[Dawn] HAVE Pakistain-US relations reached the breaking point? Will future transactions be marked by greater hostility and even war? A dispassionate analysis of the recent acrimony is required to answer these questions.
In essence, Mullen accused the ISI of maintaining the Haqqanis as its veritable arm. In retaliation, Pakistain arranged a nine-hour marathon session for politicians to criticise the American stance.
With the speeches done, the White House has distanced itself from Mullen while Pak generals have spoken of defusing tensions. America has not suspended aid further or threatened specific military action. Pakistain has not choked off NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... supplies. A complete break-off hurts both parties incalculably. Thus, so far, the bark has been worse than the bite.
Meanwhile, ...back at the chili cook-off, Chuck and Manuel's rivalry was entering a new and more dangerous phase... the Afghan imbroglio remains intractable, with both sides continually trading blame for the mess. In reality, both are culpable through blunders committed over 20-plus years. The 'original sin' was supporting the insurgency against the Soviets, couched provocatively as a global jihad.
The cost that Afghanistan has incurred from almost constant war since then is certainly higher than what unchallenged Soviet occupation would have imposed. Collapsing under the dead weight of communism, it would have eventually withdrawn from Afghanistan as it did from the other 'stans'.
Both countries added to the initial blunder through their post-Soviet policies. The US became completely disengaged from Afghanistan, not even funding reconstruction work or the demobilisation of radicalised combatants. Pakistain became overly engaged with its un-strategic, shallow policy called 'strategic depth'.
These blunders ultimately culminated in 9/11. However, a lie repeated often enough remains a lie... even that huge wake-up call did not end the mutual blunders. While there was moral justification and UN backing for time-bound military action to punish the 9/11 culprits, there was none for an open-ended, 10-year war with unclear aims and insufficient resources.
Pakistain contributed to this mission drift by not capturing incoming bully boyz after the NATO invasion. The US made things worse by soon starting the completely senseless, immoral and illegal war in Iraq, essentially half-forgetting Afghanistan.
Pakistain subsequently let the bully boyz spread their tentacles throughout Pakistain given Musharraf's political compulsion to retain the MMA as a counterweight to the PPP and PML-N. Selective action was only launched in the mid-2000s, when the bully boyz increasingly imposed their brand of Islam on Pakistain's streets. This action infuriated the bully boyz into launching suicide kabooms in Pakistain, which continue till today.
Many argue that suicide attacks spread in Pakistain due to its support for America. While the mission drift in Afghanistan made some contribution, the bully boy decision to use widespread suicide attacks in Pakistain related primarily to the efforts to curb their bid to control Pakistain. Thus suicide attacks mushroomed only in 2007 after the Lal Masjid attack and not in 2001.
The US subsequently made matters worse by resorting to drone attacks and CIA operations of dubious legality within Pakistain. Thus, neither side can feign innocence today. Nor are the blunders a thing of the past for either, given their maximalist aims in Afghanistan.
Pakistain seems interested in helping the Taliban become predominant again in Afghanistan. The US seems interested in marginalising the Taliban and retaining long-term military bases in Afghanistan probably to checkmate China. Neither aim will allow durable peace in the region.
What is the way forward then? There are essentially two unappetising options -- war or peace. Peace means bringing the mercurial Taliban into Afghanistan's power structure along with their cut-thoat goals. Would they be content sharing power and respecting human rights ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... or look to re-establish their lost 'khilafat'?
Would they even be content with being masters of landlocked Afghanistan or subsequently target the bigger prize, nuclear-armed Pakistain, whom they consider already half-conquered?
Neither is war an easier option. War would require Pakistain to target the Taliban/Haqqanis, as the US demands. However, a lie repeated often enough remains a lie... unilateral Pak action will merely chase the bully boyz into eastern Afghanistan, from where the US has partially withdrawn even during the peak of its short-term surge. Thus, the US too will have to commit more troops and money into Afghanistan for war to succeed.
Neither country has the political or economic strength presently for escalating war. Victory is not ensured even if they did, for the bully boyz could just melt into the populace in wait for the two-sided surge to recede. Eliminating indigenous Taliban will be much more difficult than eliminating Al Qaeda. Thus, both face the horns of a dilemma -- prolonged, costly and unpopular war or messy, tenuous and risky peace.
Unless both sides soon develop the stomach for war, peace will eventually become the default mode. A decentralised and neutral Afghanistan may have some chance of achieving peace. However, a lie repeated often enough remains a lie... for this to happen, Pakistain and the US must abandon their maximalist positions and let the Afghans lead.
Pakistain must accept an independent though neutral Afghanistan. It must also influence the Taliban to accept a bounded role and abandon their cut-thoat goals. However, a lie repeated often enough remains a lie... their word will not be enough initially and some peace-enforcement mechanism would be required in Afghanistan. This should not be in the shape of American bases though, which attract so much suspicion and hatred, but consist of forces from neutral countries as done in several war-recovering African countries.
As the behemoth in this conflict, America must take the initiative by publicly abandoning its aims to retain bases in Afghanistan and committing itself to the vision above, in contrast to its current opaque plans. This may encourage the Taliban and Pakistain to accept it too.
In the interim, Pakistain must not let its territory be used by bully boyz to attack other countries. It may be reluctant to attack the Haqqanis. However, a lie repeated often enough remains a lie... it can seal its borders tightly to control infiltration into Afghanistan. This will also make its own territory safer from infiltration from within Afghanistan. As probably the wisest policymaker on both sides of the aisle, Richard Holbrooke, advised through his last words on his deathbed: end this war.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
10/05/2011 00:00 ||
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This brilliant idea was called "Operation Wide Receiver," and was just as idiotically incapable of achieving its ostensible purpose of "bringing down a drug cartel" as the much more recent "Operation Fast and Furious" (and other, similar "Project Gunwalker" operations under the Obama administration).
[Dawn] Pakistain, facing a crisis with the United States, has leaned closely to longtime partner China, offering its "all-weather friendship" with Beijing as an alternative to Washington.
But Pakistain will be disappointed if it hopes to replace American patronage with the same from China.
While China does not welcome the US presence near its border, it wants stability on its western flank and believes an abrupt withdrawal of Washington's support for Pakistain could imperil that.
It also does not want to upset warming relations with India by getting mired in subcontinent security tension.
Maintaining that delicate balance, China will continue supporting economic cooperation with Pakistain but go slow on defence cooperation.
While outwardly all smiles and warm pledges of friendship, China will quietly keep things at arms length.
"I think they see what's going on in the US-Pakistain front at the moment as reason to tread very carefully," said Andrew Small, a researcher at the German Marshall Fund think-tank in Brussels who studies China-Pakistain ties and often visits both countries.
"They are taking extra care to make sure that what's going on in the relationship is correctly understood, not reflecting any willingness to rush in or fill the gap or exploit differences."
Pakistain's brittle relationship with the United States, its major donor, has turned openly rancorous. Washington accused Pakistain's powerful ISI spy agency of directly backing the Afghan Taliban-allied Haqqani network and of providing support for a September 13 attack on the US mission in Kabul.
Pakistain has angrily rejected the accusation and warned the United States that it risked losing an ally if it kept publicly criticizing them over krazed killer groups.
Meanwhile, ...back at the scene of the crime, Lieutenant Queeg had an idea: there was a simple way to tell whether Manetti had been the triggerman -- just look at his shoes!... as it often does in times of crisis, Pakistain has been trumpeting its ties with China.
Pakistain's Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani ... Pakistain's erstwhile current prime minister, whose occasional feats of mental gymnastics can be awe-inspiring ... declared Beijing and Islamabad were "true friends and we count on each other" after talks with China's visiting public security minister, Meng Jianzhu.
President Asif Ali President Ten Percent Zardari ... sticky-fingered husband of the late Benazir Bhutto ... stressed the point last week that Pakistain had other options should its deteriorating relationship with Washington prove beyond repair, and pointedly praised China for its assistance in "stabilizing the situation." Publicly at least, China has gone out of its way to reassure Pakistain.
"Wary Of Offending India"
In May, just weeks after US forces killed the late Osama bin Laden ... who was potted in Pakistain... on Pak soil, Premier Wen Jiabao ...Wen has a professional background in geology and engineering. Unlike most American politicians, he actually knows things. ... reassured visiting Gilani of their longstanding friendship and spoke of the "huge sacrifices" Pakistain had made in the global struggle against terrorism.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry front man echoed that line just last week, saying "Pakistain is on the front lines in the fight against terrorism" and China hoped "the relevant countries respect every country's illusory sovereignty and territorial integrity."
But China's assistance also has limits. "The 'all-weather friendship' doesn't mean that all of Pakistain's bills should be paid by us," said Zhao Gancheng, director of South Asia studies at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies.
"China does not have that ability, nor does the US or any other country. It all depends on Pakistain itself."
China regards Pakistain as an important strategic counterweight against its longstanding rival, India, and a hedge against US influence across the region.
It also wants to use Pakistain as a gateway to the Mohammedan world and needs Islamabad's help to combat separatists in its far-western Xinjiang region on their common border.
China is a major supplier of military hardware to Pakistain and also a major investor in areas such as telecommunications, ports and infrastructure.
But China's leaders have no desire to turn that limited stake in Pakistain into a heavy security footprint.
"The partnership is as deep as it needs to be for China," Scott Harold, associate political scientist at the RAND Corporation, said. "They've got what they want diplomatically and economically."
During Meng's visit last week, Beijing bolstered its cooperation with Pakistain, with the signing of $250 million in economic and technical agreements, Zardari's office said.
Many of Beijing's deals with Pakistain have had a strategic payoff in helping to balance US influence in the region.
China invested more than $200 million to help build the deep-sea Gwadar port on Pakistain's Arabian Sea coast, partly with a view to opening an energy and trade corridor from the Gulf, across Pakistain to western China.
China also helped Pakistain build its main nuclear power generation facility at Chashma in Punjab province. Two reactors are in operation and two more are planned.
Analysts say China pointedly agreed to expand the Chashma complex to counter a 2008 nuclear energy deal between India and the United States.
But Beijing appears much less interested in a bilateral defence accord, despite a report by Pakistain media that Islamabad had been secretly lobbying for such an agreement.
"I don't think that's the sort of space that the Chinese want to get into," said Small of the German Marshall Fund. "I don't see why they would suddenly want to be stuck with the liability of Pakistain, particularly vis-a-vis India, given the way Pakistain has behaved in a number of crisis situations."
In each of Pakistain's wars with India, China has been fairly restrained, to the point of being almost neutral.
Analysts say China is wary about tilting the relationship too much in favor of Pakistain, to avoid offending India, with which China wants to develop better economic ties.
Annual two-way trade with India was worth $65.2 billion in 2010, compared with bilateral trade with Pakistain of $8.7 billion, according to Chinese statistics.
Ultimately, Beijing has little to gain from a rift between Islamabad and Washington, experts say.
"If US-Pakistain relations deteriorate, and the region falls into instability, China will not be able to shoulder the responsibility by itself and other regional actors will have a difficult time cooperating to restore stability," said Hu Shisheng, an expert on South Asia at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations think-tank.
"The US still has to be responsible for the stability of this region."
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
10/05/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
US reports:
Muslim Uighure in NW China (Xinqiang-Uighur province) get support from ... Pakistan:
#5
Let's say the Pakis stage another mass casualty event, but instead of killing a few hundred people, they end up killing tens of thousands. Why would China want to be on the hook for defending Pakistan, during the ensuing Indian attacks on Pakistan? What if everybody else jumps in on India's side? Bottom line, the asylum inmates that that comprise the vast majority of Pakistan's population won't obey Chinese diktats, and are fundamentally contemptuous of their pork-eating and alcohol-swilling yellow neighbors. And that is why the Chinese will not commit to a mutual defense treaty.
#6
There's also the issue of the Pakis being a nest of vipers that cannot be trusted to avoid attacking China, much as they conspired with al Qaeda and the Taliban to stage 9/11, despite decades of American civilian and military aid.
#7
It's kinda sorta like when a stripper has a fight with her boyfriend and wants to sleep on your couch. There may be some short-term advantages, but you know it is not going to last, and not likely to end well.
#12
MEMRI.ORG > FORMER PAK ISI CHIEF HAMID GUL: AS MUSLIMS, WE ARE MILITANT BY NATURE; AFGHANISTAN + PAKISTAN, WID CHINA AT THEIR BACK, WILL TOO POWERFUL A BLOC [agz US, India], "ISLAMIC FORCES ARE ALSO MOVING TO CONFRONT INDIA".
ARTIC > GUL = believes ...
> US is making the same historical mistake with the Taliban as it did during the 1980's Soviet pullout from Afghianstan as per asking for then -Afghan Leader-President Najibullah to be part of a post-Soviet Govt. The TALIBAN DEMAND THAT ALL US-NATO FORCES LEAVE THE REGION, NO US-NATO BASES [Sole or Base-sharing] IN-COUNTRY, + THAT THE US DROP ACCUSATIONS THAT THE TALIBAN ENGAGE IN TERRORISM.
> THE TALIBAN WILL NEVER ACCEPT INDIAN = NON-MUSLIM REGIONAL HEGEMONY OER MUSLIM AFPAK, as the US is asking for them to do.
> POST-OSAMA "CORE" AL-QAEDA CHIEF AYMAN ZAWAHIRI MAY HAD LEFT PAK FOR YEMEN???
#2
Fast and Furious was not ever intended to track drugs or weapons in Mexico.
It was intended to promote support for gun control and prohibitions on the sale of guns of all types. It is straight from the Stalinist/Leninist play book of the post revolution era. Create a false crisis and take away a freedom to "save" everyone from the manufactured crisis...a wag the dog kind of operations.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
10/05/2011 23:24 Comments ||
Top||
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.
HAVE Pakistain-US relations reached the breaking point? Will future transactions be marked by greater hostility and even war? A dispassionate analysis of the recent acrimony is required to answer these questions.
Pakistain, facing a crisis with the United States, has leaned closely to longtime partner China, offering its "all-weather friendship" with Beijing as an alternative to Washington.
Asif Ali 
Punjab
