[DAWN] Akhtar Mansour, leader of the Afghan Taliban, has reportedly been killed in Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... in a US drone strike. While confusion still persists over the news made known to the world initially by US officials, and subsequently corroborated by Afghan officials and the Afghan Taliban, the security equation in the Pak-Afghan region has changed once again.
Pakistain, the country that is alleged to have hosted Mullah Mansour, and said to have helped him ascend to the top of the Taliban leadership and nudged the group to the negotiating table with Kabul ...the capital of Afghanistan. Home to continuous fighting from 1992 to 1996 between the forces of would-be strongman and Pak ISI/Jamaat-e-Islami sock puppet Gulbuddin Hekmayar and the Northern Alliance, a period which won Hek the title Most Evil Man in the World and didn't do much for the reputations of the Northern Alliance guys either.... , is left with unanswered questions and is at the receiving end of considerable international finger-pointing.
Yet again the morass that has been Afghan policy -- for many states, but perhaps most consistently for Pakistain over the past three decades -- looks set to lead a number of countries into an uncertain future with few good options.
Five years since the late Osama bin Laden ... who is now among the dear departed, though not among the dearest... was killed in Abbottabad ... A pleasant city located only 30 convenient miles from Islamabad. The city is noted for its nice weather and good schools. It is the site of Pakistain's military academy, which was within comfortable walking distance of the residence of the late Osama bin Laden.... , and less than a year since it was revealed, though never conclusively proved, that Mullah Omar ... a minor Pashtun commander in the war against the Soviets who made good as leader of the Taliban. As ruler of Afghanistan, he took the title Leader of the Faithful. The imposition of Pashtunkhwa on the nation institutionalized ignorance and brutality in a country already notable for its own fair share of ignorance and brutality... too had died on Pak soil, Mullah Mansour’s reported death in Pakistain is not altogether surprising.
Pak officials have acknowledged that the so-called influence, though not control, that the state here has over the Taliban is partly a result of providing sanctuary to Afghan Taliban leaders. If there were no sanctuary, there would be no influence -- and certainly none of the control that the outside world accuses Pakistain of having over the Taliban.
Yet, it is troubling that Mullah Mansour was apparently allowed to move freely on Pak soil even as it became clear that the Taliban he controlled were neither lowering the intensity of the war they are waging against the Afghan state nor really looking for a way to start dialogue.
While Pakistain has rightly insisted that it cannot realistically be expected to take military action on Pak soil against the Afghan Taliban, surely the freedom of movement that friendly Taliban leaders are believed to still enjoy is not in Pakistain’s interests.
What is indisputably in the interest of Afghanistan, Pakistain and other regional and international powers is for the Afghan question to be settled through dialogue. However, a hangover is the wrath of grapes... given that the US has now bluntly stated that the Taliban leader was an impediment to negotiations and reportedly eliminated him, it is not clear who dialogue can be conducted with among the group or even if the Taliban will be able to stay united.
Whatever the case, Pakistain should be wary of repeating the process that led to Mullah Mansour’s accession and the determined attempt to unify the Taliban behind him.
With new strains in relations with Afghanistan and the US, Pakistain must be clear about what it believes it can deliver and set realistic expectations. Otherwise, the regional security situation may deteriorate further.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/24/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
Five years since the late Osama bin Laden
was killed in Abbottabad, and less than a year since it was revealed, though never conclusively proved, that Mullah Omar too had died on Pak soil, Mullah Mansour’s reported death in Pakistain is not altogether surprising.
It would be surprising if they had died anywhere else.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
05/24/2016 11:48 Comments ||
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#2
Are there really any new twists when it comes to that elusive Afghan peace?
#4
Not really g(r), it's kinda like my last job bringing the plant up. Every day I'd drive down there, tell myself this was gonna be the day we'd drain the swamp... and every day, by mid morning, I'd be up to my ass in alligators. Finally I had a brainstorm, and when the guy who had the HR hat (among many others) was next there, I asked him: maybe we could hire less alligators?
I hear they eventually filled my position with a herpetologist from the local university working part time.
Anyway, to make a long story short, having Pakistan as your peace partner means you're never short on alligators in the marshes of Afghanistan. We'd be better off not hiring them to begin with.
Then there are oil prices, what I see as some serious mistakes by Maduro, the role of the grassroots and workers (which of course the media is utterly oblivious to), and more. And the likes of Nick Casey working for the New York Times, going around finding dislocated sad stories, without noticing anything else, and without being aware of the politics behind the drama: for instance, that the hospital he wrote about as falling apart is actually run by the right wing. Doesn't matter who you are when socialist policies cause shortages and you can't get medical supplies.
And socialist policies always cause shortages eventually. Ignoring economics will do that.
Posted by: Hupoper Spawn of the Hemps4540 ||
05/24/2016 01:12 ||
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#1
There's also the minor detail that things were consistently improving in Venezuela, right up until the time when Chavez got sick
The minor detail that things were going great until the credit cards maxed out and the bills started to come due.
#5
The articles blame it all on Chavismo, socialism and Maduro, without bothering to reference any context or to recognise that the rightwing have some power and therefore a level of responsibility in Venezuela now. Nor do they care to admit that like all countries, Venezuela's economic situation has structural, economic and historical causes. There's also the minor detail that things were consistently improving in Venezuela, right up until the time when Chavez got sick and the right wing went on the offensive.
Then why not try it again? Surely this time it'll be different.
#7
Then why not try it again? Surely this time it'll be different.
They've been saying that ever since Joe Stalin.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
05/24/2016 17:55 Comments ||
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#8
Captain Cashflow looketh over his flock, and says unto them,
"You blewith through your pouch of shekels with wild abandon. I am not thy sugar-father, and thou art not my prodigal son, so thou art excrementally out of good fortune."
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/24/2016 20:38 Comments ||
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[WashingtonPost] Surveying the wreckage of the Middle East and the fraying of Europe, President Obama understandably would like us to believe that no other policy could have worked better. The United States has tried them all, his administration argues: massive invasion, in Iraq; surgical intervention, in Libya; studied aloofness, in Syria. Three approaches, same result: chaos and destruction.
So why bother? Why get sucked into “a transformation that will play out for a generation,” as Obama described it in his State of the Union address this year, “rooted in conflicts that date back millennia”?
Even setting aside the offensiveness of such a sweeping dismissal of Arab potential, the formulation is wrong on two counts, one prescriptive and one analytical.
It offers no plausible path for Obama’s successor — who, as Obama’s own fitful, reluctant re-escalation shows, will not be able to ignore the region. Instead, it invites the kind of demagogic promises we have heard during the campaign, to “carpet bomb” Islamic militants until we find out whether “sand can glow in the dark,” as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) threatened, or, in Donald Trump’s words, to “quickly, quickly” “knock the hell out of” the Islamic State and then “come back here and rebuild our country.”
More fundamentally, the administration’s fatalism ignores a fourth policy option that Obama, from the beginning, was determined not to try: patient, open-ended engagement using all U.S. tools — diplomatic as well as military — with a positive outcome, not a fixed deadline, as the goal.
That is an approach that has worked before. In Korea, the United States forged an intimate alliance more than a half-century ago, and today U.S. soldiers and diplomats are still present. U.S. support deterred an external foe while — and people forget this, given South Korea’s stability today — helping steady a society torn by civil war as its people gradually built a democracy.
Obama came into office determined to avoid this approach. In Afghanistan, he set a timetable for troop withdrawal, untethered to conditions. In Libya, he bombed the Gaddafi regime out of power but did not stay to help a new government get on its feet. In Iraq, he overrode his civilian and military advisers and declined to keep in the country the 15,000 or 20,000 troops that might have helped preserve the stability the U.S. surge had helped achieve.
The president did not defend that withdrawal because millennia-old hatreds made Iraq a hopeless case. Just the reverse, in fact: Success had made a U.S. presence unnecessary. “This is a historic moment. A war is ending. A new day is upon us,” he said in 2011. “People throughout the region will see a new Iraq that’s determining its own destiny — a country in which people from different religious sects and ethnicities can resolve their differences peacefully through the democratic process.”
It does not require hindsight to appreciate the recklessness of his decision. True, few foretold just how completely the nation would fall apart, with a vicious caliphate occupying much of the country and a return of frequent bombings in Baghdad. But The Post’s editorial page was not alone in warning at the time that “a complete withdrawal sharply increases the risk that painfully won security gains in Iraq will come undone.”
I understand why Obama and so many other Americans reject persistent engagement, often derisively called “nation-building.” It is difficult, and the United States often does it badly and sometimes doesn’t succeed; Americans can’t impose democracy; we often end up doing work that we wish the locals or their neighbors would do. Obama is right, too, that other regions, such as the Pacific, are more important to the global economy and more central to U.S. strategy.
But against all that wisdom stands one stubborn fact, again proved by Obama’s re-escalation: The United States does not have a choice. The unraveling doesn’t stay put, but spreads to Syria and Paris and Brussels and the skies over the Mediterranean and, eventually, the United States. Under conditions far more difficult than they might have been, the president finds himself unleashing bombers over Syria and dispatching soldiers into Iraq.
He cannot acknowledge, maybe even to himself, that disengagement was a mistake. That is why, even as Americans are, once again, being killed in Iraq, Obama insists that no service members are in combat.
But it would be healthy for the country, and the next president, to move beyond make-believe. There is no “quickly, quickly” defeating Islamist terrorism — and there is no safe way to retreat from the challenge of combating it for the long term.
I would be, God willing, the first president coming from the Left. I am Bayan, and I have been Bayan for the many years I have been mayor. I am not a member of the Communist Party of the Philippines. We follow the path of socialism. But this extremism is not good for me. My being a socialist is left of center, only up to here in the armpit, don't be scared. But my dimensions in life, I am only a poor man's son.
They say that's too ambitious. My God, try me. That's what I told the Davao criminals before. I had them called out, 'Do you want to go out of the city? Do you want to go to Manila? Life is good there. Just go there, you want?' Those who didn't believe me are dead. What do we have to talk about?
"Ang sabi ko sa military pati police (I told the military and police), only criminals, drug-related offenses, I will tell the police and military, ’Go out and kill them.’ Period. Before you become a police, you have the situations where you can really kill. Of course, in the enforcement of the law, because it is really to overcome the resistance and if you find yourself in jeopardy of losing your life, shoot...Ako bahala (I will take care of it). Basta (Just) follow my orders and do it in accordance with the book. Huwag kayo lumabas doon (Don't go beyond what the book says). No abuses. I have the best police force in the entire Philippines, talagang (really) behaved." (Los BaĂąos, March 11, 2016)
If you really want me to be president, this year, after elections, the salaries of the police and military will be doubled...Then they will be given rice so they have something to eat every day. Their children will have free education from kindergarten to high school, only in public school. When they die in the line of duty, they will receive 3 years' worth of salaries...Now, if I double their salaries and they still ask for bribes [makes clucking sound to indicate gunshots].
You know, we are from different tribes. There are Tausug, Maranao, Tagalog, Bicolano, Ilocano. You know, our dialects are different, so is our culture, even our idiosyncracies. But now what remains to hold us together is this Philippine flag. The written manifestation of the flag is the Constitution. I hope that everybody would remain loyal to that flag because if not, if you start to fuck it, you steal the money and let us live in our poverty there, we don't even have enough resources after we give you all our money and you send us a pittance and things are messy, you leave to us a serious problem of maybe a fractured island.)
He often uses this rhetoric to justify why a shift to a federal form of government is necessary. Federalism would allow regions to retain most of their income instead of sending most of it to the national government in Metro Manila. The writer of the piece says we need to watch 1 or 2 of his speeches to understand him. Videos and more analysis at the link.
[Rappler] Most of you will read articles in the media calling Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte a "fascist," "punisher," or "dictator." Some have even called the Filipino people "dumb" for even considering voting for him.
It is completely understandable to be shocked and appalled at some of the things he has said, such as his death threats to criminals, and his seeming disregard for due process.
You are probably wondering: how has this man amassed nearly double the number of votes compared to his closest rival? Why do so many Filipinos want this man to lead their country?
Duterte has promised very basic but necessary changes in security and well-being for the Filipino people. Pretty good explanation for why he was elected at the link.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[WashingtonPost] Surveying the wreckage of the Middle East and the fraying of Europe, President Obama understandably would like us to believe that no other policy could have worked better. The United States has tried them all, his administration argues: massive invasion, in Iraq; surgical intervention, in Libya; studied aloofness, in Syria. Three approaches, same result: chaos and destruction.
