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This is the question for Pakistani politicians and American analysts. While the Surkha crowd (the drawing room Marxist liberalsnot the real revolutionaries). Of course they are thinking with the paychecks (they are not loyal to Moscow or Beijing anymoreonly to the Almighty Dollar) and doing the bidding for the Neocons.
One would have imagined that the locals from QAU would have enough sense to talk to the Americans and show some intellectual integrity. One would have expected the likes of Ahmed Rashid, and Pervez Hoodbhoy to tell the Americans, that it is in Americas interest to reduce the decibel level of the war in Afghanistan and to really assist Pakistan in fighting terrorinstead they tell the visitors what the want to hear. Worse, the Ikram Sehgals and the Asma Gilanis parrot the American linehook line and sinker.
The fifth column continue to berate the establishment on Strategic Depth, but never mention the Indian policy of Fungible Force (using terror from Afghanistan to destabilize Pakistan). These Neo-liberal and Neo-Con cabal simply regurgitates the latest concoction that the White House bars describes as the new cocktaila new Afghanistan-Pakistan policy. Most of it is base don old recopies discarded by The Ugly American and Friends Not Masters.
Mary Fritzgeralds of the Irish Times describes the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan with tainted eye glasses. She has been able to see the failure on the ground. It is self evidentno rocket science here. However he analysis reeks of hegemony, colonial desires, a policy based on Kiplings White Mans burden. Either she doesnt have the brain capacity to comprehend the political a fissures in the Subcontinent, or she is playing dumbbecause her article is simply part of a disinformation campaign that justifies perpetual mimetic warfare.
LONG BEFORE Barack Obama took office, a new term Afpak had crept into the lexicon of policymakers and analysts concerned with the troublesome lands in and around the Durand Line, the colonial-era boundary that today marks where Afghanistan ends and Pakistan begins. Heres how Richard Holbrooke, now US special envoy to the region, explained it in March 2008: We often call the problem Afpak . . . This is not just an effort to save eight syllables. It is an attempt to indicate and imprint in our DNA the fact that there is one theatre of war, straddling an ill-defined border.
It is a region that so abounds with cautionary tales, from the Greeks to the Mughals, and from the British to the Soviets, that the description graveyard of empires has become threadbare with use. And now, more than 20 months after Holbrookes remarks, the ghosts of those empires past loom large over the Obama presidency, as the Afpak conundrum becomes the foreign policy issue most likely to define it. In a March 27th speech, Obama declared that the region had become a priority as he sketched the basic contours of a strategy that would include bolstering the US military and civilian presence in Afghanistan, along with fresh efforts to engage wider regional support to improve security there.
Nine months later, after much unseemly wrangling and accusations that Obama was dithering on the specifics, the strategy was recalibrated again in the shape of a pledge to deploy 30,000 more US troops, or three of the four extra brigades that had been requested by the US military commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal.
This, along with further commitments from Nato states, is expected to swell the ranks of the international military presence in Afghanistan next year to 150,000, some two thirds of which will be US forces. More than 40 nations have contributed troops to the mission, including Ireland, which has deployed seven members of the Defence Forces.
Announcing the troop increase during a speech at West Point on December 1st, Obama outlined a formidable list of objectives: denying al-Qaeda safe havens in the region; reversing the insurgents momentum in Afghanistans southern and eastern flanks; strengthening the Afghan national forces, and creating conditions for the transfer of responsibilities to the Afghans themselves.
But, for those parsing the speech in Kabul and Islamabad, one element stood out: the plan for a phased withdrawal of troops commencing from July 2011, giving those on the ground some 18 months to make substantial progress towards the ambitious stated goals.
Many wondered how the US would be able to achieve in such a paltry time what it had failed to do in the eight years since the Taliban government was ousted following the September 11th attacks. Hamid Karzai, declared president for another five-year term in November following a deeply flawed election that flew in the face of what were once much vaunted democratic aspirations for Afghanistan, has already contradicted the Obama plan by predicting the Afghan army and police will not be ready until 2014.
Several observers caution that imposing such a timeline could result in the Taliban merely waiting out the US exit, and reorganising with the aim of taking power in Kabul, as they did in 1996. This prospect only adds to the apprehensions of ordinary Afghans, torn between resentment of the foreign military presence and fear of a return to Taliban rule.
Talk of timeframes also has implications across the border, with some fretting that it reduces the chances of Islamabad cleaning up its act by completely severing links with Taliban leaders who were once allies, and who might again prove useful in forming a friendly and malleable government in Afghanistan after the US and Nato pull out. As regional specialist Ahmed Rashid asked recently: Is it in Pakistans interest to antagonise the Afghan Taliban now, if they will be in power two or three years down the road?
Few disagree that Pakistans own travails remain the gravest challenge. [] Suicide bombings in Pakistan have increased 20-fold since 2005, and earlier this year Taliban fighters took up positions just 60 miles from the capital. The ensuing fighting displaced more than two million people from their homes.
Zaid Hamid video on Swat
Ms. Fitzgeralds article is a bit dated. The incredulous The 70 miles from Islamabad nonsense conjures up only an image of journalistic incompetence and geographical ignorance. Ireland of all places should know that terrorism cannot be measured in terms of distance from Belfast. Irish Car bombs were sold in New York pubs to finance explosions in London and elsewhere. Events have passed her by. She lives in the old paradigm of Afghan nation building and the bad guys are in Swat. That was yesterday and so 2008. Today there is a new reality which endangers all of Central Asia.The rise and fall of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan & Pakistan: Where next?
Indian Occupied Kashmir: 100,000 kids in orphanages
Isnt Afghanistan Is More Complicated Than Vietnam?
The likes of Mr. Fitzgerald can never comprehend the The Great Game. If she had read Mr. Joshis article published in the Guardian (this week) on why Indian troops should run Afghanistan, she may have comprehended the foreign policy goals of Delhi and how the Indian establishment has a name for itFungible Force. Send terror to Pakistan via Afghanistan. The policy is simplesince Bharat cannot attack Pakistan using conventional forces (mutually assured destruction and Nuclear weapons prevent it from a frontal attack), it has been using its bases in Tajikistan and its Consulates in Afghanistan to projects its objectives using malleable youth and trained mercenaries.Ms. Fitzgerald and others like her choose to ignore that fact that 80% of Indian troops are deployed on the Pakistani border, and that all major politicians in Delhi have called for the destruction of Pakistanegged on by an virulently vociferous Anti-Pakistan media.
Ms. Fitzgeralds hasnt quiet grasped the situation quite yet. She hasnt figured out the fact that there is a new reality in town. Obamas Surgers vs. Exiters: Still at odds on how to leave Afghanistan. The only discussion that is really happening in Washington is the discussion which sayshow to get out of the quagmire. Any journalist still wondering about should-we-or-shouldnt-we should be sent back to Kindergarten for a refresher on Afghan history, and the limits of American power. Is the US Military Exhausted?
[] India poses the greatest threat to the region, and many within its military bristle at the perceived failure by the US to understand how deep their suspicions of Delhi run.
While the Obama administration has attempted to assuage these concerns with offers of security guarantees and greater regional co-operation with India, the US relationship with Pakistan remains prickly a situation hardly helped by the latters weak government under Asif Ali Zardari, and rampant anti-American sentiment among its general public.
It all adds up to a pretty ominous picture for 2010 a year few doubt will prove a defining moment for the now firmly entwined fortunes of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and one newly garlanded Nobel Peace laureate.Barack Obamas plan to start withdrawing troops in 2011 could lead to further instability, writes MARY FITZGERALD Foreign Affairs Correspondent
The only real solution to the quagmire in Afghanistan, is the end of the war in Afghanistan and a Marshall Plan for Pakistan. An FTA (Free Trade Agreement) and Reconstruction Opportunity Zones (ROZs) in Pakistan would alleviate the problems of the unemployed and would be Dollars well spent.
