Bharat Rakshak

Kabul (AFP) - A US F-16 was struck by enemy fire in eastern Afghanistan, military officials have confirmed to AFP, in a rare instance of an advanced fighter jet coming under a Taliban-claimed attack.The attack occurred last Tuesday in the Sayid Karam district of eastern Paktia province, much of which is under control of the Taliban, who have been waging an insurgency against US-led NATO forces and government troops since they were forced from power in 2001.Photographs of the site obtained by AFP and seen by J. Chacko, an open-source military analyst based in London, indicated the jet had lost two "drop-tanks" -- fuel tanks used to extend flight time -- an air-to-ground missile, and two other unguided bombs.When presented with the images, the US military confirmed in a statement to AFP late Saturday: "On October 13, a US F-16 encountered small arms fire in the Paktia Province in Afghanistan. The surface to air fire impacted one of the aircraft's stabilisers and caused damage to one of the munitions."The pilot jettisoned two fuel tanks and three munitions before safely returning to base. The pilot received no injuries and safely returned to base."The Taliban have shot down several military helicopters using small-arms fire, but never an F-16 -- an advanced jet capable of supersonic speeds and reaching heights of 50,000 feet, which have been deployed in Afghanistan since the beginning of the US-led military in 2001.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan's acting defense minister said Monday that the Doctors Without Borders hospital bombed by U.S. forces in the northern city of Kunduz was being used by insurgents as a "safe place.""That was a place they wanted to use as a safe place because everybody knows that our security forces and international security forces were very careful not to do anything with a hospital," Defense Minister Masoom Stanekzai told The Associated Press, adding that a Taliban flag had been mounted on one of the hospital's walls.
MSF has acknowledged that it treated wounded Taliban fighters at the Kunduz hospital, but it insists no weapons were allowed in. Afghans who worked there have told the AP that no one was firing from within. But Stanekzai insisted that "the compound was being used by people who were fighting there, whether it was Taliban or ISI or whoever they were," referring to Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, long accused by Kabul of supporting the Taliban. "If the fighting was not coming from there, that kind of a mistake will never happen."
American special operations analysts were scrutinizing the MSF hospital days before it was destroyed because they believed it was being used by a Pakistani operative to coordinate Taliban activity, officials have told the AP. The analysts knew it was a medical facility, according to a former intelligence official who is familiar with some of the documents describing the site.
The analysts had assembled a dossier that included maps with the hospital circled, along with indications that intelligence agencies were tracking the location of a Pakistani operative and activity reports based on overhead surveillance, according to the former intelligence official. The intelligence suggested the hospital was being used as a Taliban command and control center and may have housed heavy weapons.
After the attack, some U.S. analysts assessed that the strike had been justified and concluded the Pakistani, believed to have been with the ISI, had been killed.No evidence has surfaced publicly suggesting a Pakistani died in the attack, and MSF says none its staff was Pakistani. The former intelligence official was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Stanekzai said his government had evidence the insurgents in Kunduz were communicating with command and control centers in Pakistan. "We have traced very clearly the communications they were receiving from Quetta, Peshawar and Karachi," he said, naming three Pakistani cities where the Afghan Taliban presence is widely known."How can any country allow the nationals of other countries to have such large-scale operations from their soil and just sit and watch them," Stanekzai said.

But going beyond the defence hardware co-production, the visits and the Modi-Putin summit will also reshape the greater strategic neighbourhood of India, says former ambassador Stobdan. “It’s noteworthy that the Pakistani Prime Minister was visiting Washington DC and the Chinese President was being welcomed in London when Sushma Swaraj visited Moscow. It shows that India is willing to look into strategic requirements in fast-changing global circumstances,” Dr Stobdan told The Hindu . “Russia is raising a new division for Afghanistan along the Tajik border to fight Islamic extremists of Af-Pak that are threatening the modern governments of Central Asia. Therefore, its partnership with Pakistan is not expected to last long and that is why India and Russia will work together in the Afghanistan region,” Dr. Stobdan said.

According to James M. Dorsey of S. Rajarathnam School of International Studies, Singapore, the recent shocking losses under Taliban attack in Kunduz were a lesson for regional powers and India and Russia are expected to work together to stabilise Afghanistan in view of the American plans to stay back in Afghanistan beyond 2016.

Y I Patel wrote:I am slogging my way through Artemy Kalinovsky's "A Long Goodbye" which focuses on the Soviet end-game in their Afghanistan war. It is slow going because what he describes has been forcing me to rethink all I thought I knew of that conflict and its connections to current global geopolitics. I intend to write about this in the Afghanistan thread (inshallah in the near future), but there are very intriguing parallels with the situation in Syria right now, and I want to indulge in some piskology on what Putin may be thinking. So bear with me as I rewind back to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan to set the context.

In the beginning, there was unanimity among the big three players - Foreign Affairs, Defense, and KGB on the decision to intervene in Afghanistan. However, as the years passed and the problems continued to multiply, doubts began to grow, encouraged by the arrival of Gorbachov as General Secretary of the Politburo. This led to factions within the Soviet establishment, with the military favoring an accommodation with the rebels (particularly Ahmed Shah Mehsud and the Tajiks) followed by a pullout, while Foreign Affairs and KGB continued to hold out for continued support until a negotiated settlement was arrived at which enabled continued functioning of a stable Najibullah regime (and note that in setting this up, I have fast forwarded to about end of 1986 when Najibullah was installed as the President of Afghanistan). Through subsequent twists and turns, including Gorbachov's dismissal through an unsuccessful coup, one entity that stood steadfastly for support of Najibullah was the KGB. They ensured that Afghanistan continued to receive armaments, fuel, financial, and diplomatic support even after the Soviets left Afghanistan; importantly, KGB was instrumental in holding out against any settlement that called for Najib's removal prior to the establishment of any "National Unity" government. In early 1991, they had been successful in wearing down US insistence to Najib's removal, to the point where the then Secretary of State James Baker was softening US stance to accepting Najib's continuation in power until a unity government was installed. When Yeltsin became President of Russia, he withdrew support from Najib. This was really the capstone event that marked the last loss of credibility for Najib's rule; his credibility, his source of power, his leverage all unraveled and the (Communist) Republic of Afghanistan really entered into its death spiral.

Now I begin my piskology. What a young KGB officer at that time would have learned is that a positive outcome was still possible, even after the Soviet Union's demise, had the Russians continued the Soviet policy (heavily influenced by KGB) of steadfastly supporting their man. At that point, it was credibility and legitimacy that Najib need, that Russia could have provided at minimal cost but did not. That would have been a bitter lesson, and one which the KGB officer would have taken to heart as he rose to become Russia's president and confronted the possible demise of Russia's man in Syria.

So Putin, remembering the past experience, intervenes to shore up the beleaguered Assad regime, especially as the situation appears stalemated and the growth of ISIS focuses all players' thoughts on coming up with a unity government in Syria. The calculation would be that some amount of military force is necessary by the coalition supporting Assad, to ensure that he is not locked out of the peace talks. Is it working so far? Yes. There is increasing international recognition that Assad can continue until some alternative is worked out, much in the way Soviet Union would have wanted Najib to continue.

However, there is a potential spoiler here, much like Pakistan vis a vis Afghanistan - we are talking about Turkey, of course. Turkey can and probably will continue to take actions which will muddy the waters, because the current contours of a settlement will be very adverse for Turkey. For example, as part of the peace settlement, one can prognosticate a Shia/Alawite zone, a Kurd zone, and a Sunni zone. Compared with a Turkey friendly ISIS zone that gobbles most of the other zones, this is a distinct deterioration. So if Turkey prolongs the situation, the danger is that Putin's initiative will get stuck in a quagmire and second opinions will begin to crop up including within Russia. There is also a risk that Putin will overplay his hand and hold out for a lot more than is possible. So it remains to be seen if we will see a replay of Najib's fate or a modified outcome. In any case, my feeling is that the big plays right now are not the military actions but the diplomatic maneuvering in the UN and in Vienna.

I hope you found this to be an interesting and educative insight - if you did, please do get Kalinovsky's excellent work and go through it. I would love to see BRF discuss this more, especially in the Afghanistan thread.

Paul wrote:YIP..this might help ease the slow going

Y I Patel wrote:Firstly, no "ji" please - just YIP or Yogi are much more comfortable! Also, thank you Paul for the link to that discussion on Kalinovsky's book - if you don't want to wade through the book, the hour+ spent on that link will be sufficient to get you up to speed on his main points! FYI, there are some great rejoinders from the US Ambassador/Envoy to Afghanistan on that video as well.

To Deejay's point, yes it does look like Russia (and Putin) may have learned the lessons of Afghanistan. Ironically, the proof for me regarding that is the restraint shown by Russia in not retaliating to the shooting down of the fighter plane and rescue helicopter. If India had shown the same amount of restraint after an IAF plane gets shot down over LOC, fatwas to depose Modi (or worse) would gave gone out from BRF

One big mistake the Soviets made going in was in ignoring the potential of Pakistan to influence events in Afghanistan. In the same manner, like it or not, Turkey remains probably the most influential player in Syria right now, and they have shown that they are not going to hesitate in using that against ally as well as foe. Turkey has constraints too, but the fact is that Russia too can only go in with limited or constrained objectives. If it turns out that Russia overplays their hand and the resource commitments they have to make are far out of proportion to what they are able to walk away with, then Putin will be vulnerable to domestic backlash. That is because we really do not know who is driving the Russian intervention in Syria, and how strong the support is among various stakeholders within Russia such as the military and their external affairs department. The stated objective of the intervention is that if ISIS is not defeated, it will spread its tentacles to Russia or to the sensitive CAR republics. But there are different choices that can be made to address this, all of them suboptimal so long as a credible local force cannot be assembled to fight it. Joining a Shia dominated coalition only hardens the support for ISIS in Sunni dominated areas, and to me it is therefore a challenging choice for Russia to make. Challenging because they will require finesse to navigate the local realities - that Kurds are not willing to fight outside their areas, Iraqi shia outside their area, and SAA is unlikely to be terribly effective as an ally in Sunni dominated areas.

These challenges are of course not limited to Russia, but the point I want to make is that in US or Western European countries there is much greater debate (public or non-public) which drives the decisions and the commitments, and the debate makes the choices made easier to sustain through unexpected contingencies. I am not aware of any similar debate taking place in Russia before the intervention, and I am certainly not going to take the word of Sputnik News or Russia Times on this. My suspicion is that Putin and maybe a small coterie surrounding him are responsible for this decision, and they made it without sufficient consideration of the ramifications. If that is the case, while things look okay for them right now, they should be very mindful of not succumbing to hubris. Their interests in Syria are in fact reasonably aligned with other European players and the US, but there are also some minefields - for example, if Turkey gets desperate it will get increasingly brazen in provoking a confrontation in order to make this a NATO issue. So we are not out of the woods yet, and the situation can get much much worse.

I have belabored my thoughts on the Russian intervention in Syria long enough. Please feel free to comment, but I will most likely not have followups. I do want to get back to Afghanistan, after all

Once Gromyko, Ustinov, and Andropov had come to an agreement among themselves and managed to secure Brezhnev's support, they were able to pressure other Politburo members and senior officials to accept their decision.

Surya wrote:YIP
one thing I never understood is why the Soviets did not wage a full flegded counter covert war on the Pakis with Afghan intel.there were hits on mujahideen but surely they could have done more.

I have said this earlier and will repeat it again that modern Indians do owe our Punjabi cousins a debt of gratitude in stopping the latest invader from Central Asia before they rolled into Delhi.

Surya wrote:YIP

one thing I never understood is why the Soviets did not wage a full flegded counter covert war on the Pakis with Afghan intel.

there were hits on mujahideen but surely they could have done more.

Russia's interests coincide with the ones of the Afghan Taliban movement concerning fighting the Islamic State, Russia's Foreign Ministry department head Zamir Kabulov said Wednesday, the Interfax news agency reported.Kabulov also said that Russia has already established channels to exchange information with the movement.The Taliban is an Islamist movement shaped in Afghanistan in the 1990s. It was in power from 1994 until 2001. The Taliban voiced its support to Chechen separatists during the second Chechen war. The movement was recognized as a terrorist organization by the United Nations in 2003.IS is a terrorist organization banned in Russia.

• Pakistan’s military aim was to use the military operations to drive the militants out of North Waziristan and shift the terror base from its soil to Afghanistan.
  
  As of today, the Taliban controls 80 percent of the rural areas in Afghanistan.
  
  the Taliban was crafting an escape clause for Pakistan and its cohorts to evade implementation of any agreement arrived at during the talks.
  
  Mullah Mansoor is living in a Pakistani town in an open unrestricted environment. He enjoys freedom of movement. The large detachment of plainclothes security personnel in his part of Satellite Town increased conspicuously around the time he was announced as the Taliban’s leader.50 Where is the question of Pakistan being ignorant of his presence in the country? Obviously, Mansur enjoys a special status from the Pakistani authorities. Is it possible that the US was not told of his presence in Pakistan?
  
  The appointment of two powerful Haqqani leaders as the two top leaders of the Taliban is significant considering that Pakistan wields substantial influence over the Haqqani network.
  
  “ISI_ _apparently_ _i_s_ _f_u_n_d_i_n_g_ _a_l_l_ _p_a_r_t_i_e_s_ _o_v_e_r_ _h_e_r_e_ _(_i_n_ _A_f_g_h_a_n_i_s_t_a_n_)_,_ _T_a_l_i_b_a_n_ _a_n_d_ _I_S_I_S_,_”

Conclusion
The world needs to see the reality that Pakistan has mastered the art of
play-acting to be the arbitrator to bring about peace in Afghanistan while
supporting the very same terror outfits that are fighting in that country.
It receives funds from the world powers in the name of fighting terror
and siphons off the very same funds to the very same terror units to prop
them up. It shelters terror commanders and fighters and has the audacity
to deny the same when confronted, as happened in the case of Osama bin
Laden, Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders. It sets up terror groups and
nourishes them as its strategic assets and as a matter of state policy. It funds
terror. It is a party to the growing number of terror camps on its soil and
in areas under its control. The world is aware of these facts but turns a
blind eye to it and adopts an ostrich like attitude due to its own debauched
interests. Countries forget that though terrorism may not be affecting them
directly today, it is bound to hit them very hard some day.

Now, with the Taliban on the offensive and gaining ground and control
over large swathes of Afghan territory, would it give up arms and settle for
partnering the democratically elected government in Afghanistan? Would it
relinquish its larger aim of establishing a pan Islamic caliphate in Afghanistan
and beyond, governed by Sharia law? The Quadrilateral Coordination
Group (QCG) on Afghanistan seems to want the Taliban and the Afghan
government to “enter into early talks to resolve all differences politically.”79 Is
it a question of resolving differences? We seem to be grossly underestimating
the enormity of the problem. It is a conflict of ideology, faith and beliefs. It is
about the type of rule and governance that the Taliban is seeking to establish
in Afghanistan. It is about an external power trying to establish its control in
the country illegitimately and by force, to achieve its objectives.

As of now, do any of the militant commanders in Afghanistan have the
ability to implement a peace deal even if they want to, especially with Daesh
entering the fray in Afghanistan and elsewhere on the world stage? Is Pakistan
capable of reigning in the multifarious terror groups which it was instrumental
in creating, funding, training and launching in Afghanistan? Would Pakistan
now, at this stage, give up on its objective when it seems to be getting closer
to achieving it? The world seems to be making a mistake.

Should the world continue to goad Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the
negotiating table and hope that the Taliban and Pakistan will listen to logic
and reason? Even if that were to happen would that end the terror that is
raging and waiting to explode in other parts of the world?

In all likelihood, we might have reached a stalemate which cannot be
broken or handled by any single country. The major powers of the world,
some of which are responsible for the state of affairs today, have been
struggling with the issue in different parts of the world for over two decades,
without any respite or serenity in sight.

What we are witnessing today in the form of terrorism is not an isolated
event or confined to a limited area. It has affected a large number of
countries in the world, cutting across continents in one form or the other.
Those countries that have been saved the agony of witnessing the contours
of terrorism yet, may be affected sooner than later. It is a question of time.
It is time the world realised that it is on the threshold of a new type of a
World War.

This menace cannot be tackled piecemeal or with countries of the world
pulling in different directions. The tools that were used during the earlier
wars may not yield results in this war. The war will have to be fought at
the ideological, economic, as well as military and law enforcement levels.
The linked issues of drugs, money laundering and law and order will have to
be challenged. As a matter of rule, no country in the world can be allowed
to become a haven for transitional terrorists. In this war, the safety and
well-being of the people of the world is paramount and cannot be ignored.
Terror has already drawn enough blood the world over. Accordingly, the
war-fighting strategy will have to be rewritten and the tools shaped keeping
in mind the constraints and the essentials.

The directions and the legitimacy for the war and the battle will have to
come from the world body and handled at the regional level with participation
by all the countries of the world in one form or the other, without
exception. The major powers of the world will have to play a constructive
and responsible role, leaving aside their differences and larger geo-political,
economic and strategic aims. Countries that are playing a negative role in this
war will have to be reined in by force.

Pakistan is a nuclear power, duly supported by the major powers of
the world, with over 110-130 warheads and an unknown quantity of fissile
material in its possession. It has four operating plutonium production
reactors. The nuclear facilities in the country are under the control of the
Pakistan Army, with the political establishment having no jurisdiction over any
of these facilities or the employment of these weapons of mass destruction.
A part of Pakistan’s military is radicalised. A large number of terror groups
are flourishing in the state and individual terrorists move around freely in
the country. A number of Pakistan’s major military establishments have been
penetrated and hit by the militants in the past. Doesn’t the world see the
danger of fissile material or weapons from Pakistan’s nuclear establishments
falling into the hands of the terrorists? Should we wait for that to happen
before we decide to act?

A way will have to be found to remove all weapons of mass destruction
from the world scene. Stringent measures to prevent weapons and other
tools of war-fighting from falling into the hands of non-state actors and
proxies of countries will have to be enforced. Financing crimes and terrorism
will have to be treated as high treason acts and the perpetrators along the
chain punished in a time-bound manner. Necessary laws where required for
the purpose, will have to be created at the level of the world body.
Countries hoping that they may not be affected will be making a grave
mistake. The sooner we unite and confront the menace, the lesser will be the
struggle and the loss and damage to humanity.

Austin wrote:Pakistani Patronage of Haqqani Network Continues Undeterred as US Turns a Blind Eye

• Rewards Pakistani terrorism making it to invest more and more in that
• Restricts natural and beneficial (beneficial to the common-folk Afghans) Indian interests in Afghanistan
• Destabilizes more an already difficult region
• Subverts democratic processes in the region which alone can ensure peace