By Ahmed Quraishi
Now the Mayor of Kabul wants to invade Pakistan.
| Note the disdain for Karzai, the current (actually a few years old) myth regarding which is that his writ goes no further than the limits of Kabul. |
Six years of Pakistani appeasement in the face of gradual loss of our legitimate security interests in the region
| That'd be the Talibs to the west and Hizbul Mujaheddin to the eat... |
have come down to this: the weakest leader in modern Afghan history warns Islamabad he will not only invade Pakistan but will also "rescue" the Pakistani Pashtun population--a thinly veiled threat to claim our northwestern regions as part of Afghanistan.
| The Afghans having been liberated from the choking yoke of the Talib holy men, the government of Pakistain presumes to assist in the process of reimposing it. To do that they attempt to ride the tiger of tribal politix. Whenever they attempt to assert any actual control the Mighty Pak Army gets its nose bloodied and some Punjabi families get Sonny home in a body bag. |
Hamid Karzai should not be blamed for making statements that far exceed his status as a weak ruler propped up by warlords and a foreign power, and whose authority hardly surpasses the city where he is bunkered.
| You knew he'd get back to that meme. It was pretty much true in 2002, less so in 2003. This is [looks closely at watch to make sure] 2008. Despite multiple attempts on his life Karzai is not dead. The warlords with talent like Mohammad Fahim, Ismail Khan, and Abdurrashid Dostum have been moved from their feifdoms to positions where they can make a contribution to the government without posing a danger -- or at least as much of a danger -- to it. Gul Agha Sherzai no longer rules in Kandahar, and while he is oppressing someone else it's someone else with less strategic importance. Younus Qanouni is in the opposition and he's a capable enough man that I wouldn't worry if he won the next election. Karzai's proven himself to be a much more capable politician than many gave him credit for, and Afghanistan outside the Pashtun areas bordering Pakistain is coming along fairly nicely for a country that remains under external attack. |
| Islamabad's real problem lies not with Karzai. It's with Washington, whose military sided last week with Mr Karzai's rag-tag army in a border dispute where it used massive aerial power to pound a Pakistani border post and kill eleven of our soldiers. This disproportionate use of power was so senseless it could only be a deliberate hostile act against Pakistan. |
Islamabad's real problem lies not with him.
| Sure it does. Afghanistan freed from Pak interference and counterweighting Pak influence with India, the U.S. and -- yes -- Russia stands a chance of subordinating the holy man to the businessman. The 60 percent of the population that isn't Pashtun, which is the 60 percent that's not in a continual state of warfare now, stands a good chance of highlighting the ineptitude of the mostly Punjabis running the Land of the Pure. |
It's with Washington, whose military sided last week with Mr Karzai's rag-tag army in a border dispute where it used massive aerial power to pound a Pakistani border post and kill eleven of our soldiers.
| The rag-tag Afghan army clobbers the feared Taliban every time the feared Taliban is dumb enough to engage them. Every time. That's why the Talibs stick to attacking policemen and, even better, civilians. |
This disproportionate use of power was so senseless it could only be a deliberate hostile act against Pakistan.
| It could have been an act of legitimate self defense. It could also have been an act of contempt toward an ally-in-name-only whose duplicitousness is so poorly concealed that they trip over it twice in the course of a single sentence. |
The explanation given by Dr Condoleezza Rice to our foreign minister – whom she tried to convince this was a case of friendly-fire – has no buyers in Pakistan.
| No. I don't think it was friendly. I think we were killing Taliban. The Taliban were also members of the Pak Frontier Corps. That tells me an awful lot. If Pakistain was a civilized country, like for instance Guatamala or Samoa or Dahomey, they'd drop the subject now because there's egg on their collective face. |
If a war is being imposed on Pakistan – and all indications are that this is the case – then Islamabad should retaliate.
| Islamabad is "retaliating" by allowing primitives to swarm across the border with the intent of killing infidels or anybody else who doesn't agree with them. |
To regain respect, Pakistani military should henceforth hold the government in Kabul and the Afghan military directly responsible for any act of aggression emanating from Afghan soil. In last week's case, Pakistani military should have launched a retaliatory strike targeting the nearby Afghan army posts.
| I'd love to see that. We'd all love to see that show: The Mighty Pak Army launched against a trained Afghan army and NATO. That'd be better'n sex. Or maybe nearly as good. I can't remember... |
The prime minister could have sanctioned the attack after seeking, and receiving, parliament's consent on urgent basis, even after the operation.
| Then he could have handed out medals to the survivors, if any. |
A Pakistani counterstrike would have tested and exposed the intentions of the American-led NATO troops. A subsequent attack on Pakistan would have confirmed this was no misunderstanding.
| And what would have been the Pak interpretation of us tossing their bullet-riddled carcasses back across the border without invading? |
The Americans have been saber-rattling for months now and the June 10 attack fitted a pattern of US official statements, media leaks, and cross-border violations.
| Oh. I understand now. He's been mistaking warnings for the sort of saber-rattling and face-making the Paks are fond of. |
In every sense of the word, an undeclared war is being waged against Pakistan from the Afghan soil since 2004.
| We've watched with something between bemused interest and awe as the Pak "government" has lost all its sovreignty, not to us or the Afghans or Indian invaders or tentacled nematodes from Arcturus XIV, but to a passle of unwashed bandidos with a veneer of religion. |
Islamabad is in possession of plenty of real and circumstantial evidence to this effect.
| Such as the ruins of Damadola and the bones of a fairly large number of Arabs. |
The purpose of this war is to set off ethnic and religious wars inside Pakistan to weaken the country and precipitate its disintegration. In the past four years, separatist activity in the entire Pakistani region next to Afghanistan jumped from nil to levels not seen since the 1980s, when the Soviets used Afghan soil for the same purpose.
| He's making the assumption that Pakistain is important enough on the world stage that we'd bother to plot and plan its disintegration when it's pretty obvious that disintegration's what happens naturally to states like Pakistain. This is known in the psychology game as "delusions of adequacy." |
Afghanistan has a political problem that the US and its puppet regime in Kabul have been unable to resolve for the past seven years. This failure is destabilizing Pakistan, not the other way around. The Pakistani foreign minister should have used the Afghan donor conference in Paris last week to make it clear that Islamabad – and NATO for that matter – cannot be held responsible for Washington and Kabul's inability to end the Afghan civil conflict.
| I think that after nearly seven years we've got a pretty good idea of where the roots of the problem lie. |
It's also time to turn the tables. Pakistan should issue a list of demands to the regime in Kabul. The list should ask for a halt in all cross-border terrorism originating from Afghan soil into Pakistan. This includes the closure of training camps for terrorists who are sent into our provinces of Balochistan and NWFP and the expulsion of all terrorist elements recruited from Pakistan and sheltered at safe houses provided by the Afghan government. Failure to meet these legitimate demands should result in punitive measures; including restricting both Afghanistan's overland trade and US fuel supplies through Pakistani land and airspace.
| That's the key, isn't it? Afghanistan's landlocked. It can only be gotten to by way of Pakistain, Central Asia or Iran. Of these, Pakistain was the easiest nut to crack. At the time, I don't think we realized just how much a part of the problem they were. And they don't understand that problems are made to be solved. |
Washington has been double-crossing Pakistan from the moment Islamabad joined America's war on terror.
| Actually, Pakistain didn't "join" the war on terror. George Bush frightened Perv into giving us what we wanted at the time. What the Paks have given has been reluctant and it's been constrained by their internal politix, which they think are Byzantine but which are merely duplicitous. |
In the seven years since 9/11, Washington has deliberately ignored Pakistan's legitimate security needs and concerns in Afghanistan on every count.
| "Strategic depth" is a case in point, in fact... |
Under American watch, rabidly anti-Pakistan warlords and exiled elements with Indian connections going back to the days of the Soviets have been encouraged to wield influence in Kabul.
| Perhaps there are good reasons for the rabidly anti-Pak stance of the warlords. India, the width of an entire country removed, makes a good counterweight to the bully next door. |
The narcotic trade has been allowed to recover from near-total eradication under the previous regime, giving a boost to organized crime affecting both Pakistan and Iran.
| We notice that the vast majority of the opium fields are in the Pashtun belt adjacent to Pakistain, where the bulk of the drug is exported. |
Pakistani officials have long been suspecting that some Indian and Afghan elements operating in Afghanistan have an interest in inciting a confrontation between Pakistan and the United States. But it is also true that Washington has accorded little importance, by design or by coincidence, to the legitimate security and strategic interests of its Pakistani ally. We should win together in Afghanistan. Washington's victory should not become a Pakistani loss.
| Just think of Pakistain as our version of "strategic depth." And cough up Binny. |
|