Bharat Rakshak

The president’s pragmatic worldview is likely to temper military engagement overseas.

Says negotiations with Taliban must proceed carefully

Obama's apparent willingness to divide the Taliban into awful and less awful is just the latest sign that a sterile but necessary realism has settled over American foreign policy.

and, NYT:
NYT :: As U.S. Weighs Taliban Negotiations, Afghans Are Already Talking

NYTimes: U.S. Seeks New Afghan Supply Routes, Even in Iran
But Pentagon and NATO planners, as part of an effort to consider every contingency, have studied Iranian routes from the port of Chabahar, on the Arabian Sea, that link with a new road recently completed by India in western Afghanistan.

Vicious political infighting in the country is again underlining the west's limited power to control events in the region

Here is an excellent riposte by Pat Condell on Youtube:



This is the kind of thing that we Indians need to do as well. Such oratories are worth a thousand words.

OPED | Saturday, March 14, 2009 | Email | Print |


AfPak: new name for old headache

Chintamani Mahapatra

It's not such a great game any more in Afghanistan, but America is in the throes of a violent Pak-crafted deception. Whatever happened to the promise for 'change' Mr Obama?

Pakistan may turn out to be a political migraine for the recently installed Barack Obama administration. President Asif Ali Zardari has begun to misuse the country's Judiciary; cultivate ties with the Islamic extremists and seek to end the political career of his rivals.

Only recently, military rule failed to stabilise the country and with the help of political backing of the United States, civilian rule in the country was restored. It was a high-priced reinstallation of civilian administration, as reflected in the ghastly murder of one of the most well known and respected leaders, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

The military under General Pervez Musharraf ruled Pakistan for about nine years. In comparison the Asaf Ali Zardari government is just about a year old. But that is not enough to insulate it from the prospect of regime change. Analysts have predicted that the outcome of the current political turbulence could be the emergence of a dictatorial Zardari regime. Alternatively, it could spell the premature end of the political career of Zardari and the re-emergence of former Prime Minister Nawaz Shariff as the main political force.

There is a third, highly likely way out of the impasse: the re-imposition of military rule. This is where the credibility of the Obama regime meets the realism of Pakistan. The world is more keen to see how the man who stood for 'change' in America would react to the next military coup in Pakistan.

All these events are taking place in the midst of a review of the Afghan strategy by the new Obama administration in Washington. Like his predecessors, President Obama has clearly concluded that the road to an Afghan solution goes through Pakistan. This conviction is reflected in the increasing use of a new nomenclature-AfPak.

George Bush spent more than $ 10 billion on Pakistan, supplied very sophisticated military equipment to the Musharraf regime and regularly heaped praises on President Musharraf only to realise late in the day that the US political, economic and military investment was not bringing adequate returns. Taliban forces in Afghanistan went on expanding their influence and geographical space. The Islamic extremists consolidated their hold over huge swathes of Pakistani territory bordering Afghanistan and number of terrorist incidents went on increasing within Pakistan. Casualty figures mounted.

Barrack Obama made lots of promises during his campaign to fix the Afghan problem by raising the energy level of the ground troops in that country. He said he would reform the misuse of American assistance to Pakistan by putting in more non-military assistance and making Pakistan accountable for it. He showed his determination to fight terror by going to the extent of using US military prowess against actionable targets in Pakistan only if timely intelligence was available and not caring much about the concept Pakistani sovereignty.

Even before taking oath of office, Obama's Vice President-elect, Joe Biden, travelled to Islamabad to take stock of the situation. Biden did not find it necessary to make a visit to New Delhi from Islamabad. Once in office, Obama instructed his party men in the Congress to introduce legislation to provide Pakistan with $ 15 billion over the next ten years in exchange for that country's support to Washington's war against terror. Two-thirds of this money would be for non-military purposes-fair enough to satisfy a civilian government. For the satisfaction of the military, which seemed more distant from power back then than now, it was deemed fit to allocate about one-third of the American largesse.

To indicate the importance given to the situation in AfPak, President Obama quickly appointed Richard Holbrook, a veteran trouble-shooter, as a special envoy. Without delay he visited the region to have a first hand account of issues and events. The amount of time he spent in Islamabad and Kabul and then in New Delhi indicated that Pakistan (not India) was the key to resolving the terror issue.

In the meantime, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made her maiden foreign trip to four Asian countries. Included in her list was the largest Muslim country in the world, Indonesia, and Pakistan's most trusted strategic ally-China. She too did not consider important to stop over in India on her way back. Pakistani and Afghan foreign ministers were then invited to Washington for a trilateral dialogue on the South Asian regional issues.

In the meantime, President Obama himself and his high officials in the State Department and the Pentagon sought to advise Pakistan that its main national security threat was not India but terror networks. The Obama administration has failed to properly understand the Pakistani response to such advice. The Pakistani Army Chief sought more weapons that would be appropriate to tackle the perceived threat from India and President Zardari allowed the Islamisation process to proceed full steam ahead in Swat valley.

For a moment, Holbrook appeared disappointed. He spoke against Zardari's appeasement policy and then kept quiet. Perhaps such a response was meant to avoid an impression that Zardari discussed with him and sought his support before extending his friendship to Islamic extremists.

But very soon the cat was out of the bag. The American media came out with reports praising Taliban indirectly for not having a hand in international terrorism and distinguishing between good Taliban and bad Taliban. President Barrack Obama followed suit and expressed his willingness to negotiate with good Taliban.

One hopes the Obama administration has taken proper note of the response of the Taliban leadership to such ideas. The word has spread among the Taliban that the so-called new American strategy involves age-old divide and rule policy.

Pakistani polity is in the verge of implosion much before the strategy of dividing the Taliban is implemented. Obama needs to be more alert and wise. His political and economic investment in the Zardari government could turn out to be much more expensive and much less productive.

-- The writer is a Professor at JNU

Withdrawal from Afghanistan need not mean defeat for America.

Anjem Choudary, who led protests against returning British troops, has urged his followers to send money to 'mujaheddin'

RANTING hate preacher Anjem Choudary – the man behind the vile Luton protests – wants the flag of Allah to fly over Downing Street and ALL British women forced to wear a burka.

"I would say that, at a minimum, the mission is to prevent the Taliban from retaking power against a democratically elected government in Afghanistan and thus turning Afghanistan, potentially, again, into a haven for al-Qaida and other extremist groups," Gates told NPR's Robert Siegel in an interview at the Pentagon.

The unkindest cut of them all.

Bin Laden Accuses Arab Leaders of Plotting Against Muslims

The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is the largest organization of Pakistani militants operating in the country’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), which includes the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Launched in a secret meeting on December 13, 2007, it is active in most of the 24 districts, seven tribal agencies and six frontier regions in the province. The militants’ strongholds are in South Waziristan, North Waziristan, Orakzai, Kurram, Khyber, Mohmand, Bajaur, and Darra Adamkhel tribal regions and in the settled districts of Swat, Upper Dir, Lower Dir, Bannu, Lakki Marwat, Tank, Peshawar, Dera Ismail Khan, Mardan, Charsadda, and Kohat.

The following is a profile of important Pakistani Taliban commanders active in areas of the NWFP and FATA excluding South Waziristan and North Waziristan, which were covered in an earlier article (see Terrorism Monitor, September 22, 2008).

Pakistan's Troubled Frontier: The Future of FATA and the NWFP
Publication: Volume: 0 Issue: 0
April 15, 2009 12:07 AM Age: -30 days
Category: Event, Home Page, Featured



Featuring Keynote Speaker David Kilcullen

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Root Conference Room, Carnegie Endowment

1779 Massachusetts Ave, Washington, DC

*Admission fee includes free copy of Jamestown's new book:

Pakistan's Troubled Frontier (Dr. Hassan Abbas, ed.)