Sunday, October 31, 2010

A New Book by Nir Rosen on Iraq War and its dark consequences

Aftermath
AFTERMATH: FOLLOWING THE BLOODSHED OF AMERICA'S WARS IN THE MUSLIM WORLD
http://aftermathbook.com/

An extraordinary feat of reporting, Aftermath follows the contagious spread of radicalism and sectarian violence that the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the ensuing civil war have unleashed in the Muslim world.

Nir Rosen has spent nearly a decade among warriors and militants who have been challenging American power in the Muslim world. In Aftermath, he tells their story, showing the other side of the U.S. war on terror, traveling from the battle-scarred streets of Baghdad to the alleys, villages, refugee camps, mosques, and killing grounds of Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and finally Afghanistan, where Rosen has a terrifying encounter with the Taliban as their “guest,” and witnesses the new Obama surge fizzling in southern Afghanistan.

Rosen was one of the few Westerners to venture inside the mosques of Baghdad to witness the first stirrings of sectarian hatred in the months after the U.S. invasion. He shows how weapons, tactics, and sectarian ideas from the civil war in Iraq penetrated neighboring countries and threatened their stability, especially Lebanon and Jordan, where new jihadist groups mushroomed. Moreover, he shows that the spread of violence at the street level is often the consequence of specific policies hatched in Washington, D.C. Rosen offers a seminal and provocative account of the surge, told from the perspective of U.S. troops on the ground, the Iraqi security forces, Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents that were both allies and adversaries. He also tells the story of what happened to these militias once they outlived their usefulness to the Americans.

Aftermath is both a unique personal history and an unsparing account of what America has wrought in Iraq and the region. The result is a hair- raising, 360-degree view of the modern battlefield its consequent humanitarian catastrophe, and the reality of counterinsurgency.

For a except of the book, click here; for revirews, click here
To visit Nir Rosen's blog, click http://www.nirrosen.com/blog/

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

A Victory for Democratic and Liberal Forces in Pakistan - Asma Jahangir Wins Supreme Court Bar Association Elections


Asma Jahangir wins SCBA election
Dawn, October 27, 2010

ISLAMABAD: Advocate Asma Jahangir became the first women president of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) after she defeated her opponent marginally by 38 votes in election held on Wednesday.

According to an unofficial vote count, Ms Jahangir bagged 834 votes while Ahmed Owais got 796 votes. Highest numbers of votes were polled in Lahore where Ms Jahangir received 419 votes and Owais 409.
She was leading in Quetta, Islamabad, Peshawar and Karachi while Owais was ahead in Multan.

President Asif Ali Zardari, Nawaz Sharif, Chaudray Shujaat Hussain and Pervez Musharraf welcomed Ms Jahangir for winning the presidential seat.
Ms Jahangir said her success is a victory of liberal and democratic forces.—DawnNews

Related:
Bio - Jazba Magazine; For career details, click here
My mission is to serve mankind with dignity: Asma Jahangir - Daily Times
Profiled among Asian Heros - TIME
Interview with Asma Jahangir - Asia Society
For more interviews, click here

Turkey Leaps forward...


Turkey Steps Out
By Roger Cohen
New York Times, October 25, 2010

ANKARA — Davutogluism is a mouthful. It’s not going to make Fox News any time soon. But if I could escort Sarah Palin, Tea Partiers and a few bigoted anti-Muslim Europeans to a single country illustrating how the world has changed, it would be the home of the D-word, Turkey.

Ahmet Davutoglu, who birthed a foreign policy doctrine and has been Turkey’s foreign minister since May 2009, has irked a lot of Americans. He’s seen as the man behind Turkey’s “turning East,” as Iran’s friend, as Israel’s foe, as a fickle NATO ally wary of a proposed new missile shield, and as the wily architect of Turkey’s new darling status with Arab states. The Obama administration has said it is “disappointed” in Turkey’s no vote on Iran sanctions last June; Congress is not pleased, holding up an ambassadorial appointment and huffing over arms sales.
Nostalgia is running high in Washington for the pliant Turkey of Cold-War days. Davutoglu is having none of it. “We don’t want to be a frontier country like in the Cold War,” he told me. “We don’t want problems with any neighbor” — and that, of course, would include Iran.

Zero problems with neighbors lay at the core of Davutoglu’s influential book “Strategic Depth,” published in 2001. Annual trade with Russia has since soared to $40 billion. Syrian-Turkish relations have never been better. Turkey’s commercial sway over northern Iraq is overwhelming. It has signed a free trade agreement with Jordan. And now Turkey says it aims — United Nations sanctions notwithstanding — to triple trade with Iran over the next five years.

All this makes the anemic West edgy: The policy has produced 7 percent growth this year. There’s also something deeper at work: The idea of economic interdependence as a basis for regional peace and stability sounds awfully familiar. Wasn’t that the genius of the European Union idea?

Which prompts another question: Can it only work for Westerners? I don’t think so. And, having shortsightedly kept Turkey out of the European Union, the West is scarcely qualified to complain. As British Prime Minister David Cameron, Turkey’s strongest European supporter, said recently, “It is just wrong to say that Turkey can guard the camp but not be allowed to sit in the tent.”

For complete article, click here
Related:
Turkey’s radar map ready in case of eventual missile deal - Today's Zaman
Turkey still has a long way to go to meet EU’s accession criteria - Kurdish Aspect
The crucial support line for Turkey: Seeing the big picture - Hurriyet

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Women, violence and the law

Women's protest outside national assembly in Islamabad
Women, violence and the law
S Iftikhar Murshed, The News, October 24, 2010

The woman's head was covered with a sack, her hands were tied and she was tethered to the ground – while a group of turbaned, bearded men hurled rocks at her, breaking her bones and then crushing her skull. According to reports in the press, she had been walking unescorted and was presumed guilty of adultery. The barbarity, allegedly perpetrated by the Taliban in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), was shown on Dubai's Al Aan television. The same footage was televised by a private Pakistani channel on Sept 28 and the story also featured that day in the local print media.

There was no reaction from civil society, no politician demanded that the government bring the criminals to justice, no resolution was passed by parliament expressing concern over the outrage, no statement emanated from the president or the prime minister condemning the incident, and the atrocity faded from public memory because the woman was a nonentity and did not matter.

The adage "justice delayed is justice denied" is not necessarily true. In the case of the unknown woman in Fata, as in other instances, the skewed Taliban concept of Islamic justice was as swift as it was brutal. The stringent Quranic evidentiary requirements for proving adultery were set aside and the accused was condemned for a crime she had never committed.

Around the time that the video footage of the stoning incident in Fata was aired on television, the MIT-educated Pakistani cognitive neuroscientist Dr Aafia Siddiqui was sentenced to 86 years in prison by a US federal judge. On Feb 3, she had been convicted on various charges, including attempted murder, armed assault, and using a firearm against US nationals. After the verdict, she exclaimed: "This is coming from Israel, not from America. That's where the anger belongs."

There was stern public and government reaction. Demonstrators took to the streets, chanted anti-US slogans and burnt the American flag. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani described Dr Aafia Siddiqui as a "daughter of the nation," but did not think it worthwhile to make a similar pronouncement about the woman who was so cruelly put to death in the tribal areas. Equally forgotten were some 7,000 women languishing in prison, 88 percent of whom, according to the National Commission for the Status of Women, have been incarcerated on charges of unproven adultery.

The nationwide display of support for Dr Aafia Siddiqui was admirable, but the law, as Aristotle believed, "is reason free from passion." This was what a few members of the National Assembly implied when they stated that the response to the sentencing should be balanced and confined to the legal aspects of the case. Some of the opinion columns also alluded to Dr Siddiqui's second marriage in February 2003 to the accused Al-Qaeda member Ammar al-Baluchi in Karachi. The latter is a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks, and a cousin of Ramzi Yousef who was convicted for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre. Al-Baluchi was arrested on April 29, 2003, and could face the death penalty as he awaits trial in the US for complicity in the 9/11 incidents. However, these details are extraneous to the Aafia Siddiqui case because she was neither accused of nor convicted for terrorism.

Again there was justified countrywide outcry when on April 2, 2009, the television channels aired video footage of a 17-year old girl, Chand Bibi, being publicly flogged in Swat by the Taliban because she had been spotted outside her home accompanied by a naamehram (stranger) and was therefore presumed guilty of indecency. Whatever little sympathy there may have been for the Taliban disappeared in one sweep. The Supreme Court took suo moto notice and asked for the girl to be produced before the court. However, for fear of reprisal by the Taliban, her family denied that the incident had ever occurred.

This was evident from the change in the Tehreek-e-Taliban stance. Initially, their former spokesman in Swat, Muslim Khan, justified the harsh punishment on the ground that had the case been heard by a qazi (judge), Chand Bibi would have been stoned to death. Without even batting an eyelid he subsequently claimed that no such incident had taken place and the video had been doctored by NGOs as part of a conspiracy against the Taliban.

The former information minister, Sherry Rehman, stated that "ignoring such acts of violence amounts to sanctioning impunity. The fire in the Swat Valley and our northern regions can engulf other parts of the country, if we do not put it out." So strong was public opinion against the Taliban that military operations against them were launched in Swat some months later, followed by a similar onslaught in South Waziristan.

Chance played a role in raising Mukhtaran Mai from her ordeal to dazzling celebrity status and international prominence. Brought up in poverty and illiteracy she braved the odds in a society where women's bodies are a battleground for male honour. Her journey to fame began in 2002 when her brother was seen walking with a woman from a rival clan. He was sentenced by a panchayat (tribal council) and the punishment ordered was that his sister be raped. Mukhtaran Mai was accordingly assaulted by four men and paraded naked through the village.

The government of the time, led by Gen Pervez Musharraf, remained a passive bystander till the tragedy captured international media attention. Even then, on June 10, 2005, as she was about to travel to London on invitation from Amnesty International, she was not allowed to leave the country as she had been placed on the Exit Control List.

Musharraf, who was on a visit to Australia and New Zealand, admitted to the international media that the travel restrictions had been imposed on her because he "did not want to project a bad image of Pakistan." This belied an earlier government claim that she did not want to go abroad because of the illness of her mother. Subsequently Musharraf, who claimed that the motivating impulse of his government was "enlightened moderation," unabashedly stated that the easiest way for a Pakistani woman to obtain a visa was to get raped. Perhaps that was the image of the country he wanted to project.

Jurists say that the law is the repository of the morals of the people. However, it cannot, by itself, generate justice, which has to be imported in its application. If the common good of all is the purpose of justice, then it must be free from political bias and anchored in the bedrock of truth. This applies as much to the trial and sentencing of Dr Aafia Siddiqui as it does to the stoning to death of the woman in Fata and the thousands of other "daughters of the nation." There cannot, and must not, be any selectivity in the public reaction to these outrages.

The writer is the publisher of Criterion quarterly. Email: iftimurshed @gmail.com
Picture Source

Related:
What About Afghan Women? - Nicholas Kristof, New York Times - Oct 24, 2010
Damsels in Distress: Using Victimized Women as Political Ploys - Beenish Ahmed, Huffngton Post

Saturday, October 23, 2010

New Report: Militancy in Pakistan’s Borderlands: Implications for the Nation and for Afghan Policy

The Century Foundation - New Publications:
Militancy in Pakistan’s Borderlands: Implications for the Nation and for Afghan Policy
by Hassan Abbas
New York, October 22nd, 2010:

As part of a series of expert papers commissioned to inform the work of its International Task Force on Afghanistan in Its Regional and Multilateral Dimensions, as well as the broader national and international debate on Afghanistan policy, The Century Foundation announces publication of a new monograph exploring the Pakistan’s ambivalent policies toward Islamic militants in its borderlands and the implications for international efforts in Afghanistan.

President Obama, in first introducing his policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan in March of 2009, called their shared border region “ the most dangerous place in the world.” This timely paper provide a critical perspective on past Pakistani policy toward militant groups, the growth of their influence in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Kyber Pukhtunkhwa Province (KPP), and what steps need to be taken in order to reverse their momentum. Militancy in Pakistan’s Borderlands: Implications For The Nation And For Afghan Policy, written by noted Pakistan analyst Hassan Abbas, is a sharp-edged assessment of Islamabad’s erratic efforts to assert authority in this volatile and historically autonomous region.

More From Militancy in Pakistan’s Borderlands:

• Pakistan’s discriminating relationships with militant groups. Pakistan’s security forces are still fighting a selective war against insurgent elements in these areas. “Clearly, Pakistan’s military leadership distinguishes between obvious threats, such as those in the TTP, and the looming danger of well-armed religious radicals in other networks, such as militants affiliated with the Haqqani network. Pakistan deserves credit for conducting increasingly aggressive operations against militants in FATA, especially since the beginning of 2009, but the scope of Pakistan’s targets are still limited to anti-government fighters, generally grouped under the TTP umbrella.”

• The Afghan Taliban in Pakistan. Abbas questions the conventional assumptions on operational control over Taliban on both sides of the Durand Line. “Contrary to the general belief in policy circles in the United States, those Taliban leaders who are living or hiding in Pakistan have limited control over the decision-making among Taliban operating on the ground in Afghanistan.”

• The prospects for peace. He is deeply skeptical of the currently trajectory of U.S. and NATO policy in the region, which has so far failed to bring stability or security to either nation. “The Western ‘nation-building’ project in Afghanistan has largely failed, and a major overhaul of policy is needed. Anyone who believes that the Taliban will sign a surrender document or will compromise their basic goals (achieving a dominant role in society and establishing an authoritarian state) is living in a fool’s paradise.”

• Pakistan’s next steps. Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership will have to transition from a short-term strategy of deal-making and army offensives to a long-term political solution that will erode the gains made by militant groups in these areas since 2002. “In the case of Pakistan, its counterinsurgency operations will have to be complemented by substantive political reform in FATA, as already promised in 2009 by the democratic leadership of the country. Implementation of political reform would allow secular political parties to compete in elections there, thus increasing political participation and accelerating reform of the draconian colonial-era laws.”

For complete report, click here
 
Related:
Pakistan struggles to hold gains against Taliban - Washington Post
Taliban negotiates to gain access to key Pakistan area - BBC
Abdullah Abdullah: Talks With Taliban Futile - NPR
Afghan lawmaker: Karzai in talks with Haqqani - AP

Thursday, October 21, 2010

The U.S. - Pakistan Strategic Dialogue...

Talking at Cross-Purposes
By H.D.S. GREENWAY, International Herald Tribune, October 20, 2010

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN — When Americans and Pakistanis sit down in Washington this week for the third round of their “strategic dialogue,” it will come at a time of mutual tension. Seldom has the relationship been more strained.

For Pakistan, the recent hot-pursuit incursion that killed three of their soldiers meant that a red line had been unpardonably breached. For Americans, the retaliatory closing of the Khyber Pass, their main supply route into Afghanistan, and the images of burning fuel-tankers rankles.

If there were to really be what diplomats call a full and frank exchange, the dialogue might go like this:

America: It’s quite simple. Stop sitting on your hands and go into North Waziristan and clear out that nest of terrorists you’ve been sheltering.

Pakistan: It’s not at all simple. You are scapegoating us after having failed in Afghanistan for nine years. We may not be entirely innocent, but some Taliban taking advantage of a notoriously porous border is not the real problem. The problem is that the Pashtuns, who make up nearly half of the Afghan population and nearly all of the Taliban, were shut out of the new Afghanistan when you put their historical rivals, the Tajiks and Uzbeks, in power.

Pashtuns are underrepresented in the Kabul government and armed forces. The Afghan National Army is viewed as yet another foreign occupation force in Pashtun territory. The Taliban has become a national movement in Afghanistan, and is not dependent on trying to hide in our territory.

Our forces are stretched thin enough as it is. We are fighting the Pakistani Taliban, which represents a danger to the state. It is a tall order to demand that we take on the Afghan Taliban, which is not threatening our state.

America: The line between the Pakistan and Afghan Taliban is also growing thin.

Pakistan: It would be madness to recklessly take on another armed group of Pashtuns, setting the frontier alight, when we haven’t got the means to cope with it. And besides, you Americans are encouraging talks with the Taliban. Why should we completely sever a longstanding relationship that you originally helped foster? Those same groups you now want us to kill might help us thwart India’s intrigues when the Taliban are part of the new, post-American Afghanistan we will be stuck with when you leave. Our influence with the Taliban might help you make the deal you are looking for.

America: If only you would get rid of this paranoia about India.

Pakistan: What you don’t understand is that after a bloody partition 63 years ago, four hot wars, in one of which an Indian army invaded East Pakistan and dismembered our country in 1971, we are in a cold war every bit as serious to us as your cold war against the Communists. As you well remember, in a cold war you probe for weakness along the perimeters, as you did with Contras in Nicaragua and other proxy wars. Your endearment of India may come at our expense. All right, we have stung them from time to time, as they are stinging us in stirring up Balochistan.

America: But you are losing control of those groups you thought you could unleash with impunity.

Pakistan: Just as you did with the Afghan forces we unleashed together against the Soviets. But what we want is a true strategic partnership, not a transactional one in which you seek only to buy our loyalty. God knows we need the money, but you don’t attempt to understand what is vital to us. Your war has brought terrorism into the heart of our country. Our once-pleasant capital, with its blast walls, checkpoints and barbed wire, looks more like Baghdad than Washington. We have allowed you your drones, which infuriate our people, but please consider that our difficulties and strategic interests may not always jibe with your own. And don’t cross our red lines and let your General Petraeus send special-ops teams into our country, which he is dying to do. We will resist, and the last thing you need is a fight with another Muslim country.

America: But we’ve told you that if a made-in-Pakistan terrorist act is committed in the United States, the American people will demand retaliation.

Pakistan: So you give any terrorist group the incentive to bomb you in order to have you bomb us? Who do you think is the real winner in that scenario? Why would you want to hold us hostage to terrorist whims when we both struggle with home-grown terrorists?

America: We are always talking at cross-purposes here.

Pakistan: On that we can agree.

Related:
U.S.-Pakistani officials tackle difficult issues - Reuters
For U.S. Troops, Peril On The Afghan-Pakistan Border - NPR
Released by Pakistan, Mullah Baradar at Center of Taliban Peace Talks - Antiwar.com

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

The U.S. - Iran Relations: 'Obama wrote Khamenei twice, Ahmadinejad wrote Obama twice'

Ex-official: Obama wrote Khamenei twice, Ahmadinejad wrote Obama twice
Laura Rozen on Foreign Policy, Politico, October 15, 2010

Veteran diplomat John Limbert served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iran in the Obama administration for nine months, departing this past summer.

He writes in a forthcoming U.S. Institute of Peace Iran primer on the Obama administration's frustrated attempts to negotiate with Iran so far and how both sides, but particularly Iran, beset by internal pressures and deep mutual misunderstandings, "claim the other is not responsive to its messages, and ... risk falling into the familiar, dysfunctional ways of the past."

Among his key points, Limbert reveals that Obama "twice wrote Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, but did not receive a response to his second letter." Meantime, "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad twice wrote Obama, but did not receive a reply."

I remember hearing that one letter from the office of Khamenei had come into the U.S. (and was being translated at State, very few people notified, in May/June 2009), just before Iran's disputed June 2009 presidential elections.

Limbert also reviews how a proposed Iran nuclear fuel swap deal, accepted and then reneged on by an internally divided Iran last fall, was unacceptable to the West by the time Iran agreed to it, with Brazil's and Turkey's mediation, in May 2010, and interpreted by the U.S. by then as a sanctions-stalling ploy.

"The last-ditch diplomacy ended up a classic case of bad timing. Terms acceptable in October 2009 were not acceptable in May 2010. ... The Obama administration—along with Russia and France, the original parties to the Geneva deal—viewed the revised package primarily as an Iranian attempt to avoid U.N. sanctions. By then the sanctions process had acquired too much momentum for the Turkey-Brazil deal to reverse."
The upshot?

"Officials on both sides seemed unable to get beyond their classic responses...Never say yes to anything. You will look weak," Limbert writes. "Insist the other side must change first. Anything the other side proposes must contain some subtle trick. Its only goal is to cheat us."

Despite the fact that "Obama was willing to go further than any previous administration in normalizing relations with Iran [and that] Washington continued to look for [diplomatic] opportunities ... the road ahead is likely to be frustrated by Iran’s fears, internal political friction and mutual hostility built up over 30 years without communication," he writes.

Whether sanctions can now persuade Iran's leaders to come to a negotiated solution is now the question. U.S. officials seem to think there is some time to find out -- perhaps two years.

Related:
Iraqi PM courts Iran during visit - Aljazeera
Iranian President Backs Nuclear Discussions - NTI
Chinese firms bypass sanctions on Iran, U.S. says - The Washington Post
Iran joins international talks on Afghanistan - ABC
Briefing Skipper: China, Israel, Iran, Cuba, Russian spies - Foreign Policy

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Sunnis in Iraq Allied With U.S. Rejoin Rebels


Sunnis in Iraq Allied With U.S. Rejoin Rebels
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and DURAID ADNAN, New York Times, October 16, 2010

BAQUBA, Iraq — Members of United States-allied Awakening Councils have quit or been dismissed from their positions in significant numbers in recent months, prey to an intensive recruitment campaign by the Sunni insurgency, according to government officials, current and former members of the Awakening and insurgents.

Although there are no firm figures, security and political officials say hundreds of the well-disciplined fighters — many of whom have gained extensive knowledge about the American military — appear to have rejoined Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Beyond that, officials say that even many of the Awakening fighters still on the Iraqi government payroll, possibly thousands of them, covertly aid the insurgency.

The defections have been driven in part by frustration with the Shiite-led government, which Awakening members say is intent on destroying them, as well as by pressure from Al Qaeda. The exodus has accelerated since Iraq’s inconclusive parliamentary elections in March, which have left Sunnis uncertain of retaining what little political influence they have and which appear to have provided Al Qaeda new opportunities to lure back fighters.

For complete article, click here
Related:
Iran brokers behind-the-scenes deal for pro-Tehran government in Iraq - Guardian
Iraq looks to black gold for salvation - Sydney Morning Herald
Syria offers Maliki a life jacket - Asia Times
Pentagon braced for the release of 400,000 Iraq files on Wikileaks - Telegraph

The U.S. - Pakistan Relations and the 'War on Terror'

Trying to win Pakistani trust, 1 flight at a time

By KIMBERLY DOZIER
The Associated Press, Sunday, October 17, 2010

SWAT, Pakistan -- The flood waters have mostly receded from the Swat Valley, leaving a vast swath of silt littered with the remains of houses, roads, and bridges.

Above it, there's the incongruous sight of lumbering U.S. Army Chinook helicopters, like twin-rotored flying trucks, ferrying refugees in one direction, and cement, rice and other relief supplies in the other.

Aboard this flight is U.S. Army Brigadier Michael Nagata, second in command of the U.S. military mission to Pakistan.

"I tell my people, we are ruthlessly focused on being here for the people of Pakistan," said Nagata. He rejects any notion that U.S. aid relief was about boosting U.S. approval rating in Pakistan, which is somewhere in the 17 percent range.

The Chinooks - together with a fleet of smaller Black Hawks - could well be a visual symbol for the almost schizophrenic military and diplomatic relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan.

Here, U.S. pilots work closely and quietly with the Pakistani army on flood relief, in what is almost a model for cooperating with a host country instead of putting U.S. boots on the ground, at great cost in money and lives. Yet in recent weeks, U.S. pilots in armed helicopters have also strayed or fired into Pakistan's tribal territories, killing two Pakistani border guards while pursuing militants from Afghanistan. Pakistan shut its Torkham border crossing to U.S. truck shipments to Afghanistan for almost two weeks in retaliation, before opening it again.

For complete article, click here
Related:
How to defuse a human bomb: Rescuing the Taliban's teenage recruits - Guardian
Risky Pakistan route imperils Afghan-bound U.S. supplies - Miami Herald
US understates civilian casualties in Pakistan, makes no amends - Today's Zaman
Ruses that distract from a CT strategy - The News

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

'Pakistan Is Not America's Enemy': WSJ Op-ed

Pakistan Is Not America's Enemy
A sustained U.S.-Pakistani partnership after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan could have produced a very different history than the one we wrestle with today.
By RYAN CROCKER, Wall Street Journal, October 11, 2010

The news from Pakistan is grim. NATO helicopters engage suspected militants inside Pakistan, killing three, only to discover they are Pakistani soldiers. The angry Pakistani government blocks NATO fuel shipments at the Khyber Pass, and militants attack the stalled trucks. An Obama administration report to Congress charges that the Pakistanis aren't doing enough against the Taliban and al Qaeda. Press accounts quote unnamed officials asserting that elements in Pakistani intelligence are encouraging the Taliban to step up attacks on NATO forces. And Bob Woodward cites President Obama as saying "the cancer is in Pakistan."

One could easily conclude that we are describing an enemy, not an ally. Many in Pakistan feel the same way. And yet the prospects for stabilizing Afghanistan, defeating al Qaeda and preventing further attacks on the United States are a direct function of that strained alliance. It is time for a collective deep breath.

Pakistan's historical narrative focuses on how the U.S. worked with Pakistanis and Afghans to drive the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980s: We succeeded—and then we left. And on our way out, we slapped sanctions on Pakistan, ending all security and economic assistance because of the country's nuclear program, which we had known about since 1974 when Pakistan's prime minister announced it publicly. We left Pakistan alone to deal with a destabilizing civil war in Afghanistan, and when the Taliban emerged as a dominant force in the mid-1990s, Islamabad supported them as a means of ending the conflict.

Then came 9/11 and the U.S. was back. Pakistanis welcomed the renewed assistance. But a constant question I heard while serving as ambassador to Pakistan from 2004-2007 was "How long will you stay this time, and what mess will you leave us with when you go?" For a fragile state with innumerable problems, including a vicious internal insurgency, these are existential questions.

Never in Pakistan's six decades of existence has the U.S. sustained a long-term, strategic commitment in the country. The Bush administration recognized this and enacted security and economic assistance programs designed to make a long-term difference in education, health care and governance. In 2006, I argued successfully for a five-year assistance package for Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which are notable both for chronic underdevelopment and extremism. The Obama administration has built on this, and last year's Kerry-Lugar bill provided $7.5 billion in assistance over five years. So we have the architecture in place to build a strategic relationship.

Still, short-term pressures risk undermining long-term strategy. When I was ambassador, voices in Congress, the media and even the administration were constantly calling for the U.S. to get tough on Pakistan, make Pakistanis do more, threaten them with consequences. Such exhortations were—and remain—generally counterproductive, as they fuel fears that the U.S. will again abandon Pakistan.

The U.S. can better work with Pakistan if we improve our understanding of history: Given its rivalry with India and its organic disunity, which dates back to its founding, Pakistan fears for its basic survival. The country has always had a difficult relationship with Afghanistan, not least because in the 19th century the British deliberately drew the Pakistani-Afghan border, the so-called Durand Line, in order to divide the Pashtun people. Today Pashtuns make up Afghanistan's largest community, but there are more Pashtuns in Pakistan.

The Durand Line also set the groundwork for the tribal areas, which are legally distinct from the rest of Pakistan because the British could never exert direct control over them. No central authority ever has. Winston Churchill's first published work, "The Story of the Malakand Field Force," is about fierce tribesmen declaring jihad against a Western army. It could be a contemporary account.

So what does this mean in concrete terms?

First, the U.S. should appreciate Pakistan's challenges and support its government in dealing with them. This summer's devastating floods have disappeared from the U.S. media but will continue to wreak havoc in Pakistan for a long time to come. In 2005 and 2006, after an earthquake in Kashmir killed almost 80,000 Pakistanis, the U.S. organized the largest relief operation since the Berlin Airlift. The floods' death toll is lower, but their long-term damage will be far greater. U.S. support should be commensurate.

Second, the U.S. should not carry out cross-border military actions, which I strongly resisted as ambassador. They are clearly counterproductive, and not just because we hit the wrong target. If NATO can carry out military actions in Pakistan from the west, Pakistanis wonder, what stops India from doing the same from the east? There are other options, including drone strikes, which the U.S. is now coordinating more closely with Pakistanis.

Third, with Pakistan's government (as with Afghanistan's), we must be private in our criticism and public in our support. Private talks should deepen regarding challenges like the insurgent Haqqani network in North Waziristan, and we need to listen at least as much as we lecture.

Fourth, any talks between the U.S. or Afghanistan and the Taliban must be transparent to the Pakistanis. A nightmare for Islamabad is the prospect that the Americans and Afghans come to some accommodation with Taliban elements that would leave them hostile to Pakistan. If Pakistan is not part of the process, we will be working at cross-purposes and only the Taliban will benefit.

Pakistan's arrest of Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar—at a time when he had begun reconciliation talks with Afghan authorities—underscored the risks of leaving Islamabad out of the loop. Going forward, the timing and nature of talks with the Taliban should be set by Afghans, Pakistanis and Americans working together.

None of this will be easy, but it is essential. A sustained U.S.-Pakistani partnership after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan could have produced a very different history than the one we wrestle with today. Writing a different future requires making long-term commitments—on both sides of the Durand Line.

Mr. Crocker, the dean of Texas A&M's George Bush School of Government and Public Service, was U.S. ambassador to Pakistan from 2004 to 2007 and U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2007 to 2009.

Related:
The Latest Crisis - New York Times Editorial
Pakistan stands up for its sovereignty  - Asia Times
U.S. tries to mend relations with Pakistan - UPI

Saturday, October 09, 2010

Drone attacks may be legal, but are they moral? - Varying Viewpoints

Source: New America Foundation
Drone attacks may be legal, but are they moral?

The silence from human rights groups on America's use of 'targeted attacks' in Afghanistan is deafening, says Alasdair Palmer
By Alasdair Palmer, Telegraph, October 9, 2010

Abdul Jabbar, a British citizen from Birmingham, was killed last week in Pakistan by a missile launched from an American drone. If Jabbar was indeed planning a Mumbai-style massacre in a British city, as the intelligence services claim, his death will be a relief. Yet the degree to which it now seems to be acceptable for the US to use drones to kill those it believes to be involved in planning terrorist attacks is alarming.

Since the beginning of September alone, President Obama has authorised at least 25 targeted killings. The total since he came to office is more than 100. These have certainly killed some of the senior operatives of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. They have also killed dozens of people, including a large number of women and children, who were not involved in terrorism.

For complete article, click here
Related:
Drone strikes in Pakistan could backfire in long-term - Reuters
US secretly shifts armed drones to fight terrorists in Pakistan - Telegraph
Study: Drone Strikes Have Been Effective in Pakistan - VOA
Drones Over Pakistan -- Menace or Best Viable Option? - Huffington Post
For detailed data on drone attacks in Pakistan, see New America Foundation's The Year of the Drone

Thursday, October 07, 2010

Terrorists Target Abdullah Shah Ghazi Shrine in Karachi


Eight killed in Karachi shrine suicide attacks
Staff Report, Daily Times, October 8, 2010

KARACHI: The twin suicide bombings at the shrine of Abdullah Shah Ghazi is a continuation of sectarian killings that have been witnessed in the city during the last few months.

There are two sectarian wars going on in the city simultaneously: one between the Deobandi-inspired Ahl-e-Sunnat Wal Jamaat, formerly Sipah-e-Sahabah and the Shia sect; and the other between Sunni Tehrik and the Deobandi sect for the control of mosques.

The blasts at the shrine took place after the funeral prayer of Maulana Amin, who was gunned down in a targeted attack on Tuesday.

Targeted killings of banned outfit Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) activists started last year that fuelled sectarianism in the city. Since then sectarian killings have claimed lives of 23 people belonging to the Deobandi school of thought. In the aftermath of their killings, a number of Shias including doctors and high profile personalities were also killed in targeted attacks in the city.

A senior police official speaking on condition of anonymity said the turmoil has been organised in which rival group members exploited the situation.

He said the conspiracy to push the city into sectarianism was exposed when terrorists targeted the Ashura and Chehlum processions.

Before that there had been no terrorist activities in Karachi for the last few years, he said, adding that such activities were entirely sectarian based.

Sunni Action Committee, a sister organisation of SSP, had categorically accused the Sunni Tehreek for assassination of their leader Amin.

The accusation angered the activists of both thought schools and the blast at the Ghazi shrine would further flare the confrontation.

Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies, on directives of Home Minister Dr Zulfiqar Mirza, sealed all shrines in the metropolis following the blasts.

Auqaf Secretary Bilal Zaidi agreed with the decision to seal the shrines.

However, the decision of the closure of shrines would also increase tension among the sects as clerics and scholars of different sects declined to accept the decision.

Sunni Tehreek chief Sarwat Ejaz Qadri condemned the decision and said the government should arrest the elements involved in such activities instead of imposing bans on shrines.

Majlis-e-Wahdat-e-Muslimeen leader Maulana Hassan Zafar said instead of evolving a counter-terrorism strategy, the government has imposed the ban on shrines.

Going by the trend, he said, the government would then also close down mosques and impose ban on markets as the terrorists have targeted mosques and shopping centres in the past.

At least 80 shrines of saints across the province, including 36 in Karachi, have been declared sensitive by the Sindh Auqaf Department following the terrorism threat.

Sources privy to the matter told Daily Times that the department had provided a list of 80 shrines to the Sindh Home Department and law enforcement and intelligence agencies for arranging foolproof security to avoid any untoward incident. Despite repeated warnings by intelligence agencies, the security department concerned did not take proper security initiatives.

Related:
The barbarians have attacked another shrine – no respite for Karachi - Jahane Rumi
Pakistan: Militants attack leading Sufi shrine - Independent
8 killed in blasts at Sufi shrine in Pakistan - Los Angeles Times
US condemns deadly bombings at Pakistani shrine - AFP
In pictures: Pakistan shrine bombing - BBC (also picture source above)

Crisis Guide: Pakistan - Council on Foreign Relations

Crisis Guide: Pakistan
Tensions over U.S. attacks in Pakistan's tribal areas, and concerns about stability after recent floods, highlight Pakistan's importance to U.S. policy in the region. This interactive guide examines the roots of Pakistan's problems and offers paths to a solution.

Executive Summary
This summary is part of “Crisis Guide: Pakistan,” published on CFR.org. - It may be viewed at www.cfr.org/pakistanguide

Pakistan represents one of the world's most troubling states in crisis. It is home to an array of terrorist groups that pose threats to international security and, increasingly, to Pakistan itself. It possesses a nuclear arsenal of about seventy to ninety weapons that is rapidly growing, and in the wake of growing instability, could become vulnerable to militants. Bordering a conflict-ridden Afghanistan and poised on a seemingly permanent war footing against India, what happens inside Pakistan's borders matters deeply to the region and the wider world.
 
The considerable global efforts to pacify and stabilize Afghanistan ultimately rely on Pakistan's cooperation. Its tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan serve as safe havens for militants battling U.S. and international troops across the border. In the 1980s, along with the United States and Saudi Arabia, Pakistan's army and its military intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), helped foster many of these groups in the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. But following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on U.S. targets carried out by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan vowed to sever ties with these groups and support the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan. However, experts say some of these relationships remain alive as Pakistan plans for the day when the U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan go home. Pakistan's army and intelligence services are also expected to play an important mediating role in any political settlement between the Afghan government and insurgent leaders.
 
For complete report, click here

Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Why doesn't the U.S. take credit for aiding Pakistan?

Why doesn't the U.S. take credit for aiding Pakistan?
David Ignatius, Washington Post Blog, October 4, 2010

Islamabad -- Hundreds of Americans have been working their butts off to help Pakistan cope with their flood disaster, and they haven't been getting much credit for it -- including from me.

I wrote last week from a village called Pir Sabak in northwestern Pakistan that U.S. flood relief wasn't evident there, or along the way. "The U.S. military has been working hard to provide flood assistance, but most of that is invisible to Pakistanis," I noted. That seemed to me to be a missed opportunity -- and characteristic of a weird misfire in U.S. public diplomacy. For a superpower, we can be oddly shy about advertising our good works.

I talked more about this problem with U.S. officials managing the relief effort, who felt their colleagues' work had been slighted. They're right; America has been making a big effort to help the flood victims, more than any other nation. But I'm more convinced than ever that the way we're doing it -- providing food aid through the U.N., for example, and focusing on transporting it rather than taking credit for its distribution -- reduces its public impact.

Here are some statistics that I didn't mention in my earlier column and should have: The U.S. government has provided a total of $362 million in aid; there are currently 26 U.S. military helicopters in Pakistan supporting relief efforts; four to six C-130 and C-17 cargo planes are transporting people and assistance every day; the U.S. has moved over 20,000 refugees and 13 million pounds of relief supplies.

For complete article, click here
Related:
Behind Closed Doors by Steve Coll - the New Yorker
Can the Obama administration avoid a split with Pakistan? - Editorial, Washington Post
Eight Germans Reported Dead in U.S. Drone Attack on Militants in Pakistan - Bloomberg
Supply line closure strains US-Pakistan ties - Boston Globe

Sunday, October 03, 2010

Inside Pakistan Today?

Capital suggestion
Dr Farrukh Saleem, The News, October 4, 2010

President Zardari, PM Gilani, Mian Nawaz Sharif, our media, Pak Army and the judiciary have all contributed to the instability, insecurity and uncertainty we call Pakistan. There's recession, depression and despair everywhere.

No more politics, please. Time out. Stop the clock. We were loosing ourselves and our country in the 'vast abysses of space and time' even before the Great Flood; the abode of evil spirits is now just around the corner. Our budget was redder than blood even before the Great Flood -- and now we are trying to wash blood with more blood.

Please take stock of the situation. Over the 2003 to 2010 period, the total Pakistani fatalities in terrorist violence now stand at 31,243. Over the same period there have been 2,571 bomb blasts. Over the same period there have been 247 suicide attacks. All this and we still don't have a consensus on how to counter terror.

No more politics, please. Take stock of the situation. The Great Flood has destroyed homes, crops, bridges, telecom, roads and grid stations worth some $20 billion. One out of every eight Pakistanis is on the verge of contracting hepatitis, meningitis, dysentery, insomnia, liver enlargement, diarrhoea or skin diseases. Dragons of winter nights are here and we are still in denial.

The fact is that dirt stinks more when stirred. We are more dependent on the US, Saudi Arabia and the UK than ever before (our three largest donors in that order). Foreign aid comes with foreign strings and beggars breed while rich nations feed. The US, Saudi Arabia and the UK want two things: transparent governance and non-political relief and reconstruction.

We are more dependent on the ADB and the World Bank than ever before (our two largest loan disbursers in that order). They also want two things: power sector reforms and additional taxes. A hungry dog, as we all know, would have to eat dirty pudding.

We would have to save ourselves. We must cure our own cancer. We must reform and he who reforms, God assists. There's no way out but to live within our own means. If our Ministry of Finance announces a Rs700 billion-deficit budget then our prime minister has no right to spend Rs3.3 million a day on his foreign junkets. If HEC's budget is on the butcher block then our president has no right to spend Rs400 million a year on the maintenance of his presidency.

The world is telling us that our politics stinks. And, they won't feed a stinking fish no more. The fish, we all know, stinks from the head downwards. The butcher is here in his killing clothes. Is our government deaf? Are we blind? We all know that a deaf husband and a blind wife are always a happy couple.

P.S. Ever wondered why there are so few women in politics? Well, it is awfully hard to 'put makeup on two faces'.

The writer is a columnist based in Islamabad. Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com

Games India Isn’t Ready to Play

Games India Isn’t Ready to Play
By Pankaj Mishra, New York Times, October 2, 2010

ON Friday afternoon, public spaces across north India were flooded with policemen and paramilitaries. Thousands of alleged “troublemakers” were arrested. The sending of bulk text messages from mobile phones was banned. These precautions had nothing to do with the opening on Sunday of the Commonwealth Games, the athletic competition among the nations of the former British Empire that so many Indians have hoped would be their country’s symbolic coming out as a world power.

Rather, the police were out in force because an Indian court had pronounced its verdict on the site in the town of Ayodhya that has been long claimed by Hindu nationalists as the birthplace of Lord Rama. The government did not want a repeat of the horrific mob violence that in 1992 had followed the destruction by Hindu nationalists of a 16th-century mosque standing on the land in question.

Shortly after the verdict, which split the disputed site unequally in favor of Hindus and to the detriment of Muslims, I went for a walk through the Himalayan village near my home. Even here, 600 miles from Ayodhya, people seemed to be playing it safe, the market partly closed, and shopkeepers clustered around television sets behind shutters.

Only the migrant laborers, who have come hundreds of miles from central India to the Himalayas, were still at work, men, women and even children carrying heavy stones on their heads at the construction projects that litter the hillsides.

Easily identified — the parents small and thin and dark, and the children with distended bellies and rust-brown hair that speak of chronic malnutrition — these migrant laborers have been a regular sight here for some years, building summer homes for the affluent of Delhi all day, and then huddling under tin shacks at night.

I stopped to talk to a couple I know. All morning news channels had been working themselves into a frenzy of fear and anxiety. Even the more sober commentators fretted whether our “rising economic superpower” would be torn apart again over the question of whether the mythical Lord Rama was born in a ramshackle provincial town.

But the laborers hadn’t heard of the court verdict. As colder weather approaches, their greatest anxiety seemed to be to protect themselves: the punitive rains this summer have blown away the roofs of their living quarters. And it seemed only right that these helots of India’s globalized economy should be indifferent to the possible despoiling of India’s image in the West.

So who is anxious over India’s image in the wealthy world? That particular burden is borne by India’s small affluent elite, for whom the last few months have been full of painful and awkward self-reckonings. Certainly, the fear of violence over Ayodhya was only the latest in a long line of reminders that, as the columnist Vir Sanghvi put it, “as hard as we try to build a new India ... old India still has the power to humiliate and embarrass us.”

For complete article, click here
Related:
Commonwealth Games: For India, Games Are Entree to World Stage - NYT
India Opens Commonwealth Games With Pageantry, Tradition - VOA
Delhi delights as Games open in style - ABC
Is India really shining? - Riz Khan show, Aljazeera