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In the quest for peace, Pakistan — the principal backer of the Afghan insurgents — was receiving kid-glove treatment from the top US diplomats. As the recent interviews given by the outgoing US ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter suggest, the State Department peaceniks kept getting weak kneed each time a terrorist safe haven was taken out in North Waziristan by US drones. The Pakistani security establishment, which never did sever its ties with the Afghan Taliban and the India-oriented Punjab-based jihadists, mobilised crowds through the political patrons/wings of these outfits, creating the impression of mass-anti-US hysteria. Terrified by the well-orchestrated anger on the Pakistani street, an exit seemed to be the only strategy on the US diplomats’ minds.
Michael Hirsh had noted in the National Journal, May 2012: “Washington and other capitals continue to watch, helplessly, as a middle-sized developing country defies a superpower and the NATO alliance with virtual impunity.” The US diplomatic pussyfooting is perhaps the main reason that has enabled, and in some ways encouraged, such defiance.
The military option to confront Pakistan was deemed to be a cure worse than the cancer itself. Tactical options like the drones, though effective in a circumscribed zone, were certainly not a strategy to cope where the entire country all the way from Khyber to Karachi was serving virtually as a bridgehead for al Qaeda and the Taliban cadres and sanctuary for the who’s who of transnational terrorism. The Haqqani terrorist network’s head honchos in Peshawar and the outskirts of Islamabad, the Taliban leadership in Quetta and Karachi, and of course, Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad says it all. Yet it was the Pakistanis who were ‘outraged’ and the US diplomats who were falling over each other to apologise! How hard was it to accurately analyse the situation and how long did one need to do so? We have heard a lot about Colin Powell’s famous phone call to General Musharraf and Richard Armitage giving a piece of his mind to General Mahmud Ahmed. It is pertinent to ask how hard the US diplomats tried to challenge Pakistan subsequently, if at all.
But equally important was to cobble together a broad-based diplomatic front to question even if not to confront Pakistan over its continued interference in Afghanistan. Why the US diplomatic corps, including Holbrooke, Gross and Munter, failed to do so when their colleagues like the former US ambassador to Kabul, Ryan Crocker, kept warning about the Pakistani interference, is intriguing.
And, the above has come from a Pakistani in DT
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ShyamD, I think the new Paki role is due to the US election decision. They want to avoid being in the POTUS cross hairs.
So they are trying to appear to be resaonable.
I think Mullah Omar & Al Zawahiri will get their raisins before the term is over and not necessarily in that order.
Johann we can drop that ALQ nonsense now. It served the Soviet Afghan era jihad. That is over now.
Its the TSPA that has Non state actors depending on the locale.
AlQ exists in TSP only. Everywhere else its a rag tag bunch.
Reason is its not a "big idea" organization/movement but a small terror enabling outfit developed to fight FSU due to Cold War compulsions. Cant fight them openly and all that.
Its similar to the numerous WWII irregular armies raised in Europe prior to the D-Day invasion.
ramana wrote:
Johann we can drop that ALQ nonsense now. It served the Soviet Afghan era jihad. That is over now.
Its the TSPA that has Non state actors depending on the locale.
AlQ exists in TSP only. Everywhere else its a rag tag bunch.
Reason is its not a "big idea" organization/movement but a small terror enabling outfit developed to fight FSU due to Cold War compulsions. Cant fight them openly and all that.
Its similar to the numerous WWII irregular armies raised in Europe prior to the D-Day invasion.
Ramana,
I'm sorry but you have it backwards. Look at everything you know about the movement again and think about it carefully.
Al Qaeda was born *after* of the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, as a reorientation of the new forces and ideas that emerged in the 70s and 80s.
It was Soviet defeat in the Cold War that enabled the US to play a larger part than ever before in the Middle East, starting with the 1990-91 Gulf War and directing the Madrid conference.
Al Qaeda is part of the *reaction* to all of that.
Its part of the Jihadi triumphalism that said Islam can beat one superpower, so lets make it two, and lets really be free for the first time in centuries to be live like really good Muslims.
Its also channeling the broader fear and the anger over the extent of American power in the Muslim world after the Cold War - and since America is so powerful it is held responsible (rightly and wrongly) for everything that is wrong with the region.
After Gulf elites, the Pakistani security establishment has consistently been one of the most important supporters of Al Qaeda's core idea in the world, but it too is surfing the wave rather than in ordering the tide one way or another.
As an idea Al Qaeda's particular jihad its going to be around for as long as the conditions of US hyperpower in the region persist amidst war and despotism.
Johann wrote:
As an idea Al Qaeda's particular jihad its going to be around for as long as the conditions of US hyperpower in the region persist amidst war and despotism.
I think the trajectory of the game is changing. In about 20 years, the value of oil and gas will still be there but due to changes in technology and large deposits away from the region are increasingly being exploited, the US hyper power equations in the region are bound to subdue. KSA and the Saud clan will likely loose their iron clad protection is one way it may go. The apparent lack of US policy to not insist on particular outcomes from the Arab spring uprisings is a precursor to the way things will go.
But the region will be important for India for many decades to come, both for its hydrocarbon resources and to manage the geo-political threats from the region. What India has to do is find a way to dilute the effects of Islamism, sufi style by way of globalization. The target enemy are the sunni theologians and their agendas should not be allowed to succeed.
ShauryaT wrote:What India has to do is find a way to dilute the effects of Islamism, sufi style by way of globalization. The target enemy are the sunni theologians and their agendas should not be allowed to succeed.
It doesn't work out that way! CPC has its Pandas, Mullahs have their Sufis. None have any true power!
Even as US dependence on energy imports drops two things will keep it tethered to the ME for decades to come
1) The ME's decisive role in setting global energy prices. Energy prices are a critical domestic political issue in the US - America tries to use its power and influence to reduce volatility and moderate price rises. Of course this clashes with its second pillar of ME policy.
2) The defence of Israel. This isn't just about the Jewish vote. Its the much larger Christian Zionist vote thats emerged along with the religious right from the late 1960s onwards. I think of it as the Billy Graham effect.
One of the reasons the Americans are likely to retain dominance in the ME is that its an incredibly expensive and risky job which hardly anyone else has the stomach for. India, China and much of the EU reap some of the benefits, but without the same kind of costs. Ultimately India and/or China will only try to take on the role if and when the US loses the will/ability to keep going.
Johann,
by that logic, as long as any non-Islamic super-power exists anywhere in the world - nowadays - when frontiers are not limited to what can be reached on horseback and camelback, Muslim anger at anyone else's power or independent existence will keep on generating ALQ version X.
If you think back on this, the greatest anger at such "other superpower" should have been directed at the British in the 19th and 20th century. In spite of a few confrontations, all of the muslim world - quickly, very quickly, got hand in gloves with the British superpower, at a time when the centre of the Islamic world, ideologically speaking [not commercially which was Ottomania] was in the Gulf, which wa snot being threatened by any other superpower.
In fact through the rise and decline of the British superpowerdom, there has been surprisingly little confrontation between Islamic jihad and British super-powerism. The only problem zone was AFG, but there are reasons for that. Even there, the Brits quickly worked out a mutually beneficial equation, through the inclusion of the Afghans in BIA and thereby transfer of military tech [the many known instances of Brit knowledge of removal of hardware from BIA into Pakhtun hands].
The so-called anger - is not just about existence of superpowers, it is a fundamental imperialist drive based on two fundamental logics:
(a) Islam needs a framework of civilization based on physical dominance hierarchies, which means labour intensive, and hence Islam is most comfortable in typically low-tech agrarian setting. Technological advances in production systems blurs the boundaries of physical inputs, and hence jeopardizes the primitive/animalistic domiannce submission patterns outlined in the theology.
(b) Islam's tendency is therefore to try and continuously expand territorially, and capture fertile or well-irrigated lands for agriculture. Simultaneously, while it is not completely dominant, and alternative economies exist that produce stuff that the Islamists cannot produce or cannot afford to produce without jeopardizing and challenging the simpler/primitive biological dominance model - Islam likes to control the exchange market for such commodities. This adds another urgency angle to the imperialist expansion agenda - to take over trade routes beween more advanced technologies.
By enforcing dominance on the exchange process - if nothing else other than by creating nuisance value - Islam funds its own demographic and territorial expansion agenda, while taking a cut from non-Muslim growth and affecting non-Muslim economies. Its all part of the ulterior expansion agenda while trying to keep civilization at that particular primitive level where the biological dominance controls everything.
Thus imperialism is inherent in the Islamic, and it is independent of the existence of any superpower or not. Yes an existence of a superpower helps in mobilization - but a British type seems not to provide the right excuses - but it is not necessary. Mere existence of something lootable would be good enough.
However, I would also like to point out that - the Islamic is very much - very much, bought-able. Bribes, money, women will fracture any semblance of any unity there - not permanently, but for the right amount of time, which can be used to bulldoze the institutions. One advantage of the primitive psychology inherent in the theology also makes it particularly vulnerable to overwhelming crushing, genocidal defeat. The submission theology prepares auto-justification in the mind to give up on defeat with atrocities that the Islamic practices on others. It is a sign to them that their supreme has abandoned them or lost.
Modi’s alleged complicity in the riots is bound to make the international community, particularly the Muslim countries, extremely apprehensive if the BJP were to anoint him as its prime ministerial candidate. For long, he conflated the Muslim with the terrorist, Islam with backwardness. In his quest to fan fear and anxiety, Modi recognised no limits, no niceties. He is among the few politicians in the world to have targeted the head of another country in his election campaigns, as he did in 2002 and 2007, spewing venom on then Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and imploring the people of Gujarat to teach him a lesson by, believe it or not, voting Modi to power.
Should then the principal opposition party of India, which the BJP is, project him as the prospective prime minister? Ask this question of BJP leaders and they are likely to reprimand you for seeking the approval of Uncle Sam and India’s erstwhile colonial master, simultaneously pooh-poohing the clout the Muslim countries can wield. Yet these leaders were overjoyed at the decision of Time magazine to put him on its cover and went to town at the British government’s instruction to its High Commissioner in Delhi for renewing ties with Modi, whom they had boycotted after the 2002 riots. The British government cited “national interest” to justify its rethink on Modi, a point BJP supporters often harp upon to claim that as prime minister, he cannot remain a pariah to foreign countries, who would not wish to risk their commercial interests in India.It is this logic of self-interest that has bolstered the hope of the BJP that most of its existing or potential allies, despite their deep dislike for Modi, would veer to rallying behind him, as it is only he who has the mass appeal to wrest power from the Congress-led coalition in Delhi. Would they for the ideological reason of secularism sacrifice their chances of securing a share of power, ask the BJP leaders.Now imagine Modi as India’s prime minister and his need, inherent in democratic politics, to muster sufficient numbers to remain ensconced in power. From talking about the pride of Gujaratis, he will harp on the pride of Indians. His emotive style of politics will see him fan insecurities countrywide, demanding he create enemies capable of terrorising the entire nation. Such enemies will be so much simpler to find outside the country, in other nations, particularly those comprising South Asia. A trade dispute between India and another country could be blown out of proportion, a concession granted to another nation reversed suddenly, and a border skirmish portrayed as the prelude to an inevitable conflict. It has been Modi’s trait to feed on the weak to become strong personally. Ultimately, Mr Strong is Mr Bully.
Arab anger over US policy isn't confined to Muslims. Christians -except for Lebanese Maronites- were just as likely to be opposed to it.
Its also not over the idea of American power in the abstract. Its over two very specific forms of US intervention in the Middle East
- consistent, strategically decisive levels of support to Israel. However much conservative Muslims hated the Soviets and the secular Arab nationalists, many Arabs relied on the Soviets to counterbalance US support to Israel.
- the power of the US to affect internal politics in Arab countries, although this is sometimes overblown. But the result is that the US has been blamed for thwarting popular choice over who runs their governments, and the people's influence over their governments policies.
This is one of the reasons the Arab Spring was so exciting to so many Arabs - it was seen that by throwing out dictators the Arab masses would finally have real sovereignty, and real choice over their present and their future. This is also why the Iranian regime hailed it as an anti-American revolution.
I am trying to understand your point of view, so please bear with me.
Is modernity a time-space event or a continuous feature? If modernity = western world-view today then modernity in 700AD should be == to Indic philosophy (I know that Indic philosophy is not modernity in 2012) or something like that right?
How many Muslims or wanna-be Muslims thought about modernity in 700AD and how Islam responded to it and how Islam adopted to it?
If Islam didn't adopt to the modernity of 700Ad then how can it respond to or adopt to 2012 modernity? Can we separate Islam from the Islamic society?
Sorry to butt in.J has no worthwhile view on Pakistan.Its just the typical perfidious British view of trying to do 'rational' anal-ysis on pakistance obfuscating its essential genocidal barbaric anti-hindu nature which is perfectly ok for the anglo-american barbarians in whose eyes the heathen hindoos with their dark caste system deserve all sh1t.
Also do not forget in British eyes India is NOT a nation.So it is perfectly ok for whitemen to support and sustain the anti-india pakistan.
Even for us,India is sooooooo EXAAAAASPERATING.How much more for the CLEEEEN,NEEEET whiteys.
Its incredible so many people here 'debate' with this guy.Tells us more about ourselves.
Fair question. The pattern I see the relationship between the relative ability of different systems to build an amplifying feedback loop between thought/knowledge and power.
In the end rulers and elites have to be pragmatic in order to survive. Their attachment to the specific values and ideas of a system beyond its effectiveness is not something that can last indefinitely. They can refuse to change at all, lose and be taken over. Or their way of doing things must evolve and change to cope with new ways of doing things. Or they can chose to defect and join the competition.
No doubt there were periods when the classical Indian approach was the best available system for sustainably generating and mobilising power - and that's when it spread through Central and South East Asia along the trade routes. But it was no longer in that position when Islam burst upon the scene.
Islam in the 7th AD was increasingly militarily dominant in the known/classical world. The Islamic world view and knowledge system contributed to the generation of political power, supported by commerce. So you had the alliance of the bazaar/souq, the madrasa and the Caliph or Sultan's palace. It was good at building communities, building trade networks and recruiting nomadic tribes that made efficient warriors. Islam as a set of mutually enforced obligations was the powerful glue that held it all together.
Ultimately many polities - for example business communities in Arabia like a more secure form of commercial law and access to new markets. Independent rulers in South East Asia and Central Asia chose to give up their existing polytheistic value framework and adopt Islam because it offered a way of consolidating state power. In other words if you can't beat em, join em.
The particular vision that people like Francis Bacon hit on in the renaissance was to support science, translate science into technology, combine it with commerce, and use the whole thing to support state power, which would then feed back into support for science and commerce. Much of that system is now moving beyond the framework single nation-state model to a larger global system, and within the national framework consultative government is seen as key to keeping all of it working properly.
The traditional Islamic system couldn't compete with that in generating power. It lost again, and again, and again. In much the way that Islam had once inflicted defeat after defeat on other traditional systems. Obviously the Muslim world has tried to adapt and build a hybrid system. The changes made have greatly improved parts of the Muslim world but are not fundamental enough to really change the power generation capacity in most Muslim countries.
Sorry to butt in.J has no worthwhile view on Pakistan.Its just the typical perfidious British view of trying to do 'rational' anal-ysis on pakistance obfuscating its essential genocidal barbaric anti-hindu nature which is perfectly ok for the anglo-american barbarians in whose eyes the heathen hindoos with their dark caste system deserve all sh1t.
Also do not forget in British eyes India is NOT a nation.So it is perfectly ok for whitemen to support and sustain the anti-india pakistan.
Even for us,India is sooooooo EXAAAAASPERATING.How much more for the CLEEEEN,NEEEET whiteys.
Venkat please try again. You'll get nowhere using stereotypes to argue with real people who fail to fit the cartoons you draw.
So please show some courage and wade into deeper waters, and grapple with the uncertainties of the real world and the actual views of different sorts of living, breathing people. Don't just do the lazy thing and use a 'he's a typical X' as a convenient label.
For example, I don't personally find India particularly exasperating, and certainly not doomed to failure. If I want exasperating and frightening I look at Pakistan and North Korea. If I wan't examples of failed examples in nation-building I look at Somalia, Congo, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. If I want to see tragically wasted human and economic potential on a national scale I look at Russia and Nigeria.
Difficult as it may be to conceive, people aren't always driven by clash of the civilisations lens. Or even the nationalism lens. You have to be able to deal with that, even if that contradicts your own personal dogma.
Its incredible so many people here 'debate' with this guy.Tells us more about ourselves.
S Venkat, the confusingly personal defensive tone of your post apart, how much time do I spend here talking about India? Or Hinduism?
Anyway, I'd much rather talk about Pakistan than about myself. I think Pakistan is more important and more interesting and dangerous than myself. I note with due flattery that you seem to think its the opposite.
If you see the history since 700AD it is the kings/rulers who 'constructed' the conditions for general populace and not the otherway around. It is the Islamic invaders who made the Islamic kingdoms. I is the colonial invaders who made the map that it is today. It is the INC leadership that made India what it is today. Even after 1947, it is the Pakistani leadership that made JK and BD for what they are today. China made Tibet and Aksai-chin for what it is today. Do you really think Chinese people selected Maoism before Mao and Nehruvism before Nehru and so on?
This is the proverbial debate on whether it is "yatha raja" or "yatha Praja"
Leaving the debate on history and the ideologies for another day lets move on to contemporary issues...
Who do you think demanding sharia and Islamic ummah? Is it the Islamic populace or the ruling elite? In the clear struggle between sharia and modernity, which we cannot deny, who is on what side?
Why do we see more cultural and national assertiveness in even Hindu Indians as they become more affluent and (technically) advance? How can it be different in Islamic society?
If the argument is that all societies move towards their natural self-identity (be it any ideology, including western-materialism) then what importance the underlying ideology must be given?
Johann,
first : as you yourself point out - what was so intolerable in the creation or presence of an independent state for the Jews - to the Arabs? After all, the current Islamist claim is that the Jews had it golden under Islamic/Arab rule! So what was so galling to have these much loved, protected, and islamically sheltered or nourished Jews to have a state of their own! If losing a state in war with another power was sufficient reason to deny that defeated entity ever again claiming a right to exist independently, most of the Arab world was crushed, defeated. The Arab empire eased to exist by the 1200's. By that logic almost all of the modern Arab states are "created" and "invenetd" states - exactly by those they hate most as supposed crushers of Islam - that is the colonialist European powers. By that "defeat" logic, almost every currently independent Arab states have no right to exist.
That is not the logic - and it leaves only one logic, openly admitted to by Islamists - that they are against the Jews from a theological viewpoint. It is not simply about an independent nation foisted on "Arab" lands - in fact where Isarel has been created was itself not Arab, and Arabs were invaders there. It is about all non-Muslims in Muslim majority territory anywhere in the world, must be slaves to the Islamic - a captive source of economic and sexual exploitation.
Second : I have problems with your representation of Islamic "superiority" in military and "knowledge" side in the 7th century as being the sole determinant of their success. First almost every Islamic knowledge "innovations" appears ina brief and much propagandized brilliance shown briefly over a period that starts after a pre-Islamic advanced civilization is overrun by the Islamic armies, and overa century or so - that innovation ceases.
This can be tied up with appropriation of brains, intellect, and texts of defeated societies - but the internal animalistic and primitivization drive in Islam soon destroys the remnant traces of knowledge constructing/seeking mechanisms in the conquered society, and once the "copying" is over, no new innovation comes out.
About the military success - the primary success of the Arab armies happened in the backdrop aof a growing mega-drought that affected global tropical zones. This meant large and complex agriculturally dependent civilizations found it impossible to sustain themselves and were weakened sufficiently to have harassing irregular forces defeat them. You will find the pattern repeated in the fall of the Romans and Persians and Egyptians and Indians. In fact the same model was used by the Christians of Spain to eliminate the Islamists from Spain - in the backdrop of the medieval dry period.
In the 7th century - the beginnings of the drought - and the long standing confict between the Romans and the Parthians ended bleeding both, in which the Arab armies expanded. In fact the last major campaign mounted by the founder - an open regular field army one - was crushed and the Muslim army came limping back dragging its bloody rump, in a battle with teh Byzantines. This episode is marked clearly in Muslim literature as also coinciding with growing criticism from within his followers [and is noted as criticisms from the "hypocrites"]. The founder switched back to harassing/mobile/ambush/deception methods.
Moreover, it was indeed a civilizational clash - because Muslims flouted and infact deliberately used deception, to take advantage of liberal loopholes in the societies they targeted, over conduct of war. It took a long time for many of the more established societies to realize that the Islamic would take recourse to any and all possible deception in war or ambush. Once those whose societies ahd yet not been fully crushed by the Arab expansion, observed the Muslims - they mounted their own matching ruthless and deceptive tactics - and the Arab caliphate was finito, as when sasy Hulaku sacked Baghdad.
If Arabs were militarily so innovative, why were they licking Mongol and Turkish feet by the 1300's? Why were they defeated at Vienna? Why in the 7th century, Charles the "Hammer" destroyed their army south of Paris - never again for a Muslim army to venture out north? Every step of the wa across north-Africa, to spain - the exapnsion was by deception, deception, and again deception over an economically exhausted polity - the opponents to fight holding their own conduct of war values while Muslims would flout all.
The Muslim success, was out of specific climatologic and historical weakening of pre-existing civilizations, as well as Muslim freedom from any guilt in employing any atrocity or method to kill or loot, while pretending otherwise. I would concede that Muslim success was partially out of their dropping all moralism in conflict, and the failure of their opponents to catch on to the game.
Muslim/Arab forces will be crushed, if their opponents are not constrained by the Geneva shenanigan - which no Islamic army ever themselves follow anyway on the field. Pakis, or Iraqis, or Talebs and a host of other Islamic forces - regular and irregular have proven that they are not constrained by the Convention anyway. That they ahve not been or will not be prosecuted is another different equation altogether.
Afghans were licked well and gluteally - by at least three known military ruthlessnesses - for example Alexander, the Mongols and some of the Persians and Parthians. Thei Islamicness did not prevent them from getting licked, and abjectly so. But theyw ere always defeated when they were treated by their own methods - deception, genocide, and complete lack of any morality in warfare.
the Brit success partially came out of similar abandonment of any and all morality in the conduct of war - but the Brist avoided their moral dilemma by postulating humanity as being confined only to white+Christian. Hence they were "Muslims" in their warfare morality on non-Christians and non-Europeans, and that meant all the remnant Arab/Muslim powers were licked in the IOR.
If you see the history since 700AD it is the kings/rulers who 'constructed' the conditions for general populace and not the otherway around. It is the Islamic invaders who made the Islamic kingdoms. I is the colonial invaders who made the map that it is today. It is the INC leadership that made India what it is today. Even after 1947, it is the Pakistani leadership that made JK and BD for what they are today. China made Tibet and Aksai-chin for what it is today. Do you really think Chinese people selected Maoism before Mao and Nehruvism before Nehru and so on?
Hi Rama,
The power of rulers is rarely ever absolute. They also have to attract, inspire, bribe and co-opt peoples and forces. If they don't their rule will be short.
Leaving the debate on history and the ideologies for another day lets move on to contemporary issues...
Who do you think demanding sharia and Islamic ummah? Is it the Islamic populace or the ruling elite? In the clear struggle between sharia and modernity, which we cannot deny, who is on what side?
Rama, my point is actually that the populace wants both modernity and Islam. They dont want to chose.
They're reluctant to change Islam too much to fit modernity because the mullahs have told the people - and themselves- that it is bad to change Islam. So when changes are made, everyone has to lie to themselves and each other that no change has taken place.
But they're not satisfied with the results and keep tinkering. And they'll keep doing it until they get something that delivers results.
Why do we see more cultural and national assertiveness in even Hindu Indians as they become more affluent and (technically) advance? How can it be different in Islamic society?
If the argument is that all societies move towards their natural self-identity (be it any ideology, including western-materialism) then what importance the underlying ideology must be given?
My argument is not about moving towards 'essences', but rather the opposite - globalisation is forcing convergence. We're all going to become more like each other. There will be no 1-way flows of influence, although the weaker (in terms of composite power, not just hard power) you are, the less influence you will have. Of course you can resist, but if its a destructive rather than productive resistance you just end up weaker and further behind.
brihaspati wrote:If Arabs were militarily so innovative, why were they licking Mongol and Turkish feet by the 1300's? Why were they defeated at Vienna? Why in the 7th century, Charles the "Hammer" destroyed their army south of Paris - never again for a Muslim army to venture out north? Every step of the wa across north-Africa, to spain - the exapnsion was by deception, deception, and again deception over an economically exhausted polity - the opponents to fight holding their own conduct of war values while Muslims would flout all.
B,
Classical Islam as a system of organisation wasn't just about the direct conquest by the Arabs, it was the ability to pull in new nomadic groups into the faith through trade, missionary work, and the Arab version of the Mamluk system. That was the whole point of the Abbasid empire. So yes, the conversion of Turkic tribes of Central Asia was critical to maintaining Islamic expansion in mainland Eurasia. India, Anatolia and the Balkans couldn't have been conquered without the converting the various nomads of Central Asia. Just like northern Africa couldn't have been held without converting nomadic Berbers like the Tuareg. But the point was that Islam was good at it.
The problem the Islamic empire encountered in Europe was that Christianity and the remnants of the Roman Empire was also busy doing the same thing - converting tribes like the Franks and the Bulgars, and building an institutional church to tie them together and steeped in the idea that they were inheritors of Rome.
Mahadevbhu,
I am not a professional. Just an amateur who takes it seriously.
brihaspati wrote:Johann,
first : as you yourself point out - what was so intolerable in the creation or presence of an independent state for the Jews - to the Arabs? After all, the current Islamist claim is that the Jews had it golden under Islamic/Arab rule! So what was so galling to have these much loved, protected, and islamically sheltered or nourished Jews to have a state of their own!
The particular way that Israel came to be conceived long before the Holocaust required creating a Jewish majority in specific areas while building a state in parallel. Part of that meant immigration from Europe (despite the fact that there were plenty of Jews in the Middle East & North Africa at the time). That meant buying land, and getting the Arabs on it to go somewhere else. Early settlers assumed that the locals (who they didnt take seriously at all) could be bought off and they'd go somewhere else.
Large land owners were happy to sell, but your average villager (Christian and Muslim) came from families and communities that had been there for a very, very long time indeed and were not willing to move. The Levant has seen conquerors come and go, but the communities remained even if they changed states, languages and religions.
That was pretty much the setting for the modern conflict between the Palestinians and the European Jews. The rest of the Arabs joined in out of a combination of ethnic and religious solidarity, while non-Arab Muslims chimed in out of purely religious solidarity. That *sense* of solidarity (and this is typical) far outweighed actual practical assistance. So the Palestinians, and later Arabs as a whole repeatedly escalated the conflict and lost badly, and each time the Jewish community was ready to not just defend themselves, but permanently push Arabs off the land.
So the cycle has been that in the face of open Israeli desire to push them off their farms and villages the local Arabs get angry, local and other Arabs use hatespeech to whip everyone up, lash out violently and half-arsedly, lose the battle, lose their land, get angry, escalate lash out, ad infinitum.
In an age of nuclear weapons however, this is all rather frightening.
But if the Arabs were more in control of their emotions they would have accepted the UN partition plan of 1947, and limited their losses to a fraction of what it became. But they were thinking in terms of honour rather than rational cost-benefit terms. So they've lost far, far more than they needed to. On the whole I find Arabs and Palestinians still very emotional, but fare more realistic than in previous decades.
But then the European Jews didn't really ever expect the Palestinians to be so tenacious (most Israelis still dont really get the Palestinian attachment to ancestral villages), or the non-rational element of Arab honour, or the Muslim world's desperate need for a unifying cause. Even more drastically Israel did not expect the 19th and early 20th century formulation of nationalism would lose global legal backing.
Israel (especially Likud and the religious Jewish parties) want and need a Jewish majority state, but its still stuck with millions of Palestinians who it is not allowed to expel and whom it it doesn't want to give citizenship to. It still has the problem of wanting the land without the people, the original driver of the local conflict. Its a pressure cooker all right.
Last edited by Johann on 08 Dec 2012 23:40, edited 1 time in total.
Anyone who ignores that Jerusalem is the holiest place of Jews already knowingly skews the balance of discussion. Israel and Jerusalem are bare minimum basic rights of Jews which is made to look abnormal by ignoring the context and making changing goalposts.
After that it is all Israel's fault, almost to an extent that one wonders why Jews came to this place specifically because otherwise Jews even in Europe faced slaughter from Christians and moral keepers did nothing to stop genocides.
Jews facing attacks and genocide is normal. Jews demanding peace, security, right to worship in their own homelands and holy lands is abnormal.
Meaning such line of thought have no standards to begin with.
vishvak wrote:Anyone who ignores that Jerusalem is the holiest place of Jews already knowingly skews the balance of discussion. Israel and Jerusalem are bare minimum basic rights of Jews which is made to look abnormal by ignoring the context and making changing goalposts.
After that it is all Israel's fault, almost to an extent that one wonders why Jews came to this place specifically because otherwise Jews even in Europe faced slaughter from Christians and moral keepers did nothing to stop genocides.
Jews facing attacks and genocide is normal. Jews demanding peace, security, right to worship in their own homelands and holy lands is abnormal.
Meaning such line of thought have no standards to begin with.
Vishvak,
You should know Israel as a serious project began half a century before the Neuremburg laws and the Holocaust. The Zionists who built Israel were overwhelmingly secular people for whom Jewishness was an ethnic identity, not a religious one. They were also incredibly self-consciously European, which came with all of the colonial attitudes that meant that the majority of immigrants never had any real communication with locals living next door to them.
If Israel as a movement had on the other hand been begun by the millions of Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Muslim world there would have been far, far less conflict as people who were already part of the regional culture. But they had little interest in moving to Israel or Jerusalem until the 1940s-60s when other Arabs would attack them every time the Arabs or Palestinians lost a battle out of their own stupidity. It was triply stupid, because these reluctant refugees all needed more land within Israel, which came from Arabs, and they contributed their considerable cultural skills to the government in intelligence work.
So yes, if the Israel-Palestine problem was that some European Jews (not all) wanted a land without people which did have people, the Arabs consistently made it worse through escalation and making new enemies.
Why are people talking for Jews? Who can talk for Jews other than Jews?
What are the standards of secularism here? Secularism of Arabs who massacre Jews? Secularism of UK who have Christian representatives in Parliament and is predominantly Christian? Secularism of Europe where Jews and Romas faced genocides?
Who can talk with any conviction that only "some" European Jews wanted "a land"? That is factually incorrect.
I don't think majority of people on earth have earned rights to talk for Jews and then turn around and pass value judgements on Jews.
Who is judging 'the Jews' as whole? Jewish opinion about and involvement with Israel and Zionism has always been incredibly diverse.
The area has always been special in the minds and hearts of Jews, but that isn't the same thing as a universal commitment to building a Jewish majority nation-state, let alone the very specific vision that the founders of the Zionist movement had.
I would recommend getting a better idea of how the project to re-establish a Jewish homeland, and the Zionist movement developed. Walter Lacquer's A History of Zionism. Before you ask, yes he's Jewish, and his book is taken serious by Israelis as well. Same for Arthur Hertzberg's 'The Zionist Idea.'
Also, how can you be simplistic enough to imagine that the world exists in completely exclusive categories such as 'Jewish' and British?
I'm certainly not religious, but Judaism is a living part of my family background.
Johann and others, plenty can be said about the so-called diversity of threads that converged into "Zionism". But is this the proper thread to do so? The Arabs are as illegitimate in Palestine as Jews are - going by the Arab/Palestine logic. Moreover even if the foundation of Israel was at the hand sof "secular" Jews [yes, a large part wa splayed by militant left-leaning radical Jews side by side with more "orthodox" components], the "Arabs" with their grand muftis and mullahcracy - was never secular in that zone.
There are two questions here : but definitely elaboration for another thread. Is the Arab/Palestine claim on Palestine land more tenable than the jewish one? All sorts of ideologically determined value judgments will come up - but even there most logic used to support Arab/Palestine claim can actually be also used to support Jewish claim. The fact that we dont do so - is because Muslims are very clever at deception, and rewriting history. Or opportunist non-Muslims help them do so.
The second question is, if both their claims are illegitimate, which side do we Indians choose? Even if the Jewish claim is shown as illegitimate and the Arab not - by some specific set of value judgments - which side is in Indian interest to choose to support? That in turn is mine field of a question because it is dependent on what is seen as "Indian interest". If Indian interest is about appearing perfectly "neutral" and "unbiased" - which is an impossibility, and only some Hindus try to do so under demand from non-Hindus who themselves do not practise neutrality - we let this or that factor crop up to excuse ourselves from the debate, or quietly back up the Islamist in the hope that the jihadis will spare our valuable lives, even if they take our daughters and wives and kill our brothers and sons.
If we do want our civilization, with its philosophy, and knowledge construction methods to continue, we choose Israel to support. Keeping Isarel expanding, allowing less territory on the sea-front to Muslims as an independent state - the better for Indians. If Israel can be laid low, as someone has already pointed out - the desperate need in the Ummah to find a rallying focus of an enemy will pick out India. Lets keep Jihadi eyes constanty turning to his backside, whicever way his frontal turns.
I beg to differ on the cause behind the Arabs' defeat. The only reason why the Jews and the Israelis made this far was because of the unwavering support of the US. If the Soviets hadn't thrown its support behind the Arab states, US wouldn't have thrown its support behind Israel so completely and dominantly and Israel would be far less assertive with the Palestinians.
In fact, if Nasser had made the decision to side with the US, you can bet your bottom ass that Egypt would be controlling the affairs of Israel. Egypt was far more important strategically in terms of the Suez Canal and oil and its links with other oil-producing countries. Israel had nothing to offer but a refuge of Jews and a way to assuage the West's guilt over the Holocaust which is not a lot because the Holocaust was entirely the making of the Germans and the Germans at that time were in no position to influence any country outside its borders nor was it allowed to.
brihaspati wrote:
The second question is, if both their claims are illegitimate, which side do we Indians choose? Even if the Jewish claim is shown as illegitimate and the Arab not - by some specific set of value judgments - which side is in Indian interest to choose to support? That in turn is mine field of a question because it is dependent on what is seen as "Indian interest". If Indian interest is about appearing perfectly "neutral" and "unbiased" - which is an impossibility, and only some Hindus try to do so under demand from non-Hindus who themselves do not practise neutrality - we let this or that factor crop up to excuse ourselves from the debate, or quietly back up the Islamist in the hope that the jihadis will spare our valuable lives, even if they take our daughters and wives and kill our brothers and sons.
If we do want our civilization, with its philosophy, and knowledge construction methods to continue, we choose Israel to support. Keeping Isarel expanding, allowing less territory on the sea-front to Muslims as an independent state - the better for Indians. If Israel can be laid low, as someone has already pointed out - the desperate need in the Ummah to find a rallying focus of an enemy will pick out India. Lets keep Jihadi eyes constanty turning to his backside, whicever way his frontal turns.
exactly!! all other "legal"/"illegal" aspects are BS. yes, that's right. they're BS. and it's completely OK for India to take that stance. that's right. there is nothing wrong with picking a side that we perceive as helping our cause against forces which seek to destroy our civilization. to me, nothing else matters. we can keep debating the legitimacy of Israel all we want. I personally don't care about the legalistic crap. in my analysis, continued existence and even gradual expansion of Israel will always keep the Islamics off balance. and we need that.
we don't have the luxury of pontificating about Israel. we are not an island protected on all four sides by vast swathe of ocean or seas. we are surrounded by the Islamic menace. so it's about time we woke up and took stock of our situation.
I did NOT abuse J,nor will I.'Innocuous non-entity' makes it clear.the criticism was about a point of view.'****' mindset .This term is freely used in BRF for the British worldview wrt India.Anyway I had desisted after your caution.Yet you chose to brandish the lathi.
The pakistani hatred of india stems from religion.Its not majority or minority.India is full of minorities and there are people climbing and people clinging.Anujan said that religion was not an issue but oppresing mango abduls was reason pakjabis chose pak.J latched on to that and gave his pontification on Lalu CM of UP,Hindi/Urdu,Arya Samaj,Hindu Mahasabha.This is the typical western apology.No less than Dr Ambedkar has said that economics,social relations matter zilch when religious passions were induced in Indian muslims of the pre-partition.
If you think my response is unreasonable,go ahead and ban me.
I know my limits and am hardly the type to pick quarrels.
But, back to the pashtoons. They have been the toughest nuts to crack since time immemorial. Why will they change now, islam or no islam?
Actually the Pashtoons have been the easiest to crack throughout history. Almost everyone has come, conquered them, converted them to whatever they wanted and then left as it was useless retaining that belt. If one really makes a list of truly fcuked up clans, Pashtoons would be very high toppers on that list. True battle and war is about defense of value systems. Pashtoons have abandoned their women, children to the ravages of value systems most abominable. They did not even have the guts to rally behind Khan Abdul Gaffar. A clan that changes colors and ideology for the worse at each stage deserved to get whipped and it has got whipped throughout as history shows. Remember Saragarhi..20 Sikhs versus 10,000 plus pashtoons. Soviets, Americans even Punjabi Muslims have had them on a leash till date. What has the Mard e Pashtoon got to say about his life style, economy, women, children, standards today? Nothing. Zilch. No future, nothing..just a random drone attack that takes them out due maybe to some fellow pashtoon giving away his GPS location. Children roaming like wild beasts with an AK and a RPG in some ramshackle toyota..and a fat arse bearded buffoon whipping one of his shuttlecocks and bombing some girls school..this is what they fight to defend. The cowardly Pashtoon is what the reality is. They have been cowardly enough to embrace every evil ideology there is. They have succumbed, not fought.
On December 6, Asadullah Khalid, Head of Afghanistan’s Intelligence set up — the National Directorate of Security — was seriously injured in a bomb attack by a Taliban suicide bomber posing as a peace envoy. Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai announced the next day that the suicide bomber was from Pakistan. While not directly naming the Inter-Services Intelligence, Karzai described the suicide bombing as a “very sophisticated and complicated act by a professional intelligence service”.
Khalid is one of President Karzai’s closest aides. He has held crucial gubernatorial appointments in Ghazni and Kandahar and had escaped Taliban assassination attempts in 2007 and 2011.
He has been playing a crucial role in trying to wean away Pashtun tribal support from the Taliban, as the American “end game” in Afghanistan picks up momentum. Asadullah Khalid is seen as a dangerous adversary in Pakistan.
In its quest for “strategic depth,” the Pakistan military establishment has based its entire political strategy in pretending to champion the cause of Pashtuns, who constitute 40 per cent of the country’s population, with the Tajiks constituting 33 per cent and the Shia Hazaras and Uzbeks 11 per cent and 9 per cent, respectively.
Gaining dominance
Pakistan’s strategy is to pretend that it supports an “Afghan-led” process of national reconciliation, while ensuring that the Quetta Shura and the Haqqani Network, which have strong ties with the al Qaeda and international Islamist causes, negotiate from a position of strength, so that southern Afghanistan initially, and thereafter the entire Pashtun belt, come under the control of its “strategic assets”.
This would be a prelude to obtaining a dominant role across the entire country. It is primarily in pursuit of this objective that the senior-most Taliban leader from the Durrani tribe, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, has been incarcerated and kept incommunicado in Pakistan.
Pakistan has its own Achilles heel. Firstly, no Pashtun worth his salt recognises the Durand Line.
Moreover, after the Pakistan army’s assault of the Lal Masjid in 2007, the Tehriq-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has made common cause with other Jihadi outfits in Pakistan, to challenge the writ of the Pakistan army and the Pakistan State.
Unable to directly take on the TTP, the Pakistan army is fomenting tribal animosities between the Mehsud and Waziri tribes in South Waziristan.
It is also clear that should a Government-led Imran Khan’s Tehriq-e-Insaf or Nawaz Sharif’s PML (N) assume office after the 2013 elections in Pakistan, one can write off any prospect of the Pakistan army taking any action whatsoever, against the Haqqani network or other al Qaeda-affiliated groups, as the American drawdown in Afghanistan proceeds.
The one country which can remain unaffected by a Taliban takeover of Southern Afghanistan is Pakistan’s “all weather friend” China, which is known to have maintained links with the Mullah Omar-led Quetta Shura, even as it professes to be a strategic partner of the Karzai dispensation.
In these circumstances, there are now concerns that if not properly equipped, motivated and backed, the Afghan National Army (ANA) could well lose control of the entire Pashtun belt in the country. This could have serious consequences for the very unity of Afghanistan.
It is significant that influential Afghan leaders like Mohammed Atta and Ismail Khan are preparing the ground to be able to defend areas they control, in the event of the ANA being unable to effectively deal with the Taliban challenge.
Preparing the ground
There should also be no doubt that the primary objective of the Taliban would be to seize control of Kandahar, because of its importance in Pashtun minds as the traditional and spiritual capital of the country.
There would also be efforts by the Taliban to cut off the line of communication from Khyber to Jalalabad. India would have to work closely with foreign partners, including the US, its NATO allies, Russia Iran and Saudi Arabia, to ensure that the international community remains on course to back the elected Government in Afghanistan, economically and militarily.
India has already provided Afghanistan with substantial economic assistance and is preparing the ground for large-scale investments in such areas as iron ore, coal, steel, copper and gold.
Indian military analysts, with expertise in Afghanistan’s armed forces, note that to ensure that the ANA can stand up to challenges from across the Durand Line, India should readily supply mountain artillery, armoured personnel carriers, apart from transportation and communications equipment.
It remains to seen whether an establishment wedded to its pacifist illusions, will pick up the courage to act decisively on major emerging security challenges in our neighbourhood.
Equally importantly, India and its partner States need to recognise that, given Pashtun sentiments and historic realities, it should be agreed upon that the Durand Line is a “dispute boundary” between Pakistan and Afghanistan, while expressing the hope that the dispute will be resolved peacefully, keeping in view Pashtun sentiments.
Did general David Petraeus grant friends access to top secret files?
Petraeus was forced out of the CIA in part because his mistress read sensitive documents. Now it is alleged he granted two friends astonishing access to top secret files as he ran the Afghan surge. In a painstaking investigation, Rajiv Chandrasekaran reveals how the volunteers won big donations from defence firms – and how they pushed the army towards a far more aggressive strategy
Rajiv Chandrasekaran , Washington Post
As war-zone volunteers, the Kagans were not bound by the stringent rules that apply to military personnel and private contractors. They could raise concerns directly with Petraeus, instead of going through subordinate officers, and were free to speak their minds without repercussion.
Some military officers and civilian US government employees in Kabul praised the couple’s contributions — one general noted that “they did the work of 20 intelligence analysts”. Others expressed deep unease about their activities in the headquarters, particularly because of their affiliations and advocacy in Washington.
Fred Kagan, who works at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, was one of the intellectual architects of President George W Bush’s troop surge in Iraq and has sided with the Republican Party on many national security issues. Kim Kagan runs the Institute for the Study of War, which favours an aggressive US foreign policy. The Kagans supported President Obama’s decision to order a surge in Afghanistan, but they later broke with the White House on the subject of troop reductions. Both argue against any significant drawdown in forces there next year.
Fred Kagan, who works at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, was one of the intellectual architects of President George W Bush’s troop surge in Iraq and has sided with the Republican Party on many national security issues. Kim Kagan runs the Institute for the Study of War, which favours an aggressive US foreign policy. The Kagans supported President Obama’s decision to order a surge in Afghanistan, but they later broke with the White House on the subject of troop reductions. Both argue against any significant drawdown in forces there next year.
Looks like troop reduction in 2014 wont happen with US domestic politics taking over this issue and creating a large media controversy in US. The conservatives vs the liberals on the Af Pak will diverge and may create a grid lock. This may affect India and Indian foriegn policy in the long term. Foriegn policy grid lock in South Asia could create a different trajectory for the next 30 years.
But there are special interest who want to drag India into this back hole and create a permanent psychological damage to the sub continent.
India has sounded a cautionary note amid efforts by the West to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table.
Pointing out that al-Qaeda and Taliban still enjoy linkages and are far from having been defeated, New Delhi has warned they could re-emerge if the draw-down by the western security forces leaves a vacuum and sanctions against them eased.
Speaking during a discussion on Afghanistan at the U.N., Permanent Representative Hardeep Puri pointed out that though there had been progress in the social and economic spheres, Afghanistan continues to face an existential threat from terrorism.
The infrastructure of terror is still intact, the “syndicate of terrorism’’ which includes elements of the al-Qaeda, Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba and other terrorist and extremist groups, is active and far from being isolated.
Security situation
While the security situation continues to remain fragile, ISAF draw down has proceeded apace. This has accentuated the uncertainties with the risk of creating a security vacuum coupled with an economic downturn in Afghanistan, which could undermine the hard fought gains we have achieved together during the last decade,’’ cautioned Mr. Puri.
With the U”.N. having renewed the mandate of sanctions regimes against these organisations just two days ago, Mr. Puri underlined that it is important to ensure that the fight against counter-terrorism should not be diluted.
“The linkages between al-Qaeda and Taliban are real and cannot be wished away. The recently adopted Security Council resolutions clearly recognise this aspect and have tasked the Monitoring Team to report periodically on this matter.’’
We are back to square one of warning the US, yet again, about dangers of accommodating the Taliban. We did that earlier too and we were kept out of the London Conference. Then we appeared to loosen our strict stand but we are now back to the cautioning mode once again.
The Pakistani tactics are revealed if we look back at what has been happening in Af-Pak in the last three years.
There has been competitive attempts among the US, Karzai Government, and NATO to seek the support of Taliban for nearly three or four years now. As a part of this strategy, the US decided to allocate a Billion dollar fund to wean away from the Taliban ranks those who were not ideologically committed and would thus fall prey to financial inducements, even as it went ahead with its surge tactic. These Taliban are being offered various inducements such as jobs, money, a seat in peace talks and possibly even the Government if they renounced violence and return to peaceful means. The whole effort is premised on the assumption that many Taliban might be fighting because of lucrative money offered by the terrorists.
Pakistan has played a major part in selling this snake-oil strategy. Even while doing so, it has collaborated with the Taliban to physically eliminate those leaders (Pashtun & non-Pashtun) who would be a stumbling block in re-throning the Taliban. Others like the powerful Intelligence Chief like Amarullah Saleh or the Interior Minister Hanif Atmar were forced to be removed (in c. 2010) from the Karzai cabinet through sustained pressure on the US. This has also been the reason that it has been trying to shape the trajectory these peace talks took. The arrest of those Taliban leaders who bypassed Pakistan were part of the strategy to force the acceptance of the primacy of Pakistan. ISI was quoted as having admitted, “We protect the Taliban. They are dependent on us. We are not going to allow them to make a deal with Karzai and the Indians.” A senior Afghan official has recently admitted, while describing the Pakistani release of the Taliban for peace talks, “Islamabad is telling us that its willing to let the peace kite fly — but only if we accept that its hand will hold and guide the string.”
All the while, it is the implicit faith in the concept of 'strategic depth' that is the lodestar for Pakistani moves and counter moves. Gen. Kayani, even explained Pakistan’s position in the NATO commanders’ conference just before the London Conference of January 2010. He said, inter alia, that India was the only existential threat for Pakistan which necessitated the strategic depth into Afghanistan, India’s presence in Afghanistan posed security challenges to Pakistan and must therefore be curtailed etc. He also offered to train the Afghan Army (ANA) as a counter to India’s proposals. In the March 2010 Strategic Dialogue between the US and Pakistan, it made its request to the US to ‘protect its interests’ in Afghanistan and eliminate India’s influence which Pakistan considered as threatening to its security. The frequency of visits to Kabul by the Pakistani COAS, Gen. Kayani, indicated mediatory efforts between Haqqani and Mullah Omar on the one hand and the Kabul Government on the other hand. After one such visit in August 2010, Karzai called for withdrawal of US/NATO maintained ‘private security forces’ (employed to guard ISAF convoys and installations) within four months (i.e by year end, 2010) as they were ‘poorly regulated, reckless and effectively operate outside local law’. Possibly, it was a demand from the Taliban that was conveyed through Gen. Kayani that Karzai voiced. That the Americans and the rest of NATO/ISAF were tired and eager to withdraw from Afghanistan emboldened the Pakistani Army to drag its feet successfully in mounting any operation in North Waziristan, stronghold of the Haqqani shura and the pro-Army faction of the TTP (led by Hafeez Gul Bahadur).
The American military strategy of a 'surge' that would enable the Allies to speak to the Taliban from a position of immense strength has come a cropper. The timeline to capture Kandahar was in 2010 and Kunduz a little later. None of these happened. Finally, in early May, 2010, the NATO commanders scrapped the Kandahar offensive. In order to save itself the embarrassment, it characterized the offensive as rather a civilian reconstruction effort with the military in a supportive role only. The American requests to the Pakistani Army for operations in North Waziristan were rejected. In the meanwhile, the casualty figures of the NATO forces were climbing up. The helicopter attack on a Pakistani Army post in early October, 2010 within Pakistan by the American forces resulting in the killing of two Pakistani soldiers must also be seen in the light of frustration among the Americans on the reluctance of Pakistan to stem the flow of Taliban and their armaments. This resulted in Pakistan closing down the NATO supply routes (GLOCs) until the US issued an apology. Using this attack as an excuse, the Pakistani Foreign Office defiantly re-stated its long standing policy, “While we understand the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) concerns, any question relating to when, how and what is to be done in North Waziristan is based on judgment, keeping in mind our capacities, priorities and overall national interest. This in no way should be interpreted as lack of Pakistani resolve”. In mid-November 2010, reports appeared that the US was demanding permission from Pakistan to use its drones on Quetta, a request rejected by Pakistan.When the US Special Envoy to Af-Pak, Richard Holbrooke, passed away most unexpectedly on December 13, 2010, the general consensus was that even he could not “get Pakistan on board to deal with Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan.”
Pakistan made a significant gain in early 2012 when various jihadi factions, warlords, TTP, Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban announced a united consultative council, Shura-e-Murakeba on Jan. 2, 2012 after two meetings, one at Wana (South Waziristan) on November, 27, 2011 and the other at Datta Khel (North Waziristan) on December, 11, 2011. One of the outcomes reportedly was not to attack the Pakistani armed forces, focusing the efforts solely on NATO/ISAF. This seems to be a result of the ‘peace negotiations’ that GoP had earlier initiated with the Taliban in the second half of c. 2011
In the NATO conference in Chicago in May, 2012, preceded by the Salalah drama and the participation of Zardari, the final declaration said "The countries in the region, particularly Pakistan, have important roles in ensuring enduring peace, stability and security in Afghanistan and in facilitating the completion of the transition process.". NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen was even more categorical, maintaining that “we cannot solve the problems of Afghanistan without the positive engagement of Pakistan”.
The recent thawing in the frosty relationship between the US and Pakistan (resumption of arms shipments, payment of huge dues for ISAF operations, immunity to ISI chiefs in 26/11 court proceedings in the US) portend once again isolation of India in the Afghan affairs, notwithstanding the signing of the India-Afghanistan Startegic Agreement with great fanfare. Hence the Indian caution.
India's concerns were never factor in US AfPak calculations. Where there was a mid course problem was that TSP was going down the tube as collateral damage to US actions in AfPak, and TSP through its maneuvering has managed to reverse that. So basically we are now back to MushRat and Al Quailin Paveel days where the deal between US & TSP has been restored, namely, whatever you (US & NATO) do, it should not weaken us visa vi India, and in fact strengthen our ability to fight the so called "Indian threat" which translated to reality means fighting India. US/NATO slime balls have accepted this. No amount of Indian caution is going to change that
