Afghanistan and the rise of India are indicators that the balance of power in South Asia​—​like the balance of power in Europe, the Persian Gulf, or Pacific Asia​—​is emerging as a core security concern of the United States and an increasingly important test of the international system.

A coherent American strategy rests on convincing Islamabad of three things: that the United States has come to South Asia to stay; that India’s rise should be met with strategic cooperation, not competition; and that playing a “China card” won’t work.

Long experience has convinced Pakistani leaders that the United States will lose interest in them and in South Asia, and that they will be left with what they see as an existential crisis​—​these were the lessons of 1965, 1971, the Cold War, and after. The Obama administration’s plans to draw down and “transfer the lead” in Afghanistan to Kabul fits Pakistani preconceptions perfectly; and they’re making plans accordingly. But the greatest strategic reward of Operation Enduring Freedom, well beyond killing Osama bin Laden, disrupting al Qaeda, or suppressing the Afghan Taliban, would be to begin to curb Pakistan’s longing for “strategic depth” in Central Asia. That requires retaining a substantial military presence and developing a strategic partnership with the Afghans.

Relieving Pakistan’s paranoia about India will take even longer. But the cost of this paranoia has been devastating to Pakistan, militarizing the state, politicizing the faith of its people, debilitating civilian political and economic development. This is the “declining glide slope” that Admiral Mullen lamented. Pakistan does not need to achieve eternal enlightenment, just a rational policy that would put things like economic cooperation above recovering Kashmir. The United States needs to follow two principles to improve the prospects for success: continue to develop its strategic partnership with India​—​to slowly convince Islamabad that its traditional strategies can no longer work​—​and demand that military-to-military ties take a back seat to civilian diplomacy. We must cure ourselves of the “Tommy Franks syndrome.”

Convincing Pakistan that the Chinese won’t be the sugar daddy who makes up for their mistakes won’t be easy. In response to Mullen’s accusations, the Pakistanis reaffirmed their love for China as, in the words of Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani, “higher than mountains, deeper than oceans, stronger than steel, sweeter than honey.” The Chinese, however, prefer more tangible expressions of regard, such as material resources, the deep-sea port at Gwadar, and an expansion of the Karakoram highway into western China. China’s presence in the Indian Ocean is growing, but part of U.S. strategy for Asia is to preserve a favorable maritime balance there. India shares that interest; one of its prime strategic directives is to stymie a China-Pakistan axis.

In sum, there’s a lot that the United States can do when it comes to Pakistan, but none of it can be done quickly. Nor can it be done without facing, as Admiral Mullen did at last, the truth about the Pakistani Army.

Thomas Donnelly is director of the Center for Defense Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

The Pakistan Illusion | The Weekly Standard

 

[Bang Galore]

Pakistan and America
To the bitter end

Growing concerns about a difficult relationship

THOUGH America’s relations with Pakistan grow ever more wretched, it remains hard to imagine either side daring to break them off. Military types, diplomats, analysts and politicians in Islamabad describe a mood more poisonous than at any time for a generation. Links between the intelligence agencies, the core of bilateral relations for six decades, are worst of all, notably since America caught Osama bin Laden hiding amid Pakistan’s apron strings. Pakistan felt humiliated too by the way the al-Qaeda leader was killed.

Yet the ties still bind, amid fears of far worse. Last month, America’s departing chief of staff, Mike Mullen, said Pakistan’s army spies ran the Haqqani network, a militant outfit that has killed American men in Afghanistan and attacked the embassy in Kabul in September. The chatter in Pakistan was of frenzied preparation for military confrontation.

Many Pakistanis seemed jubilant at the idea, with polls suggesting over 80% of them are hostile to their ally, and chat shows competing to pour scorn on America as the root of all evil. Instead relations have been patched up. Last week Barack Obama said mildly that the outside world must “constantly evaluate” Pakistan’s behaviour. In what may signal a conciliation of sorts, a new CIA chief has been installed in Islamabad, the third in a year after Pakistani spies outed his predecessors.

American policy is contradictory. On the one side are defence types, eager to fight jihadists and angry at Pakistani meddling in southern and eastern Afghanistan. On the other side are diplomats, anxious about losing tabs on Pakistani nukes or having to do without Pakistani assistance in stopping terror attacks in the West. Many also fear the spreading failure of the Pakistani state (see article). A senior American official in Islamabad starkly describes how the relationship seemed lost last month, with “huge numbers of people trying not to let it go over the edge”.

For the moment ties persist, though they are loosened. America has suspended military aid, supposedly worth hundreds of millions of dollars (Pakistanis say Americans inflate the figures). It has not paid its agreed dues to Pakistan’s army for several months, nor have its trainers returned. America is also readier than before to back things that Pakistan despises, such as India’s blossoming relations with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, who last week swept through Delhi to laud India’s growing role as a donor.

Pakistan’s army has responded by giving a little ground. It still refuses America’s call for a war on militants in the border area of North Waziristan—“it’s bad strategy to ignite everything at once” sniffs a gloomy Pakistani official—but it has, apparently, nudged Haqqani leaders from their hiding places over the border into Afghanistan. At the same time Pakistanis complain of impossible American demands over jihadists: they say Mr Obama’s strategy of “fight and talk” in Afghanistan requires Pakistan’s army to handle insurgent fighters by killing, capturing and bringing them into negotiations all at the same time.

Afghanistan, where the two countries fumble and fail to accommodate each other, will remain the crux of Pakistan’s relations with America. Pakistan’s leaders long derided what they saw as America’s vain “transformative” struggle to make Afghanistan modern, democratic and united—perhaps they also feared a similar push to refashion the role of the army in Pakistan. The head of Pakistan’s armed forces, General Ashfaq Kayani, in particular, is said to dismiss America’s understanding of the fractured country next door as naive and simplistic, a doomed effort to make Afghanistan into something it is not.

But as America’s ambitions there have shrunk to little more than extracting its soldiers fast and leaving behind a minimally stable territory that is not dominated by Pushtuns, concerns in Pakistan have grown anew. It now fears being abandoned, losing aid and relevance, and becoming encircled by forces allied with its old foe, India. Several commentators in Islamabad suggest that, sooner than have a united neighbour that is pro-India, Pakistan would prefer more war and division in Afghanistan—“let Afghanistan cook its own goose” says an ex-general.

A crunch could come in the next few months, as foreigners gather for a pair of summits on Afghanistan, first in Istanbul in November, then in Bonn in December. What should have been a chance to back domestic peace talks (which have not happened) could instead be a moment for recrimination, with Pakistanis to take the blame. Worse yet for Pakistan would be if its ill-starred performance as an ally becomes a prominent issue in Mr Obama’s presidential re-election campaign. Afghanistan is sure to dominate a NATO summit to be held in Chicago in May.

Afghanistan may, or may not, recede in importance after 2014, when America is due to cut the number of soldiers it has in the region. Yet even without the thorn of Afghanistan, a list of divisive, unattended issues infects Pakistan’s relations with America. On their own they would be more than enough to shake relations between most countries.

Pakistan is a known proliferator, and is more hostile than almost any other country to America’s global efforts to cut nuclear arsenals and prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. America is fast expanding its economic and military ties with Pakistan’s great rival, India. And Pakistan’s domestic rule would set most American diplomats’ hair on end—venal civilian leaders; army men hankering for the next coup and having pesky journalists killed off; Islamists who shoot opponents for being liberal. With a friend like Pakistan, who needs enemies?

Pakistan and America: To the bitter end | The Economist

 

[Don Jaguar]

Hilarious pic!!!

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Playing nuclear chicken in Southeast Asia​

By: Eric Margolis | Published: October 06, 2011

It’s awfully hard for the world’s greatest power to admit its high-tech military forces are being beaten in Afghanistan by a bunch of lightly-armed mountain tribesmen that we dismiss as “terrorists.”
But that’s what’s happening in the “Graveyard of Empires.” Washington can’t and won’t admit it has blundered into a bloody, trillion-dollar fiasco in Afghanistan.

Right now, Pakistan is the chief whipping boy for US fury even though it is still officially called a “strategic US ally.”

Last week, outgoing US chairman of the joint chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, accused Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI, of being behind recent high-profile attacks against US targets in Afghanistan that were allegedly staged by the Haqqani network, one of the Taliban’s coalition members fighting foreign occupation. An assault by Taliban mujahedin on the US Embassy in Kabul revived very bad dreams of the Viet Cong’s war-winning 1968 Tet Offensive.

Admiral Mullen accused the Haqqani network of being “a virtual arm” of ISI. Pakistan strongly denied US charges. In fact, both CIA and Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI, have long maintained covert links with the Haqqani group. Much of CIA’s intelligence on Afghanistan comes from two sources: electronic intercepts, and the Afghan government’s intelligence service. Most anti-US fighters are far too experienced to use electronic communications they know are easily picked up by US satellites, aircraft, drones, airships, and ground stations. The Afghan government intelligence service is dominated by Tajik Communists from the old Soviet-created KHAD intelligence agency who are blood enemies of Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Pashtun majority. Afghan spooks have become a primary source of disinformation to US military and civilian intelligence outfits, and likely the source of claims that Pakistan’s ISI was behind recent attacks on US targets in Afghanistan. US intelligence was similarly misled in 2003 over Iraq by a “friendly,” self-serving intelligence service.

Official Washington is reacting with free-form rage rather than careful thought. No doubt, the example of the Soviet 1989 defeat in Afghanistan increasingly haunts Washington.

Ironically, as I saw myself in the 1980’s, the US created the Haqqani network, arming and funding it. In those halcyon days, Jalaluddin Haqqani and Pashtun fighters were hailed by the US as “freedom fighters.”

One of the US Senate’s least intellectual members, influential Republican Lindsay Graham, is threatening more US attacks on Pakistan “to defend US troops” from “terrorism.” US Predator drones are now staging almost daily attacks inside Pakistan — without even advising the feeble government in Islamabad.

Sen. Graham’s threat is pretty rich. The US invades a country, brands any who resist as “terrorists,” then threatens to bomb and/or invade its neighbour to “protect” the invasion force. Meanwhile, the US is paying bankrupt Pakistan $7.5 billion over five years to sustain the war in Afghanistan.
Ever since the days of George W. Bush, US policy in the Muslim world has been driven by a combination of imperial arrogance and profound ignorance.

When the US was preparing to invade Iraq in 2003, I had dinner with three of Bush’s most senior advisors. “Tell us about Iraq, Eric,” they asked. As I spoke of Kurds, Sunnis, assorted Shia, Yazdis, their eyes quickly glazed over. “Just give us the bottom line,” snapped one Alpha Republican. “The bottom line,” I replied, “is don’t get involved in a messy country you don’t understand at all.” Well, here we go again with Pakistan. Hardly any senior members of the Obama administration understand complex Pakistan. There are some experts in Washington who do understand, but they are routinely ignored. The same things happened with Iraq. The American bulls in South Asia’s china shop are ready to charge in, heedless of the facts or risks. Threatening war against Pakistan, a nation of 180 million with a tough military, is the height of folly. Our forces have not faced a tough enemy ground force since Vietnam. Pakistan will be no cakewalk.

Pakistan controls most of the supply routes essential to US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Most Pakistanis now consider the US a bigger enemy than old foe India. Even crazier, Washington is making warlike threats against nuclear-armed Pakistan, a very close ally of China, an important nuclear power. So far, Beijing has been cautious yet firm in its support of old ally, Pakistan.

But US attacks on Pakistan that go beyond the current raids by CIA drones could draw China into a confrontation with the US. China has quietly made clear it will not allow the US to tear apart Pakistan in order to grab Islamabad’s Chinese-aided nuclear arsenal. More craziness. The US under both Bush and Barack Obama has been trying to get India militarily involved in Afghanistan. But the Indians were too clever to send combat troops into Afghanistan.

Washington then gave India a green light to pour intelligence agents and money into Afghanistan to support the anti-Taliban Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara minorities. The US has greatly aided the buildup of India’s nuclear arsenal — which has only two targets, Pakistan and China.

All this, of course, has set off alarm bells in Islamabad, which sees Afghanistan as its strategic back yard. Russia and China are also watching this drama with growing unease, torn between concern about militant Islamists and intrusive US power.

The strategic interests of Pakistan and the US are different, often in conflict. Yet the US “put a gun to our head,” as I was told by both a former ISI director and Pakistan’s former president, Pervez Musharraf, and forced to join the war against Taliban, a close Pakistani ally and strategic asset.
Why should Pakistan forsake its own strategic interests for those of the United States, whose confused, erratic foreign policy is increasingly seen abroad a being run by domestic special interest and extreme religious groups? A blow-up between Pakistan and its sometime American patron would be a calamity for all concerned.

Expanding a war into the intersection of the interests of four nuclear-armed powers is the height of irresponsibility and manic behaviour. But so long as America’s war in Afghanistan continues it indeed threatens to destabilise Pakistan and runs the risk of nuclear confrontation. – Huffington Post

 

[Omar1984]

Pakistan and America

Who comes up with these funny drawings

 

[BanglaBhoot]

C. Raja Mohan

The ‘C’ word has finally appeared in the American discourse on Pakistan. In article in the ‘New York Times’ on October 14, a leading US expert on the region, Bruce Riedel has called on the Obama Administration to adopt a strategy of containment against the Pakistan army.
‘Containment’ is the strategy the United States had adopted towards the Soviet Union after the Second World War. It called for sustained external pressure on Soviet Russia in order to produce internal regime change.

Containment was seen as the middle path between confronting the Soviet Union and accommodating it in the international system. Historians of American foreign policy see it as largely a success despite the many excesses that it produced.

If adopted towards the Pakistan army, a strategy of containment would be a significant departure from the habitual temptation to simply buy Rawalpindi's affections.

The latest proposal for containing the Pakistan army has not come from an academic ivory tower. Bruce Riedel is a former CIA officer who worked for several American presidents and shaped Washington's policies towards South Asia and the Middle East.

At the beginning of President Barack Obama's tenure in the White House in early 2009, Riedel led the review of the ****** situation and helped define a new policy. Riedel now says that approach is not working.

Riedel says Obama was right to adopt engagement then, but now must move towards a containment of the Pak army. Central to the rethinking is Riedel's recognition that the strategic interests of the United States and Pakistan in Afghanistan are "in conflict, not harmony and will remain that way as long as Pakistan's army controls Pakistan's strategic policies".

Acknowledging that containment would involve hostility towards Pakistan, Riedel calls for 'focused hostility', which targets specific officials of the army and the ISI with sanctions rather than the population as a whole.

He calls for trade concessions and a special outreach to women in order to empower entrepreneurs and women, two groups he believes 'are outside the army's control and who are interested in peace'.

Among his other proposals are deep cuts in military aid and a 'strategic dialogue' with India on Pakistan, which he bets would concentrate minds in Rawalpindi.

Instead of relying on the ISI to stabilise Afghanistan, Riedel calls for stronger support to the Afghan security forces and extended Western support to Kabul even as the U.S. reduces military presence there.

Riedel concludes that containing the 'aggressive instincts' of the Pakistan army is the key to the emergence of a 'progressive Pakistan' and success in the global war against terror.

These sensible proposals coming from an influential voice in Washington do not mean they will be translated into policy anytime soon. What they do suggest that the American debate on Pakistan is evolving rapidly. Delhi must stay tuned.

Containing the Pakistan Army - Indian Express