DE BORCHGRAVE Wash Times Nov 15 2010 Pakistan bombshell Candid narratives explode myths about our purported ally
DE BORCHGRAVE: Pakistan bombshell
Candid narratives explode myths about our purported ally
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/nov/15/pakistan-bombshell/
The Washington Times
4:57 p.m., Monday, November 15, 2010
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, left, and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari shake hands as Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, center, looks on during their meeting in the Bocharov Ruchei residence near Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi, Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2010. Medvedev on Wednesday offered Pakistan support in dealing with catastrophic floods as he hosted leaders of Afghan, Pakistan and Tajikistan for talks on efforts to stabilize the region. (AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Dmitry Astakhov, Presidential Press Service)
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Some can't wait to get out of Afghanistan, and some can't wait to see us leave. NATO allies want out ASAP. Some have left already (Dutch troops), others are preparing to leave (Canadians), and soon the allied fighting force will be reduced to 100,000 Americans and 9,000 Brits. And Afghan President Hamid Karzai wants the United States to reduce its military footprint countrywide - just as U.S. commander Gen. David H. Petraeus seeks to widen it - and begin negotiations with the Taliban.
When NATO allies volunteered military units to assist the United States in rooting out al Qaeda's infrastructure in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001, they figured they'd be home in a few months. Had their governments known that their troops would be in Afghanistan for a decade, they would have stayed home.
Most troublesome for U.S. and NATO allies is that al Qaeda, the original reason for dispatching troops "out of area," fled Afghanistan for Pakistan in mid-December 2001.
The prestigious Council on Foreign Relations' 25-experts-strong, 71-page task-force report on the crisis, says that given "the complex political currents of Pakistan and its border regions ... it is not clear U.S. interests warrant" the costly war, "nor is it clear that the effort will succeed." Also, if President Obama's December strategic review "shows progress is not being made, the U.S. should move quickly to recalculate its military presence in Afghanistan."
The same week the council published its gloomy assessment of the Afghan war, one of Pakistan's most influential journalists, the editor of a major newspaper, made the "off-the-record" - which now means go ahead and use it but keep my name out of it - rounds in Washington to deliver a stunning indictment of all the players. Samples:
· All four wars between India and Pakistan (1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999) were provoked by Pakistan.
· There is no Indian threat to Pakistan, except for what is manufactured by the ISI (Inter-Service Intelligence agency).
· Washington says Pakistan must do more to flesh out insurgent safe havens in FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas). As long as the Taliban were the illegitimate children of ISI, that was possible. But the Taliban are now the enemies of Pakistan, irrespective of whether they are Pakistani Taliban or Afghan Taliban. Assets have become liabilities. We've lost 3,000 Pakistani military killed in action. All the jihadi terrorist organizations were created by Pakistan - and they have turned against us.
· Pakistan has a big stake in Afghanistan, and America's own exit strategy is entirely dependent on Pakistan. Our army has a chokehold on your supply lines through Pakistan. And Pakistan wants to be the U.S. proxy in Afghanistan. ISI wants to make sure Pakistan does not become a liability in Afghanistan.
· The United States should cut its losses in Afghanistan as rapidly as possible.
· There is no chance whatsoever for the U.S. and its NATO and other allies to prevail in Afghanistan. No big military successes are possible. All U.S. targets are unrealistic. You cannot prevail on the ground. ISI will not abandon the Taliban. And if the Taliban does not have a major stake in negotiations with the United States, these will be sabotaged by Pakistan.
· Time is running out for Gen. Petraeus - for the United States and for us (Pakistan). Our system is falling apart. The sooner the U.S. and Pakistan are on the same page, the better it will be for both of us.
· The Kerry-Lugar aid bill ($1.5 billion a year over five years) is too little, too late. Only half of U.S. pledges are actually coming in. A huge slice of this bill goes to administration and local bureaucracy; $25 million was earmarked for "Sesame Street" - for Pakistanis. U.S. aid is not achieving any of its objectives. Flood relief also caused havoc. Four hundred bridges were washed away.
· The attacks against U.S.-NATO supply lines through Pakistan, which have included the torching of scores of tanker trucks, were not the work of Taliban guerrillas; they all were the work of the ISI made to look like Taliban. The objective was to demonstrate the extent to which the United States is dependent on Pakistani security.
· U.S. drone strikes? The Pakistani line about "huge provocations" and more civilians killed than the Taliban and their partners is pure army invention. Drones play a limited role and should continue.
· One can't begin to understand the Pakistani crisis until one absorbs the terrifying fact that Pakistan's 180 million population includes 80 million children younger than 18 - almost half the population. And just 40 percent of Pakistani children are in school. (Reminder: Pakistan also is one of the world's eight nuclear powers, counting North Korea).
· India and Pakistan must bury the Kashmir feud. The reason it continues in an off-and-on mode is because that's what the Pakistani army wants. The army's corporate interests are at stake. If the crisis is resolved, the army loses its narrative for dominating the economy.
· Pakistan is a work in progress. The war against extremism is our war, too. The stakeholders are changing. Urban Pakistan is not interested in al Qaeda's global caliphate narrative.
· The pictures and stories about the public whipping of a young girl sent a wave of revulsion through our middle classes. Alas, they are still a minority.
· President Asif Zardari is pilloried in a corner. He has no room to move.
· Anti-Americanism? (The Pew Foundation poll shows 64 percent of Pakistanis believe the U.S. is the enemy.) Yet the one thing they all want most of all is a U.S. visa. The anti-U.S. feelings all trace back to the way Washington left us high and dry after we had fought together against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
· China? The Pakistanis see President Obama's visit to India and the warm relations between the old and the new superpower as further evidence it would behoove Islamabad to further enhance its relations with China, which is busy enlarging its footprint in Pakistan. An Iran-Pakistan-China pipeline is considered a realistic project. Singapore has rights on Gwadar, the new Pakistani port on the Arabian Sea, which soon will be transferred to China (with some fancy footwork by Pakistan's Supreme Court that will say the Singapore contract does not hold legal water, which will clear the way for China).
Between the Council on Foreign Relations' report and a prominent Pakistani newspaper editor's confidential musings about his own country's betrayals, there was a touch of Yogi Berra's deja-vu all over again.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor-at-large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.
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http://www.scribd.com/doc/21693873/Indo-Pak-Wars-1947-71-A-STRATEGIC-AND-OPERATIONAL-ANALYSIS-BY-A-H-AMIN
Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." --
Albert Einstein !!!
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