Future shocks
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Editorial, The News International, Pakistan
Saturday, May 30, 2009
General Petraeus came calling again last Tuesday, this time to discuss the implications of an upcoming surge in US forces in Afghanistan. There can be little doubt that an increase in US military activity in southern Afghanistan is going to be bad news for Pakistan; we are going to see the war in Afghanistan spill over into and commingle with the war we are already fighting in NWFP and elsewhere. It is probable that another 21,000 US troops are going to arrive in Afghanistan over the next few months. Our own military spokesperson, Maj-Gen Ather Abbas said he knew nothing about the visit of General Petraeus – which if true is a poor reflection on those who brief him.
The very real fear that we have is that an upsurge in fighting in Afghanistan and pressure being brought to bear on the Taliban there, is going to drive them not just over the Durand Line and into NWFP, but into other towns and cities as well. They are already active in every province, have a strong presence in south Punjab and parts of Balochistan, and for them to be reinforced by battle-hardened fighters fresh from tangling with the Americans is a prospect we view with some despair. The somewhat threadbare strategy for dealing with the inevitable comes down to another handout - $700million would be at the disposal of the US military and more specifically to CENTCOM each year till 2013 under the Pakistan Counter-insurgency Capabilities Fund to meet the country's needs in its fight against extremists. The fund is designed to allow the Centcom chief to work with our military to strengthen counter-insurgency capability.
With the greatest of respect we have to tell you, General Petraeus, that this is peanuts, and rubbish peanuts at that. At the moment we are beginning to get to grips with the concept of the war we are now fighting as being 'ours' – which is difficult enough; but adding into the brew elements of a war that is 'yours' not 'ours' is going to make the fighting of our own war that much more difficult. This $700 million is not going to buy us anything other than cosmetics for the face of modern warfare, and no amount of promises to share intelligence gathered by drones and other cooperative military activity is going to mitigate the contribution to our own insecurity and instability that the fighting of 'your' war brings to our nation. The price we are going to pay in terms of lost incomes, another surge of Afghan refugees to add to the 1.7 million already here as well as the three million IDPs generated by our fight to take our country back from the Taliban, far outweighs the paltry $700 million you offer us. Come and visit us again. Bring better peanuts next time. And more of them.
Source
Saturday, May 30, 2009
General Petraeus came calling again last Tuesday, this time to discuss the implications of an upcoming surge in US forces in Afghanistan. There can be little doubt that an increase in US military activity in southern Afghanistan is going to be bad news for Pakistan; we are going to see the war in Afghanistan spill over into and commingle with the war we are already fighting in NWFP and elsewhere. It is probable that another 21,000 US troops are going to arrive in Afghanistan over the next few months. Our own military spokesperson, Maj-Gen Ather Abbas said he knew nothing about the visit of General Petraeus – which if true is a poor reflection on those who brief him.
The very real fear that we have is that an upsurge in fighting in Afghanistan and pressure being brought to bear on the Taliban there, is going to drive them not just over the Durand Line and into NWFP, but into other towns and cities as well. They are already active in every province, have a strong presence in south Punjab and parts of Balochistan, and for them to be reinforced by battle-hardened fighters fresh from tangling with the Americans is a prospect we view with some despair. The somewhat threadbare strategy for dealing with the inevitable comes down to another handout - $700million would be at the disposal of the US military and more specifically to CENTCOM each year till 2013 under the Pakistan Counter-insurgency Capabilities Fund to meet the country's needs in its fight against extremists. The fund is designed to allow the Centcom chief to work with our military to strengthen counter-insurgency capability.
With the greatest of respect we have to tell you, General Petraeus, that this is peanuts, and rubbish peanuts at that. At the moment we are beginning to get to grips with the concept of the war we are now fighting as being 'ours' – which is difficult enough; but adding into the brew elements of a war that is 'yours' not 'ours' is going to make the fighting of our own war that much more difficult. This $700 million is not going to buy us anything other than cosmetics for the face of modern warfare, and no amount of promises to share intelligence gathered by drones and other cooperative military activity is going to mitigate the contribution to our own insecurity and instability that the fighting of 'your' war brings to our nation. The price we are going to pay in terms of lost incomes, another surge of Afghan refugees to add to the 1.7 million already here as well as the three million IDPs generated by our fight to take our country back from the Taliban, far outweighs the paltry $700 million you offer us. Come and visit us again. Bring better peanuts next time. And more of them.
Source
Labels: Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Extremism, Taliban, Terrorism, US Pakistan Relations
posted @ 9:28 AM,
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