Friday, July 29, 2011

Pakistan's ISI from the Inside!

Pakistan's ISI from the Inside
Steve Clemons, Atlantic Monthly, July 25, 2011

The best places to meet the world's most interesting national security and foreign policy personalities are no longer Washington or London or Paris. Rather, highest on the list are Beijing, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha.
Many years ago, I met Lt. General Asad Durrani in Beijing thanks to a conference organized by Australia's Monash University. We have been acquainted and communicating since. I remember arriving late to the conference and rushing in as the brash, younger-than-I-am-now upstart and sitting down at one of the lunch tables of ten. I quickly met everyone and heard that Durrani was a general from Pakistan. That's all I knew.

I asked him quickly not having known that he was essentially Pakistan's Karla, or George Smiley, depending on your perspective, "Do you think President Musharraf really doesn't control the ISI?" Several faces went white at the table. A jaw dropped. Durrani's eyes narrowed and he slowly said, "It may be in General Musharraf's interests to pretend he has little control over the ISI." This is pure Durrani -- layers, meaningful, informed, and no one's flack.

Then I realized looking at bios that he was the former chief of the ISI -- and our accidental bluntness and candor has glued us together since.

Tonight, General Durrani sent me an essay he wrote, with very light editing by me. These are his words, his insights into how Pakistan sees the Taliban and Afghanistan -- as well as its competition with the US in the region.

I have permission to post the entire essay which I am doing. I think that those interested in understanding the other side of the complex and stressed US-Pakistan relationship need to read a bit about the history of the ISI in the words of one of their own.

When I last met General Durrani at a conference organized by Al Jazeera in Doha, he said to me:

Steve, it is very hard for me to overstate to you the enthusiasm for which Pakistan's generals have for the Taliban.

Durrani is not a booster for the Taliban; he is a hard core realist -- and his view is that Pakistan's generals prize the Taliban for its ability to give them "strategic depth". Whether you agree or not, his assessments are very much worth reading in full.

So, the rest from Lt. General and former ISI Chief Assad Durrani:
The ISI: AN EXCEPTIONAL SECRET SERVICE
by Lt. General Asad Durrani

When Smashing Lists, a relatively unknown website, declared Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, the ISI, the best of its kind, it gladdened my heart but also had me worried.

Soon after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, I met an old colleague, a Special Forces officer recently inducted in the ISI. He whispered in my ears: "we have decided to support the Afghan resistance". Understandably. With the "archenemy" India in the East and now not a very friendly Soviet Union on our Western borders, Pakistan had fallen between "nutcrackers".

We therefore had to take our chances to rollback the occupation; but did we have any against a 'superpower', and the only one in the region at that? Soon after the Soviet withdrawal, as the Director General of Military Intelligence, I was assigned to a team constituted to review Pakistan's Afghan Policy. That, followed by a stint in the ISI, provided the answer.

The Afghan tradition of resisting foreign invaders was indeed the sine qua non for this gamble to succeed. American support took two years in coming but when it arrived, US support was one of the decisive factors. The ISI's role -- essentially logistical in that it channelled all aid and helped organise the resistance- turned out to be pivotal. In the process, from a small time player that undertook to punch above its weight, rubbing shoulders with the best in the game, the Americans, catapulted the Agency into the big league. Unsurprisingly, the ISI became a matter of great concern not only for its foes.

Cooperation amongst secret services, even within the country, is not the norm. It took a 9/11 for the US to create a halfway-coordinating mechanism. Between the CIA and the ISI, however, communication and coordination worked out well as long as the Soviets were in Afghanistan. The shared objective -- defeat of the occupation forces -- was one reason; respect for each other's turf, the more important other.

The CIA hardly ever questioned how its Pakistani counterpart dispensed with the resources provided for the Jihad or for that matter how it was conducted. And the ISI never asked if the American providers were over invoicing the ordnance or undermining the Saudi contribution. It did not mean that they trusted each other.

For complete article, click here

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Directionless Policing in Pakistan

Repeal of the Police Act: Sindh steps back to 19th Century
Tariq Khosa, The News, July 15, 2011

With one thoughtless and reckless stroke of pen the PPP-led Sindh Government has repealed the police law of 2002, thus reviving Police Act of 1861. This is a huge leap backwards that revives military model of Irish constabulary as well as bureaucratic control of the police.

The so-called democratic government has walked into the trap laid by devious baboos and their political patrons who do not want a politically neutral, democratically controlled and highly accountable police service. By a single notification, the police in Sindh have been turned into an oppressive force rather than a public service. It is time to rise against this retrogressive step.

This executive order may have been given under political compulsions but its implications have not been carefully examined. Revival of 1861 law is not only unconstitutional but also violates the principle of separation of the judiciary from the executive. It is aimed at undermining the independence of judiciary, removing the democratic control of elected Nazims over the local government, ensuring bureaucratic control over the police through executive magistracy, and diluting the command of the police chief over his own force. In other words, the executive by one stone has tried to kill three birds, i.e. independent judiciary, elected mayors, and professional police commanders.

This patently illegal and unconstitutional directive is all set to be challenged before the High Court and may even go before the Supreme Court. Questions are being raised whether Police Order 2002, a federal law, can altogether be repealed by the provincial government instead of introducing some amendments that do not vitiate the basic structure of the law. The question whether police law could be promulgated by the federal government came up before the Lahore High Court in 2002. Mr Justice Tassaduq Jilani of Lahore High Court ruled that policing is an extension of the Criminal Procedure Code and therefore the federation can promulgate police law. This question therefore was settled by the High Court and has not been undone by the Supreme Court.

The question of separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary is bound to be raised in this unilateral action of the Sindh Government. The institution of the executive magistracy stands abolished in accordance with the constitutional requirement in all the four provinces.
 
For complete article, click here  
For background, see:
Reforming Police and Law Enforcment Infrastructure in Pakistan by Hassan Abbas - USIP
Reforming Pakistan Police: An Overview by Shoaib Suddle
Strengthening Police Reform in South Asia - Asian Development Bank

Thursday, July 21, 2011

The Future of U.S. - India Relations



Hillary gives India points to ponder
Deccan Chronicle, July 21, 2011

U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s speech in Chennai on Wednesday, just a day after she held the second India-US strategic dialogue in New Delhi, was absorbing in a way that the official talks were not.

Indeed, if the secretary of state had done no more than dwell at some length on the key points she made in Chennai, especially those relating to East and Southeast Asia and South and Central Asia — and let the senior officials accompanying her engage with the nitty-gritty of the bilateral relationship with their Indian counterparts — the assessment of the second strategic dialogue between the two countries may have been more upbeat.

We can trust senior bureaucrats to mess things up, and in this case Indian and US officials did little to prove us wrong.

The joint statement at the end of the strategic dialogue was a limp affair, clearly failing to capture the spirit of the discussions, while in Chennai the secretary of state informed her audience that in New Delhi she had discussed in depth the key issues she was raising before them.

In her “vision for the 21st century” speech, the secretary of state made no secret of the US desire to forge multi-faceted ties with India because the history of the present century will be “written in Asia”. America’s Asian allies coming down from the Cold War era remain intact.

For compete article, click here
Related:
Hillary Rodham Clinton urges greater leadership role for India - Washington Post
Eyeing China, Clinton urges India to take leader role - Express Tribune/AP
Remarks on India and the United States: A Vision for the 21st Century - Complete text of Secretary Clinton's Speech

Friday, July 15, 2011

Human Rights Situation in Balochistan

Pakistan: Upsurge in Killings in Balochistan
Hold Military, Paramilitary Troops Accountable for Abuses
Human Rights Watch, July 13, 2011
(New York) - Pakistan's government should immediately act to end the epidemic of killings of suspected Baloch militants and opposition activists by the military, intelligence agencies, and the paramilitary Frontier Corps in the southwestern province of Balochistan, Human Rights Watch said today.
Across Balochistan since January 2011, at least 150 people have been abducted and killed and their bodies abandoned - acts widely referred to as "kill and dump" operations, in which Pakistani security forces engaged in counterinsurgency operations may be responsible. Assailants have also carried out targeted killings of opposition leaders and activists. Human Rights Watch has extensively documented enforced disappearances by Pakistan's security forces in Balochistan, including several cases in which those "disappeared" have been found dead. (See appendix.)
"The surge in unlawful killings of suspected militants and opposition figures in Balochistan has taken the brutality in the province to an unprecedented level," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The government should investigate all those responsible, especially in the military and Frontier Corps, and hold them accountable."
In the first 10 days of July, nine bullet-riddled bodies, several of them bearing marks of torture, were discovered in the province, Human Rights Watch said. On July 1, the body of Abdul Ghaffar Lango, a prominent Baloch nationalist activist, was found in an abandoned hotel in the town of Gadani, in the Lasbela district. The local police told the media that, "The body bore multiple marks of brutal torture." Lango had been abducted by men in civilian clothes in Karachi, in Sindh province, on December 11, 2009. When Lango's relatives tried to lodge a complaint about his abduction, the police refused to take it. An officer told the family that Lango had been detained because he was a BNP leader and that the "authorities" wanted to restrain him from participating in politics.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

IS U.S. Military Aid to Pakistan in Doldrums ?

U.S. halt of aid to Pakistan risky
By Sebastian Abbot, Associated Press, July 12, 2011

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The decision to suspend more than one-third of American military aid to Pakistan could end up hurting Washington more than Islamabad as the United States seeks to navigate an end to the Afghanistan war and defeat al-Qaeda, former Pakistani officials and analysts warned Monday.

Holding back the $800 million in aid, they said, is unlikely to pressure Pakistan to increase cooperation with the United States and could strengthen those in Pakistan's government who argue that Washington is a fickle ally who can't be trusted.

"If you still need the relationship, which clearly the United States does, then it really doesn't make sense to take action at this time, because it leaves the United States with less, not more, influence with the Pakistani military," said Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States. "Cooperation cannot be coerced by punitive actions."

Despite billions in American aid since the Sept. 11 attacks, the relationship has long been tense because of Pakistan's reluctance to target Taliban extremists on its territory who stage cross-border attacks against NATO troops in Afghanistan.

For complete article, click here

Related:
Army aid: US lays bare concerns on Pakistan army - AFP/Express Tribune
Pakistan 'punished' in Pipelineistan - Asia Times Online

Friday, July 01, 2011

Defeating Al-Qaeda - Refining U.S. Strategy ?

Obama Adviser Outlines Plans to Defeat Al Qaeda
By Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, June 29, 2011

WASHINGTON — A week after President Obama announced the initial drawdown of American troops from Afghanistan, his top counterterrorism adviser described plans to rely more heavily on a largely landestine campaign to destroy Al Qaeda’s network, which he described as already “in its decline.”

The adviser, John O. Brennan, said Wednesday that military and intelligence operatives would deliver “targeted, surgical pressure” on militant groups intent on attacking the United States.

Laying out the administration’s plan to battle Al Qaeda in the era after Osama bin Laden and at a time of declining public support for costly wars, Mr. Brennan outlined a White House counterterrorism strategy that formalized a governmentwide approach that had been evolving in practice since Mr. Obama took office.

He talked of hitting Al Qaeda “hard enough and often enough” with increased numbers of Special Operations forces and speedy deployments of “unique assets” (presumably drone aircraft), and he underscored that military commandos and intelligence operatives were working more closely than ever before on the battlefield.

“It will take time, but make no mistake, Al Qaeda is in its decline,” he said in a speech at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

But this wide-ranging strategy — relying on often unreliable allies, sometimes sketchy intelligence and a clandestine American force already strained by a decade of secretive wars — has its limitations, American officials have said in recent days.

Mr. Brennan acknowledged as much in his remarks, noting the collapsing government in Yemen and the United States’ deteriorating relationship with Pakistan. Although he said that the United States must remain committed to Pakistan, Mr. Brennan voiced exasperation at one point, saying, “I’m hoping that the Pakistani people and the services are going to realize this really is a war.”

He said that the terrorist threat emanating from both countries was so serious that the United States had little choice but to deliver aid and military support to bolster its faltering counterterrorism partners.

For complete article, click here

Related:
Read complete (pdf) document - National Strategy for Counterterrorism, White House, June 2011
How to get Pakistan to break with Islamic militants - By Zalmay Khalilzad, Washington Post
Analysts: New Strategy Focuses On Insurgent Leaders - NPR
Drone strikes show Pakistan still cooperating with U.S. By Jonathan Landay, Miami Herald
The Future of Al-Qaeda - Foreign Policy