Re: Pak US relationship - Afghan War End Game
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Re: Pak US relationship - Afghan War End Game
I knew this was bound to happen in the end, happens every time. Any how good step by the government to improve relations with Russia, china and European union.
In the guise of this war on terror the Americans are tightening the noose against china, and especially with their current buildup in Asia things are becoming clearer. It’s important for Pakistan to side with the region instead of america in all these affairs.
In any future confrontation of Americans with Chinese we know where Pakistan and India will be standing. The Americans want India to play a bigger role in world politics to counter the Chinese. Dangerous games!
**US Pacific build-up gets nod in Beijing snub
US Pacific build-up gets nod in Beijing snubJohn Garnaut, Beijing June 03, 2012
http://images.smh.com.au/2012/06/02/3345269/art-panetta-300x0.jpg
US Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta: ‘The United States military is rebalancing and brings enhanced capabilities to [the Pacific] region.’*Photo: AFP
AUSTRALIA has thrown its support behind a ‘‘rebalancing’’ of American military might in the Pacific region, which promises to deepen strategic rivalries with China.
Defence Minister Stephen Smith yesterday spoke of the ‘‘positive impact’’ of the United States on regional security, just hours before the US presented its most detailed plan of how it will bulk up military might into the Pacific region while making budget cuts elsewhere.
Chinese analysts said the US and Australian comments will provide more ammunition to those in China who argue that the US is using its allies to ‘‘contain’’ China’s rise.
But, they said, the civilian Chinese leadership in unlikely to be drawn into a new verbal spat with the US or Australia as it continues to play down diplomatic incidents - including the arrest of an alleged American spy - in an attempt to smooth the road to a once-a-decade leadership transition later this year.
‘‘By 2020, the navy will reposture its forces from today’s roughly 50-50 split between the Pacific and the Atlantic to about a 60-40 split between those oceans,’’ US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told Asian officials at a conference in Singapore yesterday.
‘‘That will include six aircraft carriers in this region, a majority of our cruisers, destroyers, combat ships and submarines,’’ he said.
**
Re: Pak US relationship - Afghan War End Game
Re: Pak US relationship - Afghan War End Game
Despite disliking of anyone, no peace in Afghanistan is possible without Pakistan:)
Re: Pak US relationship - Afghan War End Game
^ thats the history, and that would be the future. Both countries will have to improve their relations for betterment of environment in the region and beyond.
Re: Pak US relationship - Afghan War End Game
The destiny of both nations is intervined, the share a big region of Pashtoonistan:), World has to take Pakistan on the board if they are sincere to peace in Af-Pak region.
Re: Pak US relationship - Afghan War End Game
There's nothing called pashtunistan, yes pashtuns live on both side of the borders.
Re: Pak US relationship - Afghan War End Game
Feeling nervous already? 
As U.S. Eyes Afghanistan Withdrawal, Will China Up Its Role? | World | TIME.com
The U.S. “pivot” to East Asia is looking increasingly like a game of musical chairs. The military, diplomatic and economic shift, which President Obama first presented last fall, was envisioned as a response to the winding down of the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the increasing military power of China. Last week, while traveling in Asia, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that by 2020 about 60% of the U.S. Navy’s warships would be stationed in the Pacific Ocean, versus a roughly 50-50 split between Atlantic and Pacific today. **But even as the U.S. shifts to the East, China is looking to its far West, to the very place the U.S. is planning to quit. The U.S. and its allies plan to withdraw most of their troops from Afghanistan by 2014. China, however, has large and growing interests in the country with which it shares a short, mountainous border. Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai met Friday with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao in Beijing, where they announced a new strategic partnership. Afghanistan was also made an observer of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional security group made up of Russia, China and four central Asian states, which was holding its annual summit in Beijing.
**
In recent years, China has become a key investor in Afghanistan. In 2007, China Metallurgical Group won a $3 billion lease to mine the Aynak copper field in Logar province, the largest single project in the country. Last year, Afghanistan approved China National Petroleum Corporation’s bid to drill for oil and natural gas in Sari Pul and Faryab provinces, the first concession granted a foreign firm. Trade between the two countries is small but rapidly growing, increasing from $25 million in 2000 to $234 million last year. But while China looks to Afghanistan to fulfill part of its appetite for energy and raw materials, its chief interest is security. China has been wary of the U.S.-led western military presence in the country. At the same time Beijing suspects that some of the Uighur militants behind attacks in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang have received training and shelter in Afghanistan under the previous Taliban regime. Likewise, China is a market for Afghanistan’s booming heroin production. Part of Friday’s declaration signed by Hu and Karzai included a renunciation of terrorism, extremism, separatism and organized crime, a sign of China’s concerns about Afghanistan’s influence on stability in Xinjiang.
Hu also met with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Beijing last week, where the two reaffirmed their common stance against intervention in Syria. As Panetta was traveling through Asia visiting U.S. allies and partners, Putin’s Beijing turn signaled that China also has friends in the neighborhood. While China is facing rivalries with Vietnam and the Philippines over territorial claims in the South China Sea and with Japan over parts of the East China Sea, the SCO grouping fosters stability among China’s central Asian neighbors. As the U.S. plots its Afghanistan withdrawal, some observers in Russia and China have suggested that the grouping lead Afghan peace talks, citing the lack of direct involvement in the U.S.-led war against the Taliban as a key advantage for the regional bloc. But despite the appearances of Sino-Russian comity in Beijing, the massive neighbors have very divergent goals that prevent deep cooperation, independent analyss Bobo Lo argued in a New York Times op-ed.China, which refused any participation in the coalition force in Afghanistan, either through the contribution of troops or in a resupply role, will continue eschewing any military involvement. Instead, Beijing hopes that increased investment will improve stability while helping provide the raw materials consumed by China’s economy. “Faced with the threats of extremism and drugs, the long-term strategy is to start with economics, the establishment of regional transportation networks and to expand Afghanistan’s trade with Central Asia and China, letting China’s economic engine to drive economic development in Afghanistan,” Chen Xiaochen, a journalist and researcher, wrote Monday in China Business News, a Shanghai-based financial daily. “The local people have employment, and the support for terrorism will be reduced. With the replacement planting, local people will be able to grow fewer poppies. Afghanistan is a high-risk area, but that means returns will be high.”
Re: Pak US relationship - Afghan War End Game
Amateur Hour in Chicago - By Arif Rafiq | Foreign Policy
**As last weekend’s NATO summit made clear, President Barack Obama’s Hamlet-like indecisiveness on Pakistan plagues his administration’s relationship with the country and its president, Asif Ali Zardari. Obama remains unable to effectively manage the need to both apologize to and reengage Pakistan, while at the same time moving the country away from supporting militant groups that destabilize it and the region.
**
Since November, the Obama team has agonized over whether it should apologize for the deadly U.S. air attack on a Pakistani Salala military base along the border with Afghanistan. Twenty-four Pakistani soldiers died as U.S. helicopters fired on the Salala base for two hours, including more than an hour after Pakistani liaisons pleaded for the attacks to stop. The Wall Street Journal reported this month that planned apologies to Pakistan were aborted numerous times – including once after Qurans were found to be desecrated by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. Washington has expressed “regret” and offered its condolences for the incident.
For all the importance Obama claims to place on Pakistan, he has taken a back seat in directing the sinking partnership with Islamabad. In the extensively sourced Wall Street Journal report, the president is missing from the narrative. The internal administration debate on whether to apologize to Pakistan seems to be one among principals, deputies, and senior aides. But the U.S.-Pakistan relationship is too important for Obama to delegate.
As a candidate, Obama argued not only that the war in Afghanistan, not Iraq, was the real post-9/11 war, but also that Pakistan holds more strategic importance for the United States than Afghanistan. In a June 2008 address, Obama said, “as president, I will make the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban [in Afghanistan and Pakistan] the top priority that it should be.” He added, “The greatest threat to that security [in Afghanistan and the United States] lies in the tribal regions of Pakistan.” In Obama’s first two years as president, his administration reviewed America’s AfPak strategy not once, but three times, with numerous course corrections along the way. Numerous press accounts portray the president as deeply and very personally involved at key points in the decision-making process.
Contrast that with his behavior at the NATO summit: Initially, the White House told reporters the president would not meet with Zardari, a clear snub. But this clashed with the administration’s strategy of enhancing and maintaining support with Pakistan’s civilian democrats while taking the military to task. By summit’s end, the administration backtracked – realizing that a complete snub of Zardari could hurt Pakistan’s fragile democratic transition – and Obama held two “brief” meetings with the Pakistani president. The White House highlighted these interactions, yet emphasized that they were not especially substantive. Obama then awkwardly avoided mentioning Pakistan in his press conference at the summit’s close. (He referred to NATO’s commitment to bringing “peace and stability to South Asia, including Afghanistan’s neighbors,” but Pakistan is the only South Asian state that borders Afghanistan.) Finally, Obama gave an extensive response to the first question from the media, which was on Pakistan, giving the impression that his discussions with Zardari were wide in scope. The Obama administration’s behavior was not carefully calibrated diplomatic messaging, but tactical maneuvering that was imprecise, difficult to decipher, and verging on passive aggression. It was amateur hour.
The president’s refusal to apologize has kept U.S.-Pakistan relations frozen at last winter’s nadir, and the spring has seen no thaw. Relations could have been back on track had the president swallowed his pride and allowed his diplomatic team to bring Pakistan on board to secure a lasting peace in Afghanistan.
Yes, the White House fears the Romney campaign could cast too many concurrent apologies as weakness. But economic and domestic, not global, leadership, will decide who wins in 2012. And the Obama campaign can refute claims of weakness on Pakistan by reminding voters that Obama not only unilaterally sent Special Forces into the heart of the Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden but also vastly expanded the drone bombing campaign on Pakistani soil, over the vocal opposition of the Pakistani government and public.
A strategic convergence between the United States and Pakistan is possible. Neither wants civil war in Afghanistan. Both have leverage over different sets of belligerents in Afghanistan’s intensifying internal feud. (Pakistan has the most clout with the Taliban and its Afghan allies, while the United States has working, albeit increasingly troubled, ties with a broad segment of mainstream Afghan factions.) But both lack a coherent, viable Afghanistan strategy. Washington hopes to hand over security control to Afghan forces its own troops believe are compromised by drug-abuse and thievery. Meanwhile, Islamabad has succeeded only in antagonizing most of Afghanistan’s power brokers; its partners, the Taliban and associated militant groups, are incapable of taking over the country. Pakistan is the most disliked country in Afghanistan. And the longer instability prevails in Afghanistan, the bigger the strain on Pakistan’s economy and security. A stable Afghanistan in which all major power brokers, including the Taliban, are brought into a legitimate and reasonably effective political process is in the interest of both Washington and Islamabad.
Though Pakistan is in a period of political transition – new elections could take place as early as October – Obama should engage Pakistani civilian leaders on how to best aid Afghans in resolving their civil war. Washington can help Islamabad in its outreach to non-Pashtun power brokers, such as members of the anti-Karzai and anti-Taliban National Front. Islamabad can in turn coax the Taliban and Haqqani network to join a sustained peace process. Only by working together can the United States and Pakistan serve as guarantors of a lasting, Afghan-owned political settlement.
Some might dismiss the idea of engaging Pakistan’s civilians on security issues. After all, isn’t the military in charge? But in the past year, Pakistan’s federal cabinet and parliament have played a much more active role in forming the country’s national security policy. Civilian oversight bodies, such as the prime minister-led Defense Cabinet Committee, have been remarkably more proactive since the bin Laden raid. The Parliamentary Committee on National Security, led by Senator Raza Rabbani, has created a landmark set of recommendations on how to reshape ties with the United States. It’s the product of consensus between secular ethnic nationalists, Islamists, and centrist parties. And last year, a conference consisting of all of Pakistan’s major political parties resolved to"give peace a chance" and back out of the war on terror.
Americans are tired of war. So are Pakistanis and Afghans. There is a collective realization that war is not the solution, but the road map for peace has yet to be charted.
President Obama has a diminishing but real opportunity to not simply exit from Afghanistan, but exit in a way that vastly reduces the prospects of renewed civil war. To start, he must break the impasse with Pakistan and engage its civilian leadership. But this time, the conversation can’t be brief.
Re: Pak US relationship - Afghan War End Game
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303444204577462883225254476.html?mod=googlenews_wsj)
WASHINGTON—**U.S. and Pakistani officials have held secret exploratory talks on a new counterterrorism partnership, but that initiative and others are held up by the impasse over an American apology for the deaths last year of 24 Pakistani troops, both countries said.
The dispute over an apology for the Nov. 26 deaths—which Pakistan has demanded but which the White House has refused to give—has widening implications. It is delaying a deal to reopen critical supply routes for U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in neighboring Afghanistan, U.S. and Pakistani officials say.
**
**The dispute also makes reaching a deal on counterterrorism cooperation that much harder.
**
Senior U.S. officials in recent months have quietly sounded out their Pakistani counterparts about negotiating a broad accord intended to give Islamabad a greater role in what has largely been a unilateral U.S. drone campaign against Pakistan-based militants, participants in the preliminary talks say.
The proposals call for a joint military campaign against militants that would incorporate U.S. drones as well as Pakistani F-16s and ground forces, these officials say.
The Central Intelligence Agency, which pilots the hunter-killer drones in Pakistan, invited the new head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, Lt. Gen. Zaheerul Islam, to Washington last month to discuss counterterrorism cooperation, but the visit was postponed, reflecting the two countries’ fraught relations.
A partnership with Pakistan on counterterrorism operations is critical, advocates say, to ensure that the U.S. can keep the pressure on al Qaeda and its allies as American and international forces gradually pull out of Afghanistan. Without a deal, they say, Pakistan could move to block CIA drone flights.
Islamabad has publicly called for the U.S. spy agency to halt all drone attacks on its territory but it hasn’t taken any tangible steps to stop the flights.
The Pakistanis have in recent months grown so frustrated that they have explored options to counter the drones, including shooting them down and mounting a legal challenge to the program in the World Court as a violation of international law and of the United Nations Charter, say people familiar with the matter.
**Senior U.S. and Pakistani officials acknowledge the difficulty of forging a real counterterrorism partnership given deep-seated Pakistani public opposition to U.S. drone operations.
**
**Reflecting its frustration with Pakistan, the White House has authorized stepped-up CIA strikes in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan in recent weeks.
**The hurdles to any deal are great, both sides acknowledge.
**Vali Nasr, a former top Obama administration adviser on Pakistan, said the current U.S. strategy of “pressure, pressure and more pressure” is unlikely to lead to a “grand bargain” on the drone program and counterterrorism. “We can’t even get out of the gate with an apology.”
**
Moreover, officials say talks on a counterterrorism deal setting out the roles of U.S. and Pakistani forces would be complicated by disagreements between the countries over which militant groups should be targeted, officials say.
While U.S. officials believe Pakistan would consent to U.S. drone strikes targeting top al Qaeda leaders and Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, which is battling the Pakistani government, Islamabad has so far balked at strikes against the Haqqani network, which American officials say has long-standing ties to Pakistan’s intelligence agency and is responsible for attacks against U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
To try to address Pakistanis’ concerns that the drone strikes impinge on their sovereignty, U.S. officials have raised the possibility of a more collaborative approach under which U.S. drone operations could be conducted in concert with strikes from Pakistan’s fleet of F-16s.
The U.S. would, in turn, share more intelligence with Pakistan to support operations by its air and ground forces, officials say. Intelligence sharing has been hampered in the past because of U.S. concerns that Pakistan will tip off wanted militants before the strikes take place.
The Obama administration has made clear that drone strikes will continue to target what remains of al Qaeda’s network in the tribal areas of Pakistan, whether Islamabad agrees or not. But U.S. officials involved in the preliminary discussions believe the Pakistani government would be more receptive to cooperating if those operations were seen as part of a broader campaign supporting Pakistani forces. Officials said such a strategy could allow the Pakistanis to argue that the drone attacks aren’t an affront to their sovereignty because they directly benefit Islamabad.
Advocates of such an arrangement acknowledge that reaching a deal may be a “long shot” in the near-term, but they want negotiations to begin.
U.S. officials said President Barack Obama was wary of apologizing to a country that continues to harbor militants. Such an apology at the height of a presidential campaign could expose him to criticism from Republicans.
**The U.S. officials say they believe Pakistan postponed Lt. Gen. Zahir’s visit to Washington because the government wants to settle other outstanding differences, including over the reopening of NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, before tackling thorny counter-terrorism issues, encompassing the drone program. The Pentagon said this week that it pulled U.S. negotiators.
**
**Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S., Sherry Rehman, said the lack of an apology is holding up counterterrorism discussions. “We are committed to working with the international community to bring stability to the region, and this includes the U.S., of course,” she said.
**
“The apology is holding up important discussions in many areas, including a broader conversation on counterterrorism cooperation. I hope we resume productive cooperation in many areas, but all of it will have to pass the test of transparency. Drone attacks need to cease, especially since most of al Qaeda has been destroyed, that too with our active cooperation.”
A U.S. official said there “there’s always room for discussion” with the Pakistanis on ways they can partner with the U.S. and “get more involved in the defense of their own country from terrorists.” But the official said progress in this area tends to “happen incrementally” and that there were no active negotiations “when it comes to conducting the counterterrorism operations needed to protect the U.S. and its interests.”
A Pakistani official said that a counterterrorism program using Islamabad’s F-16s and the U.S.'s drones would only be acceptable if the Pakistanis were involved with the operations of both. The F-16s could be used in relatively unpopulated areas.
Among the proposals that were floated were a joint program run out of the Pakistani military’s headquarters in Rawalpindi and a joint program run out of one of the border patrol outposts along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
The Pakistani official said Lt. Gen. Zahir will visit the U.S. when his schedule allows, and that a visit is expected in the near future.
A U.S. official said: “The ball’s in their court. We’re ready to have him back.”
Re: Pak US relationship - Afghan War End Game
US congressional delagation is in Pakistan, lets see if both countries can reach to a solution!
Re: Pak US relationship - Afghan War End Game
^ I think it has returned back, kayani refused to meet them.
Re: Pak US relationship - Afghan War End Game
oh okay, But its kinda strange that he refused to meet them, didnt expect this from him :(
Re: Pak US relationship - Afghan War End Game
talks on getting the routes re-opened have become snagged on a Pakistani demand for a substantial increase in the fees Pakistan charges on the supplies, media has reported.
But Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar rejected that.
“Pakistan is not in any sort of price-gouging debate right now. So these impressions are indeed incorrect, wrong and must be dispersed as soon as possible,” Khar told reporters.
“The US side knows very well the needs and requirements to enable us to move in that direction, to enable us to take that decision,” she said, referring to re-opening the routes.
Re: Pak US relationship - Afghan War End Game
A few events that have taken place during the past few months:
1) NATO Summit where Zardari was reportedly snubbed
2) After the summit drone strikes resume, 9 so far during the past three weeks
3) Pakistan sentences Afridi which sent the relationship in a downward spiral
4) ISI Chief was supposed to visit US on an official trip, which was cancelled due to pressing reasons
5) Kayani refuses to meet with visiting US Assistant Secretary of Defence
6) American team which was in Pakistan for the past 6 weeks to negotiate the opening of NATO supplies returns empty handed
The US attitude (unilateral and at times seems arrogant) in the region has increased anti Americanism to an extent that the government has very little space to manoeuvre.
Re: Pak US relationship - Afghan War End Game
Pakistan and the US left | DAWN.COM
LAST week saw another episode in the petulant saga of sulks and ‘sorry’ that is the Pakistan-US relationship.
A drone hovering over the tribal areas shot a Hellfire missile and took out an Al Qaeda operative, the number two on the list of important targets whose collective elimination is to mean an eradication of terrorism. Yahya Al-Libi had been living in the Dattakhel area, and was identified last year by US officials as one of the five people who could have succeeded Osama bin Laden.
The names of the 10 other people who died in the attack remain unknown.
The drone attack on Pakistani territory was followed by a verbal spanking. Perched across the border, CIA chief Leon Panetta — whose agency secretly and solely handles almost all the US operations in Pakistan — chided this country for not helping enough in the project of eliminating terrorist hideouts; he announced that drone attacks would continue.
Despite the drone hits and the scolding, Pakistani and American officials continued to sit in some secret room in Islamabad and haggled over the specific words of apologies and the exact prices of tankers.
A lot happened this past week, but everything stayed the same.
In the time since the raid on the Bin Laden compound and the attack on the Salala check post last November, Pakistani officials, policymakers and diplomats have worked particularly hard to emphasise to the US the cost being extracted from Pakistanis for the ‘war on terror’.
The issue of impinged sovereignty in terms of drone attacks, the security costs of convoys of supplies meant for the military passing through towns and cities, the public health costs of spies being planted in vaccination programmes, have been enumerated as reasons that impede Pakistan’s ability to cooperate with the US or the capacity of the civilian government to maintain some bare semblance of stability within the country.
Despite all of these efforts, few in America know that 10 times more Pakistanis have died in terror attacks since 9/11 than the total number of Americans that perished in the twin towers. Fewer still know that Pakistan saw over 400 terrorist attacks just last year, and that the hundreds of thousands have been displaced owing to the ‘war on terror’, unleashing warfare all over the nation.
These facts, discussed in great detail and with great regularity in the Pakistani media as well as by current and former officials, have been summarily and completely been ignored in the US. For American government and military officials and diplomats, Pakistan is a nuisance, a sinister and wily nation whose hypocrisy justifies every intrusion.
Some of the cost for this accrues to Pakistan’s own strategic failings. It has been unable to harness the war narrative in a way that humanises the Pakistani victim before the ordinary American. One part of this failing can be pinned to Pakistani foreign-policy officials and their assumptions regarding the bearers of power and influence in the US.
Nearly all of Pakistan’s formal foreign policy resources, and some informal ones such as commentators, strategists and researchers, direct themselves towards a single class as a target: bureaucrats at the US State Department or within the Obama administration, or military personnel at the Pentagon.
If these power brokers can be influenced by alternative policy arguments, into seeing Pakistan’s good intentions or valid demands for reimbursement, it is believed, all problems can be solved: drones attacks stopped, supply routes reinstated for more money, the plight of dead soldiers and many more accidentally killed victims revealed, and Pakistan saved from being hit yet again by an endless war.
This recipe has not yielded the sympathy or reaffirmation of sovereignty it was meant to. The crucial missing meat is the inability to adequately note the historical and political make-up of anti-war movements in the US that have previously recreated the image of other nations attacked by their country.
When Pakistan seeks to attract the attention of only hawks in the American bureaucratic machinery, it ignores that the core of American anti-war efforts in Vietnam or Afghanistan were led by radicals, intellectuals and activists in the American left.
At the Nato summit held a few weeks ago in Chicago, it was a coalition of leftist groups — including the Occupy Movement, Veterans for Peace and Code Pink — that stood up against drone attacks in Pakistan, and illegal military interventions that impinge on the sovereignty of other countries.
This part of American politics that opposes war from an ideological position is largely ignored by Pakistani foreign officials and its advocates never invited to the regular round-up of talks, parties and events for selling Pakistan that occur weekly in Washington D.C.
Those ideologically most likely to see Pakistan as a suffering nation instead of a hated one, most amenable to creating the sort of people-to-people connections that end war, are summarily left out of the equation. Some of the reasons for this omission are the assumptions that operate in Pakistan itself, where bureaucrats and military officials hold not just a bit but all of the power.
Calculations learned at home, a disdain for grassroots politics, the haphazard inefficiency of protest politics, the sensational passion of acts of civil disobedience, are all generally treated with contempt in Pakistan. This suggests to Pakistanis that they must be similarly ineffective elsewhere.
Add to this a maimed Pakistani left having all but abandoned its own anti-war position and you have one right-dominated country imagining that another is also similarly constituted of only those who think war, secret and illegal.
For Pakistan, at least, the misunderstanding is an expensive one, marking a failure to create the one linkage that could recreate Pakistan in the American political discourse as more than a road for Nato supplies and render Pakistanis something more than cheap, forgettable collateral damage of remote-controlled violence.
The writer is an attorney teaching political philosophy and constitutional law.
Re: Pak US relationship - Afghan War End Game
Pakistan must be grateful to US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta for articulating a clear, unambiguous US line of action in regard to Pakistan’s perceived inability to proceed against groups that the US sees as dangerous to its forces operating inside Afghanistan and which are supposedly based in the tribal areas.
Now is the time for Pakistan to place its cards on the table and challenge the wholly unsubstantiated assertions of a frustrated man. If the Pakistani establishment rushes to do damage control or launches another “determined” campaign of appeasement, the US bullying is only expected to grow in intensity and ferocity. That is the lesson of history.
The fact that the defence secretary chose to deliver his warning to Pakistan from Delhi and Kabul is significant. That was intended to reinforce his tough message to the rulers of Pakistan. Panetta said the US is running out of patience with Pakistan. In the ongoing war on terror, has the US ever displayed patience, shown any deference to Pakistan’s interests or respect for its sovereignty?
Whether it is the incessant drone campaign that has killed hundreds of innocent people, including women and children, limited ground incursions inside Pakistani territory, a raid deep inside Pakistani territory to eliminate Osama bin Laden and making a mockery of the notion of Pakistan’s sovereignty, the US has never vacillated in its resolve to do whatever it considers best for its own interests. So where has it exercised patience? Let us examine the claim that some militants who are inflicting pain and misery on the coalition forces in Kabul are operating from “sanctuaries” located in the tribal area on Pakistani-Afghan border.
One may ask: on how many occasions in the past ten years have the US forces or their Afghan counterparts been able to intercept, confront, capture or kill those who intrude into Afghanistan, travel more than a hundred miles inside Afghan territory, carry out operations and then safely return to their hideouts in the tribal areas, again traversing a distance of more than a hundred miles?
This failure seems more enigmatic, considering that the coalition forces number 130,000 and are assisted by the more than 160,000-strong Afghan army in addition to more than 50,000 of “contractors” serving as security forces. The Afghan police force is also operating in the area and its strength has gone up to more than 140,000.
Also consider that these forces are equipped with the most sophisticated weapons and they function with the help of a vast surveillance network, radars and a comprehensive human intelligence apparatus.
And there is another dimension to this bizarre theory of sanctuaries. If the sanctuaries do exist, as the defence secretary claims, how and why have the hundreds of US drone strikes missed such targets for a whole decade? When mosques, houses, markets, vehicles, schools, weddings and funeral processions could be targeted and hit with such accuracy, how could the terrorists’ hideouts and sanctuaries be spared? Hitting sanctuaries should have been a top priority for the CIA drone campaign managers. This exposes the absurd rationale of the whole fragile theory that is woven around wholly baseless assumptions.
But this is repeated ad nauseam because Islamabad has never been able to confront its American interlocutors with facts and ground realities. If one were to assume, even for the sake of an argument, that some resistance in the few Afghan provinces that border Pakistan would have some connectivity with militants operating from the tribal area of Pakistan, then how would one explain the growing resistance in areas that have no border with the tribal area or with Pakistan?
On June 9, there was a deadly attack on French soldiers in Kapisa province, which neither has a border with Pakistan nor has any substantial Pakhtun population. And who are targeting the coalition forces on a daily basis in such regions as Qundus (bordering with Tajikistan), Herat (bordering with Iran), Jozjan (bordering with Turkmenistan) and such areas as Sare Pul, Ghazni, Lugar and Wardak which have no border with Pakistan.
Panetta, who is now calling the shots as far as the war theatres of Afghanistan and Iraq are concerned, must be under considerable pressure to deliver an emphatic victory at least in some sector of Afghanistan. He has some results to show, however. The night raids initiated by Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus have caused tremendous losses to the resistance, although many of the casualties were innocent Afghans. The local militias formed in some regions have also inflicted heavy losses on the resistance.
But the fighting, despite such losses, has not diminished. The most worrying thing for the Pentagon bosses is the rate of desertion in the Afghan National Army which is going up. Secondly, the many supporters and sympathisers of the resistance within the government establishment are causing a headache to the coalition forces which see their scheme for Afghanistan unravelling in the face of more defections and more “conversions.” These are formidable challenges which cannot be managed by throwing money at people.
Pakistan must be able to see the emerging mayhem in Afghanistan which a residual force of 25,000 US troops after 2014 will not be able to contain or handle. The Doha peace process is as good as dead. In any case, Mullah Umar has now decided to discontinue any future parleys with the US, having realised according to some reports that these are gimmicks aimed at creating a rift in the ranks of the resistance. To an extent the team that is based in Doha has lost its relevance for the leadership of the resistance.
These are grim and painful developments. As well as confronting the US position with the help of solid evidence and facts Pakistan must also take a more robust part in initiating a serious dialogue between the US and the resistance, exploring the solid basis that exists for working togather: no Al-Qaeda in future Afghanistan and no use of Afghan soil against any other country. As Pakistan undertakes this stupendous task it would learn very soon that common ground has existed between the position of the US and the resistance that has not been tapped into for many years.
But the success of such an effort would depend on whether the US is willing and prepared to withdraw all its soldiers, trainers, advisers within a stipulated period of time. Insurgency with all its attendant consequences will not end unless the US agrees to a complete pull-out of its forces of all types. Would the US listen?
The writer is a former interior secretary and ambassador. Email: rustammohmand @hotmail.com
Re: Pak US relationship - Afghan War End Game
Yes, now pakistanis are also responsible for the security of eastern Afghanistan.
Defense Secretary Panetta’s Pakistan comments complicate talks - latimes.com
Defense Secretary Panetta’s Pakistan comments complicate talks
WASHINGTON — The United States and Pakistan had nearly completed a deal to reopen crucial NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, officials from both countries said, when Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta harshly criticized Islamabad last week for allowing militants to mount cross-border attacks from its territory.
And with that, new problems erupted.
U.S. and Pakistani negotiators had been putting the final touches on the agreement when Panetta, speaking in Kabul on Thursday, said the U.S. was “reaching the limits of our patience” over Islamabad’s failure to root out Afghan insurgents in its tribal areas, the officials said.
In the wake of his comments, Pakistani officials refused to meet with a senior Defense Department official over the weekend in Islamabad, and the Pentagon announced Monday that it was bringing home a negotiating team that had worked in the Pakistani capital for nearly two months to end the bitter impasse over the supply routes.
The U.S. official, Peter Lavoy, a deputy assistant secretary of Defense, was not allowed to meet with Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the army chief. Kayani is widely viewed as Pakistan’s most powerful figure, and Pakistani media portrayed the snub as a clear signal of Islamabad’s displeasure with Panetta’s remarks.
U.S. officials appeared to blame the Pakistanis for the latest irritant in a strained relationship that has spiraled from bad to dismal over the last year.
At the White House, Press Secretary Jay Carney said the U.S. negotiators would return to Islamabad “when the Pakistani government is ready to conclude the agreement.”
Islamabad has barred Afghan-bound supply convoys since airstrikes by (http://applewebdata://06CB1B15-3DE5-4CC5-9898-3AD93DFFB0B3/topic/unrest-conflicts-war/defense/u.s.-military-ORGOV000021106.topic) helicopters mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border in November. A key sticking point remains a Pakistani demand that the U.S. apologize in public for the attack.
U.S. officials have repeatedly expressed regret and condolences over the deaths but have balked at issuing a formal apology for an incident that, in their view, involved mistakes by both sides.
The U.S. and its allies have adjusted to the closing of the ground routes in Pakistan by moving more military supplies by air and railroad through Russia and other countries north of Afghanistan.
But those routes are longer and more expensive, and the Pentagon badly wants the Pakistani routes reopened for its convoys, which will be particularly critical as the U.S. and other countries remove heavy equipment during troop withdrawals from Afghanistan in coming years.
In recent weeks, Pakistani authorities had backed away in private from their public demands for a sharp increase in transit fees as a condition for reopening the routes, and there were also signs that Pakistan was open to something short of a high-level public apology, U.S. officials said.
But Panetta’s comments in Kabul, the Afghan capital, which came only hours after he made a two-day stop for talks on defense cooperation in India, Pakistan’s biggest regional rival and traditional foe, have thrown that progress into doubt.
At a news conference Tuesday, Pentagon spokesmen Capt. John Kirby and George Little acknowledged that the negotiators had almost wrapped up the deal to reopen the supply routes, but they declined to go into detail about why the talks had stalled.
“The teams themselves have taken it as far as they can right now,” Kirby said. “And now it’s really in the hands of the political leadership of Pakistan to make some decisions about where they want to go strategically on this.”
Pakistani officials, for their part, said negotiations have not broken down. They insisted that the U.S. could resolve the dispute with an apology.
“We have not been given the courtesy of an apology,” said Syed Naveed Safdar Bokhari, first secretary at Pakistan’s Embassy in Washington.
Panetta and Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were incensed by a recent insurgent attack on a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan. An explosives-packed vehicle breached the outer wall and suicide bombers, some wearing U.S. and Afghan uniforms, fought their way into the compound, U.S. officials said. At least one American died of injuries after the battle.
U.S. officials quickly blamed the attack on the Haqqani network, an Afghan militant group that operates from the tribal belt in Pakistan.
One senior U.S. official disputed the notion that Panetta’s criticism of Pakistan had set back the talks.
“The sticking point for a long time has been the apology issue,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in discussing sensitive negotiations. “If Panetta had talked about growing roses instead of Pakistan, it’s doubtful the supply routes would have been opened by now.”
Pakistan’s civilian government, led by beleaguered President Asif Ali Zardari, is heading into an election season, and experts say he is eager to be seen taking a tough line with Washington in a country where anti-American sentiment runs deep. Washington has not helped his position by increasing CIA drone missile strikes against Al Qaeda and Taliban militants in the tribal areas, attacks that are deeply unpopular in Pakistan.
“As the humiliation mounts, the reaction from Pakistan mounts,” said Zafar Hilaly, a former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S. “This government has less and less room to maneuver.”
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Cloud reported from Washington and Rodriguez from Islamabad, Pakistan.
*Times staff writer Ken Dilanian in Washington contributed to this report. *
Re: Pak US relationship - Afghan War End Game
drone strike hits a building in Miranshah and kills 4, however, some people are saying it was not just a building, it was a mosque!
Re: Pak US relationship - Afghan War End Game
**KABUL: Afghanistan is expected to use the latest round of international talks on its future on Thursday to raise pressure on Pakistan over militant safe havens ahead of the departure of foreign troops.
That is why we have continued to witness major attacks, including on US interests inside Afghanistan, that have frustrated US and Afghan officials,” Najib Mahmood, a political science lecturer at Kabul University, told AFP.
“I believe the Afghan government will seize the opportunity in this conference to put added pressure on Pakistan to deal with this problem more seriously,” he said.
**Pakistan will not allow its territory to be used against any country, nor will it allow any safe havens on its territory,” foreign ministry spokesman Moazzam Ahmad Khan told AFP.
**“Nobody should doubt our resolve and determination in this regard. Our sacrifices remain unparalleled and our resolve unshakable,” he said.
Afghanistan set to press Pakistan on terror havens – The Express Tribune
**same parrotic repetition by both sides, when will our spineless leadership stand up and talk about ground realities???