Re: Pakistan - America Relations
Re: Pakistan - America Relations
Biggest liar of the wold Obama
Re: Pakistan - America Relations
..
Ok so you acknowledge america forces and contractors arrival was the start of pakistans problems fine.
I agree with second point also the more divided the muslims are the more easy for enemies like america to take complete advantage and control of places like iraq and afghanistan/pakistan.
look i can't say 100% the enemies like american forces are planting the bombs i only have past history to look at like iraq and middle east etc to see their long list and history of assassinations, sabotage and interference that is why they are for me the usual suspects, they like serial criminal that is why. Can you tell me what benefit muslims have from bombing other muslims?
Re: Pakistan - America Relations
An important article from John Kerry, which will also give an insight as to what the Americans are thinking about Pakistan post Afghanistan withdrawal.
The Road Home from Kabul
Drawing down troops from Afghanistan is the right move. Now it’s time to focus on the realthreat in the neighborhood: the one coming from Pakistan.
BY JOHN KERRY | JUNE 24, 2011
his week, President Barack Obama fulfilled a promise he made to the American people in 2009 to begin responsibly ending the war in Afghanistan. His decision to withdraw 33,000 troops from the country over the next year came from a position of strength, thanks in large part to our men and women in uniform and their civilian counterparts who helped break the Taliban’s momentum.
**We brought Osama bin Laden to justice and defeated al Qaeda in Afghanistan. It is now time to reduce the U.S. footprint and for Afghans to take charge of their country and its future. It is time to focus on the real threats in the region: those that emanate from Pakistan.
Much work remains to be done, and the withdrawal should be seen as the beginning of a new path toward success. **The steps that the United States, the Afghans, and the international community need to take in the coming months are clear and achievable.
First, we must recognize that we will still be fighting two separate but intertwined wars. The first is against Mullah Omar’s Taliban in southern Afghanistan, the group that provided sanctuary to al Qaeda. We must make sure they never do that again. The president’s surge gave our military the forces it needed to launch robust operations against the Afghan Taliban, weaken its base, and force its leaders to consider negotiations as a way to survive. Our reconciliation efforts are mostly aimed at this group, which may be driven by a radical interpretation of Islam but whose interests are confined to Afghanistan.
The other war is against those who are likely irreconcilable and dedicated to attacking us, chiefly the Haqqani network and its allies in eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan. As our troops shift from the south to the east, their mission should shift accordingly from counterinsurgency to counterterrorism. It’s the job of the Afghan security forces to win hearts and minds. Along the border with Pakistan, where insurgent groups pose a major threat, we should continue to train and work closely with elite Afghan units and the Pakistani military to root them out once and for all. There will be no rest for those who seek to do us harm.
Second, we must work with Pakistan to satisfy both our interests in Afghanistan and Islamabad’s. This won’t be easy. Relations between the two countries have deteriorated sharply since bin Laden was killed near Pakistan’s premier military academy. American politicians and the public have responded with incredulity to the notion that the world’s most wanted man was hiding in plain sight a couple of hours from the capital city of Islamabad, and Pakistan’s leaders were angered and embarrassed by the violation of the country’s sovereignty. The task is difficult, too, because some insurgent networks have long-standing ties to the Pakistani state, which has used them as proxies in the fight against India and permits them sanctuaries from which they attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan. At the same time, other insurgents have attacked Pakistani security forces and civilians, killing more than 35,000 people.
Despite these differences, there is common ground with Pakistan. We have shared interest in a political deal to end the conflict in Afghanistan and allow the exodus of U.S. troops. We also share an interest in reining in the extremists who are attacking Pakistan and avoiding another Mumbai-style attack that could destabilize Pakistan-India relations. We need to build on these common interests.
Third, we must push for a political settlement in Afghanistan because ultimately there can be no military solution to the country’s problems. This is why I am heartened that the Obama administration is seriously pursuing talks with the Taliban. For reconciliation to work and be enforced, we have to listen closely to our Afghan and Pakistani partners to make sure any deal reflects their real interests and has regional support. We also want to make certain that the rights of all Afghans, including women and minorities, are protected. We can help negotiate a regional framework for Afghanistan that includes key players such as Pakistan, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, neighboring countries in Central Asia – and even Iran, with which the United States has begun preliminary talks. Tehran’s interests and influence in Afghanistan merit a place at the table at some point.
Fourth, we should make sure that the Afghan leaders and people know that the fate of their country now lies in their own hands. President Hamid Karzai has said he will honor the Afghan Constitution and step aside in 2014 as the country holds its next presidential election. This will be a key opportunity for Afghans to chart a new course.
A successful transition will be challenging. We need to rethink how best to build and sustain the Afghan army and police in order to leave behind an effective, targeted security force – not 350,000 unpaid, armed, and angry soldiers. And we have to take concrete steps to prevent the collapse of the wartime economy we have helped create, such as slowly reducing our assistance and working with other donors to set a standard wage so that we stop hiring so many of Afghanistan’s qualified civil servants to work for foreign governments and organizations.
Karzai must do his part, too. This means putting the Afghan economy on track by supporting International Monetary Fund negotiations to develop acceptable banking standards, achieving financial stability, and resolving the Kabul Bank crisis; restoring legitimacy to parliament by overturning the special elections tribunal, which is trying to throw out the results of last year’s parliamentary elections; and taking firm steps to combat the predatory corruption that alienates the Afghan people from their government.
The road home from Afghanistan will not be easy. Wars do not end overnight, and we cannot repeat the mistakes of the past by abandoning the region. Even as our troops withdraw, the Taliban and others should understand that the United States remains committed for the long run and will never again tolerate extremist sanctuaries that threaten our interests. But if we focus on what is necessary, achievable, and sustainable, our troops can come home while leaving behind a stable Afghanistan capable of charting its own future.
Re: Pakistan - America Relations
Wrong thread
Re: Pakistan - America Relations
http://www.dawn.com/2011/06/27/pakistan-must-show-it-wants-afghan-peace-us.html
Pakistan must show it wants Afghan peace: US
KABUL: Washington’s special envoy to Afghanistan said on Monday that Pakistan must prove it wants an end to the war by preventing militants from hiding out on its soil and enabling those who launch attacks on the Afghan side of the border.
Marc Grossman, US special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said in Kabul that discussions among Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States being held this week in the Afghan capital are important to coordinate efforts to find a political resolution to the nearly decade-long war.
He said they also are an opportunity to clearly convey to Pakistani officials that part of their responsibility for bringing peace is to stop supporting insurgent safe havens and those who attack Afghans and international forces in Afghanistan.
“We’ve been pretty clear that going forward here, we want the government of Pakistan to participate positively in the reconciliation process,” Grossman said at a news conference. “Pakistan now has important choices to make.”
Grossman and representatives from more than 40 nations are attending a meeting of the International Contact Group. The group’s 11th meeting comes after President Barack Obama announced last week he was ordering 10,000 US troops home by year’s end; as many as 23,000 more are to leave by September 2012. That would leave 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan.
The 33,000 total to be withdrawn is the number Obama sent as reinforcements in December 2009 as part of an effort to reverse the Taliban’s momentum and hasten an eventual political settlement of the conflict. The US and its allies plan a full combat withdrawal by the end of 2014.
Michael Steiner, German representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said at the news conference that the international community’s engagement will not end in 2014, when Afghan security forces are to have the lead responsibility for security across the nation, a process he said is on track.
“I think we have a strategy which is working despite the difficulties we have,” Steiner said. “I am not painting here any illusions. We will have problems ahead. But I think we have a realistic strategy.”
Separately, the UN World Food Program announced Monday it will cut food assistance to more than 3 million Afghans in about half the country’s 34 provinces because of a shortage of money from donor nations.
The UN agency said it had planned to help feed more than 7 million people in Afghanistan this year, but a shortage of donor funds means only 3.8 million people will be helped through meals provided at schools and training and work programs. It said it needed an additional $220 million to continue its work in Afghanistan at the level originally planned.
The program will focus food assistance on helping the most needy Afghans, especially women and children, said Bradley Guerrant, the agency’s deputy country director.
“We are working hard to raise the funds needed to restart these activities as soon as we can,” he said.
Also, two roadside bomb blasts killed seven civilians Monday in Ghazni province in eastern Afghanistan, the Interior Ministry said. A vehicle struck one of the bombs in Qarabagh district, killing four civilians, including two children, the ministry said. Another vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Ghazni city, killing three civilians. – AP](http://www.dawn.com/2011/06/27/pakistan-must-show-it-wants-afghan-peace-us.html)
Re: Pakistan - America Relations
US message in drone strikes: If Pakistan doesn’t take on Taliban, we will[h=2]The drone attacks Monday targeted militants in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region. The Pakistani military has promised its own offensive in the region, but no such operation has been launched.
Washington
**US drone attacks targeting militants in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region Monday sent a “we told you” message to Pakistan’s leadership: If you won’t take on the Taliban and other extremists crossing over to fight in Afghanistan, we will.
**
The Obama administration has stepped up drone strikes inside Pakistan over the past year – in particular in the North Waziristan region abutting Afghanistan in recent months. Pakistani officials have called publicly for the strikes to cease, insisting they alienate the general population.
At the same time, the Pakistani military has also promised – as recently as late May – that an offensive against North Waziristan’s havens was imminent. But no such offensive into North Waziristan, stronghold of groups like the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network, has been launched.
The strikes this week, which reportedly killed up to 21 militants, suggest the US has no intention of waiting.
The attacks occur as US-Pakistan relations, never easy, pass through a particularly tense period in the aftermath of the successful American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in his compound not far from the Pakistani capital.
Pakistan has ordered a steep reduction in the number of US intelligence agents and special-operations forces in the country, while some in the US Congress advocate cuts in aid to Pakistan. Some officials and experts on both sides conclude it’s time for a divorce between the two countries.
But Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that, even though conducting diplomatic relations with Pakistan can be a “very outraging experience,” there remain compelling national security and regional stability reasons for the US to offer Pakistan substantial defense and development assistance.
Speaking at the same hearing, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the senior Republican on the committee, offered a succinct argument for why the US needs a strategic partnership with Pakistan.
“Despite the death of Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups maintain a strong presence. And there is no question that the threat of these groups – combined with worries about state collapse, a Pakistani war with India, the safety of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, and Pakistan’s intersection with other states in the region – make it a strategically vital country, worth the cost of engagement,” Senator Lugar said.
The drone strikes do not contradict that argument, but they also convey a message that the US has certain expectations of the relationship – and that the US will not sit by if it determines its national security is threatened, as President Obama stated in his June 22 speech on Afghanistan policy.
“So long as I am president, the United States will never tolerate a safe haven for those who aim to kill us,” Mr. Obama said.
Secretary Clinton has said she told Pakistani officials when she visited the country after the bin Laden operation that the US has set benchmarks for Pakistan to meet. Those include taking a more aggressive stance against terrorist groups and senior Al Qaeda leaders and supporting Taliban reconciliation in Afghanistan.
It is not clear if Clinton, who was accompanied by Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pressed upon the Pakistanis the importance of undertaking an offensive into North Waziristan. Some Pakistani military commanders announced publicly in the days following the Americans’ visit that such an operation would be forthcoming.
Some Pakistan experts caution against the US pressing for something that might end up backfiring. A Pakistani military push into North Waziristan could end up further destabilizing a precariously fragile Pakistani state, says Michael Kugelman, a South Asia expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.
“The US either doesn’t understand or chooses to disregard that having Pakistani forces enter that particular tribal area would have huge blowback,” Mr. Kugelman says. “It would very likely destabilize Pakistan more than it is now.”
Why? Militants in the region primarily focused on routing the US from Afghanistan might be flushed out of North Waziristan, Kugelman argues – and they might end up in neighboring territories where the militants are more focused on undermining the Pakistani state.
**“If you have all these different groups banding together, you essentially have the conditions for the insurgency against the Pakistani government to increase,” Kugelman says.
“The US has to consider that it has a much more vital interest in a stable Pakistan than any other interest in Afghanistan.**
Re: Pakistan - America Relations
Good news, if implemented…
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/06/29/pakistan.drones/index.htmlPakistan calls for U.S. to leave airbase used for drone attacksBy the CNN Wire Staff
**June 30, 2011 – Updated 0044 GMT (0844 HKT)
Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) – Pakistan’s defense minister called Wednesday for the United States to leave the airbase used to launch drone attacks against Taliban and al Qaeda targets on the border with Afghanistan, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan reported.
“We have told them (the U.S. officials) to leave the airbase,” Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar told reporters about Shamsi Airbase in Balochistan, APP reported.
Asked about the remarks, a U.S. official said the comments “are news to us” and that U.S. counterterrorism operations in Pakistan were continuing.
Separately, a source familiar with U.S. drone operations in Pakistan said the airbase in southwest Pakistan was “still open for business.”
Mukhtar added that trust between the United States and Pakistan has eroded in the aftermath of the May 2 killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. special forces acting inside the town of Abbottabad, Pakistan, without Islamabad’s knowledge or permission. “This trust deficit could be reduced by sitting together and taking joint actions,” he told reporters in his office.
The minister said bin Laden’s widows and children were still in government custody but would be sent to the country of their choice as soon as possible.
Asked the whereabouts of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, Mukhtar said, “If he was in Pakistan, even then, he would have left the country after the Abbottabad incident.”
He said he favored negotiations with Taliban leaders.
**Mukhtar expressed confidence in his country’s handling of its nuclear arsenal. “Our nuclear assets are safe and are being well-maintained,” he said.
Re: Pakistan - America Relations
Pakistan will have to end its relation with America to convince its people and tribes for talks
Re: Pakistan - America Relations
wow another case of American arrogance…
http://www.dawn.com/2011/07/01/us-rejects-demand-to-vacate-shamsi-base.html
US rejects demand to vacate Shamsi baseFrom the Newspaper
WASHINGTON / ISLAMABAD: The US is rejecting demands from Pakistan that American personnel abandon a military base used by the CIA to stage drone strikes against militants, US officials told Reuters.
**US personnel have not left the Shamsi air base and there is no plan for them to do so, said a US official familiar with the matter. “That base is neither vacated nor being vacated,” the official said. The information was confirmed by a second US official.
**
On Wednesday, federal Minister for Defence Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar said that US had been asked to stop using the base for drone strikes and vacate it.
Relations between the two uneasy allies deteriorated after the May 2 raid by US SEALs in Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden. Wednesday’s statement by Mr Mukhtar was the latest salvo.
“We have been talking to them (on the issue) for some time, but after May 2, we told them again,” he told Reuters on Thursday. “When they (US forces) will not operate from there (Shamsi base), no drone attacks will be carried out.”
Earlier, the Financial Times quoted Mr Mukhtar as saying that Pakistan had already stopped US drone flights from the air base. Despite the defence minister’s statements, it was unclear what the situation at Shamsi is.
A US military official said no American military personnel had ever been stationed at the base, but the drone programme in Pakistan is run by the CIA, and the official declined to comment on that.
Pakistani military officials confirmed that the US had been asked to vacate the base, but wouldn’t comment on when the request had been made or whether the Americans had complied.
“We have told them to leave, vacate our base. We cannot provide security to their people,” a senior air force official told Reuters.
But a member of parliament who represents the area, retired lieutenant general Abdul Qadir Baluch, said that US officials were still at the base.
A senior Pakistani military official added that when US forces first launched counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan “provided Americans two bases in Jaccobabad and Shamsi. Jacobabad base has been vacated for long time ago, but Shamsi is still with them.”
“They are vacating it,” the official insisted. “Shamsi base was for logistic purpose. They also used it for drones for some time but no drones have been flown from there.”
Re: Pakistan - America Relations
Minister of Defence Ahmed Mukhtar says Americans have been asked to vacate Shamsi Air base.
Minister of Information, Firdous Ashiq Awan says that nothing of that sort has been said.
Presidential spokesman says that "no drone is operating from Shamsi Air base, therefore its a non issue"
The Americans say they have not been asked to vacate Shamsi airbase and the business as usual for them.
Re: Pakistan - America Relations
^ everybody shooting from their behinds :D
Re: Pakistan - America Relations
CIA idles drone flights from base in Pakistan
By Karen DeYoung, Saturday, July 2, 8:45 AM
**The CIA three months ago suspended its long-standing use of an air base in Pakistan as a launch site for armed drones targeting members of al-Qaeda and other militant groups, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.
U.S. personnel and Predator drones remain at the facility, in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, with security provided by the Pakistani military, officials from both countries said.** In recent days, Pakistan has publicly declared that it “ended” all U.S. flights from the base in the wake of the secret U.S. commando raid that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May.
But U.S. and Pakistani officials said the aircraft launches were halted in April, weeks before the bin Laden raid, after a dispute over a CIA contractor who fatally shot two Pakistani citizens in Lahore in January. **An American official said the CIA’s decision to suspend the launches was part of a U.S. effort to “pay attention to the sensitivities” of the Pakistanis, who had objected to a claim of diplomatic immunity for the contractor.
Although Pakistan has continued to voice sharp public criticism over the shootings and the bin Laden raid, officials from both countries said the rupture in their intelligence cooperation has slowly begun to heal. Pakistan has reversed its freeze on visas for U.S. intelligence officials, they said, and allowed dozens of CIA personnel to reenter the country.
**
**All U.S. drone strikes in the past three months have been launched from Afghanistan, in the vicinity of Jalalabad, according to the officials, who spoke about intelligence matters only on the condition of anonymity. The New America Foundation, which tracks the strikes, has listed 23 such raids since the beginning of April, all but one in Pakistan’s tribal regions of North and South Waziristan. **A June 20 attack was reported in Kurram, an area above North Waziristan along the Afghanistan border.
**The drone program has become increasingly controversial as the Obama administration has expanded its use beyond the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Lethal missiles have been launched from unmanned aircraft in at least five countries in addition to Pakistan — Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and, most recently, Somalia. **The military’s Joint Special Operations Command last week used a drone to attack what officials said were two senior members of the al-Shabab militant group near Kismaayo, on the southern Somali coast.
A U.S. official said Friday that the two “killed last week in Somalia were looking to conduct attacks in Europe” and that the specific target was Britain, but declined to provide details indicating the imminence or specifics of any plans. Some initial reports indicated that the two militants had been wounded but not killed.
Some international law experts and human rights groups have questioned the expanded use of drones and the legality of such strikes in countries with which the United States is not at war. In Libya, where the Defense Department said 42 drone strikes have been launched by U.S. Predator aircraft as of Tuesday, the United States is operating under NATO command in a U.N.-authorized mission.
In other cases, the administration has cited international laws of self-defense and the 2001 congressional authorization to strike the al-Qaeda perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks that year. John O. Brennan, who this week unveiled the administration’s new national counterterrorism strategy, said the United States was “at war” with al-Qaeda and named al-Shabab and Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula as among its affiliates.
Some critics have also raised questions of morality and said the drone program goes beyond the commonly accepted standards of warfare, because the “pilots” direct the aircraft remotely, often from half a world away in the comfort of secure facilities. The administration and defenders of the aircraft have countered that the weapons prevent U.S. military combat fatalities and that their precision greatly limits civilian casualties.
Brennan, in response to questions after his counterterrorism speech this week at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said that for “nearly the past year, there hasn’t been a single collateral death, because of the exceptional precision” of such strikes. According to the New America Foundation, since April, drone-fired missiles have killed 133 to 191 militants in Pakistan and up to 10 civilians.
Predator targeting choices and collateral deaths have long been a subject of dispute between the United States and Pakistan, where public opinion is vehemently opposed to the strikes. **The Pakistanis charge that the Americans use the weapons indiscriminately against militant “foot soldiers” rather than concentrating on top commanders, and residents in the tribal regions have cited civilian deaths.
**
Brennan indicated that such “surgical” strikes were increasingly the administration’s weapon of choice in the fight against al-Qaeda.
Nowhere has the weapon proved more effective than in Pakistan, where al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other militant organizations maintain their headquarters and training camps, but where U.S. ground troops are prohibited.
**Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf secretly authorized the CIA, under the George W. Bush administration, to operate drones from Shamsi, a small air facility in Baluchistan.The air strip, located about 600 miles southwest of Islamabad, apparently was constructed years ago by the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates as an arrival point for falconry and other hunting expeditions in Pakistan.
**
A May 2005 State Department cable from the U.S. Embassy in the UAE reported that government’s displeasure that news of the arrangement, and use of the airfield, was revealed in a book published by retired Gen. Tommy Franks, the former head of the U.S. Central Command.
**Although established U.S. air bases in Afghanistan are arguably closer to the tribal areas across the border in Pakistan, the United States was pleased at Pakistan’s involvement in the operation, even as a silent partner. The number of CIA personnel, along with contractors from the private security company then known as Blackwater, grew as the Obama administration rapidly increased the number of drone strikes.
In the weeks immediately after Pakistan’s grudging release in March of the CIA contractor involved in the Lahore shooting, top Pakistani military and intelligence officials made “a formal, personal request . . . a demand . . . more than once” to their U.S. counterparts to end the flights and leave Pakistan, a senior Pakistani defense official said.
**
In response, the official said, “there has been some thinning out at the base, and the drone missions suspended.”
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-idles-drone-flights-from-base-in-pakistan/2011/07/01/AGpOiKuH_story.html)
Re: Pakistan - America Relations
U.S. turns to other routes to supply Afghan war as relations with Pakistan fray
By Craig Whitlock, Sunday, July 3, 7:54 AM
**The U.S. military is rapidly expanding its aerial and Central Asian supply routes to the war in Afghanistan, fearing that Pakistan could cut off the main means of providing American and NATO forces with fuel, food and equipment.
Although Pakistan has not explicitly threatened to sever the supply lines, Pentagon officials said they are concerned the routes could be endangered by the deterioration of U.S.-Pakistan relations, partly fed by ill will from the cross-border raid that killed Osama bin Laden.**
Memories are fresh of Pakistan’s temporary closure of a major crossing into Afghanistan in September, resulting in a logjam of hundreds of supply trucks and fuel tankers, dozens of which were destroyed in attacks by insurgents.
While reducing the shipment of cargo through Pakistan would address a strategic weakness that U.S. military officials have long considered an Achilles’ heel, shifting supply lines elsewhere would substantially increase the cost of the war and make the United States more dependent on authoritarian countries in Central Asia.
A senior U.S. defense official said the military wants to keep using Pakistan, which offers the most direct and the cheapest routes to Afghanistan. But the Pentagon also wants the ability to bypass the country if necessary.
With landlocked Afghanistan lacking seaports, and hostile Iran blocking access from the west, Pentagon logisticians have limited alternatives.
“It’s either Central Asia or Pakistan — those are the two choices. We’d like to have both,” the defense official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid alienating Pakistan. “We’d like to have a balance between them, and not be dependent on either one, but always have the possibility of switching.”
U.S. military officials said they have emergency backup plans in case the Pakistan routes became unavailable.
“We will be on time, all the time,” said Vice Adm. Mark D. Harnitchek, deputy commander of the U.S. Transportation Command, which oversees the movement of supplies and equipment.
**In such an event, however, the military would have to deliver the bulk of its cargo by air, a method that might not be sustainable; it costs up to 10 times as much as shipping via Pakistan.
“We’d have to be a little bit more mindful of what we put in the pipe,” Harnitchek said.**
The Defense Department is already boosting the amount of cargo it sends to Afghanistan by air. To save on costs, the military is shipping as many of those supplies as possible to seaports in the Persian Gulf before loading them on planes bound for the war zone.
As recently as 2009, the U.S. military moved 90 percent of its surface cargo through Pakistan, arriving by ship at the port in Karachi and then snaking through mountain passes, deserts and remote tribal areas before crossing the border into Afghanistan. The Pakistan supply lines are served entirely by contractors instead of U.S. military convoys and are vulnerable to bandits, insurgents and natural disasters.
Today, almost 40 percent of surface cargo arrives in Afghanistan from the north, along a patchwork of Central Asian rail and road routes that the Pentagon calls the Northern Distribution Network. Military planners said they are pushing to raise the northern network’s share to as much as 75 percent by the end of this year.
Obama administration officials said they are negotiating expanded agreements with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and other countries that would allow for the delivery of additional supplies to the Afghan war zone. Washington also wants permission to withdraw vehicles and other equipment from Afghanistan as the U.S. military prepares to pull out one-third of its forces by September 2012.
By shifting the burden to Central Asia, however, the U.S. military has become increasingly reliant on authoritarian countries, prompting criticism from human rights groups that the Obama administration is cozying up to dictators.
For instance, more than one-third of the northern-route cargo passes through tiny Azerbaijan, a country saddled by “pervasive corruption,” according to the State Department’s annual human rights report. U.S. defense officials also say the northern supply lines would not be possible without the cooperation of Russia. One new route runs through Siberia.
The biggest potential choke point, however, lies in Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic that borders northern Afghanistan. It previously had kicked the U.S. military out of the country after Washington complained about the killing of hundreds of protesters in 2005.
But as the United States has deepened its involvement in Afghanistan, relations with Uzbekistan have warmed up again. Today, more than 80 percent of supplies shipped along the Northern Distribution Network pass through the country.
Expanded supply lines
The northern routes were developed in the waning days of the George W. Bush administration. Since then, the U.S. government has expanded the network into a spiderweb of supply lines.
Some start at Baltic seaports and run through Russia and Central Asia by rail. Another key line picks up traffic on the Black Sea and funnels it through the Caucasus region. One winding truck route begins at a U.S. Army depot at Germersheim, Germany, and ends, an average of 60 days later, at Bagram air base in Afghanistan. As with the Pakistan routes, the deliveries are all made by contractors.
“If you look at what we’ve done there in the last two years, we look at it more or less as a logistics miracle,” said Alan F. Estevez, the Pentagon’s principal deputy assistant secretary for logistics.
There are two big limitations, however, on what the Pentagon can ship through Central Asia. First, supplies are generally restricted to food, water and construction material; ammunition, weapons and other “lethal” cargo are prohibited.
Also, the routes are strictly one-way. Nothing can be shipped back out of the war zone.
U.S. officials said they are trying to negotiate deals with several countries to remove those restrictions. That will be crucial as the United States withdraws 33,000 troops from Afghanistan over the next 15 months, military leaders said.
Perhaps the most vital section in the northern network is a rail line that crosses south through Uzbekistan and over the Amu Darya river to reach Hairaton, Afghanistan. About five out of every six cargo containers travel this route.
“In reality, Uzbekistan is really at the center of all these routes,” said Alexander Cooley, a Barnard College professor and an expert on U.S. military relations in Central Asia. “They’re certainly in the catbird seat. And they know it.”
The final leg of the Uzbek rail line, from the city of Karshi to the Afghan border, underscores how the U.S. military has been forced to rely on rickety routes to sustain its troops.
In November 2009, U.S. embassy officials in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, were warned by a confidential source that the tracks were brittle and at risk of fracturing if trains carried more than half their usual loads. On top of that, the Soviet-era locomotives carrying U.S. cargo were not designed to cross steep mountains; engineers had to apply the brakes almost constantly as they moved downhill.
“By the time the trains have descended from the mountains, the wheels are glowing red hot,” the embassy reported in a diplomatic cable. The source, an engineer, said he was “appalled by how long it takes to transport anything by rail in Uzbekistan” and that he refused to take the train for fear of a crash.
The cable, titled “Uzbek Rail: Red Hot Wheels to Afghanistan” and obtained by the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks, concluded that “a train wreck is possible in the literal sense.”
U.S. military officials said they knew of no accidents or safety problems on the 200-mile rail segment. In February, Uzbekistan announced it had obtained a $218 million loan from Japan to upgrade the line to the Afghan border.
Human rights concerns
Uzbekistan has been assailed by human rights groups for repression under President Islam Karimov, who has ruled the country since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Freedom House, a Washington-based advocacy group, ranks it as one of the nine worst countries in the world for civil liberties and political rights.
From 2001 to 2005, the U.S. military relied on an Uzbek air base as a hub for combat and supply missions to Afghanistan. U.S. forces were evicted from the base after Washington pressured Karimov to allow an international probe into the deaths of hundreds of anti-government protesters in the province of Andijan.
Since 2008, however, Washington has steadily worked to repair relations. A stream of U.S. military leaders and diplomats has visited Tashkent, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in December and Denis McDonough, the deputy national security adviser, in late May. Uzbekistan, in turn, has reopened its railroads, highways and airspace for U.S. cargo.
Thomas M. Sanderson, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the Obama administration has continued to raise human rights concerns with Uzbekistan but that the Afghan supply routes usually take precedence.
“There is no doubt about it. We are there for one primary reason, and that is to enable our operations in Afghanistan,” said Sanderson, who has studied the Northern Distribution Network.
State Department officials said they do not hesitate to press Uzbekistan to improve its human rights record. When Clinton visited Tashkent, they noted, she made a point of meeting activists and calling for the release of jailed journalists.
“We’ve made a real effort to try to engage Uzbekistan on human rights and in trafficking persons, and in some cases there’s been some progress,” said Robert O. Blake, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia. “This is something that’s in their own interest to do, to allow greater freedom of religion and greater freedom of expression.”
Diplomatic cables, however, show Uzbek officials have not hesitated to demand U.S. restraint on human rights in exchange for cooperation on the supply routes.
In March 2009, shortly after the State Department gave an award to an Uzbek human rights activist, Foreign Minister Vladi*mir Norov made an “implicit threat” to suspend deliveries to Afghanistan, according to a cable signed by Richard B. Norland, the U.S. ambassador in Tashkent at the time.
An angry Karimov also complained to Norland personally.
“Put yourself in my place,” Karimov told the ambassador, according to the cable. “Would you trust me if I had done this?”
In that cable and others to Washington, Norland counseled the Obama administration to check its public criticism of Karimov to maintain the viability of the supply lines. In advance of a visit to Tashkent by a senior State Department official, Norland advised using “private, but frank diplomacy” to cajole Uzbekistan rather than “more openly coercive measures.”
“Uzbek pride often gets the better of rationality and officials here will think nothing of cutting off their nose to spite their face,” Norland added in a July 2009 cable.
Re: Pakistan - America Relations
Who knows what American motives are but for the past few days they have started the propaganda about the alliance of the ISI with extremist groups. Here’s one article published in NYT on the topic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/04/world/asia/04pakistan.html?_r=1&hp
Pakistani Military Still Cultivates Militant Groups, a Former Fighter Says
By CARLOTTA GALLPublished: July 3, 2011
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — **The Pakistani military continues to nurture a broad range of militant groups as part of a three-decade strategy of using proxies against its neighbors and American forces in Afghanistan, but now some of the fighters it trained are questioning that strategy, a prominent former militant commander says. **
**The former commander said that he was supported by the Pakistani military for 15 years as a fighter, leader and trainer of insurgents until he quit a few years ago. Well known in militant circles but accustomed to a covert existence, he gave an interview to The New York Times on the condition that his name, location and other personal details not be revealed. **
Militant groups, like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen and Hizbul Mujahedeen, are run by religious leaders, with the Pakistani military providing training, strategic planning and protection. That system was still functioning, he said.
The former commander’s account belies years of assurances by Pakistan to American officials since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that it has ceased supporting militant groups in its territory. The United States has given Pakistan more than $20 billion in aid over the past decade for its help with counterterrorism operations. Still, the former commander said, Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment has not abandoned its policy of supporting the militant groups as tools in Pakistan’s dispute with India over the border territory of Kashmir and in Afghanistan to drive out American and NATO forces.
“There are two bodies running these affairs: mullahs and retired generals,” he said. He named a number of former military officials involved in the program, including former chiefs of the intelligence service and other former generals. “These people have a very big role still,” he said.
Maj. Gen. Zaheer ul-Islam Abbasi, a former intelligence officer who was convicted of attempting a coup against the government of Benazir Bhutto in 1995 and who is now dead, was one of the most active supporters of the militant groups in the years after Sept. 11, the former commander said.
He said he saw General Abbasi several times: once at a meeting of Taliban and Pakistani militant leaders in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province as they planned how to confront the American military in Afghanistan; and twice in Mir Ali, which became the center for foreign militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas, including members of Al Qaeda.
There were about 60 people at the Taliban meeting in late 2001, soon after the Taliban government fell, the former commander said. Pakistani militant leaders were present, as were the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, and Muhammad Haqqani, a member of the Haqqani network.
Several retired officials of Pakistan’s premier spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, were also there, he said, including a man known as Colonel Imam but who was actually Brig. Sultan Amir, a well-known trainer and mentor of militants, and General Abbasi. The militant groups divided Afghanistan into separate areas of operations and discussed how to “trip up America,” he said.
**The Pakistani military still supports the Afghan Taliban in their fight to force out American and NATO forces from Afghanistan, he said, adding that he thought they would be successful.
The ISI also still supports other Pakistani militant groups, even some of those that have turned against the government, because the military still wants to keep them as tools for use against its archrival, India, he said. The military used a strategy of divide and rule, encouraging splits in the militant groups to weaken and control them, he said.
Although the military has lost control of many of the firebrand fighters, and has little influence over the foreign fighters in the tribal areas who belong to Al Qaeda — some of whom openly oppose the Pakistani government — it was reluctant to move against them, he said. Pakistan could easily kill the notoriously vicious militant leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, but chose not to, he said. “If someone gave me 20,000 rupees, I would do it,” he said, citing a price of about $235.
“The government is not interested in eliminating them permanently,” he said. “The Pakistani military establishment has become habituated to using proxies.” He added that there were many sympathizers in the military who still supported the use of militants.
Pakistan has 12,000 to 14,000 fully trained Kashmiri fighters, scattered throughout various camps in Pakistan, and is holding them in reserve to use if needed in a war against India, he said. **
Yet Pakistan has been losing the fight for Kashmir, and most Kashmiris now want independence and not to be part of Pakistan or India, he said. **Since Sept. 11, Pakistan has redirected much of its attention away from Kashmir to Afghanistan, and many Kashmiri fighters are not interested in that fight and have taken up India’s offer of an amnesty to go home.
Others, like the former commander, have gotten out because of their disillusionment over the way they were being used to fight Osama bin Laden’s war, or used for the aims of a few top generals who had allied Pakistan with the United States to gain access to its military and financial aid. “There are a lot of people who do not think they are doing the right thing,” he said of the military.
“This is extremely wrong to sacrifice 16,000 people for a single person,” he said, referring to Bin Laden. “A person should sacrifice himself for 16,000 people.” He said he was using the figure of 16,000 just as an example.
“The Taliban lost a whole government for one person,” he said, again referring to Bin Laden. “And Pakistan went to war just for a few generals and now for President Zardari,” he said, referring to Asif Ali Zardari. “A real war is for a country.” **
**Many of the thousands of trained Pakistani fighters turned against the military because it treated them so carelessly, he said. “Pakistan used them and then, like a paper tissue, threw them away,” he said. “Look at me, I am a very well-trained fighter and I have no other option in life, except to fight and take revenge.” **
Indeed, he was first trained for a year by the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba at a camp in Kunar Province, in Afghanistan, in the early 1990s. The war against Soviet troops in Afghanistan was over, and Pakistan turned to training fighters for an insurgency in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir.
He became skilled at firing Russian-made rocket-propelled grenades, and he was sent to fight, and train others, in Kashmir, Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. Over the years he worked with different militant groups, and he estimated that he personally trained up to 4,000 fighters.
**The entire enterprise was supported by the Pakistani military and executed by Pakistani militant groups, he said. He was paid by a wing of the ISI, which is an integral part of the army.
Fighters were paid about $50 a month, he said, and commanders about $500.
But now, he said, Pakistan and the United States would be much better able to counter terrorism if they could redirect the legions of militants toward the correct path of Islam to rebuild and educate communities, he said. **
“Pakistan, and especially America, needs to understand the true spirit of Islam, and they need to project the true spirit of Islam,” he said. “That would be a good strategy to stop them.”
Re: Pakistan - America Relations
hmmm…no comments!
Shamsi airbase never used to fire drones: PM](“http://tribune.com.pk/story/201583/shamsi-airbase-was-never-used-for-drone-attacks-pm-gilani/”)
Re: Pakistan - America Relations
[quote=“Ali_Syed, post:24, topic:243488”]
hmmm…no comments!
Once he is out of PM position he will say I was never prime minister :hehe:
Re: Pakistan - America Relations
Every day some new statement comes out regarding shamsi air base from different officials of the government, which shows the confusion in the government ranks
Re: Pakistan - America Relations
^ hence the post #92 :D
Re: Pakistan - America Relations