Bharat Rakshak

Pakistani Army mulls legal action over BBC report

RAWALPINDI (Agencies) – Pakistan military strongly denied Thursday a BBC report that alleged the Pakistani military, along with its intelligence arm, supplied and protected the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda.

A number of middle-ranking Taliban commanders detailed what they said was extensive Pakistani support in interviews for a BBC Two documentary series, the first part of which was broadcast Wednesday.

“We consider that this report is highly biased, it is one-sided, it doesn’t have the version of the side which is badly hit or affected by this report,” Major General Athar Abbas, spokesman for the military, told Reuters. “So therefore, other than that, it’s factually incorrect.”

He said the head of Pakistan’s spy agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), had already said “not a single bullet or financial support” had been given to groups named in the BBC report.

Abbas said the number of attacks against the ISI by the Pakistani Taliban - about 300 ISI officials have been killed in bombings - was proof the ISI did not support militants.

Meanwhile, talking a private TV channel, Abbas said the Army reserved the right to take legal action over the report.

Shaashtanga wrote:
Here you go -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YFbnpyiceY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDuJJ5T5bTY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-Hqx1T8zC0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuVON8uSkYs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MndWdiyf2k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghQeJ_-5UNM

CRamS wrote: this was a somewhat deliberate decision by US govt to let TSP off the hook.

Acharya wrote:

China Wants Bases an Endless War in Pakistan
By Spencer Ackerman October 26, 2011 | 3:11 pm | Categories: Af/Pak, China
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10 ... tan-bases/
Surely Beijing will enjoy an intransigent ally that rejects its advice while keeping its money. And if China really wants a larger role in global affairs, tribal Pakistan is the most advantageous place for the U.S. to pass the baton.

And since Pakistan often says it wants the U.S. to leave it alone, let’s see how it enjoys taking yes for an answer, and losing its American aid. The U.S. can still launch drone strikes into Pakistan as insurance — as it keeps for itself drone launchpads like Jalalabad or Kandahar during and after the Afghanistan troop withdrawals. Surely the Chinese will be generous patrons, since they’re rich and they like funding infrastructure.

Acharya wrote:This seems to be the treasure of TSP and acheievements

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sQEUg-R59M

Rajdeep wrote:Post-26/11, Mukherjee's words rattled Pakistan: Condoleezza Rice

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/worl ... 517620.cms

"The Pakistanis were at once terrified and in the same breath dismissive of the Indian claims. President Zardari emphasised his desire to avoid war but couldn't bring himself to acknowledge Pakistan's likely role in the attacks," Rice writes.
By now the international phone lines were buzzing with the news. The Pakistanis were calling everyone--the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Chinese.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani, in a long speech told her that terrorists who had launched the attack had nothing to do with Pakistan.

"Mr Prime Minister, I said, either you're lying to me or your people are lying to you. I then went on to tell him what we--the United States--knew about the origins of the attack," she wrote.

Soon after the Abbottabad raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, the US cut military aid to Pakistan by a third. It was a pressure tactic to coax Pakistan to act more against terrorists attacking the United States, like the Haqqani network in North Waziristan.
India was not in the picture. But Pakistan aid cut benefitted India. If this became longstanding US policy, Pakistan would pose less of a military challenge to India even with its deterrent. And it would be less reckless in trying to provoke India to war with sponsored terrorist attacks.
But this is understanding. An understanding may be misplaced although this isn't. Understandings are usually never expressed in words by governments in relation to other governments.
So even if the US aid cut to Pakistan was good in the long term, it was not advisable to say so, particularly when Pakistan was raw with the wound of the US assassination of Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad. Quietness was good policy.
But credit Krishna to say the wrong thing at the worst time. As Pakistan lay reeling with the Abbottabad attack and the US aid cut, Krishna issued a statement. India, he said, welcomed the aid cut as it would reduce the presence of arms in the volatile South Asia region.
While saying that, Krishna also mentioned the "special circumstances between India and Pakistan". He obviously meant Pakistan's rivalry with India, the Kashmir dispute, Pakistan's terrorism against India, and the four Indo-Pak wars.
Why was that necessary to say? Wasn't Krishna hyphenating India with Pakistan? And why was Krishna so foolishly irresponsible as to formalize the understanding India has reached about Pakistan over many years?

US-Pakistan relations have reached a point of no return. In Kabul, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has said "we cannot tolerate" the Haqqani network safe havens in Pakistan.
Meanwhile, American troops are massed up on the Pak-Afghan border. Pakistan's army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has warned the US to think "ten times" before attacking the Haqqani network sanctuaries.
Pakistan significantly speaks of itself as a nuclear power.
In other words, the situation is coming to a boil. It requires India to take defensive steps so that any US-Pak conflict does not spill over into this country. Pakistan would even precipitate that to turn attention from its hostilities with America. Rather than wait out as India quietly and diligently secures itself on the western flank, Krishna speaks out again.
Why? What is the need? Would India's urgings for peace make a difference to the situation? No. Is India in a position to mediate between Pakistan and the US? No. Then why is S.M.Krishna talking when it is very important for India to keep quiet and be extra watchful
The brutal facts of the western/ north-western neighbourhood are these. The Af-Pak region is going through enormous turmoil. The endgame in neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan is known.

Pakistani politician Imran Khan was watched by his ex-wife Jemima today as he launched a stinging rebuke of drone attacks on militants in the country.
Khan was speaking at a press conference in Islamabad alongside British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith who is fighting the case for drone victims in the British courts.

Khan's speech was watched by his ex-wife Jemima, who it was revealed this morning had helped paid for digital cameras to be given to tribal leaders to photograph drone attacks.
The Times reported that 50 cameras had been given to community leaders who will document each strike with the information pooled in a central data bank

Friday, October 28, 2011
AfPak Channel Daily Brief


Under fire



U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defended the viability of what she called a "fight, talk and build" strategy in Afghanistan Thursday, telling the House Armed Services Committee that the United States could be successful fighting militants while simultaneously pursuing a negotiated peace deal (Reuters, BBC, AP, ET). U.S. representatives appeared skeptical about Pakistan's commitment to helping the United States defeat the Taliban, but Sec. Clinton urged patience and claimed progress in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship (AP, CNN, Dawn). She reiterated that the United States had delivered a "frank" message to Pakistan during her recent visit, to flush out militant safe havens on its soil (AFP).



Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the U.S. second-in-command in Afghanistan, told reporters Thursday that Pakistani troops appear to be collaborating with militants who launch attacks on U.S. troops across the border, "or at a minimum looking the other way" (AFP, CNN, AP, WSJ).

Clinton’s Af-Pak policy under fire in Washington

WASHINGTON:

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke positively about her recent trip to Islamabad, but faced sceptical remarks from committee members when she testified at a House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing titled “Afghanistan and Pakistan: Transition and the Way Forward.”

Earlier, the committee’s chairwoman Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen had questioned the US’ somewhat contradictory approach: “On the one hand, the US is negotiating with the Haqqani Network, on the other hand they’re trying to destroy it.”

Alluding to the Haqqani Network as Islamabad’s armed proxies, the chairwoman said that the US and Pakistan relations should be reexamined if attacks on US forces in Afghanistan continue.

Ranking member Howard Berman urged the US to put a hold on military assistance to Pakistan. However, he highlighted the importance of helping the Pakistani people, and said that the US should continue civilian aid to the country.

Berman also questioned whether Secretary Clinton was right to give a security certification earlier this year. In response, Secretary Clinton said that “on balance, Pakistan met the legal threshold.” Pakistan, she said, had made sacrifices in the war and was cooperating in intelligence matters.

ArmenT wrote:From the Daily Mail:
Imran Khan reunited with Jemima as politician launches stinging rebuke of drone attacks on Pakistan

Pakistani politician Imran Khan was watched by his ex-wife Jemima today as he launched a stinging rebuke of drone attacks on militants in the country.
Khan was speaking at a press conference in Islamabad alongside British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith who is fighting the case for drone victims in the British courts.

So what's Jemima doing there, you ask?

Khan's speech was watched by his ex-wife Jemima, who it was revealed this morning had helped paid for digital cameras to be given to tribal leaders to photograph drone attacks.
The Times reported that 50 cameras had been given to community leaders who will document each strike with the information pooled in a central data bank

I bet that's not the only thing they're going to photograph

Rajdeep wrote:Post-26/11, Mukherjee's words rattled Pakistan: Condoleezza Rice

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/worl ... 517620.cms

"The Pakistanis were at once terrified and in the same breath dismissive of the Indian claims. President Zardari emphasised his desire to avoid war but couldn't bring himself to acknowledge Pakistan's likely role in the attacks," Rice writes.
By now the international phone lines were buzzing with the news. The Pakistanis were calling everyone--the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Chinese.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani, in a long speech told her that terrorists who had launched the attack had nothing to do with Pakistan.

"Mr Prime Minister, I said, either you're lying to me or your people are lying to you. I then went on to tell him what we--the United States--knew about the origins of the attack," she wrote.

"Finally, I went to meet the chief of staff, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani. Our military liked him and considered him honest and effective.

QUETTA, Pakistan — A Pakistani court on Friday issued an arrest warrant for former president Pervez Musharraf and former prime minister Shaukat Aziz over the killing of a Baluch rebel leader, a lawyer said.

Musharraf was president and Aziz prime minister when the main leader of the rebel movement in southwestern province Baluchistan, tribal chieftain Nawab Akbar Bugti, died in a cave hideout during an army raid in August 2006.

Bugti led an armed campaign to press for provincial autonomy and a greater share of profits from Baluchistan's natural resources. The death of the colourful, British-educated chieftain sparked angry protests in the country.

"Today the judicial magistrate in Quetta has issued an arrest warrant for both Musharraf and Shaukat Aziz," Adnan Kasi, a lawyer representing Bugti's elder son Jamil, told AFP.

The arrest warrant would be sent to the federal government to take steps to present the accused in court, Kasi said.

Karachi—Police and Frontier Constabulary (FC) jointly carried out search operation in Orangi town area of Karachi, arresting an injured Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) commander Usman Ghani, police official claimed.

Police and FC arrested six other suspects during search operation. In a late night operation, police cordoned off Kati Pahari and Kunwari Colony localities of Karachi and started house-to-house search. According to SSP West Asif Ijaz Sheikh, one militant Usman Ghani was arrested during the operation and large quantity of arms was also recovered from his possession.

Expansion in the category of permanent membership has become the central contentious issue in the current debate on Security Council reforms and Pakistan seriously needs to deliberate on this issue and take steps to forestall this eventuality, said Ambassador (r) Asif Ezdi here on Thursday.

He said this during a Public Talk on ‘United Nations Security Council Reforms’ organised by the Institute of Strategic Studies (ISS) under its series of lectures.

Ezdi said that the UN Security Council reforms is the important organ of the United Nations and in view of the power, prestige and status that flow from permanent membership of the Security Council, it is no wonder that so many aspiring powers have set their sights on joining the privileged club of the P-5.

He said that Professor Anne-Marie Slaughter in her article in the Foreign Policy issue of September/October 2011 titled: “What will the world look like in 2025?” said by 2025 the UN Security Council would have expanded from the present 15 members to 25 and 30 and would include either as de jure or de facto permanent members.

He said that her words are eye opener because if this happens, then it would not only reduce Pakistan to the status of a third-rate state along with about 180 or so other countries, but would also have far-reaching implications for the foreign policy and national security.

A top U.S. general in Afghanistan says cross-border communications with Pakistan's military that collapsed after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden are still not consistent or what the U.S. would like, but are finally beginning to improve.

U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, who directs day-to-day military operations in Afghanistan, says Pakistani troops also looked the other way when insurgents fired across the border at U.S. and Afghan troops. But after recent talks with Pakistani leaders, he says that has begun to change. He says Pakistani troops have started returning fire at insurgents in the last month.

Scaparrotti says military leaders have been meeting with the Pakistanis to lay out communications procedures.

He says cross-border radio communications were just not available after the bin Laden raid in May.

borders, tilted toward an authoritarian power (China), and infested by a totalitarian ideology (communism). Today Islamabad pursues so-called strategic depth in Afghanistan and won't quite abandon obsolete ambitions in Indian Kashmir. It leans toward "all-weather friend" China even as its economy stagnates and radical Islam eats away at society and the state.But Washington found a successful approach toward Indonesia, one that can be mirrored for Pakistan. Working with the friendly regime of Suharto, who seized power in 1966, the U.S. helped engineer a remarkable transformation. Jakarta quashed communism and turned its energies toward economic development. The men in charge, a team of U.S.-trained economists, came to be known in development lore as the Berkeley mafia. Indonesia flowered into one of Asia's star performers. Per capita income rocketed to the middle-income benchmark of $1,000 in 1993 from $325 in 1970 (in 2005 dollars). Despite the setback of the 1998 Asian financial crisis and a rocky transition to democracy, Indonesia still leads India and Pakistan in both income and human well-being.Success came at a price: up to half a million killed in anticommunist pogroms, and more than three decades of military rule. But the point is less to emulate Cold War means—Pakistan requires more democracy, not another useless dictator—than not to lose sight of the ends. A Pakistan focused on bettering the lives of its 180 million people rather than meddling across its borders will give South Asia a peace dividend akin to what Southeast Asia enjoyed. It will also allow the U.S. to focus on its long-term challenge in the region: the rise of an authoritarian China with hegemonic ambitions.

A focus on reordering the priorities of the Pakistani state does not mean ignoring Islamabad's genuine security concerns. Washington ought to encourage the Pakistani army to guard its borders, and it might even consider implicitly guaranteeing their sanctity. (Afghanistan, for one, has never recognized the Durand Line that divides the two countries.) But U.S. aid should be oriented toward professionalizing the army and fostering a market economy integrated with its neighbors and the wider region. In return, Islamabad must forswear its use of terrorism to weaken India and stop expecting independent Afghanistan to act as a vassal.The pieces of a broader Asean-like strategy have already begun to fall into place in South Asia. The 2006 Indo-U.S. nuclear deal and 2009 Kerry-Lugar aid bill for Pakistan sent a clear signal of long-term U.S. commitment to the region. Meanwhile, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are both developing export-oriented economies linked to India. East Asian ally Japan, which helped modernize Southeast Asia a generation earlier through both trade and aid, appears inclined to perform a similar role in India. For a possible South Asian miracle, the only missing piece is whether the U.S. can help Pakistan reinvent itself, as it did with Indonesia.

For a possible South Asian miracle, the only missing piece is whether the U.S. can help Pakistan reinvent itself, as it did with Indonesia.

parsuram wrote:

For a possible South Asian miracle, the only missing piece is whether the U.S. can help Pakistan reinvent itself, as it did with Indonesia.

This is rich - the usual miricle wanting wsj, blind as usual to the paki, despite the paki having taken a bite out of its unkil's ass over and over and over... ya, miricle is right. and, not going to happen, deaar wsj, not this christmas, not any other for that matter. The paki is the paki.

CRS — Pakistan: U.S. Foreign Assistance (Updated 07/28/2011)
August 23, 2011
http://fulltextreports.com/2011/08/23/c ... -07282011/

Pakistan: U.S. Foreign Assistance (PDF)
Source: Congressional Research Service (via U.S. Department of State Foreign Press Center)

The 112th Congress is focused on cost-cutting measures to reduce the budget deficit. How it deals with the second-ranking U.S. aid recipient, Pakistan—which is important to U.S. national security interests but that some say lacks accountability—will be key.

Pakistan has been among the leading recipients of U.S. foreign assistance both historically and in FY2010, and most experts list the country among the most strategically important for U.S. policy makers. Recent major developments—including the killing of Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden in Pakistan—have put strains on bilateral relations, making uncertain the future direction of U.S. aid to Pakistan. For many lawmakers, the issue will be how to balance considerations about Pakistan’s strategic importance to the United States with the pervasive and mounting distrust in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship and with budget deficit-reduction pressures.

Is Pakistan preparing for war?
Editor's Note: Omar R. Quraishi is the Editor of the Editorial Pages of The Express Tribune in Karachi. Follow him @omar_quraishi.
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com ... g-for-war/

By Omar R. Quraishi, Foreign Affairs
If Pakistani news channels can be taken at face value these days, the country is preparing for war. Retired generals, ambassadors, and professors weigh in on the likelihood of U.S. attack with an unrelenting intensity. The anchor of "Capital Talk," one of the most widely watched news programs on the popular channel Geo, recently asked guests what Pakistan should do when the impending attack occurs. A couple of his guests said that Pakistan should mobilize its forces and respond with full force. Officials have been more circumspect, but have issued the constant refrain that Pakistan's sovereignty must not be compromised.
On Facebook, meanwhile, new groups rally Pakistanis to the defense of the homeland. Just a few hours before sitting down to write this article, I received a text message with a similar call to action from a professional acquaintance. The rambling screed read, "Let them taunt us as an economically failed state, for they know not how thousands of Pakistani workers are currently working in the Middle East, Western Europe, and North America... Let them call us a technologically backward state, for they know not how we are the sole Muslim state with nuclear capability."

In the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden, such propaganda is everywhere. I have never seen it so virulent. But, in fact, Pakistan can ill afford any war, much less one against the sole remaining superpower. Sure, thousands of Pakistanis work abroad and send home billions of dollars in remittances every year. But many of those workers left precisely because Pakistan did not have jobs for them or because the economy was failing to properly reward their academic and professional achievements. And, of those employed within the country, the vast majority pay no taxes at all; Pakistan has among the lowest tax-to-GDP ratios in the world. The country's collection agency, the state-run Federal Board of Revenue, is infamously corrupt.

Defense budgets being virtually untouchable because of the military's outsized domestic power, the civilian government has dealt with the lack of revenues by cutting back the Public Sector Development Program (its social spending budget) by around 150 billion rupees ($1.7 billion) between 2010 and 2011 alone. Islamabad is left with little option but to seek development and emergency assistance from other countries. Following severe flooding in southern Pakistan last year, for example, the central government immediately called for foreign assistance. Eventually, such aid made up almost all of the relief effort. A similar appeal by the U.N. after this year's floods, for over $300 million, has raised less than a tenth of that amount, indicating that there will be nothing Pakistan can do to prevent another natural disaster from becoming one more humanitarian catastrophe.

Factbox: Ties between China and Pakistan
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/ ... GQ20111004


Mon Oct 3, 2011 11:45pm EDT
(Reuters) - Pakistan, facing a crisis in relations with the United States, has embarked on a charm offensive with China this week, keen to portray its "all-weather friend" as an alternative ally to Washington.

Here are some facts about ties between China and Pakistan:

"ALL-WEATHER" PARTNERS

* China and Pakistan call each other "all-weather friends" and their close ties have been underpinned by long-standing wariness of their common neighbor, India, and a desire to hedge against U.S. influence across the region.

* After the United States killed Osama bin Laden -- the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks -- in Pakistan on May 2, China called the event a "progressive development" but also defended the Pakistani government, which has been criticized in the United States for failing to find bin Laden, if not harboring him.

CONVENTIONAL ARMS, NUCLEAR POWER, PORT ACCESS

* China has been Pakistan's biggest supplier of conventional arms, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's database, and many analysts believe China supported Pakistan's nuclear weapons program in past decades.

* China has helped Pakistan build its main nuclear power generation facility at Chashma in Punjab province, where a second, 330 MW unit started last week, and it has plans to build two more there, despite international misgivings about risks to nuclear safety and the integrity of non-proliferation rules.

* Last year, the China National Nuclear Corp said it was also in talks about building a separate 1-gigawatt atomic plant in Pakistan.

* China has helped build the deep-sea Gwadar port on Pakistan's Arabian Sea coast, partly with a view to opening up an energy and trade corridor from the Gulf, across Pakistan, to western China.

* According to a Pew Global Attitudes Project (pewglobal.org)

survey of Pakistani public opinion in 2010, 85 percent of respondents said they had a favorable view of China, and 3 percent said they had an unfavorable view.

By contrast, 17 percent had a favorable view of the United States, and 68 percent had an unfavorable view.

* Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has visited China frequently, and urged China to invest more in his country.

Pakistan's China connection
Islamabad has understood Beijing's new obligations as a world power and adjusted its strategic expectations
By Tanvir Ahmad Khan, Special to Gulf NewsPublished: 00:00 October 10, 2011
http://gulfnews.com/opinions/columnists ... n-1.888776

Image Credit: Luis Vazquez/Gulf News
Pakistan’s main diplomatic effort at present is directed at stabilising its troubled relationship with the US. Prone to fluctuations, relations between these partners in the war on terror have touched a new low recently. As in the past, a lively debate has sprung up about whether Pakistan is playing the China card to offset western pressure.
More or less, the same questions surface again and again: Will China stand by Pakistan in a real crisis in which the US and India figure singly or jointly? Can China ever replace the US as a source of economic assistance? Does Beijing have the hardware needed by Pakistani armed forces? Wouldn’t China feel discomfited by a problematic regional ally in its own pursuit of global objectives?
Specific contents of this seemingly motivated analysis can be easily summarised. One, Pakistan exaggerates its strategic relations with China to gain diplomatic leverage. Two, their relations have been eroded by militants threatening Xinjiang’s peace. Three, China cannot take over the burden of economic assistance for Pakistan from the US. Four, some analysts, mostly in India, express concern about the increasing Chinese presence in Pakistan’s Northern Areas. A National Defence University (Arlington) study entitled Emerging Strains in the Entente Cordiale by Isaac B. Kardon and The New York Times recent write-up entitled “Pakistan learning that China’s friendship has limits” are examples, respectively in the academic and media domains, of bleak forecasts. Indian sources repeatedly allege that thousands of soldiers of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are working on dual purpose projects in Gilgit-Baltistan. Powerful sections of the international media carry de rigueur, sensational reports about Sino-Pakistan collaboration in nuclear and missile technology. Pakistani and Chinese observers are often baffled by these contradictory narratives.
A basic distinction seems to have informed Pakistan’s two most important relationships. Pakistan entered into military pacts with the US in 1950s and the vectors of their interaction have largely been determined by the strategic demands of the vastly more powerful partner. It has essentially been a transactional relationship with rewards for Pakistan dependent upon delivery and performance. Accordingly, the trajectory has seen generous assistance, especially to Pakistan’s military, during the highs alternating with decades of sanctions arising out of Washington’s tendency to revert to coercive diplomacy during the lows.
Article continues below

Pakistan turned to China earnestly in 1962 and found it a kindred ‘third world’ country totally free of the hubris of Great Powers. Since then China has become a global economic player and a major voice in the political realm. While the assumptions of 1960s are no longer valid, this extraordinary ascent to China’s enhanced status has been conducted, in Pakistan’s case, with deep mutual understanding. Pakistan has understood China’s new obligations as a world power and adjusted its strategic expectations. On their part, the Chinese have reiterated time and again that their support for Pakistan within the mutually agreed parameters remains undiminished. To assert that the relationship has limits is a tautology; all inter-state arrangements are subject to mutually envisioned parameters.
What does this vital connection signify at this moment? Pakistan and China forged a special nexus when India and the Soviet Union had adversarial relations with China. India is now a major trading partner of China; the latter builds on this foundation despite the unresolved border issue partly because it is a hedge against India committing itself fully to the American project of turning it into a hostile counter-weight to China. Beijing maintains robust defence cooperation with Pakistan, including the joint production of an advanced fighter plane, while using every opportunity to remind Islamabad that it should pursue the policy of detente and eventual rapprochement with New Delhi. China is now close to Russia, and Pakistan is using all possible means, including Beijing’s mediation, to establish profitable ties with Moscow. Having played a key role in facilitating a dialogue between China and the US, Islamabad has never looked at its bilateral relations with these two giants as an either/or situation. It recognises that these are distinct subsets, neither of them a substitute for the other.
This distinction is particularly evident in the economic field. Beijing is not in the business of acquiring client states and it has always aimed at assisting Pakistan in building its own capacity. China has an edge over the US in popular esteem because it has visible monuments — the Gwadar port, the nuclear power reactors, the spectacular Karakoram highway to China now being upgraded, the heavy mechanical complex near Islamabad — to show for this policy. Bilateral trade has not found an optimal level largely because of a severe downturn in Pakistan’s economy and China is participating in special measures being taken to redress this situation.
Meanwhile, the Chinese soldiers work with Pakistanis on an increasing number of infra-structure projects that would also enable China to use Pakistan as a gateway to the Middle East and Africa. China remains Pakistan’s only source for nuclear power production. Neither country considers some imagined great game as the context of bilateral relations. Describing their relations as a unique ‘brotherhood’, both work avowedly in enduring trust.

Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former ambassador and foreign secretary of Pakistan

Pakistan a failing state
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... bush-folly

Peter Preston
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 9 October 2011 12.00 EDT
Article history

'There is no consensus of any meaningful kind – except, perhaps, blind antipathy towards Washington.' Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/AP
We have seen 10 years of going nowhere on one side of the border – and 10 of going backwards on the other: back to bloodshed, back to civil chaos. It's simplistic to say that Afghanistan doesn't matter. You might as well say that the 100 years of war that scarred medieval Europe didn't matter. But Afghanistan still belongs to an inchoate, old world of milling conflict. Seize power there and turmoil will soon take it away. Leave enemies to stew. The real victim of Bush's great 9/11 folly is Pakistan. It might have been a buoyant nation today, joining India and China at world economic forums. Instead it is a failing state.

A decade ago General Musharraf was Pakistan's new man on top of the heap. He'd locked prime minister Nawaz Sharif away for life. As the army habitually seized Islamabad power, there was nothing too surprising here. Musharraf's battalions depended on US weapons and cash. Sharif's Muslim League, seeking friends elsewhere, had endangered all that. What would America do once the dust from the twin towers had cleared? Invade Afghanistan; throw out the Taliban. What could Musharraf do? Only swear to support them.

But it was never that easy, of course. The fatal border, the Durand Line, barely exists in any physical sense. Tribal areas straddle it. Rule of law barely exists, then as now. Two million or more Afghan refugees huddled in ramshackle camps on the road from the Khyber Pass to Peshawar. Pakistan (recruited by Washington as an ally against Soviet occupation in Kabul) couldn't stand idly by. It was involved in every way – just as India, across its other border, was involved in keeping Musharraf off balance. A political quagmire in the making.

So today, those 10 dreadful years on? Musharraf is in London exile. Benazir Bhutto, the supposed hope of democracy, is dead, murdered by zealots. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, is president. And just look at the public opinion polls.

A couple of years ago Gallup Pakistan asked people in the country what the most serious threat to Jinnah's pure state was. Some 11% said the Taliban, 18% India – but 59% picked the United States of America. Asked the same sort of question (via the Pew Research Centre) this summer, after Bin Laden was killed, and about 70% saw America as more enemy than saviour. Every drone attack runs the risk of making that opposition deeper. Who approves of Zardari's leadership? It lurches along in the 10% range, come rain or more rain. Who wants the army back? Only 8% in 2009, and its commander-in-chief's ratings are slipping. The leader-in-waiting is Sharif, probably in political business again, but this is back to the future with a vengeance.

There is, in short, no consensus of any meaningful kind – except, perhaps, blind antipathy towards Washington. There are no trusted institutions, no leaders who command respect, no prospect beyond the irredeemably bleak. And it is against this background that America blames Pakistan for its frailty in the fight against terrorism and cuts back on military aid. Pakistan in US eyes is an enemy, not an ally. Pakistan must be lectured and punished. But Pakistan is also a victim of western policy. So many stumbles, so many wrong turnings: but a victim nonetheless.

Its sense of grievance may be unappealing. The preoccupation with India, the futile attachment to Kashmir, the hapless swings between corrupt democracy and army autocracy are all heavy burdens. Yet the message of public opinion, in its bewilderment, cannot be ignored. For three decades of Afghan tumult, Pakistan has been blown hither and yon by outside imbecilities. And 10 full years after 9/11, it is the heaviest casualty of them all.

Wrapping up a war effort is always difficult when the ‘enemy’ does not accept defeat; but it is many times more difficult when the war aims are vague from the very beginning. The US war in Afghanistan falls in that ambiguous category. Ten years after Afghanistan’s invasion, the American intelligentsia and officials have realised that it is an “unwinnable war”. The Time Magazine in its issue of October 24, 2011, discusses in detail why the US cannot win this war. Richard Haas, who heads the Council of Foreign Relations, has described this war more bluntly. He said: “We can’t win it and it isn’t worth it.” In fact, the US is engaged in a mammoth military-diplomatic effort to extricate itself from this quagmire without tarnishing its ‘sole superpower status’. The fog being created is deliberate behind which the US is trying its utmost to find an amicable solution with a convincing ‘face saving’ in the world.
America’s Operation Enduring Freedom that commenced in 2001 has endured for 10 years without securing freedom/peace in Afghanistan. The Afghans have started comparing the prevailing environment with the peace and stability that the Taliban regime had provided, despite its failing. The US was either ignorant of, or deliberately ignored, the Afghan politico-social psyche. For instance, Afghanistan has its unique internal dynamics governing its population that neither changes, nor can be altered by alien forces. It is a unique nation-state in the world; it is a country divided in almost autonomous tribal areas loosely united under strict tribal codes. Its central authority has always been and will remain. Thus, the Americans will never be able to establish a strong central government in Kabul subservient to foreign dictates; if the US operation envisaged that kind of “enduring freedom” they miscalculated. Despite massive military and economic assistance, the Karzai government propped up by the US remains weak and confined to Kabul only. Also, Afghanistan is described as the ‘graveyard of empires’; the last nation having moved in and destroyed was the USSR, which collapsed as a union after it suffered a humiliating defeat. The USA will fare no better, if they keep pursuing their aims subjectively.

My friend Eli Lake has a conceptual framework that, I think, explains the U.S.-Pakistan relationship rather well. While its formal institutions -- the presidency, the top generals, etc. -- cooperate with Washington when it suits their interests, the "deep state" of the security apparatus is at war with the U.S., sponsoring some terrorist groups and tolerating others.
Now, it turns out, it's even worse than that. My colleagues and I in the Pentagon press corps drew out Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, who runs the day to day war in Afghanistan, into explaining just what the relationship with the Pakistani military involves:Frontline Pakistani troops aid and abet lethal insurgent attacks on American forces across the Afghan border, according to the day-to-day commander of the NATO war effort. It’s a big reason why rocket and mortar attacks have quadrupled since 2010.“You’ll see what just appears to us to be a collaboration or was a collaboration or, at a minimum, looking the other way when insurgents conducted rocket or mortar fire in what we believe to be visual sight of one of their posts,” Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti told Pentagon reporters on Thursday morning.
I don't enjoy coming to this conclusion. But it is very difficult to see how non-punitive measures have aided the U.S. in dealing with Pakistan. Massively generous economic assistance, military relief assistance during floods and earthquakes, literally bags full of cash to the military, nuclear-capable fighter jets -- and this is what we get.

Pakistan has a disinterest in stopping terrorism because it knows the aid spigot will subsequently twist shut. So it helps kill Americans. And its sotto-voce argument for why the relationship must continue this way is essentially a threat: You never know what loose-nuke chaos would result...****** that. No more. It's time for the U.S. to stop issuing idle threats about how Pakistan must take on the Haqqanis OR ELSE. Cut off all aid until the Pakistanis stop helping any insurgent networks and shut the safe havens down. Pull the drones from Shamsi to Jalalabad and ****** bombs-away. Let the Chinese move into Khyber-Pakhtunkwa and announce a brand new relationship with the subcontinent's real superpower, India. Watch that shit concentrate the Pakistani imagination.Part of American leadership is not allowing client states to dick us around. If this is how Pakistan wants it, then it should get a commensurate response.

A comprehensive South Asia strategy, however, such as brokering a settlement on Kashmir or improved relations between Islamabad and Kabul, could increase the likelihood of at least temporary peace in the region. Still, powerful social, religious, and historical forces work against such diplomatic solutions. For one, it will be incredibly difficult to cobble together a government in Afghanistan that has the support of all its key neighbors. Moreover, an agreement between India and Pakistan on Kashmir may still fail to discourage support for militarized jihad, particularly in the long run. Decades of assisting select militant groups have cemented ideological sympathies for radicalism among elements of the country's armed forces and civilian political elite. Such sympathies cannot be turned off overnight.U.S. officials undoubtedly understand the enormity of problems they confront in this vexing region. But these problems lead to one of two conclusions: opening formal negotiations to explore possible solutions to the problems separating these countries; or accepting that it is not within America's power to shape the interests and expectations of competing powers in South Asia.

So if Pakistani military officials stubbornly refuse to stop supporting terrorists that attack U.S. interests in Afghanistan, why isn't Pakistan considered an enemy of the United States? Because Pakistan has also provided key assistance in stopping global terrorists who might otherwise have killed hundreds, possibly thousands, in the American homeland.
Whether history judges Pakistan as friend or foe of the United States will likely depend on Pakistan's strategy for reconciliation in Afghanistan and the extent to which it is willing to set aside paranoia over India in favor of denying terrorists sanctuary on its soil. A winning strategy will almost certainly entail Pakistan fighting some of its former proxies.While Admiral Mullen's strategy of engagement and accommodation failed to garner the needed Pakistani cooperation, it remains to be seen whether the administration's current mix of openness to talks with virtually anyone in Afghanistan, and simultaneous military pressure along the Afghan-Pakistani border, will coax a better outcome from Pakistan's military leadership.American patience has its limits. Without a shift in Pakistan's powerful military leadership toward compromise in Afghanistan, the American scale of perceptions on Pakistan may start tipping toward "enemy" status rather quickly.

Op-Ed: China is Pakistan's friend but for how long?
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/313346
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For the first time in ages, China has alleged that Muslim separatists launching attacks in China are trained in Pakistan, putting the close ties between the two countries to question and concern.

‘Pakistan-China friendship’ is a well-known phrase in the political lingo of the region. Both neighbors have lived peacefully and cooperated in a number of fields for decades. Even when the political tension between the US and Pakistan mounted in recent times, it was China that warned US of keeping its hands off Pakistan. Despite this mutual political blood-brotherhood, one issue keeps popping up in the relations between the two countries, the issue of the ‘cross-border’ factor in insurgent attacks by Muslim separatists in Chinese territory.

Starting a decade before Pakistan appeared on the political map, a rebellion by Muslim separatists in the Xinjiang province of China was crushed by communist Soviet forces with, as it is believed, the consent of the Chinese government. Since then, Muslim separatist groups have remained active off and on. In 1996 and 97, crackdowns on separatists, Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs, were ordered by the Chinese government. In summer 2008, Uighurs of western Xinjiang launched protests against the Chinese government, an incident regarded by the government as a response of “splittists” to the Tibetan riots. Next year, Muslim Uighurs of Xinjiang came out on the streets in a series of one of the massive protests leading to most violent ethnic riots that killed nearly 200 people in Xinjiang.

Throughout this history of suppressing the Turkic-ethnicity separatist Muslims of Xinjiang, China did not openly blame any foreign country in the riots; only the World Uyghur Congress (based in Germany). But recently, in August this year, when two deadly attacks were made in Xinjiang region, China blamed Pakistan for training these Muslim extremists. Pakistan condemned the attacks and offered support to the Chinese government in combating the extremists’ separatist movement responsible for the attacks.

Chinese and Pakistani high officials, civil and military, visited each other’s countries to discuss the matter. In Pakistan at least, media never leaked anything of the sort that would betray the seriousness of the issue. However, Asia Times has reported today on Chinese interest in setting up military bases in Pakistan, in the tribal belt or the northern area where Pakistan shares its border with China’s Xinjiang province. This way, China means to control the attacks carried out by Islamist separatist having, as China is convinced, links with Al-Qaeda.
While this may be seen as China’s move to counter the growing US military influence in Pakistan, the fact that China has made the same allegations as US and Afghanistan about Pakistani soil a home for terrorists cannot be ignored. India and China are arch rivals and so are Pakistan and India. China’s presence on Pakistani border area will not only be a concern to India but also to US, another political opponent of China. This far Pakistan and China have dealt over the matter of insurgency in Xinjiang quite amicably. But will letting the Chinese use Pakistani soil for acting against terrorists not provide US even greater reason to ask of Pakistan for an explanation on why the US shouldn’t use Pakistani territory, particularly North Waziristan, for acting against terrorists that are attacking NATO forces in Afghanistan? On the other hand, saying “no” to the Chinese can mean a serious rift in Pak-China friendship.

The presence of terrorists in Pakistan’s tribal belt, traced back to the early late 1970s and through the 1980s, has put Pakistan in a difficult position. Afghanistan, India, US, and China are all concerned about the export of terrorists from Pakistan’s border areas into its neighboring countries’ land. Three of these countries already have tense relations with Pakistan. How long does friendship with China last depends on how Pakistan justifies letting China use its territory for military purposes. And this decision won’t come easy if Pakistan acts alone. Given the efforts of the current democratic government in Pakistan to improve relations with neighbor countries, both India and Afghanistan, it surely won’t be asking too much if all these state heads join heads and lay out a joint strategy for combating terrorism on Pakistani soil and outside it. Unless they act collectively with sound coordination, it will be hard for any of these stakeholders to avoid damage done by the groups of terrorists based in the restless tribal belt and other areas of Pakistan.


Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/3 ... z1c7qraXe4

Looming America-China Clash Over Pakistan and Afghanistan | 1913 Intel
http://www.1913intel.com/2011/10/04/loo ... ghanistan/
Posted on October 28, 2011 by usachinanukewar
October 4th, 2011

The emerging picture is clearly one of a Sino-Pakistani partnership aligned against what is seen as a U.S.-India axis designed to limit Pakistan’s assertion of its interests in Afghanistan, Kashmir and parts of India on account of an expansionist policy known as “strategic depth,” which has always been espoused by the Pakistani military and intelligence and is rooted in Pakistan’s perception of its identity as an Islamic state. These developments could well lead to what some analysts have termed a “looming superpower clash” between the United States and China over Afghanistan and the wider region, triggered by Pakistan.

Pakistan and China: Strengthening Ties :: Middle East Forum

While it is important for the US to understand that a war cannot be won by offending the people of the host nation and humiliating the country and its institutions, it is equally important for Pakistan’s terror policy Tsars to realise, as Brennan says, that we are in a war. By committing ourselves too tight with persons and groups of choice that wage war on the west and in particular, the US, we would be signing on the death certificate of our country’s integrity, which is already on a life-support machine. A smart nation would, at such a juncture, come out of the hollow populism and rhetoric and would think seriously about the future of its generations, and much misused ‘interest of the country’. But we are complex. We draw inspiration from distorted religious considerations used by the terrorists to their utmost advantage. In the absence of a counter-narrative, the al Qaeda ideology is most likely to win.

When a young university student in a big urban centre of Pakistan regurgitates the ‘anti-imperialist’ rhetoric — a drama directed and produced by the jihadi media directly or indirectly linked to the al Qaeda’s organisation or its ideology, someone in Rawalpindi/Islamabad and in Washington DC need to think. What Rawalpindi has to revise is its double-speak and use of the media to hype up public sentiment as a card to be later used to its advantage on the negotiating table. This media-surge used since decades by the establishment has done nothing except winning them a few more million dollars, maybe a few more years of US support on our terms and an ever-increasing societal degradation at the hands of the radicalisation of the masses.

Pakistan resents US efforts to promote India as a regional/hegemonic power. From our perspective, the scenario of an Afghan Army trained with an Indian mindset, deployed along Pakistan’s borders is simply unacceptable and a threat to Pakistan’s security. As long as the United States follows this flawed strategy of giving the Indians an unduly key role, the dream of bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan and the region would remain elusive.


Why does the United States remain obsessed with Iran Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline project? It is planned to transmit 20 million cubic meters of natural gas daily from Iran through Balochistan province and is expected to be operational by 2014, or perhaps even earlier. During her recent visit to Pakistan, Hillary Clinton referred to Iran as ‘a dangerous neighbor’ and once again expressed reservations about the IP project that is so critical to Pakistan’s strategic energy requirements.

Iran may be dangerous for United States and Israel but has remained friendly to Pakistan despite some hiccups in the historical and traditionally warm and close relations between the two Islamic neighbors. Pakistanis would consider it an unfriendly act by United States if it tries to sabotage or stall the IP gas pipe line project.

The US opposition to IP gas pipeline project also stems from its concerns that this pipeline could be extended to China via the Karakoram Mountains to link with China’s restive eastern Xinkiang province. While Americans eye Balochistan as a trade and energy corridor linking the Arabian sea warm waters to energy rich central Asian states via Afghanistan, it is opposed to any Chinese presence in Gwadar port on Balochistan’s coast which is also being planned as Pakistan’s future energy hub due to its geo strategic/commercial importance at the mouth of the Persian Gulf .

In this game of brinksmanship between two so called ‘allies’ and nuclear armed nations, the Americans had clearly blinked first. Here if Raja Mujtaba is quoted when he said in his article, Prepare For Armageddon, “Before the US ventures into other Muslim lands, the US would want a submissive or a broken and denuclearized Pakistan. In both the scenarios it would mean Pakistan’s death. In such a scenario, Pakistan maybe compelled to go for non conventional weapons; if such a development takes place, India, Israel and the US installations in the region would not be safe. Can the US risk such a situation would only depend on the arrogance and sanity level of the US leadership,” would be very appropriate as it reflects a true feeling of every Pakistani.

The US desperation for a safe and honorable exit from Afghanistan is understandable. If after spending billions of US dollars that has brought US economy on the verge of collapse and failure of the much trumpeted Obama’s surge strategy, Kabul and Afghan countryside still remain vulnerable to daring Taliban daylight attacks, then White House and Pentagon Generals have a lot to answer to the angry American nation. Remember Obama’s re- election is at stake as Americans go to the ballot box in less than a year.

The US Secretary of State knew fully well that the days of coercing or dictating Pakistan were over. After CIA agent Raymond Davis’s episode and May 02 Osama Bin Laden strike, the Pakistani mood viz a viz the Americans had changed to ‘Enough is enough’. Clearly stabbed in the back through CIA’s covert intelligence network across Pakistan, it was time to review and redefine the entire gambit of Pak-US relations.