Pakistan in Media

The Frontier Post, Saturday, May 30, 2009
Ehtisham Amir
Sir Winston Churchill once remarked: "Americans are a strange nation. They do the right thing after exhausting all the other options". Smiling over it! Go no farther in your humour. Churchill did not live to see the mess we are in today otherwise he would have remarked identically about us. It is such an irony that our nation is being misled and shepherded on the path to disaster by no other group but the ones in whom nation has reposed its confidence to lead.
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Daily Times, Pakistan
Monday, June 01, 2009

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on Saturday expressed concern over the US decision to send additional troops to Afghanistan. He thought it would complicate the situation “because the inflow of militants into Pakistan’s border areas would increase”. He says he has already talked about it to the US and British governments. According to him, Pakistan wanted deployment of [its own] troops on the Afghan border to stop infiltration of militants into Pakistan; and what was needed was more intelligence-sharing and coordination between the Pakistan army and the NATO forces.

The prime minister also referred to the foreign militants already on Pakistani soil — Uzbeks, Chechens, Arabs and Afghans — while promising that information about the “involvement of foreign elements” would be shared with the nation “at some appropriate time”. However, the presence of foreign fighters has also been confirmed by the Pakistan Army spokesperson during the daily briefings on the ongoing operation. There is also the issue of India’s involvement in destabilising Pakistan. This needs more proof than is currently available, though it must be said that getting evidence which can actually stick in a court of law is nearly impossible, such being the nature of the issue.

Mr Gilani’s objection to the American troop surge may also be based on analyses within the United States that oppose sending in more troops. The fear that this could push Taliban fighters into Pakistan cannot be dismissed because the last time coalition forces put the heat on Taliban-Al Qaeda fighters, they chose to cross over into Pakistan to escape annihilation. The strategy, therefore, needs to take this into consideration. Right now Pakistan is grappling with those extremist cadres that routinely attack its interests. The degree of difficulty in handling what is already on the ground is perhaps one reason why Mr Gilani has expressed the fear of more such elements entering Pakistan and overstretching Pakistan’s capacity to deal with the problem.

The paradox is clearly there. NATO-US commanders in Afghanistan think that the Taliban infiltrate into Afghanistan from Pakistan’s tribal areas. From the latest statement of our prime minister, it is clear that Pakistan too thinks that “foreign” and Afghan terrorists enter Pakistan from Afghanistan despite the deployment of Pakistani troops along the border. Pakistan thinks that if more American troops are deployed on the Afghan side, more rather than fewer militants will be pushed into Pakistan. The Americans on the other hand think that if Pakistani troops take on the Taliban in the tribal areas, fewer rather than more terrorists would be pushed into Afghanistan. The fact is that movement from west to east and east to west cannot be seen as mutually exclusive. There is movement on both sides because of the nature of the conflict, the ethnic and religious motivations involved and the terrain itself.

The idea of a “pincers” strategy against the militants is not to the liking of Pakistan. The strategy that NATO-US forces and the Pakistan Army attack the militants from two sides and finish them off by blocking their escape routes is not very appealing when you take into account the scale of the task being faced by the Pakistan Army. South Waziristan is the base of the Taliban, their leader Baitullah Mehsud now unquestionably the most powerful warlord in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has his “branchline” groups in all the agencies of FATA and the Malakand region, with jihadi collaborators in the NWFP, Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan. He has fighters and funds at his disposal unmatched by any other warlord. Fighting him will be a major operation. If he begins to get more fighters from Afghanistan, that would only add to Pakistan’s problems. Pakistan could be persuaded to pull out elements from the eastern side but that may not be possible until the US could convince India to thin its military presence on its western front.

President Barack Obama may be thinking of an exit strategy but he also plans to more than double the number of US forces in Afghanistan to 68,000 troops by the end of 2009, up from about 32,000 in 2008. Pakistani strategists think that only 200,000 to 300,000 American troops will deliver Afghanistan; anything short of that will make a mess of the war, pushing more Taliban fighters and refugees into Pakistan. Therefore Pakistan is in there for the long haul. It wants to tackle the menace of the Taliban piecemeal, relying on the public opinion in its favour, without being faced with more Taliban militants from across the Durand Line. *

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U.S. Officials Cite Drones, Offensive

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 1, 2009

Drone-launched U.S. missile attacks and Pakistan's ongoing military offensive in and around the Swat Valley have unsettled al-Qaeda and undermined its relative invulnerability in Pakistani mountain sanctuaries, U.S. military and intelligence officials say.

The dual disruption offers potential new opportunities to ferret out and target the extremists, and it has sparked a new sense of possibility amid a generally pessimistic outlook for the conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Although al-Qaeda remains "a serious, potent threat," a U.S. counterterrorism official said, "they've suffered some serious losses and seem to be feeling a heightened sense of anxiety -- and that's not a bad thing at all."

The offensive in Swat against its Taliban allies also poses a dilemma for al-Qaeda, a senior military official said. "They're asking themselves, 'Are we going to contest' " Taliban losses, he said, predicting that al-Qaeda will "have to make a move" and undertake more open communication on cellphones and computers, even if only to gather information on the situation in the region. "Then they become more visible," he said.

It remains unclear whether U.S. intelligence and Pakistani ground forces can capitalize on such opportunities before they vanish. Chances to intercept substantive al-Qaeda communications or to take advantage of the movement of individuals are always fleeting, according to several officials of both governments, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss counterinsurgency operations and the bilateral relationship.

Since last fall, the Predator drone attacks have eliminated about half of 20 U.S.-designated "high-value" al-Qaeda and other extremist targets along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, U.S. and Pakistani officials said. But the attacks have also killed civilians, stoking anti-American attitudes in Pakistan that inhibit cooperation between Islamabad and Washington.

"The need to establish a trusting, mutually beneficial U.S.-Pakistan partnership is pressing, yet the ability to do so is severely challenged by current events," Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, wrote in a secret assessment on May 27. Petraeus's statement was declassified late last week so it could become part of the Obama administration's federal court appeal to block the release of detainee photographs showing abuse. The administration argues that the images would promote attacks against the United States worldwide.

"Anti-U.S. sentiment has already been increasing in Pakistan . . . especially in regard to cross-border and reported drone strikes, which Pakistanis perceive to cause unacceptable civilian casualties," Petraeus wrote. Nearly two-thirds of Pakistanis oppose counterterrorism cooperation with the United States, he said, and "35 percent say they do not support U.S. strikes into Pakistan, even if they are coordinated with the GOP [government of Pakistan] and the Pakistan Military ahead of time."

Judging by reports from the region through late April, the Obama administration authorized about four or five Predator attacks a month, maintaining a pace set by the Bush administration in August. The CIA, which does not publicly acknowledge the attacks, operates the aircraft, chooses the targets -- ideally with the cooperation of Pakistani intelligence on the ground -- and has White House authority to fire the missiles without prior consultation outside the intelligence agency. A senior Pakistani official said the rate has not diminished in recent weeks, although "you don't hear so much about it" because the strike areas have been more isolated.

"There are better targets and better intelligence on the ground," the Pakistani official said. "It's less of a crapshoot."

A second U.S. military official agreed, saying, "We're not getting civilians, and not getting outrage beyond the usual stuff."

The CIA considers the Predator the most effective tool available in a conflict in which the U.S. military is barred from conducting offensive operations on land or in the air. "We're not at the point yet where there's a sense that there's anything that could replace that," the second military official said of the drone attacks.

The Bush administration last summer also authorized covert U.S. ground raids inside Pakistan, but Pakistani outrage after a single attack in September led to their suspension. Although U.S. Special Operations teams are on continuous alert on the Afghan side of the border, the Obama administration has not authorized any ground operations in Pakistan, and the military is divided over their advisability. "We ask all the time," said a military official who favors such raids. "They say, 'Now is not a good time.' "

The Special Operations ground teams do, however, have what this official called "standing orders" for an attack against the "big three" extremists thought to be in Pakistan -- al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and Taliban leader Mohammad Omar -- if conclusive intelligence became available and the timing was right.

The Pakistani military has its own problems maintaining the delicate balance between popular approval and public outrage over its counterinsurgency actions, even without the U.S. component. The ongoing offensive in Swat and surrounding areas has displaced more than 2 million citizens and destroyed homes and entire towns. U.S. officials have stressed that the Pakistani government must not only sustain the offensive but also win the loyalty of its people by resettling and rebuilding areas it has damaged and guaranteeing their future security.

The United States has contributed $110 million to assist Pakistanis displaced by the Swat fighting, and President Obama is dispatching special envoy Richard C. Holbrooke there this week to assess the situation. Obama "remains very concerned . . . and is pressing internally to make sure we are doing all we can, in concert with our Pakistani friends, to address this in an aggressive way," according to a senior White House aide.

Beyond unease over public perceptions, a hesitant and often mistrustful relationship between the U.S. and Pakistani military and intelligence services continues to limit collaboration. Intelligence relations remain tense, officials from both governments said. Although the military cooperation has improved, "the Pakistan army still believes [the Americans] have ulterior motives," the Pakistani official said, including undermining Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.

Pakistan has accepted U.S. money, weaponry and limited training, but has rebuffed further U.S. efforts to assist its forces. Although the U.S. military flies Predators -- separate from those directed by the CIA -- along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, it is prohibited from overflying Pakistani territory. Thus far, the United States has turned down Pakistani requests for its own Predators.

This spring, U.S. forces offered a compromise: Pakistan could direct U.S. military Predators over areas of its choice, transmitting images directly into its own intelligence channels, according to officials from both governments. After Pakistan refused to allow a downlink to be established on its side of the border, the ground equipment was set up at a joint cooperation center on the Afghanistan side. Pakistani officials were taken to Turkey to observe a similar program.

"It was somewhere between March 10 or 15 that we flew the first 'proof of concept' mission for the Pakistanis and said, 'Here's how the system would work. Here's how we can push data through your own networks so you would have capability available to you,' " said a U.S. military official familiar with the program. Although the Predators were armed, U.S. and Pakistani officials said, no offensive operations beyond intelligence-gathering were contemplated or authorized.

Twelve missions were flown over the tribal regions near the border. But in mid-April, the Pakistanis abandoned the project, the official familiar with the program said. "They just did not ask for additional flight information. Any time we have asked them if they need anything, they've come back and said, 'No, thank you.' "

The Pakistani official said that his government expected the program to continue eventually but that its attention was now focused farther east, on the ongoing Swat offensive. U.S. overflights there were not wanted, he said. "We don't want the American UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] going so deep" into Pakistani territory, he said.

Source

By R. Jeffrey Smith and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 28, 2009

Sometime next year, at a tightly guarded site south of its capital, Pakistan will be ready to start churning out a new stream of plutonium for its nuclear arsenal, which will eventually include warheads for ballistic missiles and cruise missiles capable of being launched from ships, submarines or aircraft.

About 1,000 miles to the southwest, engineers in India are designing cruise missiles to carry nuclear warheads, relying partly on Russian missile-design assistance. India is also trying to equip its Agni ballistic missiles with such warheads and to deploy them on submarines. Its rudimentary missile-defense capability is slated for a major upgrade next year.

The apparent detonation of a North Korean nuclear device on Monday has renewed concerns over that country's efforts to build up its atomic arsenal. At the same time, U.S. and allied officials and experts who have tracked developments in South Asia have grown increasingly worried over the rapid growth of the region's more mature nuclear programs, in part because of the risk that weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists.

India and Pakistan see their nuclear programs as vital points of leverage in an arms race that has begun to take on the pace and diversity, although not the size, of U.S.-Soviet nuclear competition during the Cold War, according to U.S. intelligence and proliferation experts. Pakistani authorities said they are modernizing their facilities, not expanding their program; Indian officials in New Delhi and Washington declined to comment.

"They are both going great guns [on] new systems, new materials; they are doing everything you would imagine," said a former intelligence official who has long studied the region and who spoke on the condition of anonymity. While both India and Pakistan say their actions are defensive, the consequence of their efforts has been to boost the quantity of materials being produced and the number of times they must be moved around, as well as the training of experts in highly sensitive skills, this source and others say.

More vulnerabilities. More stuff in production. More stuff in transit," when it is more vulnerable to theft, said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, formerly the CIA's top official on weapons of mass destruction and the Energy Department's director of intelligence during the George W. Bush administration. U.S. experts also worry that as the size of the programs grows, chances increase that a rogue scientist or military officer will attempt to sell nuclear parts or know-how, as now-disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan did in the 1980s and 1990s.

Former Indian government officials say efforts are underway to improve and test a powerful thermonuclear warhead, even as the country adds to a growing array of aircraft, missiles and submarines that launch them. "Delivery system-wise, India is doing fine," said Bharat Karnad, a former member of India's National Security Advisory Board and a professor of national security studies at New Delhi's Center for Policy Research. India and Pakistan tested nuclear devices in 1998; India first detonated an atomic bomb in 1974.

A senior Pakistani official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said his government has refrained from testing missiles that could carry nuclear weapons because officials do not want to antagonize the Indian and U.S. governments.

U.S. officials say narrow appeals to the two countries to slow their weapons work will probably fail. "We have to think of dealing with the South Asian problem not on a purely regional basis, but in the context of a more global approach," Gary Samore, the senior White House nonproliferation adviser, said after a speech to the Arms Control Association last week.

Samore said the "Pakistani government has always said they will do that in conjunction with India. The Indians have always said, 'We can't take steps unless similar steps are taken by China and the other nuclear states,' and very quickly you end up with a situation where it's hard to make progress."

Some experts worry, however, that the United States may not have the luxury of waiting to negotiate a treaty that would curtail the global production of fissile materials -- a pact that President Obama says he hopes to complete during his first term.

A recent U.S. intelligence report, commissioned by outgoing Bush administration officials, warned of the dangers associated with potential attacks on nuclear weapons-related shipments inside Pakistan, for example

Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told senators days before his retirement in March that "Pakistan continues to develop its nuclear infrastructure, expand nuclear weapons stockpiles, and seek more advanced warheads and delivery systems." He added that although Pakistan has "taken important steps to safeguard its nuclear weapons . . . vulnerabilities still exist."

Although Maples did not offer details of the expansion, other experts said he was referring to the expected completion next year of Pakistan's second heavy-water reactor at its Khushab nuclear complex 100 miles southwest of Islamabad, which will produce new spent nuclear fuel containing plutonium for use in nuclear arms.

"When Khushab is done, they'll be able to make a significant number of new bombs," Mowatt-Larssen said. In contrast, "it took them roughly 10 years to double the number of nuclear weapons from roughly 50 to 100." A third heavy-water reactor is also under construction at Khushab, according to David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security.

Before it can be used in weaponry, the plutonium must first be separated from the fuel rods at a highly guarded nuclear facility near Rawalpindi, about 100 miles northeast of Khushab. Satellite images published by Albright's institute show a substantial expansion occurred at the complex between 2002 and 2006, reflecting a long-standing Pakistani desire to replace weapons fueled by enriched uranium with plutonium-based weapons.

Pakistani officials dismiss suggestions that the building represents an acceleration in South Asia's arms race. "If two are sufficient, why build 10?" asked Brig. Gen. Nazir Ahmed Butt, defense attache in Pakistan's embassy in Washington. "We cannot match warhead for warhead. We're not in a numbers game. People should not take a technological upgrade for an expansion."

Details of precautions surrounding Pakistani nuclear shipments are closely held. Abdul Mannan, director of transport and waste safety for Pakistan's nuclear regulatory authority, said in a 2007 presentation to the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington that Pakistani safeguards are "enough to deter and delay a terrorist attack, and any malicious diversion would be protected in early stages." But Mannan also said the government needed to upgrade its security measures, and warned that "a country like Pakistan is not well equipped" to contain radioactive fallout from an attack on a nuclear shipment.

U.S. officials have said they accept Pakistan's assurances that its nuclear stockpile is adequately safeguarded, but intelligence officials have acknowledged contingency plans to dispatch American troops to protect or remove any weapons at imminent risk.

Proximity to Taliban

While Pakistan's nuclear program has lately attracted the most worry, because of the close proximity to the capital of Taliban insurgents, many U.S. experts say that it should not be considered in isolation from India's own nuclear expansion.

Some experts say that a civil nuclear cooperation agreement that Bush signed with India in October benefits the country's weapons programs, because it sanctions India's import of uranium and allows the military to draw on enriched uranium produced by eight reactors that might otherwise be needed for civil power. In a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency last July, Pakistan's ambassador in Vienna warned that the deal would increase "the chances of a nuclear arms race on the sub-continent."

Ken Luongo, a former senior adviser on nonproliferation at the Energy Department who recently returned from meetings with Pakistani officials, said the deal exacerbated Pakistan's fears of losing a technological race; others say that, at the least, it provided a rationalization to keep going.

Feroz Hassan Khan, a retired Pakistani general in charge of arms control, said Pakistan perceives a real risk of a preemptive strike by India. Because of Indian superiority in conventional forces, "Pakistan is compelled to rely more heavily on nuclear weapons to counter the threat," Khan said. "It would be highly foolish not to produce more and better weapons."

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Beijing, which is hesitant to get more deeply involved, is asked to provide training and even equipment to help Pakistan counter a growing militant threat.

By Paul Richter
May 24, 2009

Reporting from Washington -- The Obama administration has appealed to China to provide training and even military equipment to help Pakistan counter a growing militant threat, U.S. officials said.

The proposal is part of a broad push by Washington to enlist key allies of Pakistan in the effort to stabilize the country. The U.S. is seeking to persuade Islamabad to step up its efforts against militants, while supporting the fragile civilian government and the nation's tottering economy.

Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration's special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, has visited China and Saudi Arabia, another key ally, in recent weeks as part of the effort.

The American appeal to China underscores the importance of Beijing in security issues. Washington considers China to be the most influential country for dealing with isolated, militaristic North Korea. Beijing also plays a crucial role in the international effort to pressure Iran over its nuclear program.

China traditionally has been reluctant to intervene in the affairs of other countries. However, Chinese officials are concerned about the militant threat near its western border, fearing it could destabilize the region and threaten China's growing economic presence in Pakistan.


A senior U.S. official acknowledged that China was hesitant to get more involved, but said, "You can see that they're thinking about it." He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivity of the subject.

U.S. officials believe China is skilled at counterinsurgency, a holdover of the knowledge gained during the country's lengthy civil war that ended with a communist victory in 1949. And with its strong military ties to Pakistan, U.S. officials hope China could help craft a more sophisticated strategy than Islamabad's heavy-handed approach.

The Pakistani military has used artillery and aircraft against Taliban extremists in the Swat Valley and surrounding areas in its ongoing offensive. "They're very focused on hardware," the senior U.S. official said of the Pakistanis. But the fighting has forced more than 2 million civilians to flee, United Nations officials estimate, and a humanitarian crisis looms.

The tide of displaced people could set off a backlash against the campaign among ordinary Pakistanis, many of whom already see the fight as driven by American, rather than Pakistani, interests.

China's strategic alliance with Islamabad dates to the 1960s. Beijing has sold Pakistan billions of dollars' worth of military equipment, including missiles, warships, and tanks.

China also has a huge economic presence in Pakistan. China's ambassador, Luo Zhaohui, said in a speech this month that there are an estimated 10,000 Chinese engineers and technicians working in the country.

But Beijing is increasingly concerned about the Pakistani insurgency, in part because Muslim separatists from the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang inhabited by Uighurs have trained in Pakistani camps and then returned to China.

Officials in Beijing also are concerned because of recurrent kidnappings and killings of Chinese workers in Pakistan. China has repeatedly pressed the Pakistani government to better protect its citizens.

Analysts say the Pakistani government launched an attack on radicals in the Red Mosque in Islamabad in 2007 in part because of pressure from China after several of its citizens were briefly kidnapped by militants. More than 100 people died in the assault, and Islamic militants say it represented a turning point in their struggle against the government.

Pakistani officials in Washington acknowledged a lengthy alliance with China.

"Pakistan and China have a time-tested bilateral relationship and Chinese support and cooperation have been crucial for Pakistan at many difficult times in our history," said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S. "At this moment too, we continue to look to China as a trusted friend and partner while laying the foundations of a more enduring strategic relationship with the U.S."

Chinese officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Stephen Cohen, a South Asia specialist at the Brookings Institution, said China and Saudi Arabia wield more influence with Pakistan than does the United States. As a consultant to the U.S. government, Cohen has urged American officials to try to enlist Beijing's help.

"China can be a positive influence," he said. But he added that there may be divisions within the Chinese government, and that the Chinese military, despite close ties to the Pakistani army, may be reluctant to intervene.

Holbrooke, the U.S. envoy, visited China on April 16, and officials of both countries said then that they had agreed to work together on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"We came here to share views on the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan because we share a common danger, a common challenge and a common goal," Holbrooke said at the time.

Lisa Curtis, a former congressional analyst now at the Heritage Foundation, a think tank, said it would be difficult to persuade China to assume any military role.

But she said the Chinese are concerned about the spillover effects of the Pakistani insurgency.

"The Chinese may try to deal with this privately," she said. "They won't want to make any public statements that might embarrass the Pakistanis."

Source

21 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Pakistan on Friday appealed to the US public to make small donations through their cellphones to help care for some 1.7 million people displaced in a major campaign against Islamic extremists.

Ambassador Hussain Haqqani called on Americans to donate five dollars each by sending text messages and voiced hope that television networks would encourage the effort.

The funds are to provide food, clothing, medicine and other relief goods channeled through the United Nations, which earlier Friday called on the world to contribute a total of 543 million dollars.

"Every American can contribute this small amount and help the displaced people," said Nadeem Kiani, press attache at the embassy.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged the international community to take part.

"The Secretary-General urges the international community to show their solidarity with the people of Pakistan by supporting the Humanitarian Response Plan launched today in Islamabad, and the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Plan presented yesterday by the Government of Pakistan," his spokesperson said in New York.

Ban "is concerned that Pakistan is currently witnessing rapid displacement on a massive scale ... (and) stresses the urgency of raising the 544 million dollars requested in the appeal to address the critical needs of the affected population and assist in the normalization of their lives," she added.

Pakistan says more than 1,050 militants and 58 soldiers have been killed in the offensive, which followed US criticism accusing Islamabad of a weak response to Islamic extremists.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday announced 110 million dollars in emergency aid to Pakistan and said that she and State Department employees had already made the text-message donations.

US cellular users can make five-dollar donations by texting "Swat" to the number 20222

Source

By FISNIK ABRASHI – 1 day ago

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (AP) — The top U.S. general in eastern Afghanistan said Friday he saw "some very interesting movement" of insurgents across the border into Pakistan this spring, possibly to join Taliban militants battling government troops.

Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser's comments come amid concern in Washington and Islamabad that the buildup of 21,000 additional U.S. forces in Afghanistan may push Taliban militants into Pakistan, further destabilizing the border region in that country.

The Obama administration has declared eliminating militant havens in Pakistan vital to its goals of defeating al-Qaida and winning the war in Afghanistan.

Fighters have historically moved back and forth across the border to back Taliban insurgencies in both countries.

But Schloesser's remarks in an interview with The Associated Press suggested a larger transfer into Pakistan than has been seen previously, as the fighting between Pakistan's troops and the Taliban has intensified.

He suggested that most of the movement in the past has been from Pakistan into Afghanistan, calling the new development "an interesting movement backward."

He did not provide details or numbers of those heading toward Pakistan.

It is unclear to what extent the Taliban is moving to help militants in Pakistan or fleeing from U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Schloesser suggested that both factors could be at play.

Pakistani officials have long complained that insurgents were crossing over the porous border from Afghanistan into Pakistan.

They have also expressed worries that the surge of U.S. troops into Afghanistan could lead to more militants crossing over into their country. Pakistani military officers say that Afghan, Tajik and Uzbek fighters are taking part in the current fighting in Pakistan's Swat Valley and in other border regions, but that the vast majority are Pakistani.

Schloesser, who commands American troops in eastern Afghanistan, suggested that some of the current movement may be intended to reinforce Taliban fighters in Pakistan.

"I would suppose that ... some of that movement is fighters going back to help their insurgent groups that are involved in fighting, for example in Bajur or the fighting that is occurring in Buner or in the Dir area or potentially even in Swat," Schloesser said.

Pakistani troops launched an offensive last month in the Swat region against militants who had pushed into the adjacent Buner district within 60 miles of the capital, Islamabad.

The army claims it has killed more than 1,000 militants and won back swaths of territory in Swat. But it faces stiff resistance. Earlier this year, Pakistan launched an offensive in the Bajur tribal area.

Schloesser's troops helped the Pakistani offensive by trying to prevent militants from crossing from Afghanistan into Bajur.

The area under Schloesser's command includes the provinces of Nuristan, Kunar, Khost and Paktika, all with active insurgent groups, some supported from within Pakistan. It abuts most of Pakistan's volatile tribal areas, a region of high mountains.

The current movement of fighters into Pakistan could also partly be a result of pressure from the thousands of new U.S. troops that have joined the fight in Afghanistan this year, Schloesser said.

In Washington, the top U.S. military officer said Thursday he was concerned that the U.S. troop buildup to roust insurgents from Afghanistan could further destabilize Pakistan.

However, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, speaking to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the military planning is under way to try to avoid that.

Mullen said he believes the upcoming increase of 21,000 U.S. forces in Afghanistan "is about right" for the new strategy of trying to quell the insurgency and speed up training of Afghan security forces.

Source

Reuter

Thu May 21, 2009
By Andrew Gray

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. military offensive in southern Afghanistan could push Taliban fighters into Pakistan, whose troops are already struggling to combat militants, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Thursday.

The comments by Admiral Mike Mullen raised the prospect that Pakistan, waging battles with militants who have forced about 2 million people from their homes, could face even greater turmoil in the months ahead.

The United States is pouring thousands of troops into Afghanistan this year to try to reverse gains by a resurgent Taliban, particularly in its southern heartland.

Mullen, the most senior U.S. military officer, said the United States had a clear national security interest in taking on the Taliban.

"They want Afghanistan back. We can't let them or their al Qaeda cohorts have it. We can't permit the return of the ... very same safe havens from which the attacks on 9/11 were planned and resourced," Mullen said.

"Yet we can't deny that our success in that regard may only push them deeper into Pakistan," he told the U.S. Senate's Foreign Relations Committee.

Senator Russ Feingold, a Democratic member of the committee, expressed concern about a possible spillover.

"We may end up further destabilizing Pakistan without providing substantial lasting improvements in Afghanistan," the senator said.

"Weak civilian governments, an increased number of militants and an expanded U.S. troop presence could be a recipe for disaster for those nations in the region as well as our own nation's security."

He suggested the presence of U.S. forces in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States also pushed militants into Pakistan, where al Qaeda regrouped.

Mullen said he shared Feingold's concern, particularly that militants could cross from southern Afghanistan into the Pakistani region of Baluchistan.

"Can I ... (be) 100 percent certain that won't destabilize Pakistan? I don't know the answer to that," he said.

NO SUCCESS AGAINST OPIUM TRADE

Mullen said he thought a spillover could be avoided because both Pakistani and U.S. forces were aware of the possibility and were planning measures to prevent it.

Mullen also said the opium trade, which helps fund the Taliban, must be eliminated in Afghanistan and he acknowledged Washington and its allies had failed to tackle the problem.

"We have had almost no success in the last seven or eight years doing that, including this year's efforts," he said.

He said the United States and other nations had to step up efforts to provide alternative livelihoods for farmers who grow opium poppies.

The United States has 49,000 troops in Afghanistan and plans to reach a total of 68,000 later this year. Other nations, mainly NATO allies, have about 32,000 troops in the country.

Source

By VOA News
20 May 2009

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the U.S. is losing the media war in Afghanistan and Pakistan - something she said must be reversed.

She told the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee Wednesday that militants broadcasting from radio equipment on the backs of pickup trucks are threatening and intimidating people.

She says while they are spreading what she called the "worst kind of disinformation" they have been more effective than the U.S. when it comes to strategic communications.

Secretary Clinton says as a result, the Obama administration is revamping its communications strategy - looking at new ways to directly reach people in areas where militants are active - including on their cell phones.

Clinton says the U.S. must not lose the "information war" in the region, and much do a better job at communicating its values and ideals to Afghans and Pakistanis.

She is seeking $48.6 billion in State Department funding for 2010, a seven percent increase over 2009 funding levels. Clinton also says the State Department will work side-by-side with the Defense Department to promote U.S. interests and security in the region.

Source

Waal Street Journal

May 22, 2009

By JAY SOLOMON and SIOBHAN GORMAN

WASHINGTON -- Pakistan and India have begun sharing intelligence on Islamic extremists, with the prodding of the U.S., in an arrangement that represents unprecedented cooperation between the two nuclear-armed South Asian nations.

Washington hopes the cooperation will get a lift from last week's Indian elections, in which the incumbent Congress Party won by a wide margin over a Hindu nationalist party traditionally more hostile to Pakistan.

The Central Intelligence Agency arranged for Pakistan and India to share information on Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group widely blamed for last November's terrorist attack on Mumbai, as well as on Taliban commanders who are leading the insurgency against Pakistan's government, said U.S. officials.

The U.S. is stressing to Indian and Pakistani leaders that they face a common threat in Pakistan-based militant groups. Washington hopes that when India sees the intelligence and evidence that Islamabad is seriously fighting the militants in some areas, it will ease its deployments against Pakistan -- which in turn would prompt Islamabad to put even more focus on the battle at home.

"We have to satisfy the Mumbai question, and show India that the threat is abating," said a U.S. official involved in developing Washington's South Asia strategy.

India and Pakistan traded military threats across their border in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, in which terrorists left more than 170 people dead. The CIA and U.S. diplomats tried to ease the tension, urging Pakistan to crack down on the sources of the attack. Pakistan banned Lashkar and detained six people in connection with the attack, partially mollifying Indian outrage.

Intelligence sharing on Mumbai has led to a somewhat more frequent exchange of information, U.S. and Pakistani officials said. India and Pakistan have shared "a lot" of information with each other about the Mumbai attack, said an official at Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency. He said the CIA was initially used as a conduit but the two countries now work directly with each other, while keeping the CIA in the loop.

The official cautioned, "We're not going to tell them everything we know and they're not going to tell us everything they know. Nobody expects that to happen. ... But we're talking about [the attack]. We weren't doing that in December."

A U.S. official said Washington isn't "under any illusions" about the difficulty of erasing decades-old suspicions between India and Pakistan, but sees some progress. U.S. officials hope that a calming of tensions can allow India's Congress Party government, strengthened by its election victory, to resume peace talks with Pakistan over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. Some U.S. officials believe Lashkar-e-Taiba orchestrated the assault specifically to undermine the peace process.

The Obama administration has been concerned that Lashkar could carry out a second strike on India in a bid to stoke a war. President Barack Obama came into office pledging to craft a regional solution to the instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The CIA and other intelligence agencies are stepping up efforts in the Pakistani tribal areas, tapping and tracking the location of the cellphones of Taliban commanders as well as taking pictures and collecting information in their training camps, according to a person familiar with the efforts. The U.S. shares this information with Pakistan, and sometimes with India, to reinforce the U.S. argument that the Taliban threat to Pakistan is greater than the Indian threat

The U.S. also sometimes brings intelligence on Pakistan's efforts to combat militants to India's attention, with Pakistan's consent, this person said. Examples include showing Indian officials evidence of progress against militants in the Pakistani regions of Bajaur, Swat, and Buner.

U.S. intelligence officers have been able to track the whereabouts of key Pakistani Taliban leaders, such as Baitullah Mehsud, accused of orchestrating the murder of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, said this person. Sufi Muhammad and Maulana Qazi Fazlullah, leaders of a militant group aligned with Mr. Mehsud, are also tracked, according to the person familiar with the efforts. Mr. Muhammad brokered the now-defunct deal between the Pakistani government and the Taliban to enforce Islamic Sharia law in the Swat region in Pakistan.

The government of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is hoping that Congress's victory can also provide the Indian government with the political cover to move one or two divisions away from the Pakistan border in coming months, according to an official briefed on the diplomacy.

But Indian officials say they aren't ready to do so. An Indian government official said New Delhi has documented an escalation of cross-border infiltrations by Pakistani militants into Kashmir.

Source

Editorial, Dawn, Pakistan
By Tariq Fatemi
Thursday, 21 May, 2009

AS always, the US capital is in the throes of raging controversies. President Obama remains popular, while the Republican Party appears not to have found its bearings after its rout in the last election.

This has not stopped former vice president Dick Cheney from becoming Obama’s harshest critic and the previous administration’s most forceful defender.

The Republicans claim that Obama’s sudden reversal on the issue of the release of photographs depicting the abuse of detainees held by the US authorities abroad is the result of the pressure mounted by Cheney. While Obama claimed that the release of photos would endanger US troops abroad, a rights organisation charged that it “essentially renders meaningless Obama’s pledge of transparency and accountability” because the president “has become complicit with the torture that was rampant during the Bush years by being complicit in its cover-up”.

The Republicans have also seized on the opportunity provided by the gaffes of the powerful house speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is caught in a controversy regarding what she was told by the CIA about its interrogation methods way back in 2002. With Pelosi and the Obama-appointed CIA chief Leon Panetta engaged in a major public spat, the Republicans see in it the fortuitous weakening of the speaker with a negative impact on Obama’s legislative programmes.

In the field of foreign policy, Afghanistan and Pakistan continue to occupy centre-stage, with Obama hosting presidents Zardari and Karzai in an unusual trilateral summit. Prior to Zardari’s arrival, Holbrooke was tasked to limit the damage caused by Obama’s remarks and reiterate that the US was “not abandoning it (Pakistan), nor are we distancing ourselves from Zardari”. Administration officials also affirmed Obama’s support for “the democratically elected governments” of the two countries, although there was no personal endorsement of the leaders. Zardari’s spin masters, however, have claimed that the visit was highly successful, pointing to Holbrooke’s characterising of the talks as “extraordinary” and “unprecedented”. But the reality appeared at a lunch meeting where one senator made a most inappropriate remark about Zardari’s past reputation and another accused Karzai of taking more of “the illegal [drug] money than the Taliban”.

But the administration is pleased that Islamabad has undertaken a major military operation with greater resolve to eliminate the militants than before. Nevertheless, there is now concern that the exodus of residents from the affected areas to the cities could create a backlash and weaken support for the military operations. Some have expressed the fear that it could also trigger deep-seated tensions in Punjab and Karachi. This has led Admiral Mullen to remark that “my biggest concern is whether (Pakistan) will sustain it”.

In the meanwhile, the word currently in vogue in Washington is “counterinsurgency”. Gen David Petraeus, Centcom chief, is credited with being the inspiration for this latest military mantra. Its detractors however, fear that this doctrine could soon become unquestioned orthodoxy, distracting the US from other strategic options. In the meanwhile, it has already claimed its first casualty, with Gen McKiernan the top US commander in Afghanistan becoming the first military commander to be removed since President Truman fired Gen McArthur from his Korea command. Not surprisingly, his replacement Gen McChrystal and his new deputy, Gen Rodrigues, are both strong advocates of counterinsurgency.

Nevertheless, there is a growing realisation in Washington that it has only limited options to deal with the current situation in Pakistan. For the first time, there are some voices that the administration needs to come up with a more clear and convincing strategy for both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In a recent piece in the Washington Post, Richard Haass, a former senior official in the Bush administration and who is currently president of the Council on Foreign Relations, had words of caution for the current set-up in Washington. Though convinced that Obama has opted for “a modest but not minimalist strategy [in Afghanistan] of targeting Al Qaeda, weakening the Taliban and strengthening the central government”, he points out that the US is “stretched economically and militarily”. He therefore recommends lowering its sights because it is better to have “partial success we can afford than expensive failures we cannot”.

Another evidence of ‘revisionism’ was evident in the debate in the house on the administration’s request for fresh appropriations for Afghanistan. While it was approved by an overwhelming majority, 51 members of the president’s party opposed the bill, with congresswoman Donna Edwards explaining that she could not support funding because the president lacked “a strategy for leaving Afghanistan”; while David Obey, the powerful chairman of the appropriations committee told the media that he would give Obama’s strategy a year to work before moving to the opposition. The paper described the move as a “modest but gathering opposition”.

In this context, US leaders (as well as ours), would do well to read the just published Power Rules by Leslie Gelb. A highly respected Washington veteran in government, journalism and think tanks, Gelb argues that the US may be the world’s indispensable power but cannot solve major problems on its own. In his incisive and compelling antidote to the fervour of ideologues, Gelb warns that “unilateral action even in military extremis is not likely to work”. He explains that other key nations — that too are unable to solve problems on their own — are equally indispensable as partners in solving problems and this leads him to the conclusion that the only way out is to promote multi-polarity. He therefore emphasises that “this clear mutual dependence makes mutual indispensability the central operating principle for power in the 21st century”. Finally, Gelb warns the politicians to “avoid the three demons of foreign policy: ideology, domestic politics and the arrogance of power”.

These are developments that need to be analysed by our leaders. For one, it is clear that during the next 12 to 18 months, the advocates of counterinsurgency are likely to be given a freer hand to make a concerted effort to eliminate the Al Qaeda leadership, even if this means more frequent drone attacks and cross-border incursions into Pakistan. But if that option fails, we can expect growing demands that the US review its overall strategy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan, or as Haass counsels: “if it [US] fails to meet its objectives, it should resist increasing its effort much beyond current levels”. What will this strategic review mean for Pakistan, for we know that Obama is far too intelligent to allow the US to get stuck in a quagmire?

The New York Times
By DEXTER FILKINS
Published: May 20, 2009

KABUL, Afghanistan — Leaders of the Taliban and other armed groups battling the Afghan government are talking to intermediaries about a potential peace agreement, with initial demands focused on a timetable for a withdrawal of American troops, according to Afghan leaders here and in Pakistan.

The talks, if not the withdrawal proposals, are being supported by the Afghan government. The Obama administration, which has publicly declared its desire to coax “moderate” Taliban fighters away from armed struggle, says it is not involved in the discussions and will not be until the Taliban agree to lay down their arms. But nor is it trying to stop the talks, and Afghan officials believe they have tacit support from the Americans.

The discussions have so far produced no agreements, since the insurgents appear to be insisting that any deal include an American promise to pull out — at the very time that the Obama administration is sending more combat troops to help reverse the deteriorating situation on the battlefield. Indeed, with 20,000 additional troops on the way, American commanders seem determined to inflict greater pain on the Taliban first, to push them into negotiations and extract better terms. And most of the initial demands are nonstarters for the Americans in any case.

Even so, the talks are significant because they suggest how a political settlement may be able to end the eight-year-old war, and how such negotiations may proceed. They also raise the prospect of potentially difficult decisions by President Hamid Karzai and President Obama, who may have to consider making deals with groups like the Taliban that are anathema to many Americans, and other leaders with brutal and bloody pasts. Some of the leaders in the current talks have been involved with Al Qaeda.

While the talks have been under way for months, they have accelerated since Mr. Obama took office and have produced more specific demands, the Afghan intermediaries said.

The Taliban leaders, through their spokesman, and those of other armed groups publicly deny that they are involved in any negotiations. But several Afghans here and in Pakistan say they have been talking directly to the Taliban leadership group headed by Mullah Muhammad Omar, the movement’s secretive founder. The council is based in the Pakistani city of Quetta.

Discussions have also been held with representatives of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a longtime warlord with a record of extreme brutality, and with Sirajuddin Haqqani, whose guerrilla army is based in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Mr. Haqqani’s group is also known for its ruthlessness and for sending suicide bombers into Afghanistan.

“America cannot win this war, and the Taliban cannot win this war,” Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, a former Taliban ambassador and one of the intermediaries, said in an interview. “I have delivered this message to the Taliban.”

The talks under way now appear to be directed not at individual bands of antigovernment insurgents — the strategy suggested by President Obama — but at the leaders of the large movements.

American officials insist they are not participating in any talks. “The U.S. would support such efforts only if Taliban are willing to abandon violence and lay down their arms, and accept Afghanistan’s democratically elected government,” said Ian Kelly, a State Department spokesman. Still, two of the principal intermediaries, Mr. Zaeef and Daoud Abedi, said they had held extensive discussions with American officials.

A State Department memo described a single meeting with Mr. Abedi, but said it ended abruptly because American officials were not permitted to meet with representatives of Mr. Hekmatyar. There is no independent confirmation of Mr. Zaeef ’s claim to have met with Americans.

Afghan officials said they welcomed the talks. “The government has kept all channels of communication open," said Homayun Hamidzada, a spokesman for Mr. Karzai. “This includes the Taliban and Hekmatyar.”

Mr. Abedi, an Afghan-American businessman from California and a member of Mr. Hekmatyar’s political party, the Islamic Party, said he conducted negotiations in March. Guerrillas loyal to Mr. Hekmatyar are battling the Americans in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. His political party still has a wide following in the country.

In an interview, Mr. Abedi said he undertook the negotiations — with Mr. Hekmatyar and with the Taliban leaders — at the behest of the State Department, a claim that American officials deny. Mr. Abedi said he met several times with American officials in Washington before and after his trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan. He declined to say which American diplomats he met, saying, “I am a Pashtun, and I swore on my honor that I would not reveal the names of the people I met with, so I cannot.”

Mr. Abedi said he hammered out a common set of demands between the Taliban and Mr. Hekmatyar’s group. The groups agreed to stop fighting if those conditions were met, Mr. Abedi said. The Taliban’s demands seem incompatible with much of Mr. Obama’s strategy, which is to substantially weaken the Taliban through a combination of military force and economic development.

Nor did the deal Mr. Abedi described mention either Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahri, the two senior Qaeda leaders believed to be hiding in Pakistan under the protection of the Taliban or some other armed group.

The first demand was an immediate pullback of American and other foreign forces to their bases, followed by a cease-fire and a total withdrawal from the country over the next 18 months. Then the current government would be replaced by a transitional government made up of a range of Afghan leaders, including those of the Taliban and other insurgents. Americans and other foreign soldiers would be replaced with a peacekeeping force drawn from predominantly Muslim nations, with a guarantee from the insurgent groups that they would not attack such a force. Nationwide elections would follow after the Western forces left.

As for Mr. Hekmatyar, Mr. Abedi said that he maintained a “direct link” with him, and that he was authorized to negotiate on his behalf. He did not meet with Afghan government officials.

After the agreement between the Taliban and the Islamic Party was reached, Mr. Abedi said, the Taliban leaders added more conditions: an end to the drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas, and the release of some Taliban prisoners.

Mr. Abedi said that when he returned to the United States with his proposal, he was greeted with enthusiasm by officials at the State Department. But he said they never called him back.

Mr. Hekmatyar earned a reputation as an especially brutal commander in the civil war that engulfed the country in the 1990s, in particular for the relentless bombardment of Kabul between 1994 and 1996 that killed an estimated 40,000 civilians during an attempt to capture the capital.

In 2002, after Mr. Hekmatyar resisted the American invasion, the Americans tried to kill him with a missile fired from a remotely piloted airplane. They missed.


The other main negotiation is led by Mr. Zaeef and Arsallah Rahmani, a former Taliban minister and now a member of the Afghan Parliament.

“We are not talking to low-ranking people — we are talking to the leaders,” Mr. Rahmani said in an interview. Mr. Zaeef was the Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan; he served nearly four years in American military prisons, including the one at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Their plan would be for the guerrillas and the government to reconcile slowly, starting with the least contentious issues. One of the main low-level demands of the opposition leaders is that their names be removed from a so-called blacklist, contained in a resolution passed by the United Nations Security Council, which obliges governments to detain them. More difficult issues would follow.

“Blood begets blood, but talking begets peace,” Mr. Rahmani said.

Mr. Zaeef said the public declarations of Mullah Omar, who usually vows to fight on, are not necessarily to be taken seriously.

Source

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Columnist says Pakistan and Afghanistan could turn into our next Vietnam
[Global News: Comment]

Under the pretext of responding to the September 11, 2001 attacks in America, the United and States and Great Britain invaded Afghanistan on October 7, 2001.

The two countries dubbed this invasion "Operation Enduring Freedom." President George W. Bush told the American people that the US strikes were, "designed to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations, and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime…we will make it more difficult for the terror network to train new recruits and coordinate their evil plans. Initially, the terrorists may burrow deeper into caves and other entrenched hiding places…At the same time, the oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and our allies. As we strike military targets, we will also drop food, medicine and supplies to the starving and suffering men and women and children of Afghanistan… "

During the 2008 presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama promised to immediately withdraw troops from Iraq in order to bolster the forces in Afghanistan in order to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda. "It’s time to refocus our attention on the war we have to win in Afghanistan," he said.

I believe that this approach was taken by the Obama team in order to placate the anti-Iraq contingent in the American electorate while not leaving himself vulnerable to the "soft on defense" hawkish critics on the other side.

As a campaign tactic this approach proved to be successful. In reality, this may prove to be one of the greatest miscalculations President Obama could make. After his historic election, many historians and others placed this event in the context of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s "Dream".

Some mistakenly saw this election as "the fulfillment of that Dream"; others mistakenly compared candidate Obama’s "race neutral" approach with Dr. King’s vision. Some even likened Obama’s oratory skills with that of Dr. King’s.

Today critics are asking the question: "Is the Obama Administration’s approach to the problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan going to be its Vietnam?"

As America faces its most difficult economic challenges in recent history, compare President Obama’s Afghanistan and Pakistan approach with President Johnson’s Vietnam. Is the Obama Administration making the same mistakes based on arrogance, hubris, and a misplaced sense of empire that led us into Vietnam?

Here’s what the Rev. Dr. King had to say about US involvement in Vietnam in his speech "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence."

He said: "There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor-- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such."

Today, President Obama is planning to send an additional 4,000 troops and other support personnel into Afghanistan. Like his predecessor, President Obama says, "If the Afghanistan government falls to the Taliban or allows al-Qaida to go unchallenged, that country will again be a base for terrorists."

The additional 4,000 troops will bring the total US force up to 30,000 by the end of 2009. President Obama is also ratcheting up the rhetoric and activity in Pakistan. There’s a significant increase in ground forces, Predator drones and air attacks.

In his announcement on March 27th, President Obama referred to the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan as, "the most dangerous place in the world." He added: "This is not simply an American problem - far from it. It is, instead, an international security challenge of the highest order. Terrorist attacks in London and Bali were tied to al-Qaida and its allies in Pakistan, as were attacks in North Africa and the Middle East, in Islamabad and Kabul. If there is a major attack on an Asian, European, or African city, it, too, is likely to have ties to al-Qaida's leadership in Pakistan. The safety of people around the world is at stake."

President Obama and his advisors should learn from history, some ancient some modern, and not repeat it. This is a region of the world that has never been defeated militarily. It is where empires go to die.

The Greeks, Indians, Persians, Mongolians, British, and Russians have tried to hold Afghanistan but never succeeded. According to historians, Alexander the Great in 330 B.C. lost more men and more animals crossing the Hindu Kush than all his subsequent campaigns in central Asia.

In 1839 the British invaded Afghanistan; in 1841 after an Afghan revolt, 4,500 British troops withdrew. According to a description published in the North American Review in 1842, On the 6th of January, 1842, the Caboul forces commenced their retreat through the dismal pass, destined to be their grave.

On the third day they were attacked by the mountaineers from all points, and a fearful slaughter ensued.

In more recent history, the Russians invaded Afghanistan. The initial deployment of the Soviet 40th Army began in Afghanistan on August 7, 1978. After nine years of fighting a US, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistani backed mujahedeen resistance, the Soviet troop withdrawal began on May 15, 1988 and ended on February 15, 1989.

Since 2001, in spite of President Bush and now President Obama’s noble speeches and military tactics, the US and its allies have not disrupted the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations.

The US has not been able to successfully "attack the military capability of the Taliban regime". What the US has done is lose 1,147 coalition forces; US Air Force data shows that munitions dropped in Afghanistan have risen 1,100 percent, from 2004 to 2007; and, tonnage figures jumped from 163 tons to 1,956 tons.

According to the United Nations, bombs have killed over 2000 Afghan civilians in 2008, up 40% from 2007. The Associated Press reports the direct correlation between the rise in Afghan civilian deaths and anti-American sentiment.

In terms of dollars, according to recently released pentagon reports, the price tag for running the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan will outstrip the cost of the conflict in Iraq next year. America cannot afford this folly.

To paraphrase the Rev. Dr. King would say: "Then came the buildup in Afghanistan and Pakistan and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war."

The US and its allies could "disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations, and attack the military capability of the Taliban regime" if more of this effort and money were spent on winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan and Pakistani people through real humanitarian assistance such as water, food, medicine, blankets, and building supplies.

The problem with this solution is that those who fuel and promote the military industrial complex in America do not profit from the sale of humanitarian assistance. They profit from war.

This is why, if America is not smart, Afghanistan and Pakistan will once again be where empires go to die.

Source

Washington Post
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, May 19, 2009

In 1947, a British lawyer with no experience in the region arrived in India to draw lines on a map. Within several weeks, Cyril Radcliffe had severed the future Pakistan from India, helping to create the conditions that have since resulted in three wars and the arming of both nations with nuclear weapons. People ask what America would do if Pakistan lost control of its nukes. Wrong question. Ask instead what India might do.

That country has as many as 100 nuclear weapons and the missiles, as well as the airplanes, submarines and surface ships, to launch them. Pakistan also has around 100 nuclear weapons but lacks India's extensive delivery systems. Nonetheless, the two countries have what it takes to blow each other to kingdom come. They also have the reason. They hate each other.

The stakes in this part of the world are worth reciting because they are both terrifying and virtually unprecedented. Yet in Congress, the comparison is made to the Vietnam War. Rep. David Obey, the House Appropriations Committee chairman, has suggested that the war in Afghanistan and the effort to stabilize Pakistan have an open-ended and futile Vietnam quality to them. He wants to give the Obama administration one year to show progress -- or get out.

Others make the argument that we can only make matters worse. First "do no harm," counsels Andrew Bacevich, a former Army colonel and the author of the best-seller "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism." It is his view that the problems of Afghanistan and Pakistan are beyond us, that America has neither the power nor the know-how to do much in this vast, complex region. The trick, he says, is merely to have a plan to secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons if and when the time comes.

If there is a Vietnam analogy, it may be this: Containment can be impossible. The war in Vietnam became the war in Cambodia and the war in Laos. In the end, it meant a bloodbath for the entire region. Cambodia simply went berserk, a horror that is still hard to comprehend. So, too, the unintended consequences of the war in Afghanistan. Pakistan has now been drawn into the fighting with the Taliban. The country is even less stable than it used to be. Once again, we hear that term "collateral damage." This means that the wrong people are being killed

The challenge for President Obama is to explain to the American people why Afghanistan and potentially Pakistan are worth the lives of yet more Americans. So far, Obama has stuck pretty close to the message that he is determined to eliminate al-Qaeda -- and more power to him. But that is too little, too late. The Taliban has already spilled over the border. A bit of nation-building is what Pakistan needs. That will take time -- considerably more than the year Obey and others are willing to grant.

The relevant history here may not be Vietnam at all. It could be World War I. The assassination of a single man somehow set off a chain reaction in which millions were killed and, after a pause, it all resumed under a different name: World War II. (Books are still being written about the cause of World War I.) Now, though, the stakes are so much greater. The region is a nuclear neighborhood, a pharmacy for nuclear addicts with Pakistan choosing to add even more weapons instead of -- just an idea -- opening some schools. The region is roiled. The only constant is enmity.

The critics of Obama's policy for the region are not easily dismissed. Vietnam has its lessons; Iraq, too. What's more, they have their cumulative effect. A kind of national weariness has set in. Why us? Why is it that Americans are always asked to risk their lives? Where the hell is everyone else?

These are hard questions to answer. But an even harder question could someday come after a nuclear catastrophe when people demand to know why nothing much was done to head it off. The answer cannot be that our year was up.

To the Indians, last year's Mumbai terrorist attacks seemed ominously like the sort of sea-land operation only a government -- or a rogue element -- could pull off. They look at Pakistan, which in turn looks back at India across a line drawn long ago by an Englishman. He went home after a brief stay. It will take us much longer.

Washington, May 18 (PTI) There is need to exert continued pressure on Pakistan's northwest tribal belt to defeat terrorist outfits like al-Qaeda and the Taliban, a top US military official said today.

"I think the long-range piece with Pakistan is to continue to put pressure on the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in a way that eventually puts us in a position to be able to defeat al-Qaeda," Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman, Joint Chief of Staff, said at the Brookings Institute, a Washington-based think-tank.

Mullen said there is growing insurgency in Pakistan, where the al-Qaeda leadership lives. "So the key in the strategy is to defeat al-Qaeda.

They're living in Pakistan and being protected by the Pakistanis and people, the Taliban in particular. So we must do that," he said.

Getting rid of the safe haven for al-Qaeda in Pakistan is the top priority for the US strategy in the region, he said.

Referring to the ongoing military action against the militants in the Swat Valley, Mullen said this action needs to be sustained. "In the past, this has not been the case," he said. PTI

Daily Times, Pakistan
WASHINGTON DIARY: Dr Manzur Ejaz
Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Most of the revenue collected by Pakistani government is through indirect taxes paid by those who are least capable of paying. The reason? Pakistan’s economic elite, from the merchant to the industrialist, refuses to pay their income and business taxes

The top Pakistani financial advisor, Mr Shaukat Tareen, has grudgingly accepted the lowering of petrol prices mandated by the Supreme Court. Alternatively, the Obama administration is planning to tax beer and junk food to pay for its health programme. It seems the Guru US and its pygmy follower Pakistan are so deep in economic crisis that they have resorted to taking similar anti-people regressive tax policies.

Mr Tareen was upset with the Supreme Court’s judgement to lower petrol prices because if the decision is acted upon, his career as a successful economic manager will be over. He and his predecessors’ entire wizardry has been limited to extracting funds from the common people through indirect taxes.

The Supreme Court investigation shows that the federal government receives Rs 22.86 profit for every litre of petrol sold in Pakistan. This means that the government is collecting billions of rupees through petrol sales every day. And petrol is just one commodity out of hundreds though which the government skims the earnings of the common Pakistani.

As a matter of fact, most of the revenue collected by Pakistani government is through indirect taxes paid by those who are least capable of paying. The reason? Pakistan’s economic elite, from the merchant to the industrialist, refuses to pay their income and business taxes.

Indirect taxation on necessities that have to be purchased by the common people is always regressive and a classic economic mechanism to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich. This is done by making the poor pay for building of the entire economic infrastructure while the top beneficiaries, the ones who appropriate the lion’s share of national wealth, pay much less.

In an equitable economic system — not necessarily in socialism because that is a different ball game altogether — the top wealth holders pay most of the taxes, which are used by the state to provide services to all.

The Pakistani economy is always in crisis, with the government begging richer nations, because revenue collection through skimming the common people’s money has its limits. Therefore, there is always a shortfall of revenue, forcing the government to cut more public services. This perpetual phenomenon is because of the economic elite who refuse to pay their due share.

Whether it is a general or a civilian who sits in the Presidential Palace, the government remains by the elite and for the elite. The assemblies, the commerce chambers and the security headquarters are always filled with people for whom the notion of paying taxes is alien. Therefore, Pakistan’s economy is always in a state of degeneration.

Political instability, religious extremism and terrorism are just a few of the outcomes of a highly inequitable economic system. The proliferation of madrassas is also closely linked to this inequity. Observers and researchers have shown time and again that madrassas attract children from poor families that can afford to neither feed nor educate them.

It is ironic that lately, a similar process of shifting the burden on the common people is happening in the United States. In the name of user fees and taxing bad behaviour (smoking, drinking etc.), successive US administrations have put in place economic policies that transfer wealth from the poor to the rich.

Consequently, the gap between the rich and the poor has reached a level never seen in US history. The US, once known to be an egalitarian society, has now become even more rigid than its European counterparts, who were notorious for their aristocratic domination. The current US economic crisis was created by the very unjust economic system that was practiced from 1980s onward.

The Obama administration, due to strong opposition from the lobbies of the rich and powerful, is unable to fulfil it election promise of providing health coverage to every American; forty-five million of whom today have no coverage.

Last month, to provide partial coverage to poor children, the Obama administration had to increase tax on cigarettes. Now, to provide health services to the remaining poor Americans, sodas and alcoholic beverages are going to be taxed heavily.

Given current trends, the US will soon become dependant on indirect taxes. Consequently, its economy may start resembling the Pakistani economy with similar results. Most poor children may end up in church ‘madrassas’, which may then produce Christian Taliban. The ruling elite will realise the consequences of its disastrous polices, but only when it’s too late. The US should learn this lesson from Pakistan.

Editorial, The News International, Pakistan
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Relatives of the hundreds of persons still missing in the country have stepped up their campaign of protests to draw attention to the issue. Meanwhile, former president Pervez Musharraf's curious comment as to how these persons were in fact not missing at all but had gone off on their own to wage 'jihad' has been termed absurd by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. The ex-president's explanation does not cater for the failure of the 'disappeared' to communicate with families, something they would surely not neglect to do if they had gone away voluntarily, or for the fact that the vast majority of the missing are linked to Baloch nationalist groups who oppose religious extremism.

The restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry is of course the factor giving new zeal to groups representing the relatives of the missing. The CJ had, before his November 2007 suspension, observed most of these persons were in the hands of agencies. But the case is one that needs also to be taken heed of as an example of state abuse and the impact this has on citizens. Indeed in Balochistan, the issue of missing people gives rise to a great deal of the anger. For this reason the government needs also to step in, as its leaders had indeed promised they would do, and help unravel the mystery of the persons who vanished at various points in time. For families, the truth, no matter how hard it may be, would be easier to face than the constant uncertainty they today live with and which has compelled them once more to come onto the streets in the hope that their voice will finally be heard and an end put to their long ordeal.

The New York Times
Editorial
Published: May 18, 2009

The Indian National Congress party cannot afford a prolonged celebration after its overwhelming election victory. Much of the postvote analysis has focused on the daunting domestic agenda. But now that Congress has a stable mandate — and can shuck a fractious coalition — it is time for India to exercise the kind of regional and global leadership expected of a rising power.

It can start with neighboring Pakistan, arguably the most dangerous country on earth. A report in The Times on Monday reminds us just how dangerous: The United States believes Islamabad is rapidly expanding a nuclear arsenal thought to already contain 80 to 100 weapons.

We have consistently supported appropriate military aid and increased economic aid to help Pakistan fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda, strengthen democratic institutions and improve the life of its people. Squandering precious resources on nuclear bombs is disgraceful when Pakistan is troubled by economic crisis and facing an insurgency that threatens its very existence.

Trying to keep up to 100 bombs from extremists is hard enough; expanding the nuclear stockpile makes the challenge worse. Officials in Washington are legitimately asking whether billions of dollars in proposed new assistance might be diverted to Pakistan’s nuclear program. They should demand assurances it will not be.

India is essential to what Pakistan will do. New Delhi exercised welcome restraint when it did not attack Pakistan after the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai by Pakistani-based extremists. But tensions remain high, and the Pakistani Army continues to view India as its main adversary. India should take the lead in initiating arms control talks with Pakistan and China. It should also declare its intention to stop producing nuclear weapons fuel, even before a proposed multinational treaty is negotiated. That would provide leverage for Washington and others to exhort Pakistan to do the same.

It is past time for India — stronger both economically and in international stature — to find a way to resolve tensions with Pakistan over Kashmir. If that festering sore cannot be addressed directly, then — as Stephen P. Cohen, a South Asia expert at the Brookings Institution, suggests — broader regional talks on environmental and water issues might be an interim way to find common ground. Ignoring Kashmir is no longer an option.

India has played a constructive role in helping rebuild Afghanistan, but it must take steps to allay Islamabad’s concerns that this is a plan to encircle Pakistan. It should foster regional trade with Pakistan and Afghanistan. More broadly, India must help to revive world trade talks by opening its markets. It could use its considerable trade clout with Iran, Sudan and Myanmar to curb Tehran’s nuclear program, end the genocide in Darfur and press Myanmar’s junta to expand human rights.

India is the dominant power in South Asia, but it has been hesitant to assume its responsibilities. The Congress Party has to do better — starting with Pakistan

The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: May 17, 2009

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress have been told in confidential briefings that Pakistan is rapidly adding to its nuclear arsenal even while racked by insurgency, raising questions on Capitol Hill about whether billions of dollars in proposed military aid might be diverted to Pakistan’s nuclear program.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed the assessment of the expanded arsenal in a one-word answer to a question on Thursday in the midst of lengthy Senate testimony. Sitting beside Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, he was asked whether he had seen evidence of an increase in the size of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.

“Yes,” he said quickly, adding nothing, clearly cognizant of Pakistan’s sensitivity to any discussion about the country’s nuclear strategy or security.

Inside the Obama administration, some officials say, Pakistan’s drive to spend heavily on new nuclear arms has been a source of growing concern, because the country is producing more nuclear material at a time when Washington is increasingly focused on trying to assure the security of an arsenal of 80 to 100 weapons so that they will never fall into the hands of Islamic insurgents.

The administration’s effort is complicated by the fact that Pakistan is producing an unknown amount of new bomb-grade uranium and, once a series of new reactors is completed, bomb-grade plutonium for a new generation of weapons. President Obama has called for passage of a treaty that would stop all nations from producing more fissile material — the hardest part of making a nuclear weapon — but so far has said nothing in public about Pakistan’s activities.

Bruce Riedel, the Brookings Institution scholar who served as the co-author of Mr. Obama’s review of Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, reflected the administration’s concern in a recent interview, saying that Pakistan “has more terrorists per square mile than anyplace else on earth, and it has a nuclear weapons program that is growing faster than anyplace else on earth.”

Obama administration officials said that they had communicated to Congress that their intent was to assure that military aid to Pakistan was directed toward counterterrorism and not diverted. But Admiral Mullen’s public confirmation that the arsenal is increasing — a view widely held in both classified and unclassified analyses — seems certain to aggravate Congress’s discomfort.

Whether that discomfort might result in a delay or reduction in aid to Pakistan is still unclear.

The Congressional briefings have taken place in recent weeks as Pakistan has descended into further chaos and as Congress has considered proposals to spend $3 billion over the next five years to train and equip Pakistan’s military for counterinsurgency warfare. That aid would come on top of $7.5 billion in civilian assistance.

None of the proposed military assistance is directed at the nuclear program. So far, America’s aid to Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure has been limited to a $100 million classified program to help Pakistan secure its weapons and materials from seizure by Al Qaeda, the Taliban or “insiders” with insurgent loyalties.

But the billions in new proposed American aid, officials acknowledge, could free other money for Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure, at a time when Pakistani officials have expressed concern that their nuclear program is facing a budget crunch for the first time, worsened by the global economic downturn. The program employs tens of thousands of Pakistanis, including about 2,000 believed to possess “critical knowledge” about how to produce a weapon.

The dimensions of the Pakistani buildup are not fully understood. “We see them scaling up their centrifuge facilities,” said David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, which has been monitoring Pakistan’s continued efforts to buy materials on the black market, and analyzing satellite photographs of two new plutonium reactors less than 100 miles from where Pakistani forces are currently fighting the Taliban.

“The Bush administration turned a blind eye to how this is being ramped up,” he said. “And of course, with enough pressure, all this could be preventable.”

As a matter of diplomacy, however, the buildup presents Mr. Obama with a potential conflict between two national security priorities, some aides concede. One is to win passage of a global agreement to stop the production of fissile material — the uranium or plutonium used to produce weapons. Pakistan has never agreed to any limits and is one of three countries, along with India and Israel, that never signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Yet the other imperative is a huge infusion of financial assistance into Afghanistan and Pakistan, money considered crucial to helping stabilize governments with tenuous holds on power in the face of terrorist and insurgent violence.

Senior members of Congress were already pressing for assurances from Pakistan that the American military assistance would be used to fight the insurgency, and not be siphoned off for more conventional military programs to counter Pakistan’s historic adversary, India. Official confirmation that Pakistan has accelerated expansion of its nuclear program only added to the consternation of those in Congress who were already voicing serious concern about the security of those warheads.

During a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Senator Jim Webb, a Virginia Democrat, veered from the budget proposal under debate to ask Admiral Mullen about public reports “that Pakistan is, at the moment, increasing its nuclear program — that it may be actually adding on to weapons systems and warheads. Do you have any evidence of that?”

It was then that Admiral Mullen responded with his one-word confirmation. Mr. Webb said Pakistan’s decision was a matter of “enormous concern,” and he added, “Do we have any type of control factors that would be built in, in terms of where future American money would be going, as it addresses what I just asked about?”

Similar concerns about seeking guarantees that American military assistance to Pakistan would be focused on battling insurgents also were expressed by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee chairman.

“Unless Pakistan’s leaders commit, in deeds and words, their country’s armed forces and security personnel to eliminating the threat from militant extremists, and unless they make it clear that they are doing so, for the sake of their own future, then no amount of assistance will be effective,” Mr. Levin said.

A spokesman for the Pakistani government contacted Friday declined to comment on whether his nation was expanding its nuclear weapons program, but said the government was “maintaining the minimum, credible deterrence capability.” He warned against linking American financial assistance to Pakistan’s actions on its weapons program.

“Conditions or sanctions on this issue did not work in the past, and this will not send a positive message to the people of Pakistan,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his country’s nuclear program is classified.

Yitzhak Benhorin
Published: 05.18.09, 09:33 / Israel News

WASHINGTON - The United States has a detailed plan for infiltrating Pakistan and securing its mobile arsenal of nuclear warheads if it appears the country is about to fall under the control of the Taliban, al-Qaeda or other Islamic extremists, American intelligence sources told Fox News.

According to the sources, the operation would be carried out by Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the "super-secret" commando unit headquartered at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

The unit, which was instrumental in the assassination of al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab Zarqawi in Iraq, is the military's chief terrorists hunting squad and has units now operating in Afghanistan on Pakistan's western border. But a secondary mission is to secure foreign nuclear arsenals - a role for which JSOC operatives have trained in Nevada, the sources said.

Fox News said in its report, published Friday, that the mission "has taken on added importance in recent months, as Islamic extremists have taken territory close to the capital of Islamabad and could destabilize Pakistan's shaky democracy."

One of the sources told the news network, "We have plans to secure them (nuclear warheads) ourselves if things get out of hand; small units could seize them, disable them and then centralize them in a secure location."

According to Fox News, a secret Defense Intelligence Agency document first disclosed in 2004 said Pakistan has a nuclear arsenal of 35 weapons. The document said it plans to more than double the arsenal by 2020.

"What makes the Pakistan mission especially difficult is that the military has its missiles on Soviet-style mobile launchers and rail lines. US intelligence agencies, using satellite photos and communication intercepts, are constantly monitoring their whereabouts. Other warheads are kept in storage. US technical experts have visited Pakistan to advise the government on how to maintain and protect its arsenal," the report said.

Also, there are rogue elements inside Pakistan's military and intelligence service who could quickly side with the extremists and make JSOC's mission all the more difficult, Fox News said.

Pakistan rejected the report as "mere fiction."

"Pakistan's multi-tiered and robust command and control structure is operational and we are also fully capable of safeguarding our nuclear assets against any kind of threat," Pakistan's foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said.