Sunni Terrorist Fragments of Unstable Pakistan - 10 Oct 2014

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 19 Nov 2014 00:35

Didn't Unfair repeatedly assert that India was behind Baloch Independence? MMS got an earful for Sharm-el-Sheikh faux pas.

We now have Selig Harrison advocating Baloch Independence.

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 19 Nov 2014 00:38

Solve the A problem by solving the B problem in South Asia. After this, there wont be any K , P or T problem in the area.

saip · Post by **saip** » 19 Nov 2014 02:14

Selig Harisons article is over 3 1/2 years old.

Agnimitra · Post by **Agnimitra** » 19 Nov 2014 04:24

^^ Yes but its being circulated afresh by the likes of Tarek Fatah.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 19 Nov 2014 04:49

The labeling of groups that fall out of favor as Indian and American proxies is actually well thought out strategy in Pakistan. Pakistan was for Keedas and Talibs, except when Unkil gave them money and shoved a bamboo up musharraf's musharraf, he had to give up some of their brethren. Like the dozen or so Al-Libis, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Remzi Binalshibh and so on. Now you can either convince Pakis with complicated explanations as to why supporting Al Qaeda is not sustainable but supporting Afghan Taliban and Cashmere-focussed Mujahids is, but Pakis are not going to buy that explanation. On the other hand "They are Jews" is an easier explanation. So you see this canard about uncircumcised people who attacked karachi and so on. After reading so many articles and talking to so many people, I got a lightbulb "aha" moment when I realized that

Paki public opinion is forged not by what people do, but who they are

So a group that burns a bunch of people in a Kiln (which is what happened to the Christian folks) is okay, if those people are pious. Similarly, a group that slaughters Ahmadis, Shias and sets off a few in Lahore and Karachi is okay as long as those people are pious too. On the other hand, US giving out aid and marking their food packets as USAID is totally not okay, because that is from Kafir YYY people.

The quickest way to fight against the TTP is to label them Indian, American, Afghan and Israeli proxies. Similarly the quickest way to rally public opinion against the Baloch is to label them Indian proxies. That is what birdie num num told MMS and MMS in his diplomatic stupidity told "he will look into it". Motorma Fair latched on to it, and was in her equal equal avatar when she declared "Both India and Pakistan support proxies in each others territory". My fourth cousin keeps needling her about this. Even bringing up the "Lets give Pakistan a nuke deal" article that she wrote (her response to it? She suggested it to expose Pakistan's nuke perfidy. Which is a weakass defence because Pakistan's nuke perfidy vis-a-vis AQ Khan was fully known then).

That was the old Motormar Fair. The Motorma Fair that you see now, is working on popularizing her new hypothesis that Pakistan is not a security state, but a greedy state that will not rest even if it captures whole of Afghanistan and JK. We, ofcourse knew all this. Hamid Gul is on the record saying that India is a fragile arch and JK is the keystone which if dislodged will cause the whole country to shatter into a million pieces. There is persistent obsession in Pakiland about 10,000 insurgencies in India and how India is on the verge of breaking up and collapse. But the new Motorma Fair has just discovered this and is ofcourse fascinated by this new discovery that she has latched on to and gives gyaan about it to SDREs themselves in various talks*

Anyway coming back to the original point
Paki public opinion is forged not by what people do, but who they are

The talibs will win Pakistan if they convince everyone that the TFTAs and Civvies are essentially Kafir American stooges.

*Ofcourse I am not complaining. SDREs too are stupid, like the moron who asked the question "But most Pakis I met wanted to sing Kumbaya!! Why are you casting aspersion on Pakistan that can be misused by Rightwing elements in India?"

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 19 Nov 2014 05:09

First a meta-point. People view others as they view themselves. You have to understand this. A typical Paki thinks India supports terrorism in Pakistan, because Pakistan supports terrorism in India and that is what normal countries do. So Israel, US and India support terrorism in Pakistan. Now no amount of convincing the Paki that India does not support terrorism is going to work. It is like convincing a typical abdul that other abduls have three nuts instead of two.

A typical Indian thinks Pakistan wants peace with India because India wants peace with her neighbours and that is what normal countries do. So Pakistan wants peace with India. No amount of terror attacks will convince majority of SDREs that Pakistan is irreconcilably hostile. Mumbai attacks? Well those were done by extremists without state support and there are extremists on both sides. I have seen SDREs on twitter comparing RSS with Taliban and Al Qaeda (fellows, have a sense of scale. Al Qaeda slit Daniel Pearl's throat and sent videos of it to news agencies). Because a typical "Extremist" that SDREs have encountered are those people who have an opinion and are willing to argue for it. So Pakistanis want peace and their extremists are like our "extremists".

Goras too see India and Pakistan the way they seem themselves but there are two things that Gora Sahibs get confused by. That is, how irrational India and Pakistan are.

Goras think: Supporting terrorists is okay, but once there is a blowback we should fight and kill them immediately. That is what they did with Keedas and Talibs. But Pakistan thinks supporting terrorism should be continued irrespective of blowback. Goras get taken in by this again and again. They think "Talibs have attacked Pakistan, now if we give more money to Pakistan, they will attack and take out the talibs". Pakistan doesnt. Pakistan wont. They love talibs till death do them apart. Will continue to support them till they completely burn.

Goras think: Terrorists have attacked India, now India is going to nuke Pakistan. In fact GWB is reported to have said about the Mumbai attack "This is an act of war, Indians are going to retaliate and retaliate hard". But SDREs view terror attacks as an inconvenience. Somewhere between a traffic jam and a flood. They certainly arent going to nuke anyone due to a flood. They think accelerating composite dialog will solve terror and there are no option except talks, strong and stable Pakistan is in India's interest etc etc. Similarly Goras think "Oh, we funded Yahoos in Syria to overthrow Assad so surely SDREs are funding and training yahoos in Pakistan". Turns out SDREs arent. Because a strong and stable Pakistan....

The moment they realize SDREs want talks at all cost and Pakis want terrorism at all costs, they go write a book and give talks about it. "Hey look!! what I found!! A new species of brown people who are completely unlike us!!" Which is exactly what Smt. Fair did.

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 19 Nov 2014 05:26

Brad Goodman wrote:Pakistani boot camps want to ‘re-program’ ISIS terrorists

The de-radicalization here means turning them against India and India only, away from their focus on the murtad Pakistani Army

Tuvaluan · Post by **Tuvaluan** » 19 Nov 2014 05:45

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/ ... n-doubles/

Why is the Indian govt. still handing out visitor's visas to pakis -- clearly most of them do not return to pakistan. 1800 people are in Godhra and the gujarat govt. makes no effort to remove them and get them back to pakistan? can only imagine the numbers of pakis in residence in other states where this problem is even more severe.

"A sponsor of a Pakistani national has to fill in a certificate with own name and details of the guest, including his/her photograph, how long he/she will stay and the purpose of the visit. Once attested by a senior government officer, this certificate is sent back to the Pakistani national concerned, who has to then submit it while seeking a visa."

So a babu's attesting is supposed to enforce the visa deadlines of overstaying pakis? Maybe the babus in India have heard of computers that can be used to track paki visitors...I hear they are very popular all over the world these days.

Common sense would dictate that these jokers in bureaucracy who wantonly issue visas to pakis must also keep in mind the amount of manpower on the ground to verify that these people are not overstaying, not least because Pakis are very likely to be part of terrorist networks in India if they are allowed to roam free. But the left hand does not seem to know what the right hand is up to, or so it seems.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 19 Nov 2014 06:06

Anujan wrote:First a meta-point. People view others as they view themselves. You have to understand this. A typical Paki thinks India supports terrorism in Pakistan, because Pakistan supports terrorism in India and that is what normal countries do. So Israel, US and India support terrorism in Pakistan. Now no amount of convincing the Paki that India does not support terrorism is going to work. It is like convincing a typical abdul that other abduls have three nuts instead of two.

A typical Indian thinks Pakistan wants peace with India because India wants peace with her neighbours and that is what normal countries do. So Pakistan wants peace with India. No amount of terror attacks will convince majority of SDREs that Pakistan is irreconcilably hostile. Mumbai attacks? Well those were done by extremists without state support and there are extremists on both sides. I have seen SDREs on twitter comparing RSS with Taliban and Al Qaeda (fellows, have a sense of scale. Al Qaeda slit Daniel Pearl's throat and sent videos of it to news agencies). Because a typical "Extremist" that SDREs have encountered are those people who have an opinion and are willing to argue for it. So Pakistanis want peace and their extremists are like our "extremists".

Goras too see India and Pakistan the way they seem themselves but there are two things that Gora Sahibs get confused by. That is, how irrational India and Pakistan are.

Goras think: Supporting terrorists is okay, but once there is a blowback we should fight and kill them immediately. That is what they did with Keedas and Talibs. But Pakistan thinks supporting terrorism should be continued irrespective of blowback. Goras get taken in by this again and again. They think "Talibs have attacked Pakistan, now if we give more money to Pakistan, they will attack and take out the talibs". Pakistan doesnt. Pakistan wont. They love talibs till death do them apart. Will continue to support them till they completely burn.

Goras think: Terrorists have attacked India, now India is going to nuke Pakistan. In fact GWB is reported to have said about the Mumbai attack "This is an act of war, Indians are going to retaliate and retaliate hard". But SDREs view terror attacks as an inconvenience. Somewhere between a traffic jam and a flood. They certainly arent going to nuke anyone due to a flood. They think accelerating composite dialog will solve terror and there are no option except talks, strong and stable Pakistan is in India's interest etc etc. Similarly Goras think "Oh, we funded Yahoos in Syria to overthrow Assad so surely SDREs are funding and training yahoos in Pakistan". Turns out SDREs arent. Because a strong and stable Pakistan....

The moment they realize SDREs want talks at all cost and Pakis want terrorism at all costs, they go write a book and give talks about it. "Hey look!! what I found!! A new species of brown people who are completely unlike us!!" Which is exactly what Smt. Fair did.

THis is a fabulous pisko analysis worthy of the first post in every shitland thread.

The fact that psychological and sociolgical observations such as these are vital to out understanding of human relations has been lost on post-independence India. the humanities have been ignored and discarded - with our educational instituions concentrating on science and now commerce. This will not be good for our country n the long term. We need to invest in the human resources of a strong base in the humanities where we study others as the west has done us. Its ironic that stories like the Ramayana and Mahabharata and other old Indian texts like Arth Shastra, Kama Sutra etc are chock full of pyschology and human behavioral observations.

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 19 Nov 2014 06:07

Just to add to Anujan's excellent post above on the psychology of Indian, Pakistani and American thinking.

Quite a few American articles I have read in recent times have accepted the employment of asymmetric warfare through jihadists by Pakistan against India as a fait accompli because of the conventional superiority enjoyed by India. In earlier times too, the US attributed the supposed 'Pakistani insecurity' due to conventional imbalance and used it as a justification to correct that through a massive supply of arms to Pakistan so that it felt less insecure. Now, however, it seems to be even going one step ahead by accepting jihadists as a legitimate tool by Pakistan against us. This means that future terrorist attacks against us would not even merit the attention that it has got so far, except perhaps the customary condemnation. To be fair to the US, in spite of deaths of American citizens and involvement of its own citizen in plotting the 26/11 Mumbai attack, it did pretty little anyway. So, it would be unfair to accuse it of similar inaction in the future. In any case, our non-retaliation in the past solidified the American thinking that India has no stomach for punitive retaliation and could therefore be always prevailed upon into 'talks', thus the famous 'exercise maximum restraint' advise to India and by contrast acceptance of the state and non-state actor nexus within Pakistan.

When we make even a slight adjustment to our SDRE dhimmi policy and retaliate a tad stronger, as it happened recently across the IB, the SDRE reaction was predictable. How bad an eye for an eye policy would be the cliched scenario often painted by all peaceniks, newspaper editorials, panel discussants etc. invoking Mahatma Gandhi out of context. Since the incumbent government is a 'right-wing Hindu government', all kinds of motives were attributed to that as well.

From the Pakistani PoV, they probably did the firing for a few good reasons such as pushing terrorists in before the winter and state elections, flesh out the new policy of the new Indian government, and certainly provoking the shrill peacenik voices in India knowing fully well that the dhimmi SDRE would do so based on overwhelming historical evidence, asking for UNMOGIP's involvement in truce monitoring to revive the UN involvement and discarding the bilateral Simla Agreement etc. The reaction among the Pakistanis was also one of feigned surprise, "What happened to you now? You have been like piece of dumb sponge all these decades absorbing the body blows and why do you retaliate now? Look at the war-mongering nature of the right-wing Hindu majoritarians" etc.

Mihaylo · Post by **Mihaylo** » 19 Nov 2014 07:57

Anujan wrote:First a meta-point. People view others as they view themselves. You have to understand this. A typical Paki thinks India supports terrorism in Pakistan, because Pakistan supports terrorism in India and that is what normal countries do. So Israel, US and India support terrorism in Pakistan. Now no amount of convincing the Paki that India does not support terrorism is going to work. It is like convincing a typical abdul that other abduls have three nuts instead of two.

A typical Indian thinks Pakistan wants peace with India because India wants peace with her neighbours and that is what normal countries do. So Pakistan wants peace with India. No amount of terror attacks will convince majority of SDREs that Pakistan is irreconcilably hostile. Mumbai attacks? Well those were done by extremists without state support and there are extremists on both sides. I have seen SDREs on twitter comparing RSS with Taliban and Al Qaeda (fellows, have a sense of scale. Al Qaeda slit Daniel Pearl's throat and sent videos of it to news agencies). Because a typical "Extremist" that SDREs have encountered are those people who have an opinion and are willing to argue for it. So Pakistanis want peace and their extremists are like our "extremists".

Goras too see India and Pakistan the way they seem themselves but there are two things that Gora Sahibs get confused by. That is, how irrational India and Pakistan are.

Goras think: Supporting terrorists is okay, but once there is a blowback we should fight and kill them immediately. That is what they did with Keedas and Talibs. But Pakistan thinks supporting terrorism should be continued irrespective of blowback. Goras get taken in by this again and again. They think "Talibs have attacked Pakistan, now if we give more money to Pakistan, they will attack and take out the talibs". Pakistan doesnt. Pakistan wont. They love talibs till death do them apart. Will continue to support them till they completely burn.

Goras think: Terrorists have attacked India, now India is going to nuke Pakistan. In fact GWB is reported to have said about the Mumbai attack "This is an act of war, Indians are going to retaliate and retaliate hard". But SDREs view terror attacks as an inconvenience. Somewhere between a traffic jam and a flood. They certainly arent going to nuke anyone due to a flood. They think accelerating composite dialog will solve terror and there are no option except talks, strong and stable Pakistan is in India's interest etc etc. Similarly Goras think "Oh, we funded Yahoos in Syria to overthrow Assad so surely SDREs are funding and training yahoos in Pakistan". Turns out SDREs arent. Because a strong and stable Pakistan....

The moment they realize SDREs want talks at all cost and Pakis want terrorism at all costs, they go write a book and give talks about it. "Hey look!! what I found!! A new species of brown people who are completely unlike us!!" Which is exactly what Smt. Fair did.

Indeed, Indians are as irrational as the Pukis, albeit in a different way.

-M

wig · Post by **wig** » 19 Nov 2014 09:15

meanbhile paki tycoon hashwani alleges Zardari tried to kill him

Leading hotelier and owner of Marriott and Pearl Continental chain in Pakistan has alleged that former President Asif Ali Zardari had tried to kill him due to a three-decade-old enmity. Sadruddin Hashwani alleges in his memoir 'Truth Always Prevails' that a clash in his hotel's disco at the Marriott's "discotheque" in Karachi in 1983 with Zardari turned into a lifelong rivalry with the former president.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2014/20141119/world.htm

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 19 Nov 2014 09:54

Anujan, a fu(king masterpiece there!!!

Tuvaluan · Post by **Tuvaluan** » 19 Nov 2014 10:02

Apparently, "18Nov,In US:Gen Raheel was conferred with US Legion of Merit Medal for brave ldrship,sagacity,vision,efforts for peace&stability in region"

So maybe that explains Raheel's long stay in the US -- the duo working
some Af-Pak Fak-ap now that US's bugbear Karzai is gone in Afghanisthan. Added to the song and dance that the pakis are "moderating and retraining" the ISIS terrorists. Question is what else did Raheel Sharif get other than some dinky medal and second servings at the state buffet?

kmkraoind · Post by **kmkraoind** » 19 Nov 2014 10:02

sadhana wrote:
Anujan wrote:Long article about Zarb-e-zamzam by some hack

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-1 ... Waziristan
The Pakistan Army was sitting a few miles away, twiddling its thumbs for what, 15 years? while this elaborate infrastructure was built. Now it wants to be given credit for clearing it up

And why not. The Americans are already patting their heads saying good dog and will be doing dollarabhishekam soon

Pakis think Zarb-e-zamzam is some sort of Neutron bomb, which kills bad talibunnies, while retaining the infra. The Pakis think when dust settles, they can use the same infra to produce good talibunnies. But they are forgetting that bad talibunnies are next level evolution.

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 19 Nov 2014 10:31

JE Menon wrote:Anujan, a fu(king masterpiece there!!!

Jaaki Rahi Bhaavna jaise,
Terrorism Perception Tin Aayye Jaisee.
Amreeka, Allah, Arab, orr Cheena
Mill Kar Apna Sperm Paki Deena .
IQ Resistant Strain Inbreeding Sey Leena
Jihadi Terrorism Global Scale Pey Keena .

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 19 Nov 2014 11:06

kmkraoind wrote: Pakis think Zarb-e-zamzam is some sort of Neutron bomb, which kills bad talibunnies, while retaining the infra. The Pakis think when dust settles, they can use the same infra to produce good talibunnies. But they are forgetting that bad talibunnies are next level evolution.

Actually it is the opposite. If you read that article (and probably most of it is true), what they have done is to notify everyone to leave, and then level all hiding places, C&C centers, confiscate all arms and explosives (around 200 tonnes) and as the jernail put it "dismantle the economy of terror".

‘NWA’ was a different challenge from Swat, assessed the brass. The local population was “entrenched in a decade-long economy of terror” that made them “invested in the anarchy” that was North Waziristan, says General Khattak

This is I completely believe. For example, apparently each shop had a dungeon down below where they could chain kidnapped people. Talibs would kidnap people and "deposit" them in these shops and the shops get a cut of the ransom money. Talibs are relieved from guard duty and the inconvenience of actually having to hide their prisoners. I find this credible. This is just market forces benefiting from terror infrastructure: Just like how there are gun shops if there are terrorists who want those guns.

So the key is that they are destroying the infrastructure but letting the people go. This I think is significant. The reason is that now the only people who have firing ranges, arms and ammo, C&C is the TFTA army. They will recruit the very same people, give them money and make them work towards the objectives of the TFTAs.

This is somewhat like what the Allies did in Germany after WWII. They demolished all heavy industries in Germany (Bayer was ordered to stop production, BMW was ordered to stop producing aircraft) and pretty much dismantled all industrial infrastructure in Germany. Causing germans scientists and engineers to work for the west because that was the only remaining employment opportunity given their skills.

vijaykarthik · Post by **vijaykarthik** » 19 Nov 2014 11:20

What does the forum think of the SAARC summit? I am assuming that the PM's wont meet eye to eye. But the more important qn. Is the PM accompanied by aid(e)s. Will the aides end up meeting?
Or god forbid; will there be a NSA or For Sec lvl meeting between both the countries?
Thoughts?

sudhan · Post by **sudhan** » 19 Nov 2014 14:26

Rawheel blames India for problems with Zarb-e-zamzam. Snake oil peddling starts promptly in Washington.

It's all India's fault!

vijaykarthik · Post by **vijaykarthik** » 19 Nov 2014 14:34

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/r ... 612018.ece

Nice article on Wahhabism, again

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 19 Nov 2014 17:40

sudhan wrote:Rawheel blames India for problems with Zarb-e-zamzam. Snake oil peddling starts promptly in Washington.

It's all India's fault!

^^^

Observers say that Gen Raheel could present Zarb-i-Azb as an example, based on which he will demand continuation of military aid to the country.

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 19 Nov 2014 19:01

A_Gupta wrote:^^^
Observers say that Gen Raheel could present Zarb-i-Azb as an example, based on which he will demand continuation of military aid to the country.

A couple of days back, I had sent this eMail to one of our esteemed friends.

On the question of Gen. Raheel Sharif's 7-day visit, one can only conclude the following:

The US is once again, after a gap of about 3 years (since Abbottabad), legitimizing the Pakistani Army to the same extent as before. This means that the US will directly negotiate with the Army Chief, bypassing the Pakistani Prime Minister, in issues relating to the region, especially Afghanistan. Since the US has tied up Afghanistan with India, transitively, it applies to India as well.

Gen. Raheel will exploit this re-emerging situation by demanding certain new equipment, funding fo r his army. The contours will become clear when the Congress will be notified in a few months' time.

Gen. Raheel will demand that India be restrained, especially in its new policy of 'disproportionate retaliation' for every misdemanour across the border by the Pakistani Army. Statements to this effect from the US State Department will appear sooner than later.

The US already accepts that employment of asymmetric warfare through jihadists is a legitimate one by a weaker 'security-seeking state' and so will not bring to bear any significant pressure on Pakistan over that issue. Secure in that thought, Pakistan will demand more concessions from India through the US. The Indian diplomacy and the leadership will be fully tested, stretched in 2015.

As the US once again assumes a position of indifference towards Afghanistan (as before after 1989) except relating to the presence of the 10000 US soldiers on the Afghan soil and the logistics connected with that, it is the Pakistani Army that the US will turn more to. Since there will not be any significant military engagement between the US Army and the Taliban or the various warlords, the DoD's influence over the policies of the GotUS will be much less and the State Department's will either grow or remain at the same level, with consequent disastrous results as usual for India. Gen. Raheel will be nudging the policy makers covertly and overtly during this visit.

IMO, this visit will lay the foundation for significant policy-making by the US towards the region for the near and mid-term.

saip · Post by **saip** » 19 Nov 2014 19:56

Boy who crossed LoC inadvertently handed over to India

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan army handed over a 13-year-old boy to Indian authorities after he had inadvertently crossed the Line of Control, reported a private TV channel Tuesday. Manzar Hussain, a student of class 8 and a resident of Jhanagar village in Azad Kashmir, had mistakenly crossed the LoC in Asal Kass Nullah of Khui Ratta sector on November 14, the Pakistan military said. He was handed over to Indian authorities at Chakoti-Uri crossing point.

Now Azad Kashmir is in India?

Tuvaluan · Post by **Tuvaluan** » 19 Nov 2014 20:39

So Raheel Sharief is the New Musharraf -- hurriyat has been sidelined by none other than the Indian government recently, so RR is of no use anymore to US's Fak-ap policy in the region. UNMOGIP and Hurriyat are no longer levers that US and others can use to stir the pot when they want to make the pakis happy.

RR is no longer in charge of disbursing aid to the Pakis under USAID. The question is what is the new form of payment the US will be making to the pakis, and who will be writing the reports. Some possible suspects are: US aid to paki health program and educational programs.

The pakis/ISI returning the boy to Indian territory and making a big song and dance about it has some devious intention behind it. There is no reason for the pakis to make a big charade about a boy crossing over the border unless they gain something out of that drama.

vishvak · Post by **vishvak** » 19 Nov 2014 21:03

>1.>Gen. Raheel will demand that India be restrained, especially in its new policy of 'disproportionate retaliation' for every misdemanour across the border by the Pakistani Army. Statements to this effect from the US State Department will appear sooner than later.
>2.>The US already accepts that employment of asymmetric warfare through jihadists is a legitimate one by a weaker 'security-seeking state' and so will not bring to bear any significant pressure on Pakistan over that issue. Secure in that thought, Pakistan will demand more concessions from India through the US. The Indian diplomacy and the leadership will be fully tested, stretched in 2015.

Wouldn't that be, respectively,
>1.>Direct interference from USA, and other pseudo do gooders, at the cost of Indian lives and interests?
>2.>against UN charter of UNIVERSAL human rights, since Indians are subjected to asymmetric warfare and jihad?

We need to burn the cover of civility around this unholy nexus and open up the fourfathers too to scrutiny in UN and in international courts of justice - one by one or all of them altogether.

Tuvaluan · Post by **Tuvaluan** » 19 Nov 2014 21:18

Raheel's line is the expected "operation Arb e zam zam" is not killing as many bad terrorists as it could because Pakistan has its forces operating against India. This is the same excuse that was used and trotted out to the rest of by the CIA boss Bruce Riedel (and now another anti-India a**wipe in Brookings Psychiatric Institution) in the months after 26/11 in 2008, when Pakistan expected Indian retaliation for 9/11 to be a good excuse to not do what the US was paying the paki army to do in NWFP. But that did not happen, and the US-Paki relations went south.

Now, fast forward 6 years later, the USA now has new reasons to engage the Pakis, and it can only be to keep Afghanisthan simmering with Paki help since Russia and India are both potential targets for these new crop of islamist jihadi scum running around in Pakiland and west/south afghanisthan.

The US has no leverage to use in India, which could explain the general negative attitude of the US state dept and the US govt. towards India these days, especially after the Indian PM visit to the US. So the Pakis are going to have to turn to someone else for help on that front, but then why would the US pay the pakis anything?

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 19 Nov 2014 22:22

What country does the guy behind Rawheel in the photo come from?

Tuvaluan · Post by **Tuvaluan** » 19 Nov 2014 22:52

If the flag on his lapel is a national flag, the white horizontal stripe below the blue stripe, narrows it down to Yugoslavia or Slovak Republic, but the former does not exist and the latter has a red emblem embedded in the blue stripe (which may just be blurred in the image). The camouflage pattern on that guy's outfit is the US Universal Camouflage pattern which is used by 19 different countries including the military of slovakia. Good chance it is slovakia.

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 19 Nov 2014 23:00

No more permanent seats in Security Council, Pakistan to UN

How About Bermanent Seats

NEW YORK – Pakistan has urged the General Assembly of the United Nations not to allow the creation of new permanent seats in the Security Council.Speaking in the General Assembly, Pakistan's permanent representative Masood Khan said that any expansion in the Security Council's permanent member category would be a negation of the General Assembly's democratic character. He urged the General Assembly to ensure that all member states were adequately and appropriately represented in the reformed Security Council.He said that the Security Council reform should reflect the aspirations and interests of all and not the ambitions of a few states. He underscored the need for strengthening the role of the 193-member assembly.

Lisa · Post by **Lisa** » 19 Nov 2014 23:24

JE Menon wrote:What country does the guy behind Rawheel in the photo come from?

Azerbaijan

Tuvaluan · Post by **Tuvaluan** » 20 Nov 2014 00:00

Lisa: "azerbaijan"

If you could share, how did you deduce that from the pic? thanks.

http://camopedia.org/index.php?title=Azerbaijan Azerbaijan is one of the 19 countries to use that camouflage pattern but their national flag does not have any white on it -- the white is clearly visible in that guy's lapel. So he must be part of some other mil force with its own flag/emblem, if that is not a national flag.

Sharief seems to be in azerbaijan today, but the photo is a reuters file photo that has been used 100s of times in the past two years according to google image search.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 20 Nov 2014 00:16

Images.google.com gives
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/ ... AG20131127
with caption:
"Pakistan's Lieutenant-General Raheel Sharif attends a military exercise in Khairpure Tamay Wali in Bahawalpur district November 4, 2013. "

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 20 Nov 2014 00:20

Anujan ji,

great post.

Anujan wrote:A typical Indian thinks Pakistan wants peace with India because India wants peace with her neighbours and that is what normal countries do. So Pakistan wants peace with India. No amount of terror attacks will convince majority of SDREs that Pakistan is irreconcilably hostile. Mumbai attacks? Well those were done by extremists without state support and there are extremists on both sides. I have seen SDREs on twitter comparing RSS with Taliban and Al Qaeda (fellows, have a sense of scale. Al Qaeda slit Daniel Pearl's throat and sent videos of it to news agencies). Because a typical "Extremist" that SDREs have encountered are those people who have an opinion and are willing to argue for it. So Pakistanis want peace and their extremists are like our "extremists".

At some level I think we also make the mistake of thinking that Pakistani public think logically, perhaps like us and they analyze the facts and judge according to some right and wrong, independent of "religion".

They on the other hand may simply be thinking not on basis of right or wrong, but on basis of us vs them, and facts are changed to fit that perspective. It is immaterial what level of terror or aggression they may have carried out, it is not aggression if it is not on them.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 20 Nov 2014 00:31

^^^ Raheel Sharif photo - ""Pakistan's Lieutenant-General Raheel Sharif attends a military exercise in Khairpure Tamay Wali in Bahawalpur district November 4, 2013. "

Looking for the military exercise that took place Nov 4, 2013, one finds

"Pakistani tanks manoeuvre on November 4, 2013 during in the Azm-e-Nau-4' (New Resolve) military exercise in Khairpure Tamay Wali in Bahawalpur district."

via http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/sli ... 302636.cms

So, now the question is, were there any foreign invited observers for "Azm-e-Nau-4"?

PS: blue-red-white-red-blue insignia has to do with "transgender pride"

http://www.madaboutflags.co.uk/transgen ... -916-c.asp

Raman · Post by **Raman** » 20 Nov 2014 00:34

After Zarb-e-Azm, Gen Raheel Sharief proceeds to Washington D.C. for Zarb-e-Zeb.

venkat_r · Post by **venkat_r** » 20 Nov 2014 00:35

SSridhar wrote:Just to add to Anujan's excellent post above on the psychology of Indian, Pakistani and American thinking.

Quite a few American articles I have read in recent times have accepted the employment of asymmetric warfare through jihadists by Pakistan against India as a fait accompli because of the conventional superiority enjoyed by India. In earlier times too, the US attributed the supposed 'Pakistani insecurity' due to conventional imbalance and used it as a justification to correct that through a massive supply of arms to Pakistan so that it felt less insecure. Now, however, it seems to be even going one step ahead by accepting jihadists as a legitimate tool by Pakistan against us. This means that future terrorist attacks against us would not even merit the attention that it has got so far, except perhaps the customary condemnation. To be fair to the US, in spite of deaths of American citizens and involvement of its own citizen in plotting the 26/11 Mumbai attack, it did pretty little anyway. So, it would be unfair to accuse it of similar inaction in the future. In any case, our non-retaliation in the past solidified the American thinking that India has no stomach for punitive retaliation and could therefore be always prevailed upon into 'talks', thus the famous 'exercise maximum restraint' advise to India and by contrast acceptance of the state and non-state actor nexus within Pakistan.

When we make even a slight adjustment to our SDRE dhimmi policy and retaliate a tad stronger, as it happened recently across the IB, the SDRE reaction was predictable. How bad an eye for an eye policy would be the cliched scenario often painted by all peaceniks, newspaper editorials, panel discussants etc. invoking Mahatma Gandhi out of context. Since the incumbent government is a 'right-wing Hindu government', all kinds of motives were attributed to that as well.

From the Pakistani PoV, they probably did the firing for a few good reasons such as pushing terrorists in before the winter and state elections, flesh out the new policy of the new Indian government, and certainly provoking the shrill peacenik voices in India knowing fully well that the dhimmi SDRE would do so based on overwhelming historical evidence, asking for UNMOGIP's involvement in truce monitoring to revive the UN involvement and discarding the bilateral Simla Agreement etc. The reaction among the Pakistanis was also one of feigned surprise, "What happened to you now? You have been like piece of dumb sponge all these decades absorbing the body blows and why do you retaliate now? Look at the war-mongering nature of the right-wing Hindu majoritarians" etc.

Will try to give my 2 cents on the American perspective based on what i have observed. Americans love to support the underdog - The understanding that Pakistan a underdog is fighting the Big Bad India - and America jumping to help the underdog always give them a release. In all American stories (and even Indian ones) a super hero comes to the rescue of the underdog. So this is going to be a easier story to sell to the public and has been for several decades, which explains the rationale on why it is easy to extend that logic and say the poor beaten down Pakistan had to resort to unconventional methods to fight the Big Bad India - This story has been repeated and still has some traction. Average American before 9-11 could not even differentiate between India/Pakistan and who is fighting for what, and if they knew something, only heard about Indians killing in Kashmir. Once Terrorism came into the picture after 9-11, things started to change.

Couple of important points to note in that story.
1. The story has been framed as Big India fighting small spirited Pakistan. This is a trap that needs to be avoided at all costs. Americans mostly cannot fathom that a bigger country like India would not be causing massive damages to Pakistan in some fashion or other and assume that it is being done weather it is reported or not - Following news is complex and few people have the interest or the time. It boggles Americans (and even most Indians) that retaliation against Pakistan is very soft or non-existent. This does not follow the pattern of epic stories that we have heard of where the hero defeats the evil many times his size.
So the story needs to be told in a different setting and has to be told time and again - IMO, it has to be framed as good vs the evil or freedom vs the terrorists, etc. India has always invested well in managing the relationships in senate and congress than just dealing with just the US President(Pakistan's approach). India's story has to be told a zillion times until it changes the earlier paradigms. I believe that it is possible to change the views and see the truth.

2. Indian response has to be harsh with respect to dealing with terrorism, if it is coming from terror outfits or the Pakistani Army. The "zero tolerance" policy that seems to be the new directive from the Modi government has to be pursued a lot further, until it becomes the new normal. If India pursues hot pursuit or retaliates with overwhelming force, it would be in the expected lines and not a surprise to US audience. Yes, there would be some voices mostly in India and elsewhere that will shrill and talk about eye-for-eye is not good, Nuclear flashpoint, etc. Differing voices are welcome in a democracy and will have their uses at some point in time in the future, but not every differing voice has to be followed. India also has to work on the US public opinion on the negative impact of selling military hardware to Pakistan.

Tuvaluan · Post by **Tuvaluan** » 20 Nov 2014 00:42

A_Gupta wrote: "Pakistani tanks manoeuvre on November 4, 2013 during in the Azm-e-Nau-4' (New Resolve) military exercise in Khairpure Tamay Wali in Bahawalpur district."

via http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/sli ... 302636.cms

So, now the question is, were there any foreign invited observers for "Azm-e-Nau-4"?

Not so fast

this image was used on oct 17 2013 on al jazeera blog -- the date/time of this picture can probably be determined by analyzing the jpg metadata.

http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/asia/pa ... chief-pick

harbans · Post by **harbans** » 20 Nov 2014 00:53

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jun/ ... opstories3

The document was written as an attempt to investigate why complaints of misconduct and corruption against Asian officers are 10 times higher than against their white colleagues.

The main conclusions of the study, commissioned by the Directorate of Professional Standards and written by an Asian detective chief inspector, stated: "Asian officers and in particular Pakistani Muslim officers are under greater pressure from the family, the extended family ... and their community against that of their white colleagues to engage in activity that might lead to misconduct or criminality."

When Brits use Asian for a -ve report read Paki.
When Brits use South Asian for a +ve report know it's nothing to do with a Paki.

Tuvaluan · Post by **Tuvaluan** » 20 Nov 2014 00:57

I can almost read the nametag and it says "Sean" -- very non-slovak name.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 20 Nov 2014 01:00

Tuvaluan wrote:
A_Gupta wrote: "Pakistani tanks manoeuvre on November 4, 2013 during in the Azm-e-Nau-4' (New Resolve) military exercise in Khairpure Tamay Wali in Bahawalpur district."

via http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/sli ... 302636.cms

So, now the question is, were there any foreign invited observers for "Azm-e-Nau-4"?
Not so fast

this image was used on oct 17 2013 on al jazeera blog -- the date/time of this picture can probably be determined by analyzing the jpg metadata.

http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/asia/pa ... chief-pick

It is a Reuters photograph, I gave you the Reuters use of the photograph. The photo was taken by Qamar Pervez, who supposedly was also Kiyani's official photographer.

Once again, the Reuters URL is:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/ ... AG20131127

The date I see on the al jazeera link you provided is "Last modified: 28 Nov 2013 10:23". I don't know how to see the original "oct 17 2013" date.