Afpakia: Afghanistan-Pakistan

[ya]

"Our goal in Afghanistan was to Kill Bin Laden and the core of AQ, destroy the AQ training camp infrastructure and make A-stan a place where AQ couldn't rebuild."

That's what they say...but let's look at the 3 points you make.
1.Bin Laden: is now dead, or if alive, the trail has gone cold. Bin Laden is likely not even in Afgh, but in Pak, so we are likely wasting our resources in Afghanistan.
2. Destroy "training camps": These are mostly in Pak (again we are in the wrong country), and very rarely do we hear of training sites in Afghanistan, and how do you destroy these camping sites with a few tents and perhaps a few obstacle courses. These are rudimentary camps, even if destroyed can be put back very quickly. So far I dont think we have bombed a single jihadi training camp, about 50 of which are known to be in POK.
3. Make Afg. a place where AQ cannot rebuild. Its the taliban who want to take over Afghanistan, not AQ. When the heat got too much in Sudan, Osama moved to the Af-Pak border, they can always move again. Its much more easy to go after governments that support terrorism.

The only thing sensible, we are doing, is with our drone attacks, but those video games can be played from Centcom in Florida, or from bases inside Pak.

I think the above goals, wrt  afghanistan have been achieved to the extent we could, or wanted to. There must be something more to our presence in Afghanistan. Why do we want to build a permanent base in that country ?, its certainly not to tackle AQ a highly mobile terrorist organization, over the next 10 years ?. Why is the US taking all this crap from the beggar nation of pakistan, aka epicenter of terrorism. If our aim is to destroy the jihadis,we need to be squeezing the pakis. Since we are not doing that, there must be some other reason for the US in Afghanistan..

[G M]

1.Bin Laden: is now dead, or if alive, the trail has gone cold. Bin Laden is likely not even in Afgh, but in Pak, so we are likely wasting our resources in Afghanistan.

Agreed. However, we sure have killed a lot of jihadists on the battlefield as well as gathered lots of intel and wiped out much of AQ's middle management.

2. Destroy "training camps": These are mostly in Pak (again we are in the wrong country), and very rarely do we hear of training sites in Afghanistan, and how do you destroy these camping sites with a few tents and perhaps a few obstacle courses. These are rudimentary camps, even if destroyed can be put back very quickly. So far I dont think we have bombed a single jihadi training camp, about 50 of which are known to be in POK.

Agreed. Those that were in A-stan go wiped out early on.

I think the above goals, wrt  afghanistan have been achieved to the extent we could, or wanted to. There must be something more to our presence in Afghanistan. Why do we want to build a permanent base in that country ?

Part of it is that failed states are the swamp that breeds AQ, and thus nation building is seen as the way to drain the swamp, part of it is mission creep.We can't been seen as pulling out without Bin Laden's head on a spike, otherwise it will be taken as a major victory by the jihadists worldwide.

If our aim is to destroy the jihadis,we need to be squeezing the pakis. Since we are not doing that, there must be some other reason for the US in Afghanistan..

The US nat'l security machine tends to be very risk adverse. The only time we really got P-stan to do anything was right after 9/11. We were scared, we were pissed and no one knew how far we'd go or what we'd do. No one wants to be the one that "lost Pakistan". As you have pointed out in great detail, P-stan understands how the US works and milks us for money while playing the usual double game. I said years ago that I would bet a huge amount of money the the ISI knows exactly where Bin Laden is, and most likely extracted him from Tora Bora.

[ya]

"Part of it is that failed states are the swamp that breeds AQ, and thus nation building is seen as the way to drain the swamp, part of it is mission creep.We can't been seen as pulling out without Bin Laden's head on a spike, otherwise it will be taken as a major victory by the jihadists worldwide."

I agree the ISI likely knows Osama's location...so what is the US going to doing about it. If nothing, then why are we wasting resources in Af-Pak.

The part which concerns me is the "nation building" and "draining the swamp".
Nation building: One can do nation building in eg Japan, they want to put the tsunami behind them, they are a fairly advanced society. They are progressive. Doing the same is not going to work in a Islamic society like Afghanistan, which is very primitive (outside of kabul). eg It has taken many centuries for the muslims to adjust to indic values in India, it will be a long time, before the average taliban understands "democracy". Under optimistic conditions, perhaps a generation is needed.

Draining the swamp How many swamps can we afford to drain ?.

[G M]

I'm not optimistic as to the attempted nation building in A-stan, it is however a reflection of American values. We build schools and hospitals and feed the hungry, as opposed to the Soviets and their scorched earth strategy.

Can we afford to, at this point, probably not. Can we afford to pull out, in the long run, that would probably be even more costly.

[Crafty_Dog]

Our current strategy is incoherent.

==========
This from today's WSJ.  I'm not really sure I get "supporting civilian supremacy", as called for here, as being on point.  Hopefully Ya will continue our education.

By MIRA SETHI
Two months after Salman Taseer, the governor of Pakistan's Punjab province, was assassinated by his own bodyguard for criticizing the country's blasphemy law, the only Christian member of the Pakistani cabinet, Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, was killed for doing his job—advocating protection of the country's two million Christians.

Taseer's assassination prompted a debate: Was the blasphemy law, introduced by Gen. Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s in his bid to "Islamize" Pakistan, being exploited for mundane interests? Was it leading to witch hunts? Bhatti's death should prompt Pakistanis to ask themselves an equally disquieting question: Does Pakistan have a future as a successful nation state, at peace with itself and the world?

The civilian government's reaction to Bhatti's death has outraged many Muslim and Christian Pakistanis. As after Taseer's murder, it retreated into vague bromides. At Bhatti's funeral in Islamabad, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani vowed to "do the utmost to bring the culprits to justice." There was no mention of who these culprits were (the Tehreek-e-Taliban of Punjab has claimed responsibility), no mention of the ideologies, religious parties and jihadi organizations fueling their actions, and no mention of the blasphemy laws that Bhatti had campaigned against.

But the deaths of Taseer and Bhatti are the outcome not just of the Pakistan People's Party abandonment of the principles that once made it an appealing, popular force. They are the result of a decades-long imbalance in governance and power, which now has the PPP and other liberal and centrist civilians cowering in fear.

The failure of the political classes to initiate democratic, constitutional reform after Pakistan's separation from India in 1947 enabled the military to quickly define "national interest" as an anti-India ideology. This ideology, a type of Islamic nationalism, is one from which the Pakistan military has reaped rich dividends. It has kept civilian politicians on the defensive and the people numbed.

With the onset of the Cold War the U.S. armed Pakistan for its own strategic purposes. When the Pakistani army undertook adventures creating instability in the region—wars with India and attempts, eventually successful, to build nuclear weapons—the U.S. suspended military and economic aid.

But the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 put the Pentagon and the Pakistani army on good terms again. This time, Gen. Zia extracted huge sums from Washington: Pakistan's army was paid billions of dollars in direct correlation to its usefulness in organizing an anti-Soviet Islamic jihad. The '90s saw a nasty separation—aid was suspended again—and a reunion followed after 9/11, when the U.S. needed Pakistan's help in Afghanistan.

Now Zia's "children" have come of age. Extremists of all stripes—the Taliban and the mujahedeen—roam the streets of Lahore and Karachi unchecked by the security agencies who once thought it would be a good idea to arm them. Anger and frustration fueled by inequality are making young Pakistanis turn to religion for answers.

As in Egypt, over 60% of the population of Pakistan is under 25. Unlike Egypt, they want an Islamic revolution, not a democratic one. Salman Taseer's police bodyguard—all of 26 years old—killed him for "insulting" the Prophet Muhammad. (The governor had criticized a manmade blasphemy law, not the Prophet, but his assassin didn't know the difference).

Slowly, the U.S. is beginning to understand that Pakistan's existential confusion is the result of the grand strategic designs of the Pakistani military, an army that has carried out three coups to thwart the development of a democratic political system. In the process, Pakistan's civilian leadership has been eliminated—Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto hanged, Benazir Bhutto, Taseer and Bhatti assassinated—the country dismembered, ethnic subnationalism, regional tension and inequalities aggravated.

The U.S. must support civilian supremacy and recognize the Pakistani army's game for what it is. Alarmed by the idea that if America leaves Afghanistan its U.S. funds will dwindle, the military is loath to crush the Islamist warriors who can be "calibrated" to deliver strategic value to it. Until the U.S. recognizes this, Pakistan's military will continue to hold the world to ransom.

Ms. Sethi, a native of Lahore, Pakistan, is assistant books editor at the Journal.

[G M]

Our current strategy is incoherent.

Because the "community organizer in chief" is voting "present".

[Crafty_Dog]

I loathe the man as much as any of us here, but, as Glenn Beck says "The Truth has no agenda":  Bush left an incoherent mess that was unravelling rather quickly-- see the reports of Michael Yon in the last year of the Bush presidency.  Baraq simply has multiplied it.

[G M]

I think the key problem is the unwillingness to confront Pakistan.

[G M]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/weekinreview/13lashkar.html?_r=1

A Shooting in Pakistan Reveals Fraying Alliance
By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: March 12, 2011



WASHINGTON — Inside a dark jail cell on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan, a brawny 36-year-old American from the mountains of southwest Virginia has sat for weeks as Pakistan began proceedings against him on murder charges and his own government made frantic attempts to secure his release.


Tangled Web Raymond Davis, center, opened a window on the fraught relationships between America and, clockwise from top left, the Pakistani military, whose chief once headed its spy agency, and the mili- tant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is linked to raids in Mumbai and is led by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed.

Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

KABUL, 2010 A suicide car bomb wrecked a guest house, killing 18. American intelligence suspects Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Late in January, Raymond A. Davis — a covert security officer for the Central Intelligence Agency and onetime Green Beret — unloaded a Glock pistol into two armed Pakistanis on a crowded street in Lahore, according to a Pakistani police report. His case was to move forward in court as early as this week.The shooting complicated American attempts to portray Mr. Davis as a paper-shuffling diplomat who stamped visas as a day job; generated an extraordinary swirl of recriminations and for many Pakistanis confirmed suspicions that America has deployed a secret army of spies and contractors inside the country.

It has also called unwelcome attention to a bigger, more dangerous game in which Mr. Davis appears to have played just a supporting role.

The C.I.A. team Mr. Davis worked with, according to American officials, had among its assignments the task of secretly gathering intelligence about Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant “Army of the Pure.” Pakistan’s security establishment has nurtured Lashkar for years as a proxy force to attack targets and enemies in India and in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir. These and other American officials, all of whom spoke only on condition of anonymity, are now convinced that Lashkar is no longer satisfied being the shadowy foot soldiers in Pakistan’s simmering border conflict with India. It goals have broadened, these officials say, and Lashkar is committed to a campaign of jihad against the United States and Europe, and against American troops in Afghanistan.

During a visit to Islamabad last July, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared Lashkar a “global threat,” a statement that no doubt rankled his Pakistani hosts.

And so a group that Pakistan has seen for years as an essential component of its own national security, and that American counterterrorism officials could once dismiss as a regional problem, has emerged as a threat that Washington feels it can no longer ignore.

Given such a fundamental collision of interests, it was perhaps inevitable that Lashkar would one day provoke tensions between Pakistani and American security officials, and the collision itself would come into full public view. Rather than being a cause of the problem, Mr. Davis was merely an all-too-visible symptom.

As Mr. Davis discovered, the regularly accepted rules of the spy game don’t apply here. There was little chance of quickly brokering a quiet deal, allowing Mr. Davis to be spirited out of Pakistan without anyone making a fuss. Because Lashkar has long been nurtured by Pakistan’s spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, American espionage operations against the group are freighted with grave risks, and are not viewed kindly by Pakistani spies.

[ya]

From B.Raman's blog http://ramanstrategicanalysis.blogspot.com/. Some snippets..

"13.There are three destabilizing ideological influences in Pakistan---- the Wahabised Islamic extremism, the trans-Ummah pan-Islamism and the country-wide anti-Americanism. The Wahabised Islamic extremism calls for the transformation of Pakistan into an Islamic democracy ruled according to the Sharia and the will of Allah, as interpreted by the clerics. It says that in an Islamic democracy, Allah will be sovereign and not the people. The trans-Ummah pan-Islamism holds that the first loyalty of a Muslim should be to his religion and not to the State, that religious bonds are more important than cultural bonds, that Muslims do not recognize national frontiers and have a right and obligation to go to any country to wage a jihad in support of the local Muslims and that the Muslims have the religious right and obligation to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in order to protect their religion, if necessary. The anti-Americanism projects the US as the source of all evils afflicting the Islamic as well as the non-Islamic world. The religious elements look upon the US as anti-Islam. The non-religious elements look upon it as anti-people.

14. The geo-religious landscape in Pakistan is dominated by two kinds of organizations-----the fundamentalist parties and the jihadi organizations. The fundamentalist parties have been in existence since Pakistan became independent in 1947 and have been contesting the elections though they are opposed to Western-style liberal democracy. Their total vote share has always been below 15 per cent. They reached the figure of 11 per cent in the 2002 elections, thanks to the machinations of the Pervez Musharraf Government, which wanted to marginalize the influence of the non-religious parties opposed to him such as the Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) of Mrs. Benazir Bhutto and the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) of Mr.Nawaz Sharif. In his over-anxiety to cut Mrs.Bhutto and Mr.Nawaz down to size, Musharraf handed over the tribal areas on a platter to the fundamentalists and the jihadis, thereby ---- more unwittingly than consciously --- facilitating the resurgence of the Neo Taliban and Al Qaeda.

15.The jihadi organizations are so called because they misinterpret the concept of jihad and advocate its use against all perceived enemies of Islam----internal or external, non-Muslims or Muslims---- wherever they are found. Their call for jihad has a domestic as well as an external agenda. The domestic agenda is the setting up of an Islamic democracy in Pakistan ruled according to the Sharia and the will of Allah. The external agenda is to “liberate” all so-called traditional Muslim lands from the “occupation” of non-Muslims and to eliminate the influence of the US and the rest of the Western world from the Ummah.

16. The jihadi organizations were brought into existence in the 1980s by the ISI and the Saudi intelligence at the instance of the CIA for being used against the troops of the USSR and the pro-Soviet Afghan Government in Afghanistan. Their perceived success in bringing about the withdrawal of the Soviet troops and the collapse of the Najibullah Government has convinced them that the jihad as waged by them is a highly potent weapon, which could be used with equal effectiveness to bring about the withdrawal of the Western presence from the Ummah, to “liberate the traditional Muslim lands” and to transform Pakistan into an Islamic fundamentalist State. The Pakistani Army and the ISI, which were impressed by the motivation, determination and fighting skills displayed by the jihadi organizations in Afghanistan, transformed them, after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops, into a new strategic weapon for use against India to annex J&K and in Afghanistan to achieve a strategic depth.

17.The aggravation of the anti-US feelings in the Islamic world post-9/11 has resulted in a dual control over the Pakistani jihadi organizations.The ISI has been trying to use them for its national agenda against India and in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden has been using them for his global agenda against “the Crusaders and the Jewish people”. The jihadi organizations are now fighting on three fronts with equal ferocity----against India as desired by the ISI, against the US and Israel as desired by Al Qaeda and against the Pakistani State itself as dictated by their domestic agenda of an Islamic State ruled according to the Sharia and the will of Allah. The growing Talibanisation of the tribal areas in the FATA and the Khyber Pakhtoonkwa province (KP) and its spread outside the tribal areas are the outcome of their determined pursuit of their domestic agenda. The acts of jihadi terrorism in Spain and the UK, the thwarted acts of terrorism in the UK and the unearthing of numerous sleeper cells in the UK, the USA, Canada and other countries and the resurgence of the Neo Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan are the outcome of their equally determined pursuit of their international agenda. Members of the Pakistani diaspora in the Gulf and the Western countries have been playing an increasingly active role in facilitating the pursuit of their international agenda.

18.The international community’s concern over the prevailing and developing situation in Pakistan has been further deepened by the status of Pakistan as a nuclear weapon State. The Pakistan Army has been repeatedly assuring the US and the rest of the international community that the security of its nuclear arsenal is strong and that there is no danger of its falling into the hands of the jihadi terrorists. Despite this, the concerns remain. This is due to various factors.

19. Firstly, it is admitted even in Pakistan that there has been an infiltration of extremist elements into every section of the Pakistani State apparatus---- the Armed Forces, the Police, the Para-military forces and the civilian bureaucracy. When that is so, it is inconceivable that there would not be a similar penetration of Pakistan’s nuclear establishment.

20. Secondly, the fundamentalist and jihadi organizations are strong supporters of a military nuclear capability for the Ummah to counter the alleged nuclear capability of Israel. They project Pakistan’s atomic bomb not as a mere national asset, but as an Islamic asset. They describe it as an Islamic bomb, whose use should be available to the entire Ummah. They also support Pakistan sharing its nuclear technology with other Muslim countries. In their eyes, A.Q.Khan, the so-called father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb, committed no offence by sharing the nuclear technology with Iran and Libya because both are Muslim States or with North Korea as a quid pro quo for its sharing its missile technology with Pakistan. They look upon Pakistan’s sharing its nuclear technology and know-how with other Islamic States as an Islamic obligation and not as an illegal act of proliferation.

21.Thirdly, while serving scientists may be prepared to share the technology and know-how with other Muslim States, there has been no evidence of a similar willingness on their part to share them with Islamic non-State actors such as Al Qaeda. However, the dangers of such a sharing of know-how with the non-State actors were highlighted by the unearthing of evidence by the US intelligence after 9/11 that at least two retired Pakistani nuclear scientists ----Sultan Bashiruddin Chaudhury and Abdul Majid---were in touch with Osama bin Laden after their retirement and had even visited him at Kandahar. They were taken into custody and questioned. They admitted their contacts with bin Laden, but insisted that those were in connection with the work of a humanitarian relief organization, which they had founded after their retirement. Many retired Pakistani military and intelligence officers have been helping the Neo Taliban and the Pakistani jihadi organizations. The most well-known example is that of Lt.Gen.Hamid Gul, who was the Director-General of the ISI during Mrs.Benazir’s first tenure as the Prime Minister (1988-90). Are there retired nuclear scientists, who have been maintaining similar contacts with Al Qaeda and other jihadi organizations?

22. The Pashtun belt on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border would continue to be under the de facto control of Al Qaeda, the Neo Taliban and the Pakistani jihadi organizations with neither the Pakistani Army in Pakistani territory nor the US-led NATO forces in the adjoining Afghan territory being able to prevail over the terrorists in an enduring manner. The NATO forces will not be able to prevail in the Afghan territory unless and until the roots of the jihadi terrorism in the Pakistani territory are initially sterilized and ultimately destroyed. The Pakistani Army has so far not exhibited either a willingness or the capability to undertake this task. The lack of willingness arises from its perception that it will need its own jihadis for continued use against India and the Neo Taliban for retrieving the strategic ground lost by it in Afghanistan. Moreover, the Army fears that any strong action by it against the jihadis operating in the Pashtun belt could lead to a major confrontation between the Army and the tribals, who contribute a large number of soldiers to the Pakistan Army. Next to Punjab, the largest number of soldier-recruits to the Pakistan Army comes from the KP and the FATA.

[Crafty_Dog]

CIA contractor Raymond Davis was released from prison in Lahore, Pakistan, on March 16. The release comes after several weeks of negotiations between Pakistani and U.S. government officials as to whether Davis had diplomatic immunity when he shot and killed two Pakistanis in Lahore on Jan. 27 as they allegedly attempted to rob him. Davis has now left Pakistan, and reportedly is flying to London.

Instead of being released on the basis of diplomatic immunity, Davis, facing murder charges, was released after being pardoned by the families of the individuals who were killed. Later reports indicate that “blood money” was paid to the families of the victims, prompting them to say that Davis should not stand trial for the murders, in accordance with Pakistani law and Shariah. The families reportedly also received U.S. visas in exchange for absolving Davis of his actions. The resolution was apparently brokered by Saudi authorities, who visited Pakistan to convince the families of those killed to accept the bargain in the interest of ending the diplomatic problems caused by Davis’ arrest.

STRATFOR is now watching to see how the Pakistani public and opposition forces respond to Davis’ release. As STRATFOR noted earlier, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has called for Davis to be executed, while other opposition movements have called for Davis to stand trial, on both murder and espionage charges. While STRATFOR earlier predicted that the release of Davis could cause serious unrest, the deal — which was conducted in a accordance with the Pakistani justice system — may convince mainstream groups to believe that justice has been served. More radical groups may be dissatisfied with Davis’ departure, however, and turn to violence to express their sentiments. Though the Saudi-brokered agreement will help mute the overall reaction to the Davis release, U.S. companies and U.S. citizens in Pakistan should remain prepared for potential threats.

[ya]

In the urdu media, the lawyer of the victims family, says that the family members were forced to sign off on RDavis. Atleast in the near term, the tamasha will continue.

ta·ma·sha   
[tuh-mah-shuh] 
–noun
(in the East Indies) a spectacle; entertainment.
Origin:
1680–90;  < Urdu  < Persian tamāshā  a stroll < Arabic

[G M]

How do you say "shakedown" in Urdu?

[ya]

Also of interest, Gen.Pasha, head of ISI got a year's extension. The Sharif brothers were conveniently out of the country, and Nawaz Sharif is now in London hospital admitted with chest pain!. So the story will be that RD was released when the Sharif's were out of the country by the PPP and zardari...

[ya]

DAVIS DEAL: US to Limit Humint Ops in Pak Territory

by B. Raman

It is leant from reliable sources in Pakistan that acceptance of blood money by the heirs to the two Pakistanis who were killed by Raymond Davis on January 27, 2011, their withdrawal of the complaint of murder against him, his release from detention in the Kot Lakpat jail of Lahore and his airlift from Lahore to the Bagram air base of the US in Afghanistan and subsequently to the US naval base in Diego Garcia on March 16,2011,followed an agreement reached between the Inter-Serices Intelligence (ISI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in secret talks held in Oman under the intermediary of the Saudi intelligence under which the CIA has agreed not to run its own Human intelligence (HUMINT) network in Pakistani territory.

2. It is further learnt that under this agreement while the US would be free to run its Technical Intelligence (TECHINT) network, which provides TECHINT for the operations of the US as well as Pakistan in the tribal belt, the US HUMINT requirements would in future be projected to the ISI which has agreed to strengthen its HUMINT capability with assistance to be provided by the CIA.

3. To avoid embarrassing allegations of payment of blood money by the official agencies of the US or Pakistan, it was reported to have been paid by the Saudi intelligence in the court before which Davis was being tried in Lahore on March 16.

4. According to these sources, the ISI and the Pakistani Foreign Office had the following two major complaints against the CIA:

Deployment of an increasing number of retired officers of the US intelligence community and Special Forces as contract employees in Pakistani territory without the knowledge and approval of the ISI for collecting HUMINT.
Ex-post facto grant of diplomatic status to them after they had arrived in Pakistan with official or ordinary visas by showing them as members of the staff of the US diplomatic mission in Pakistan.
5. The sources say that the CIA has agreed to end both these practices.  The agreement will not come in the way of the posting of regular staffers of the CIA under diplomatic cover in Pakistan for liaison with the Pakistani agencies. It will also not come in the way of officers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) being posted under diplomatic cover as Legal Attaches in the US missions to liaise with the Pakistani intelligence agencies and the Police.

6.  Raymond Davis, who was shown as a member of the technical and administrative staff of the US Consulate-General in Lahore, had reportedly arrived in Pakistan with an official and not a diplomatic visa. He was subsequently shown by the US as transferred to the US Embassy in Islamabad, which upgraded his status to a diplomatic one, but he continued to function from the Lahore Consulate.  The unilateral upgradation of his status by the US Embassy had not been accepted by the Pakistani Foreign Office.

7. The option of a blood money had been there from the beginning, but was not seriously considered because the heirs to the two Pakistanis allegedly killed by Davis were under tremendous pressure from the Islamic fundamentalist organisations not to accept it. The ISI refrained from pressuring them to accept the blood money, but once the US agreed to accept the ISI's demands in respect of HUMINT operations, the ISI intervened and persuaded the legal heirs to accept the money and move for the withdrawal of the prosecution of Davis.

8. The adverse public and jihadi reactions in Pakistan to the release were expected to some extent. The Government is hopeful that the ISI, which handled the negotiations, would be able to contain the protests through its influence over the fundamentalist and jihadi organisations and prevent any new wave of reprisal attacks.  Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the Director-General of the ISI, has been given an extension of one more year from March 18, when he was due to retire. But one should not over-estimate the ISI's ability to control the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Sunni extremist Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ). The recent assassinations of Salman Taseer, Governor of Punjab, and Shabaz Bhatti, Minister for Minority Affairs, showed the limited nature of the ISI's control over these organisations. The ISI has fairly effective control over the Punjabi Taliban organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network, but its control over the TTP, the SSP and the LEJ is very weak. Serious reprisal attacks could come from these organisations. Pakistan could be in for a renewed spell of reprisal suicide terrorism directed against the ISI and the political leadership.

9. Does the agreement also provide for the eventual release of Aafia Siddiqui, a US-educated Pakistani neuro-scientist, presently in jail in the US after having been convicted on  charges arising from her suspected  collaboration with the Afghan Taliban? The answer to this is not clear. Aafia's case is much more complex than that of Davis. She has already been convicted whereas Davis was only an under-trial.

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)

 

[G M]

2. It is further learnt that under this agreement while the US would be free to run its Technical Intelligence (TECHINT) network, which provides TECHINT for the operations of the US as well as Pakistan in the tribal belt, the US HUMINT requirements would in future be projected to the ISI which has agreed to strengthen its HUMINT capability with assistance to be provided by the CIA.

In other words, we continue to pay the ISI, while they feed us whatever BS they wish without worrying we might learn different.

[ya]

Yes, its likely that HUMINT operations will cease by the US, or will be done under ISI supervision...atleast for the next few months. I was pleased to see the national bird of Pakistan fly again. see picture, below.

[Crafty_Dog]

 

I note that particular bird is of the US Customs & Border Protection sub-species , , ,

[G M]

I like the subspecies that turns jihadis into smoking bits.

[ya]

Another paki trait...maintainence of H&D (Honor & Dignity) ...Pak airforce F-16 and drones likely fly out from the same airbases, most likely maintained by paki technicians....

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/Pak-air-force-on-alert-after-US-drone-hits/articleshow/7746400.cms
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has intensified air patrols and surveillance over its restive tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, especially North Waziristan, and put its air force at a higher alert level in the wake of US drone attacks that killed over 40 people, a media report said.

Orders were issued on Thursday at the "highest level " on an "emergency basis", including cancellation of leave of all personnel involved in air reconnaissance, BBC Urdu quoted its sources in the Pakistan air force as saying.
The leave of all personnel stationed at airbases and the PAF headquarters in Islamabad too had been cancelled and officials at sensitive installations had been asked to ensure the presence of all personnel on Saturday and Sunday, the sources were quoted as saying.

Some "operational changes" had been made but they are being kept secret though these are apparently related to round-the-clock reconnaissance in the tribal belt, the sources said. The administrative and operational changes are part of Pakistan's efforts to quickly respond to threats from the CIA-operated drones, the sources said.

[Body-by-Guinness]

Been reading the Long War Journal lately. Don't know it's bona fides, but they post interesting pieces like this one:

Afghan Local Police vital to General Petraeus' strategy
from 1 The Long War Journal



In his briefing to Congress on March 15, General David Petraeus stated that the "Afghan Local Police initiative was an important addition to the overall campaign" to secure the war-torn country and deny the Taliban control in key districts.

Purpose of the ALP

General Petraeus' campaign plan calls for providing security to the population for 80 "critical" districts. However, the forces available to the International Security Assistance Force and the Afghan National Security Forces are insufficient to cover all of the areas within these districts. Although the ANSF is growing, it will be several years before it reaches the required size. In the meantime, there will be areas where security forces are weak or non-existent that the Taliban could exploit. Local villagers can try to protect themselves, but in most cases they do not have the capacity to stand up to the Taliban on their own.

The purpose of the ALP is to provide a short term solution to the shortage of ANSF and ISAF forces. The initiative provides support to local armed villagers so they can provide security for their own villages.

History and issues of local defense forces

The ALP constitutes the third attempt by ISAF to create local defense forces. The earlier initiatives illustrated the problems with creating such a force.

The first initiative, begun in 2007, was the Afghan Auxiliary Police (AAP). This initiative was quickly implemented with little oversight or resources provided. The result was a poorly trained and equipped force that spent more time preying on locals than defending them. In addition, command was appropriated by local strongmen whose interests did not necessarily coincide with those of the Afghan government. The project was abandoned.

The second initiative, which started in early 2009, was the Afghan Public Protection Police (AP3). The AP3 addressed issues with the AAP. It was both heavily supervised and heavily supported. It was run by the Afghan Ministry of Interior. Training and equipment was provided by ISAF. The project was more successful in producing an effective force. However, it required so many resources and so much time that it created forces far too slowly. Of the original plan for 10,000, only 1,200 AP3 were fielded in 1.5 years.

The current initiative, the Afghan Local Police, was launched in July 2010. It adapts the lessons learned from the first two initiatives. More resources have been provided, with more community involvement and more specialized training skills, including participation of US Special Operations Forces. As part of the initiative, the AP3 will be rolled into the ALP.

ALP mission

The ALP initiative is intended to support local forces in the defense of their own villages. Individual units have no authority outside their own village.

The initiative is limited in size to ensure that the units created can be sufficiently supported. This is currently sized to be 70 districts with about 300 ALP per district, a total of about 20,000.

The ALP are expected to perform only limited duties. "The intent is not to make them a military capability force, but just give them enough training to thicken the security," said Lieutenant General William Caldwell, the commander of the NATO Training Mission. General Petraeus describes the ALP as a "night watch with AK-47's". They are expected to man checkpoints, detain individuals and turn them over to regular forces, and to provide intelligence on Taliban activities. For other issues, they are expected to call in ANSF or ISAF for support. The intent is to allow villages to resist intimidation and to prevent the Taliban from creating safe havens.

The operation of the ALP is designed to be complementary to existing ANSF operations, not to replace them. ALP units are set up in villages near existing ANSF outposts, thereby extending security beyond areas covered by the ANSF. This proximity allows the ANSF to provide prompt reinforcements to the ALP if needed.

The ALP is expected to be a temporary program with a lifespan of approximately two years. By then, the ANSF is projected to have grown to sufficient size to allow regular ANSF forces to replace the ALP. And at that point, members of the ALP deemed to be effective would be given the option of receiving regular training and joining the ANSF.

Implementation

Areas selected to participate in the ALP initiative go through a vetting process. The application process requires village leaders to formally request participation in the program. In other words, the village has to want to participate. This is followed by an Afghan government visit to validate that the village's need is legitimate.

Once the village has been selected for participation, local tribal leaders recommend recruits. They must then be approved by the ISAF trainers and the district chief of police. Recruits must be from their home village and must pass background checks. Recruits are on probation for a year, and ISAF can blacklist someone against whom they have evidence of criminal or insurgent activies.

US Special Operations Force trainers are assigned to each unit, along with Afghan Interior Ministry personnel. Training may take from 5 days to 3 weeks. Units are paid through the Ministry of Interior, and participants are paid 60% of an Afghan National Policeman's salary. Equipment provided consists of AK-47 rifles, radios, and uniforms.

The ALP units report though the Ministry of Interior chain of command through the local district Chief of Police.

Status

At the beginning of the program, the target was 10,000 police. In October 2010, this was revised upward to 20,000. With the greater number of ALP to be fielded, it was no longer possible to assign a US Special Forces team to mentor every ALP unit, so a conventional US Army battalion, as well as Afghan special forces, was assigned to supplement the SOF.

Currently, there are 70 districts identified for ALP participation, with each district authorized about 300 ALP members. At present, 27 ALP units have been validated for full operations, and the other 43 units are in various stages of being established. General Petraeus has speculated that the ALP might be expanded to 50,000 with 40 additional districts (110 districts in total).

The initiative has been in effect for eight months. As might be expected, reports from the field have been mixed, ranging from "glowing praise to condemnation and fear".

"In some cases, they have 'flipped' communities who once even actively supported the Taliban," Petraeus said in October 2010.

However, there have also been also cases in which safeguard procedures are not being followed. "The recruits in western Herat province's Shindand district are precisely those who are supposed to be kept out," said Lal Mohammad Omerzai, the head of the district government. "These people who have been recruited up to this point, they are not good people. They have criminal backgrounds." He said that police officials consulted community leaders for the first three days, then dumped the procedure.

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2011/03/afghan_local_police.php

[ya]

Afghanistan is about 50% larger in area than Iraq...which means it will be hard to police with 1/5th the troops that we had in Iraq.

[Crafty_Dog]

Especially when everyone knows we will be leaving , , , soon.

[ya]

Aafia Siddiqui the MIT neuroscientist and daughter of Pakistan was arrested for trying to shoot a US soldier in Afghanistan...and for waging jihad. Currently, the pakis are clamouring to have Aafia freed....unlikely to happen.

family connections

The man who has been charged with masterminding and planning the 9/11 attacks on the US, Khaled Sheikh Muhammad, is of Pakistani origin and has interesting family connections. His clan comes from Balochistan and he is a cousin of former minister Zubeida Jalal. KSM’s family migrated to Kuwait, as many Baloch have done to Oman and the Gulf, and that is where he got radicalized. Abdul Aziz Al-Balochi, an important member of Al-Qaeda and second husband of Aafia Siddiqui, is also from the same family. In fact, he is both Zubeida Jalal and KSM’s nephew.

[Crafty_Dog]

Regular readers here know that I hold Michael Yon in high regard. His website/blog is required reading for serious students of Afpakia. 

Here is a recent report of particular note. http://www.michaelyon-online.com/last-man-standing.htm

Comments YA?

[ya]

While I have the highest respect for Michael Yon, and he brings the unvarnished truth with all the gory details, I think organizations such as CADG that he talks about, are dealing with a microcosm of afghan society. CADG is likely welcomed by the locals, but it does not mean that their problems or the taliban's issues with the west are solved. Every winter there is a lull in insurgent activity, which picks up with the start of spring. Its also possible that the talibs have realized that the US will bring home troops come 2012 elections, so why not sober up for a while, extract $ and concessions from the US, and then it would be back to business soon thereafter. How else to explain this report from the Obama adminhttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/US-doubts-Pakistans-plan-to-defeat-Taliban-Report/articleshow/7881142.cms.

So yes we are "winning" in Afghanistan, but losing in Pak. Such wins will likely be illusory, but will offer a face saving way to withdaw from afghanistan, and the talibs know all about saving face in that part of the world. Looks like we are able to swat the flies which cross into Afghanistan, but no one is doing anything about the large festering sore in Pakistan.


"WASHINGTON: Pakistan lacks a robust plan to defeat Taliban militants and its security forces struggle to hold areas cleared of the al-Qaida-linked fighters at great cost, according to US report released on Tuesday.

The United States wants Pakistan to subdue Taliban fighters using safe havens in its rugged tribal areas to attack US forces across the border in Afghanistan.

"There remains no clear path toward defeating the insurgency in Pakistan, despite the unprecedented and sustained deployment of over 147,000 forces," President Barack Obama's administration said in a report to lawmakers in Congress.

Major security operations by Pakistani forces along the lawless Afghan border have failed to break Taliban fighters' resolve, a fact underlined by twin suicide bombings of a Sufi shrine in eastern Pakistan on Sunday that killed 41.

The report highlighted concern that even if areas were cleared of militants, fighters were not being kept out.

"This is the third time in the past two years that the army has had to conduct major clearing operations ... a clear indication of the inability of the Pakistani military and government to render clear areas resistant to insurgent return," the report said.

The doctrine of clearing ground occupied by insurgents, holding it against their return and then building up the infrastructure and public services to engender confidence in the local population was used effectively by US forces in Iraq. "

[ya]

More fun and games continue http://www.indianexpress.com/news/no-pak-exit-for-us-military-personnel/772118/

‘No Pak exit for US military personnel’

Close on the heels of a spat over a CIA contractor who gunned down two men in Lahore, another diplomatic row is brewing between Pakistan and the US after Islamabad barred US military personnel from leaving the country.

The US personnel have been barred from leaving Pakistan because of expired visas and other documentary irregularities, the Dawn newspaper quoted unnamed sources as saying. There are varying claims about the number of US soldiers denied exit. Some sources claimed about 20 to 30 people had been affected while others put the figure at slightly less than 100.

The personnel were assigned to the US Office of Defence Representative in Pakistan (ODRP), which oversees bilateral military relations, including training and equipment. Some of the personnel overstayed their visas while a majority of them had expired no-objection certificates (NOCs).


Ads by Google

[G M]

They better not get on Obama's bad side or.....




Nevermind.

[Crafty_Dog]

Thank you YA.
==================================
In late September, U.S. fighter jets streaked over the cedar-studded slopes of Korengal, the so-called Valley of Death, to strike a target that hadn't been seen for years in Afghanistan: an al Qaeda training camp.

Among the dozens of Arabs killed that day, the U.S.-led coalition said, were two senior al Qaeda members, one Saudi and the other Kuwaiti. Another casualty of the bombing, according to Saudi media and jihadi websites, was one of Saudi Arabia's most wanted militants. The men had come to Afghanistan to impart their skills to a new generation of Afghan and foreign fighters.

Even though the strike was successful, the very fact that it had to be carried out represents a troubling shift in the war. Nine years after a U.S.-led invasion routed almost all of al Qaeda's surviving militants in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden's network is gradually returning.

Over the past six to eight months, al Qaeda has begun setting up training camps, hideouts and operations bases in the remote mountains along Afghanistan's northeastern border with Pakistan, some U.S., Afghan and Taliban officials say. The stepped-up infiltration followed a U.S. pullback from large swatches of the region starting 18 months ago. The areas were deemed strategically irrelevant and left to Afghanistan's uneven security forces, and in some parts, abandoned entirely.

American commanders have argued that the U.S. military presence in the remote valleys was the main reason why locals joined the Taliban. Once American soldiers left, they predicted, the Taliban would go, too. Instead, the Taliban have stayed put, a senior U.S. military officer said, and "al Qaeda is coming back."


The militant group's effort to re-establish bases in northeastern Afghanistan is distressing for several reasons. Unlike the Taliban, which is seen as a mostly local threat, al Qaeda is actively trying to strike targets in the West. Eliminating its ability to do so from bases in Afghanistan has always been the U.S.'s primary war goal and the motive behind fighting the Taliban, which gave al Qaeda a relatively free hand to operate when it ruled the country. The return also undermines U.S. hopes that last year's troop surge would beat the Taliban badly enough to bring them to the negotiating table—and pressure them to break ties with al Qaeda. More than a year into the surge, those ties appear to be strong.

To counter the return, the coalition is making quick incursions by regular forces into infiltrated valleys—"mowing the grass," according to one U.S. general. It is also running clandestine raids by Special Operations Forces, who helped scout out the location of the Korengal strike, U.S. officials said. The twin actions offer a preview of the tactics the coalition is likely to pursue in some parts of the country as its forces hand off chunks of contested territory to Afghanistan's security forces. The process is already under way and is due to accelerate in July.

Precise numbers of al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan at any given time are hard to come by. But officials say al Qaeda camps and gathering spots similar to the one targeted in September are now scattered across sparsely populated Kunar province, a few inaccessible parts of Nuristan province and, most worryingly to some officials, the edges of Nangarhar province. That province sits astride a major overland route from Pakistan and is home to one of Afghanistan's major cities, Jalalabad.

For the most part, al Qaeda has been viewed by Western officials as a declining force in the Afghan fight. Just six months ago, U.S. intelligence estimates indicated only one or two dozen al Qaeda fighters were present in Afghanistan at any given time. Most of the few hundred fighters it had in the region were holed up in Pakistan, hiding from Central Intelligence Agency drone strikes in mountain shelters, and beset by morale and money problems. Some fighters would occasionally cross the border to conduct training or embed with Taliban units, a pattern that had become well established over a decade of war.

Now, the U.S. pullback from northeastern Afghanistan appears to have given al Qaeda the opening it needed to re-establish itself as a force in the Afghan fight, say some U.S. and Afghan officials.

"Al Qaeda tends to navigate to areas where they sense a vacuum," said Seth G. Jones, a senior political scientist at Rand Corp. in Washington who has spent much of the past two years in Afghanistan advising the U.S. military. "There are serious concerns about al Qaeda moving back into some areas of Afghanistan, the places that we've pulled back from."

Al Qaeda's message of Islamic revolution has in recent months seemed increasingly out of sync in a Middle East where a series of grass-roots upheavals are being driven largely by secular young people demanding democracy. But its recent resurgence in Afghanistan suggests that it retains potency in predominately Muslim parts of South Asia where it has put down roots in the past 15 years.

Last year's surge of 30,000 U.S. forces, authorized by President Barack Obama, aimed to inflict enough pain on the Taliban that they would negotiate a peace settlement on terms acceptable to the West. Coalition commanders and civilian officials were initially bullish about the new strategy's chances, seizing on reports from Taliban detainees that a "wedge" was developing between al Qaeda and midlevel insurgent commanders. The insurgent leaders were said to be tired of fighting and increasingly resentful of what they considered the Arab group's meddling in their fight.


The reappearance of al Qaeda fighters operating in Afghanistan undercuts those reports from detainees. "There are still ties up and down the networks...from the senior leadership to the ground level," said a U.S. civilian official, citing classified intelligence.

Interviews with several Taliban commanders bear out that assessment. The commanders say the al Qaeda facilities in northeastern Afghanistan are tightly tied to the Afghan Taliban leadership. "In these bases, fighters from around the world get training. We are training suicide bombers, [improvised explosive device] experts and guerrilla fighters," said an insurgent commander in Nuristan who goes by the nom de guerre Agha Saib and who was reached by telephone.

The two senior al Qaeda operatives killed in the September air strike—identified by coalition officials as Abdallah Umar al-Qurayshi, an expert in suicide bombings from Saudi Arabia, and Abu Atta, a Kuwaiti explosives specialist—are believed to have come across the border from Pakistan's neighboring tribal areas with the aid of the Taliban in the wake of the American withdrawal

The wanted Saudi, Saad al Shehri, hailed from one of the most prominent Arab jihadi families, according to Saudi accounts and jihadi websites. Two of his brothers, including a former Guantanamo detainee, and several cousins were among the founders of al Qaeda's Yemen-based network.

Coalition officials say the senior al Qaeda men were accompanied by one or two dozen lower-level Arab fighters. Their mission was to train locals and get into the fight themselves.

"The raid gave us insight that al Qaeda was trying to reestablish a base in Afghanistan and conduct some training of operatives, suicide attackers," the senior U.S. military officer said. "They found a safe haven in Afghanistan."

A raid in December netted another senior al Qaeda operative, Abu Ikhlas al-Masri, who has long operated in and around Kunar, said another U.S. official. His capture has provided intelligence about al Qaeda's attempts to reestablish Afghan bases, said the official.

There is debate within the U.S. military and intelligence community about the scope of the al Qaeda problem in Afghanistan. The September strike was watched carefully and "was a big deal," said another military official.

But that official and others said the numbers remain small enough to manage and that camps are, at worst, few and far between and largely temporary. And almost all U.S. and Afghan officials caution that al Qaeda isn't yet secure enough in northeastern Afghanistan to use the area as a staging ground for attacks overseas.

Besides, the officials said, having al Qaeda on the Afghan side of the border—where American forces have far greater freedom to strike—rather than in Pakistan has its advantages. The officials said many of al Qaeda's fighters are fearful of establishing too big or permanent a presence in Afghanistan because of the threat posed by U.S. and allied forces.

Kunar and eastern Nangarhar and Nuristan are strategic terrain, which is why U.S. forces first moved in a few years ago. The area is bisected by a web of infiltration routes—mountain passes, smugglers' trails, old logging roads—from Taliban-dominated parts of Pakistan's tribal areas, and the valleys channel insurgents into Jalalabad city. From there, it's a few hours by car to Kabul—and an international airport—on one of Afghanistan's better-paved roads. Islamabad, and another international airport, is a day's drive in the other direction.

The area's blend of ample hiding spots, readily traversable routes and a population historically wary of central authority have long made it a favorite for militants.

The first revolts against Afghanistan's Soviet-backed communist regime began there in the late 1970s. In the past decade, it has become a haven for an alphabet soup of Islamist groups.

Apart from al Qaeda and the Taliban, two of the most potent Pakistani militant groups have a significant presence in Kunar—Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which orchestrated the 2008 attacks in Mumbai. There's also the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, as the Pakistan Taliban are known, and the two other main Afghan insurgent factions, the Haqqani network and Hezb-e-Islami. Rounding out the scene is a smattering of militants from Central Asia, Chechnya and beyond.

Some of the valleys in Kunar "look like what we"—the U.S. and President Hamid Karzai's government—"are trying to keep Afghanistan from becoming," said Rangin Dafdar Spanta, Afghanistan's pro-Western national security adviser.

The fight in the northeast is being waged openly by regular U.S. forces, which are now routinely sweeping through valleys in limited operations that ordinarily last a few days. The operations mostly target Taliban units but sometimes disrupt al Qaeda activities, too, military commanders say.

"There's been several times that we'll get intelligence that there's going to be a gathering, whether it's junior-level leadership, whether it's Taliban, Haqqani or al Qaeda and if we can target those locations than we're absolutely going to do that," said Major Gen. John Campbell, the commander of NATO forces in eastern Afghanistan, in an interview.

More quiet—and more effective, many American officials say—is the U.S. military's secretive Joint Special Operations Command, known as JSOC, which oversees elite units like the Army's Delta Force and Navy Seal Team Six. The groups are working with Afghan intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency to keep al Qaeda off balance in northeastern Afghanistan.

It was a JSOC operation that led to the capture of Mr. al-Masri, the al Qaeda veteran, in December.

The problem, say officials, is that JSOC, with a global counterterrorism mission that gives it responsibility for strikes in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and other trouble spots, is already stretched thin. Relying on it to police Afghanistan's hinterlands as American forces pull out may be unrealistic, some officials said.

"We do not have an intelligence problem. We have a capacity problem. We generally know the places they are, how they are operating," said the senior U.S. military official, speaking of al Qaeda. The problem "is our ability to get there and do something."

—Habib Khan Totakhil contributed to this article.
Write to Matthew Rosenberg at matthew.rosenberg@wsj.com

[ya]

http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=1708
US-Pakistan: Losing the plot
Ramtanu Maitra
02 Apr 2011
With the handover of $2 million-plus in “blood money” to Pakistani relatives of his shootout victims, the controversial Raymond Davis is back in the United States. While Davis’ release has enraged vast numbers of Pakistanis, it has pleased others, including US state department officials and the Pakistan “experts” in Washington.
 
Think-tank based Pakistan experts are particularly relieved by the Davis settlement, because the unsavory event had put them in a dilemma about who to support and who to condemn. These pundits that are tied to one or another faction of the American political spectrum find it difficult to keep the party line going vis-à-vis the US-Pakistan relationship: namely, that it is mutually beneficial, substantive, vital, and deep-rooted.
 
As a result, they focus on extraneous matters, and contrive to insert Jammu and Kashmir into the debate, to somehow justify the rabid anti-Americanism within Pakistan. They would like to blame Islamabad for it but the Afghan crisis prevents them.
 
Meanwhile, the contradictions proliferate and play out. Droning the “bad guys” in Pakistan’s tribal areas warring against US and NATO forces finds complete acceptance in the US. But hitting the Pakistani “terrorists” attacking Jammu and Kashmir does not.
 
You could categorize this as “talking-heads’ license.” But more often than not, commentators on US-Pakistan relations mistake the wood for the trees, fixing on one or another aspect of the relationship as if it were the Rosetta Stone. For example, last November, prior to President Barack Obama’s visit to India and other Asian nations, Moeed Yusuf, South Asia adviser at the US Institute of Peace’s Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention advanced a disingenuous argument.
 
Yusuf argued that the Kashmir issue was not only central to improving India-Pakistan relations, but US resolution of the J & K dispute would grow America-Pakistan ties. “While the situation in Afghanistan and the threat emanating from Pakistani Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) has preoccupied the international community in recent years, long-term stability in South Asia cannot be achieved unless Indo-Pak normalization becomes reality. Kashmir remains the single most important outstanding issue,” Yusuf proclaimed.
 
“The objective reality in terms of Pakistan’s state policy vis-à-vis terrorism in India is difficult to decipher,” Yusuf went on in a paper on “US-Pakistan-India”. “Pakistan pledges incapacity to eliminate all anti-India groups completely in the short run. This is valid. However, whether incapacity is complemented by lack of will - as India contends - is not clear.”
 
“Regardless, what is clear is that Kashmir remains intrinsically linked to acts of terrorism - it is the outstanding nature of this dispute that allows militant groups in Pakistan to rally and continue operating with a certain amount of legitimacy,” Yusuf concluded. In other words, the US-Pakistan relationship also includes the deal that Washington must impose a resolution of the Kashmir issue on India.
 
Missing the wood...
 
In late January, the US Institute for Peace (USIP) held a one-day programme, “The Future of Pakistan,” that featured many of the most prominent experts. Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution warned that the US must not squander the symbolic value of Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari’s expected visit to Washington, and be careful not to bad-mouth him ahead of the trip. Riedel suggested that Zardari ought to be asked to address a joint session of Congress to make the case for Pakistan. “He can fight for what Pakistan needs,” Riedel said. He also held that Obama’s pledge to visit Pakistan was rich with substantive and symbolic value. Riedel said Obama should get out of Islamabad to meet as many Pakistanis as he can. “This is an enormously important visit,” added Riedel. “He needs to connect with the Pakistani people.”
 
It is another matter that the Davis dispute and its prickly resolution have put Obama’s visit to Pakistan on long-term “hold”.
 
Another USIP academic, Andrew Wilder, pointed out that money may not be the all-encompassing solution. Since 2001, the US has given Pakistan some $15 billion in American aid, but the US-Pakistani relationship remains weak, at best.
 
Georgetown University’s Christine Fair (a former USIP senior research associate) noted that “It really is important that we think about a new “big idea” for Pakistan.” Fair said that the US and Pakistan actually don’t share strategic interests but can build a long-term alliance anyway.
 
For example, Islamabad does not believe that the US accepts Pakistan as a nuclear state. But if Washington conferred legitimacy on Pakistan’s nuclear programme, it could change the dynamic, she argued. “Putting that out on the table,” Fair argued, “creates an enormous space for us to talk about what you, Pakistan, can do to deal with these strategic issues over which we disagree so much.”
 
On the other hand, Brookings Institution’s Stephen Cohen focused on Kashmir. “The United States must have its own views on Kashmir. I think we should speak up and talk about this,” he said.
 
Another view is that the Kashmiris themselves must count for more. “For too long the Pakistanis and the Indians have been talking as if the Kashmiris don’t exist,” says the Atlantic Council’s Shuja Nawaz. “I see Kashmir as a great opportunity.”
 
Needed: Plain talking
 
One can begin to get an idea of what these experts are evading from an article by Arnold Zeitlin, “How Pakistan Is Seen by the Washington Think Tanks,” that appeared in the Pakistani daily, The News, in February. Zeitlin served as the first AP bureau chief in Islamabad in 1969 and was a close friend of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Zeitlin pungently wrote, “If Pakistan and the US were a married couple instead of being strategic players (if not partners), counselors would recommend at least a long, trial separation, if not total divorce.”
 
Though not part of the Washington punditocracy, Zeitlin attended the USIP’s discussion. He thought it “might have been more realistic to adopt the title used by the Heritage Foundation, which called a conference on Pakistan and the US “Deadly Embrace.” “Washington,” observed Zeitlin, “hosts what appears to be an endless fascination that borders on fantasy about the Pakistan-US relationship... Much of the DC hand-wringing about Pakistan often focuses on what the US must do to save its relationship with that benighted country.”
 
“I suspect the nervousness over saving Pakistan is rooted more than 60 years ago when the notorious China lobby of Henry Luce and others branded those Mao-influenced diplomats in the State Department as traitors for losing Chiang Kai-shek’s China to Mao Zedong. None now wants the distinction of losing Pakistan, even if Pakistanis are doing a good job of it themselves.”
 
Ramtanu Maitra is South Asia analyst for the Executive Intelligence Review in Washington DC.

[ya]

http://www.thenews.com.pk/NewsDetail.aspx?ID=14021
ISI chief meets CIA head and leaves Washington
WASHINGTON: Pakistan's ISI chief Lt General Ahmed Shuja Pasha held an important meeting with the CIA chief on Monday but apparently cut short his visit and was leaving the US capital on Monday night.

A Pakistan Embassy official confirmed that Gen Pasha was scheduled to leave Monday night although earlier reports had indicated he may be staying in Washington for three days and leave on April 13.

There was no official word from the Pakistani side but the New York Times quoted a CIA spokesman, George Little, saying that the two spy chiefs had held "productive" meetings and that the relationship between the two services "remains on solid footing."

Political analysts were, however, a little surprised that Gen Pasha, who had arrived on Sunday evening, was leaving the US capital in just about 24 hours. There was no word of his meetings, if any, with other senior US leaders, including the Defence Secretary.

"The United States and Pakistan share a wide range of mutual interests," the CIA spokesman said, "and today's exchange emphasized the need to continue to work closely together, including on our common fight against terrorist networks that threaten both countries."

The newspaper said the meetings were part of an effort to repair the already tentative and distrustful relations between the spy agencies that plunged to a new low as a result of the Davis episode, which further exposed where Pakistani and American interests diverge as the endgame in Afghanistan draws closer.

The NYT also reported that Pakistan has demanded that the US steeply reduce the number of CIA operatives and Special Operations forces working in Pakistan, and that it put on hold CIA drone strikes aimed at militants in northwest Pakistan, a sign of the near collapse of cooperation between the two testy allies.

The demand that the United States scale back its presence is the immediate fallout of the arrest in Pakistan of Raymond A. Davis, a CIA security officer who killed two men in broad daylight during a mugging in January, Pakistani and American officials said in interviews.

The NYT said the scale of the Pakistani demands emerged as Gen Pasha met the CIA Director. The paper said Pakistan Army firmly believes that Washington's real aim in Pakistan is to neutralize the nation's prized nuclear arsenal, which is now on a path to becoming the world's fifth largest, said the Pakistani official closely involved in the decision on reducing the American presence.

On the American side, frustration has built over the Pakistan Army's seeming inability to defeat a host of militant groups, including the Taliban and al-Qaeda, which have thrived in Pakistan's tribal areas despite more than $1 billion in American assistance a year to the Pakistani military.

American officials said last year that the Pakistanis had allowed a maximum of 120 Special Forces soldiers to operate in Pakistan. The Americans had reached that quota, the Pakistani official said.

In an illustration of the severity of the breach between the CIA and the ISI, two intelligence agencies that were supposed to have been cooperating since the Sept. 11 attack in the United States but that have rarely trusted each other, the Pakistani official said: "We're telling the Americans: 'You have to trust the ISI or you don't. There is nothing in between.'"
 

[Crafty_Dog]

Pakistan's Uneasy Relationship with the United States

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha visited Washington on Monday and met with CIA Director Leon Panetta. The trip gave Islamabad a chance to express its anger over the Raymond Davis affair. The CIA contractor’s shooting on the streets of Lahore of two Pakistani citizens – followed by his lengthy detention and subsequent release – has generated waves of criticism amid the Pakistani populace, and has plunged the ISI-CIA relationship into a state of tension that surpasses the normal uneasiness that has always plagued the alliance between Washington and Islamabad.

“The Pakistani concern is that the U.S. will simply rush through a settlement in Afghanistan and exit the country without creating a sustainable post-war political arrangement. This would leave Pakistan to pick up the pieces.”
Pasha’s central demand in the meeting with his American counterpart was reportedly that the United States hand over more responsibility for operations currently carried out by the CIA over Pakistani soil. This primarily means unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) strikes, immensely unpopular with the average Pakistani, but quietly seen as necessary by the political and military establishment, which has an interest in degrading the capability of the Pakistani Taliban. UAV strikes are most politically damaging for Islamabad when the joystick is in the hands of a foreigner; the thinking goes that handing over the controls to a Pakistani at home would greatly reduce popular objections to the bombing missions in northwest Pakistan. Tactically speaking, Pakistan would encounter problems of capability if it ever actually put its own people to the task of running the UAV missions, but this point is rendered moot by the fact that Washington would almost certainly never allow the ISI – seen as a hostile intelligence agency – to have access to some of America’s most secret technology. The same day as Pasha’s visit, the media reported that Pakistan had also demanded Washington dramatically reduce the number of CIA operatives and Clandestine Special Operations Forces working inside of Pakistan. Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani reportedly wants 335 such personnel to leave the country, in addition to CIA “contractors” like Davis.

These demands reflect the general Pakistani complaint that it is not seen as an equal by the U.S. government. Islamabad has cooperated with Washington for almost a decade in its war in Afghanistan, though that cooperation is not always forthcoming and helpful in the eyes of the United States. Despite being on the receiving end of billions of dollars of U.S. military aid, Pakistan asserts that the myopic focus on security since 2001 has prevented it from developing its own economy. Washington would counter that without security aid, Pakistan would not have developed to the extent that it has, not to mention issues of corruption and how that has hindered the Pakistani economy. Whatever the reality may be, this encapsulates the Pakistani view toward its relationship with Washington. Indeed, an interview given by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on April 10 focused extensively on Americans’ lack of empathy regarding the help Pakistan is asked to provide Washington on the Afghan front. In addition to pointing to the existence of large amounts of natural gas that are not being developed for export because the issue falls low on the list of priorities created by the Afghan War, Zardari likened the impact of the Afghan War on Pakistan’s border region to the intractability of the Mexican drug war on the borderlands of Texas, saying many U.S. politicians do not understand the impact American foreign policy has in the AfPak region. He also specifically called out members of the U.S. Congress for suffering from “deadline-itis,” a term he coined to describe the compulsion to push ahead with the self-imposed deadline to withdraw from Afghanistan regardless of the realities on the ground.

The United States knows that Pakistan is a critical ally in the Afghan War due to the intelligence it can provide on the various strands of Taliban operating in the country, but it simply does not trust the Pakistanis enough to hand over UAV technology or control over UAV strikes to Islamabad. With time running out before the start of its scheduled withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Pakistani concern is that Washington will simply rush through a settlement in Afghanistan and exit the country without creating a sustainable post-war political arrangement. This would leave Pakistan to pick up the pieces.

Zardari is expected to visit the United States next month and will likely bring up the issue during the trip. He will remind U.S. President Barack Obama of Islamabad’s view that it is in the United States’ interests to utilize Pakistan’s knowledge of Afghan politics in order to come to a real settlement in Afghanistan. Forming a makeshift solution through securing large cities and leaving the countryside in a state of disorder will only plant the seeds for an eventual resurgence of Taliban in the country, which would lead to bigger problems down the line for Pakistan. Gen. David Petraeus has noted publicly that the United States doesn’t have the intelligence capabilities to succeed in Afghanistan on its own, meaning that it needs Islamabad’s help.

The Pakistanis see an opportunity in the current geopolitical environment to garner concessions from Washington that it would otherwise not be able to demand. Washington is distracted by myriad crises in the Arab world at the moment and AfPak is no longer the main course on its plate, as was the case for some time in the earlier days of the Obama presidency. Obama, who billed Afghanistan as the “good war” during his 2008 campaign, would very much like to point to some sort of success there when running again in 2012. For this, he would need Pakistan’s help. The United States is being driven by short-term needs to preclude any sort of serious concessions being made to Islamabad, however. This weakens the Pakistani state just when Washington needs a strong one to help wield its influence in preventing Afghanistan from reverting back to its pre-Sept. 11 days. This is where Pakistan’s leverage lies. However, the question of just how strong it is remains unanswered.

[Crafty_Dog]

See my comment at the end:
=============

So Pakistan now demands that the United States withdraw hundreds of American intelligence operatives and special-ops trainers from its soil and stop the CIA drone strikes on al Qaeda, Taliban and affiliated terrorists. Maybe the Obama Administration can inform its friends in Islamabad that, when it comes to this particular fight, the U.S. will continue to pursue its enemies wherever they may be, with or without Pakistan's cooperation.

Relations between Washington and Islamabad historically have never been easy, and now they seem to have reached something of a watershed. The fault is not all one-sided. Congressional potentates have made a habit of criticizing Pakistan publicly even when it was cooperating with the U.S. and deploying thousands of troops to fight elements of the Taliban. And promised American aid has been haltingly disbursed.

View Full Image

Reuters
 
Protesters during a rally against Raymond Davis in Karachi in February.
.Then again, Pakistan's behavior hasn't exactly been exemplary. Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, has longstanding links to terrorist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Haqqani network. The government and military have made no move against the Quetta Shura, the operational nerve center in Pakistan of Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

Islamabad's U.S. cooperation has also been double-edged. The government of President Asif Ali Zardari allowed the U.S. to increase the number of drone strikes. Yet it has made a point of complaining about them publicly, playing a particularly cheap form of politics to shore up its waning popularity with a domestic constituency smart enough to see through the hypocrisy.

The Pakistani army was also happy to cooperate with the U.S. when the targets of the strikes were members of the Pakistani Taliban who had their sights set on Islamabad. But the army has been less cooperative when the targets were the Afghan Taliban based in Pakistan or the ISI's terrorist partners.

Matters came to a head in January with Pakistan's arrest of CIA contractor Raymond Davis, after he had shot and killed two armed pursuers. Mr. Davis, who carried an official passport, ought to have been released immediately to U.S. custody under the terms of the Vienna Convention. Instead he was held for 47 days, questioned for 14, and released only after the U.S. government agreed to pay a multimillion-dollar indemnity to the families of the pursuers.

The failure to release Mr. Davis was an indication of how easily cowed Pakistan's civilian government has become in the face of an anti-American public. It also suggested a darker turn by Pakistan's military and the ISI, which were infuriated that Mr. Davis was investigating the activities of the Lashkar-e-Taiba now that it has expanded operations to include terrorism in Afghanistan. Pakistan has also complained bitterly about a drone strike in North Waziristan last month that it claims killed tribal leaders meeting with the Taliban.

A more charitable explanation is that Pakistan's military is angry the CIA is sharing less intelligence with the ISI. In this reading, the mass expulsion of U.S. security officials is really a demand for closer cooperation, even if it's a peculiar way of eliciting it. It's also possible that Pakistan army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani is trying to burnish his own public image by way of an anti-American tantrum that will pass in time.

Still, if the CIA doesn't trust the ISI, that's because it has demonstrated repeatedly that it isn't trustworthy. The Pakistani army has yet to reconcile itself to the idea that Afghanistan should be something other than its strategic backyard, preferably under the control of clients such as the Taliban, and it harbors paranoid illusions that India will encroach on Afghanistan to encircle its old enemy.

Pakistan's civilian government has also done itself neither credit nor favor by failing to tell Pakistan's people the truth about drone strikes, which is that they strike with pinpoint accuracy and that claims of civilian casualties are massively inflated for the benefit of Taliban propaganda. The government could also add that insofar as those drones are taking out leaders of the Pakistan Taliban, they are safeguarding Pakistan's beleaguered democracy.

However Islamabad chooses to act, the U.S. has a vital national interest in pursuing Taliban and al Qaeda leaders in their Pakistani sanctuaries, both for the sake of the war in Afghanistan and the security of the American homeland. Pakistan can choose to cooperate in that fight and reap the benefits of an American alliance. Or it can oppose the U.S. and reap the consequences, including the loss of military aid, special-ops and drone incursions into their frontier areas, and in particular a more robust U.S. military alliance with India.

In the wake of 9/11, the Bush Administration famously sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to Islamabad to explain that the U.S. was going to act forcefully to protect itself, and that Pakistan had to choose whose side it was on. It's time to present Pakistan with the same choice again.

=============

What is the point if we are leaving?

[ya]

My speculation is that the purelanders know that we are leaving, which is a fair assumption based on Obama's wishes. The pakis are now in the process of scoring points with the locals (jihadis), that the tough purelander army is going to throw out uncle sam. This will save their H&D (Honor & Dignity), after all the beating they took over the drone strikes. OTOH, if the US is actually wanting to stay in pakiland, then this misbehaviour on the part of the purelanders will result in more baksheesh. Its a win-win, as far as I can see.

[Crafty_Dog]

Report: "Three Cups of Tea" inaccurate
(AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — A "60 Minutes" investigation alleges that the inspirational multimillion seller "Three Cups of Tea" is filled with inaccuracies and that co-author Greg Mortenson's charitable organization has taken credit for building schools that don't exist.

The report, which airs Sunday night on CBS television, cites "Into the Wild" author Jon Krakauer as among the doubters of Mortenson's story of being lost in 1993 while mountain climbing in rural Pakistan and stumbling upon the village of Korphe, where the kindness of local residents inspired him to build a school. The "60 Minutes" story draws upon observations from the porters who joined Mortenson on his mountain trip in Pakistan and dispute his being lost. They say he only visited Korphe a year later.

The "60 Minutes" report alleges that numerous schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan that Mortenson's Central Asia Institute is said to have established either don't exist or were built by others. According to the CAI's website, the institute has "successfully established over 170 schools" and helped educate over 68,000 students, with an emphasis on girls' education."

In a statement issued Friday through the institute, Mortenson defended the book he co-authored with David Oliver Relinhis, and his humanitarian work.

"Afghanistan and Pakistan are fascinating, inspiring countries, full of wonderful people. They are also complex places, torn by conflicting loyalties, and some who do not want our mission of educating girls to succeed," Mortenson said.

"I stand by the information conveyed in my book and by the value of CAI's work in empowering local communities to build and operate schools that have educated more than 60,000 students. I continue to be heartened by the many messages of support I receive from our local partners in cities and villages across Afghanistan and Pakistan, who are determined not to let unjustified attacks stop the important work being done to create a better future for their children."

"Three Cups of Tea" was released by Penguin in 2006. Spokeswoman Carolyn Coleburn declined comment, saying the publisher had not seen the "60 Minutes" story. The book sold moderately in hardcover, but was a word-of-mouth hit as a paperback and became an international sensation, selling more than 3 million copies.

Mortenson has received numerous honors, including the Sitara-e-Pakistan (Star of Pakistan), a civilian award rarely given to foreigners.

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
=====================================
And from this monring's POTH, Greg Mrortenson responds:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/18/business/media/18mortenson.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha25

====================================
60 Minutes Charges Author Greg Mortenson Fabricated Key Stories and Misspent Charitable Funds
60 Minutes aired a report Sunday night on Greg Mortenson, author of the bestselling THREE CUPS OF TEA, questioning "whether some of the most dramatic stories in his books are even true" and raising "serious questions about how millions of dollars have been spent" by the charity he set up and "whether Mortenson is personally benefiting."

The most direct accuser was author Jon Krakauer, who says of the tale in the book about how Mortenson was inspired to build schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, "It's a beautiful story, and it's a lie." Mortenson's central storyline is that he "stumbled into" the village of Korphe after trying to climb K2 and getting lost, but two of his porters (and "three other sources") say he didn't visit the town--where he says he promised to come back and build them a school in return for their kindness--until almost a year later. "If you go back and read the first few chapters of that book you realize 'I'm being taken for a ride here,'" Krakauer charges.


In a written response Mortenson first claimed the local people and language have "only a vague concept of tenses and time." But in an updated version of an interview last Friday with his local paper, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, he concedes the book's account of "the time about our final days on K2 and ongoing journey to Korphe village and Skardu is a compressed version of events that took place in the fall of 1993.... What was done was to simplify the sequence of events for the purposes of telling what was, at times, a complicated story."


60 Minutes also contests a story in the book in which Mortenson writes that he was kidnapped and held hostage by the Taliban for 8 days. His subsequent book STONES INTO SCHOOLS includes a picture of his alleged captors, but some of those men directly deny the story. CNN also speaks to one, Mansur Khan Mahsud, who runs a Pakstani think tank, who tells them the story "is a pack of lies and not a single word of it is true." He and others say they were Mortenson's protectors rather than his captors. CNN adds that the Taliban "had no presence in Waziristan in 1996" and they also had a ban on photography at the time. In the Bozeman interview, Mortenson revised his wording, saying that he was "detained" and claiming "I thought it best to befriend the people detaining me." In a later written statement, he appears to redefine what he meant by the Taliban, writing "a 'Talib' means student in Arabic, and yes there were Taliban in the region. Waziristan is an area where tribal factions and clan ties run deep. Some people are Taliban, some are not, and affiliations change overnight often on a whim."

Examining the tax returns of the charity Mortenson established, the Central Asia Institute, 60 Minutes reports that in a recent year the organization spent $1.5 million on advertising to promote Mortenson's books, and another $1.3 million in domestic travel expenses, mostly for his often-paid speaking engagements, "some of it on private jets." The Bozeman newspaper offers this explanation: "Mortenson responded that he gets a royalty of about 40 or 50 cents per book, and that he has contributed more than $100,000 of his own money to CAI, which has more than offset the book royalties."


The Central Asia Institute claims in their written response that "because of [their] programmatic focus, he faces significant security risks that are unique in the charitable sector," which is why he often flies charters. While it seems clear that Mortenson's "donations" are but a fraction of what the institute spent on promotion, the organization's more plausible position is that "the contributions generated by Greg's presentations at these events far exceed the travel expenses." They also say they have "purchased thousands of copies" of Mortenson's books over the years to donate to various organizations, saying "the costs of the books vary depending on when they were purchased and from whom." 


As for the schools that CAI funds, their tax return itemizes 141 schools it "claimed to have built or supported," but investigating 30 of those schools, CBS found that "roughly half were empty, built by somebody else, or not receiving support at all.... In Afghanistan, we could find no evidence that six of the schools had ever been built at all." On that point, the institute speculates the CBS may have been misled in their investigation by a "former disgruntled manager in Pakistan who was involved in some improprieties."

In classic 60 Minutes fashion, they also feature brief footage of Mortenson avoiding the camera. When they approach him at a signing, he has hotel security remove the camera crew and then he slips out the back. Here the author and his institute offered a variety of responses. On Friday the CAI said Mortenson "was diagnosed with a tear hole in his heart wall that causes significant blood shunting and he will have a heart surgical procedure done on Thursday to correct it. Once his cardiologist allows he will be able to comment on his story in person." But in the meantime he spoke to his local newspaper, as noted, and then he posted a response on the institute's web site.

CBS says they first asked for an interview last fall, and more recently tried two weeks of messages and e-mails. But in yet another dispatch, Mortenson writes he "made the very difficult decision to not engage with 60 Minutes on camera, after they attempted an eleventh hour aggressive approach to reach me, including an ambush in front of children at a book signing at a community service leadership convention in Atlanta. It was clear that the program's disrespectful approach would not result in a fair, balanced or objective representation of our work, my books or our vital mission."


In another statement, he said "I stand by the information conveyed in my book and by the value of CAI's work in empowering local communities to build and operate schools that have educated more than 60,000 students."

Mortenson also writes that he "heard...last week" that Krakauer has written "a similar negative piece...in an unknown magazine." On camera, after his accusations, Krakauer tries to provide context by underscoring that Mortenson "has done a lot of good. He has helped thousands of school kids in Pakistan and Afghanistan....He has become perhaps the world's most effective spokesperson for girls' education in developing countries. And he deserves credit for that... Nevertheless, he is now threatening to bring it all down, to destroy all of it by this fraud and by these lies.


Video
60 Minutes transcript
CNN
CAI statement

[Crafty_Dog]

WAZA KHWA, Afghanistan—The U.S. military, using Google Earth and disposable parachutes, is escalating its airdrops to troops in isolated outposts, to avoid exposing ground convoys to ambushes and roadside bombs.

Around-the-clock Air Force drops of ammunition, fuel, food and water have doubled annually since 2006, reaching 60 million pounds of supplies last year.

The airdrops have taken on a new urgency with the surge in U.S. forces to almost 100,000 troops and the intensified threat from hidden explosives, which are often placed along known supply routes. Such booby-traps killed 268 American troops last year, up 60% from 2009, according to the Associated Press.

"It's our lifeline," says Army Capt. Cole DeRosa, a company commander in the 506th Infantry Regiment. "Without receiving aerial resupply, we would have no supply."

Capt. Cole's men operate out of a small base in Waza Khwa, in Paktika Province, some 30 miles from the Pakistan border. The only road connecting his position to a major supply depot threads through the Gwashta Pass, a Taliban haven featuring steep mountainsides that offer ideal cover for ambushers.

No U.S. ground convoy has attempted that dangerous trip in two years.

 Parachute drops of supplies to American forces in Afghanistan are increasingly common thanks to rough terrain and roads seeded with booby traps by the Taliban. WSJ's Michael M. Phillips reports from Waza Khwa.
.A dozen of the 18 Army positions in Paktika are supplied solely through parachute drops and helicopter lifts. Capt. Cole's artillery cannon arrived in slings hanging from the bellies of helicopters. Drums of diesel fuel for his vehicles and generators float down from the rear ramps of cargo planes flying overhead.

"You can mitigate the risk by just dropping those supplies rather than lining the vehicles up," says Col. Sean Jenkins of the 4th Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, who commands all U.S. forces in the province.

The air crews prepare for each mission by studying a three-dimensional Google Earth image of the line of approach, giving them a moving, cockpit-window view of the ridges, rivers and villages they'll see as they near the drop zone.

The approach is slow and low, and sometimes the planes come under fire from insurgents on the ground. Unless the delivery is urgent, the pilots usually don't go around for a second run if they can't make the drop on the first pass. "We get one shot at it," says Lt. Col. Karl Stark, commander of the 774th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron.

When pinpoint accuracy is needed, crews use expensive satellite-guided parachutes that steer themselves to the drop zone.

In a low-tech innovation, soldiers from the 101st Airborne keep water, food and ammunition in black body bags, nicknamed speedballs, ready for immediate delivery by helicopter or parachute to troops running low during firefights.

"You don't want guys out there needing food, ammo and water, and it taking you an hour to get it to them," says Capt. Xavier Burrell of the 801st Brigade Support Battalion.

In most cases, however, the air crews use low-cost, disposable parachutes strapped to the top of small pallets of supplies. A single such pallet can hold four 55-gallon drums of fuel.

As they approach the drop zone, the crew lowers the rear ramp and the pilot tilts the plane's nose upwards. A pulley system yanks a blade through restraining straps that hold the cargo in place, and the pallets roll out of the back of the plane.

The parachutes open automatically; their ripcords are connected to a cable that runs along the inside of the fuselage.

Crewmen install a heavy metal protective barrier at the cockpit end of the cargo bay. They don't want tens of thousands of pounds of cargo slamming into the front of the plane if it inadvertently dives—instead of climbing—after the restraining straps have been cut.

When the bundles hit the ground, soldiers race out to collect the supplies, load them onto vehicles and burn the parachutes to prevent them from becoming useful finds for the Taliban.

About 3% of the bundles go wrong; the parachutes get tangled with each other or don't open fully, sending hundreds of gallons of fuel or water plunging to the ground.

Another concern is accuracy. Last year, an Italian crew accidentally dropped most of its load into a base in western Afghanistan. The bundles hit the gym, barracks and a medevac helicopter, but caused no injuries, according to Capt. John Gruenke, a U.S. Air Force officer who visited the site afterwards to help retrain the drop-zone crew.

In another case, special-operations troops on a steep hillside were only able to retrieve 10% of the supplies dropped to their location.

At Waza Khwa, the Army has the opposite problem. Capt. DeRosa's men have received so much fuel by airdrop that they have collected hundreds of empty metal drums. Now commanders are trying to figure out how to get them back to the supply depot to be reused.

[ya]

Here is some history (from one of the blogs I frequent) about the Kunduz airlift, and the results of the strategic brilliance of the purelanders that you may be unaware of.

"The tragic events of 9/11 thrust Pakistan into limelight once again for all the wrong reasons. As is its wont, Pakistan saw an opportunity even amidst the gloom of being reduced to a rubble and being taken back to stone-age. It offered its unstinted services to the USA and hoped to resurrect its relationship with that country which was at its nadir then. More importantly, it also wished to stem the growing India-US engagement which was being interpreted as a threat for itself. Thus, it hoped to correct the perceived tilt in US policies favouring India. It also saw a window of opportunity to acquire American arms and ammunition apart from getting large funds just as in the decade of the 50s and 80s. It was also Pakistan’s calculation that with the US once again dependent on it due to its geographical advantages, it will get a free hand in pressurizing India on Kashmir and other issues through not only diplomacy but terrorism as well, just as it happened in the 80s when terrorism in the Indian Punjab was instigated. This is where it differed from a host of other countries which also demanded and got various favours from the US for their support for the US prosecution of war on Al Qaeda.

Pakistan therefore gave the US permission to use its airbases at Jacobabad, Dalbandin, Shamsi, Pasni, naval base at Ormara and several unmarked airstrips in Balochistan to operate drones. It allowed it unhindered airspace during the initial stages of the war on terror. It allowed logistics to support troops in Afghanistan through the Karachi Port and the Indus Highway to Khyber pass in FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Agencies) and Chaman pass in Balochistan It allowed the CIA to operate freely within the country, setup electronic listening posts, capture Al Qaeda suspects including Pakistanis and deport them secretively elsewhere. These Pakistani policies were to result in a severe blowback later, but, for the moment Pakistan was benefitting from its surrender of sovereignty. Apart from the write-off of some debts and the postponement in repayments of most others by over two decades, Pakistan was getting sophisticated arms ostensibly to fight terrorists in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, like F-16s, AMRAAM, naval ships, Harpoon missiles etc !!

Pakistan also extracted other tangible benefits as well from such unstinted support. One such famous benefit was the Kunduz airlift which was authorized at the Presidential level within the US to allow Gen. Musharraf to save his face and possibly his skin by airlifting over a thousand Pakistanis including ISI officers, regular Pakistani soldiers of the Frontier Corps and possibly some members of Pakistani terrorist outfits, from Kunduz in north-east Afghanistan in mid November, 2001. For the location of Kunduz, see map below.


Map Courtesy: The United Nations

To send hundreds of Pakistani Army regulars and ISI officers as far away as Kunduz to fight the Northern Alliance of Ahmed Shah Masoud, demonstrates how much Pakistan values the 'Strategic Depth' of Afghanistan. When they were finally airlifted to the safety of Pakistan, they were simply let go. Several of those charged with many assassination attempts on Gen. Musharraf later in c. 2003 were former soldiers who were airlifted out of Kunduz. Many of them later also joined Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) set up by Maulana Masood Azhar (with the help of the ISI) who was released from an Indian prison in December, 1999 in exchange for the release of the hijacked IC-814 flight. It is these Punjabi Taliban (mostly from Punjab and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir,POK) who are wreaking extensive havoc within Pakistan today. Thus, the Kunduz airlift not only helped Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders to escape, but also deeply affected personally the man who requested that, Gen. Musharraf and far more importantly has brought Pakistan to its knees today by rehabilitating hundreds of battle-hardened and vengeful jihadists. Pakistan’s tactical decisions, while looking impressive at that moment, have thus brought that nation only strategic misery.

As the Al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban groups escaped into Pakistan’s unruly FATA with the support of Pashtun tribal leaders on either side of the Durand Line and also the Pakistani Army at the border checkposts, they later re-grouped to take on the NATO and Afghan forces. One strategy employed by the Al Qaeda and Taliban was to bring under a common umbrella the various other jihadi outfits and warlords operating within Pakistan and in FATA. Thus, the Islamic International Front (IIF) of Osama bin Laden truly morphed into what is today known as AQAM with the merging of the various Pakistani terrorist tanzeems. Thus, Tehrik-e-Taliban, Pakistan (TTP) was formed (officially in c. 2007) to coordinate efforts within Pakistan given the fact that the Taliban needed to marshal the meagre and battered resources well against the mighty forces of the US, NATO and Pakistan arrayed against them. This was a tough task because of the oftentimes conflicting clannish loyalties, inter-tribal rivalries and independent warlords. The effort of unification took a long time and has not been a complete success either but it survived and has been fairly successful over the years. Though the AQAM leadership knew that Pakistan would not get too close to the Americans for AQAM’s comfort, they still needed to ensure that, by creating the TTP which maintained enough pressure on the Government and the Army of Pakistan. With Islamist-military leaders like Gen. Aslam Beg, Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul and Col. Imam guiding them, the AQAM knew only too well what perfidy Pakistan was capable of. Therefore, they needed to establish the Caliphate in FATA and TTP was the force to capture space, establish the rule there and maintain it. This is the first of the twin objectives of TTP.

Already the Pakistani terrorist tanzeem, Harkat-ul-Ansar (later renamed as Harkat-ul-Jihadi-al-Islami or HuJI and the original bearer of the tag, Punjabi Taliban) occupied an important place in the governing structure of Afghanistan during the heady days of the Taliban there. Later, Jaish-e-Mohammed also threw its weight behind Al Qaeda and Taliban. Others like the anti-Shia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), the Ahl-e-Hadith Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Wahhabi Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) of Maulana Sufi Mohammed of Malakand, Brigade 313 of Ilyas Kashmiri, the Karachi-based Jandullah of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the Berelvi terrorist organization Sunni Tehrik and the mother of all Pakistani terrorist organizations Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) coalesced with them making the AQAM a formidable group at least within Af-Pak. Collectively these Pakistani terrorist organizations are referred to as the Punjabi Taliban.

The latter have carried their 'Hanud' component to the 'Yahud-Nasara' conspiracy theory of Al Qaeda. The collective wisdom now seems to be that Pakistan must also be turned into Taliban-style rule so that in future the Taliban regime of Afghanistan would be secure and a worldwide assault on the kafir can be sustained. The Afghan Taliban, while still needing the support of the Pakistani Army and the Government of Pakistan, has therefore outsourced that effort to TTP. They give the appearance of keeping the TTP at an arm's distance. The Pakistani Taliban thus seek to overthrow the Pakistani government. This is the second of the twin objectives of TTP. The Pakistani Army and the Government of Pakistan have no option but to continue with their support for the Afghan Taliban as they blindly continue to chase the mirage of 'strategic depth'. Like a monkey whose hand is trapped in the honey jar, the Pakistani Army and the Government of Pakistan are thus caught in a cleft, from which they can come out only if they let go of their Indian obsession, an impossibility. Thus the Afghan Taliban is the cleverest of them all as it gets support from Pakistan while at the same time bringing it under its sphere of influence (a reverse strategic depth). While the Pakistani Army and the Government of Pakistan believe that by supporting the Haqqani Shura and the Hizb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, another old friend of the ISI, they are preparing themselves for the day after the American departure, the AQAM also believes that it has also prepared well for the same day. Pakistan therefore could be in for a rude shock when the reinstated Taliban might fall foul of their creators and mentors, the Pakistani Army and the Government of Pakistan, because it has grown an independent mind and strategy. The assassination of Khalid Khwaja and the mujahideen and Taliban creator Col. Imam are pointers in that direction.

[ya]

Here's some interesting data from long war journal and comments from posters that I know.


http://img218.imageshack.us/i/fatanwfp22apr2011.jpg/

The change in Drone Strike Ratio, and the respective composition of ISI-proxy-Taliban vs. TTP (Tehrik e Taliban Pak) in various agencies, gives a good indication as to the direction in which US-TSP relations have been headed for a while.

The figure also attempts to illustrate where PA (pak army) is active (blue regions), where PA has refused to deploy in spite of US demands (red/purple regions), where the US drones are active (also the red/purple regions), and where new fronts are being opened by TTP against TSPA at the present time (blue regions in central and eastern FATA.)

There is a clear distinction between theatres of interest that is beginning to show up. PA/ISI are using proxies mainly in the western part of FATA... Waziristan... to wage war against NATO and Kabul. TTP is stronger in central and eastern FATA, and directing its energies towards eastern NWFP in the direction of Punjab (to link up with Punjabi Tanzeems?) The US is hitting the PA/ISI proxies with 95% of its drone strikes, and largely leaving the TTP alone (at least on Pakistani soil.)

A slightly different picture than "US being taken for a ride" that some have advanced. At least three distinct wars are going on in different theatres:
1) Kabul/NATO vs. ISI-proxy-Taliban in North and South Waziristan and in Southwest Afghanistan
2) Kabul/NATO vs. TTP-leaning Taliban in Central/Eastern Afghanistan
3) ISI/TSPA vs. TTP-leaning Taliban in Central/Eastern FATA and in NWFP.

It seems interesting that the new fronts being opened by TTP do not seem directed towards expanding influence in the FATA but are going directly for the heart of Pak proper...NE part of NWFP, Dir and Swat.


(Source: Long War Journal)

[Crafty_Dog]

Whoa.  That's heavy. 

[G M]

Well, at least we're winning in Libya......


 

[Crafty_Dog]

Worth noting is that much of the incoherence of our strategy has its origins in the Bush-Rumbo era , , ,

[G M]

Well, at least we elected the lightwalker who will end the Iraq war, win in Afghanistan and close Gitmo. When does he get sworn in?

[Crafty_Dog]

I'm more interested in finding a way forward for America.   What are the implications of what YA just posted?
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As the search function here will reveal, I read and was impressed by the "Three Cups of Tea" book a few years ago, and so I have followed its recent fall from grace with a certain amount of personal interest.  Here is a column that gives a sense of what was involved:

The first tip-off that Greg Mortenson's memoir "Three Cups of Tea" has some credibility issues comes in the book's introduction. Co-author David Oliver Relin writes that as Mortenson is flying over Pakistan, the helicopter pilot marvels to Mortenson, "I've been flying in northern Pakistan for 40 years. How is it you know the terrain better than me?"

The pilot also confides, "Flying with President Musharraf, I've become acquainted with many world leaders, many outstanding gentlemen and ladies. But I think Greg Mortenson is the most remarkable person I've ever met."

People don't talk like that. Books don't lead with that level of self-aggrandizement. Unless they want to induct you into a cult.

Last Sunday, "60 Minutes" reporter Steve Kroft ripped into Mortenson's claim of stumbling years ago into a Pakistani village as he descended from a K2 climb and meeting a young girl who asked him to build a school. While he refused Kroft's request for an on-camera interview, in a statement, Mortenson admitted his version of events was "condensed."

It seems Mortenson also fabricated a story of being kidnapped by the Taliban. Kroft interviewed Mansur Khan Mahsud, the research director of an Islamabad think tank, who was surprised to see himself in a photo that Mortenson had claimed showed his 1996 captors.

In the statement, Mortenson explained that "Talib" means student of Arabic. And Khan wants to sue him for defamation.

The worst part: "60 Minutes" checked out 30 of the 141 schools that Mortenson's charity, Central Asia Institute, claimed to have built in Afghanistan and Pakistan "mostly for girls." Kroft reported, "Roughly half were empty, built by someone else or not receiving any support at all."

American Institute of Philanthropy President Daniel Borochoff found that in 2009, CAI spent more on "domestic outreach" -- largely advertising and travel promoting Mortenson's books, "like a book tour" -- than it spent overseas.

"Into Thin Air" author Jon Krakauer, who is mentioned in "Three Cups" as a CAI supporter, charged that Mortenson, who has made millions in book sales, used the charity "as his private ATM."

That revelation must have hit "Three Cups" fans in the gut. The memoir asserts that Mortenson made repeated sacrifices -- such as living in his car rather than pay rent -- because "every wasted dollar stole bricks or books from the school."

But there were so many other signals that the book was problematic.

In "Three Cups," Mortenson charmed his Taliban kidnappers by asking for a Quran and showing his devotion -- and so they let him go. Which is amazing.

More amazing was the claim that they gave him money, saying, "For your schools. So, Inshallah, you'll build many more." (It helps if you forget how bad the Taliban take on education for girls is.)

There were other signals. Writer Ann Marlowe questioned some of the "anti-military nonsense" in a 2008 Forbes commentary. Mortenson claimed that during his stint as an Army medic in Germany, Vietnam veterans were hooked on heroin and died "in their bunks and we'd have to go and collect their bodies." Marlowe suggested that readers take his tales with "three grains of salt."

Instead, he sold 3 million books. Why? Through the pouring of "Three Cups," Mortenson came to personify every liberal conceit. He pushed books, not bombs. He had a nuanced take on Islamic extremism. He's not afraid of terrorism; for him, "the enemy is ignorance."

Marlowe observed, "The implication is that this solitary do-gooder's work is a better model for helping the rural poor in areas that are a breeding ground for Islamic extremism." While to the contrary, the U.S. Army built more schools in just one Afghan province in 15 months than CAI built in a decade.

Listeners of KQED-FM's "Forum" last week were outraged and perplexed. On the one hand, Mortenson has done a lot of good for a lot of children. On the other hand, the "60 Minutes" story makes his fans look gullible.

A caller asked: How are we supposed to know a book is a phony?

Hmmmm. If the cash-giving girls-school-loving Taliban tale doesn't ring a bell, if the constant reminders of Mortenson's greatness -- and modesty -- don't do the trick, maybe there is another warning sign. Global Fund for Women Vice President Shalini Nataraj warned about any memoir that hails "the white savior who's going to come in and save the local people."

[ya]

SMITH: Why Pakistan will betray us
The question isn’t if - it’s why
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/23/why-pakistan-will-betray-us/print/


It should come as little surprise, but U.S. headlines are again dominated by dour news out of Pakistan. The U.S.-Pakistan relationship is today under severe strain, rattled by heated disputes over CIA drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas; clandestine U.S. intelligence operations inside Pakistan; and Islamabad's persistent refusal to crack down on the Taliban and their radical allies. Intelligence cooperation is at an all-time low.

This latest series of rifts may indeed prove more damaging and permanent than previous disruptions, but they fit all too neatly in the general narrative of U.S.-Pakistan relations. One day Islamabad is touted as an indispensable ally; the next it is a back-stabbing fountain of Islamist militancy. For the longest time, these competing tensions were encapsulated in the Washington debate over whether or not Pakistan was playing a "double game."

But we were debating the wrong question. Of course Pakistan is playing a double game. Of course its intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), supports Islamist militants. The relevant question is not if Pakistan is playing a double game, but why? The simplest answer is that Pakistan believes it needs a pliant, anti-Indian regime in Afghanistan and - as it has for decades - Pakistan is using Islamist militants as an extension of its foreign policy.

In short, Islamabad sees a Taliban-led government in Kabul as the best guarantor of its interests in neighboring Afghanistan. But this, too, begs the question: What are its interests? Why risk international condemnation and the ire of your superpower benefactor for influence in a desolate, landlocked country with few natural resources or infrastructure, and of questionable strategic value?

Two motivations are often cited: First, Islamabad is said to covet Afghanistan for "strategic depth." Pakistan is geographically narrow and its major cities, positioned as they are near its eastern border with India, are vulnerable to attack in the event of a war with its rival. Thus, Pakistan's military planners - for whom an Indian invasion is always imminent - yearn for the rugged Afghan terrain to the west, where a retreating army could regroup and coordinate a guerrilla war, if necessary.

Second, Pakistan is fearful of Indian influence in Afghanistan. Around every corner in Kabul, Pakistanis see Indian agents and behind every Afghan initiative, a nefarious Hindu plot. That India's presence in Afghanistan has been benign, civilian and economic in nature has not stopped the ISI from backing brazen jihadi attacks on the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

This suggests that Pakistan's perceived interests in Afghanistan are India-centric. However, the fear of ethnic (specifically Pashtun and Baluch) nationalism may play an even greater role in Pakistan's strategy, penetrating to the heart of what constitutes Pakistani identity and the integrity of the Pakistani state.

There are roughly 40 million Pashtuns straddling the Afghan-Pakistan border, the notoriously autonomous "martial race," with legendary fighting prowess (virtually all Taliban are Pashtun, but not all Pashtun are Taliban). The Af-Pak border that cuts this stateless nation in half was drawn by India's colonial British overlords in 1893. Incorporating a sliver of the Afghan frontier into northwestern India, the Durand Line, as the border is called, was designed to create a buffer zone between India and the lawless hinterland beyond. But after partition in 1947, the new (West) Pakistani state inherited these Pashtun tribal areas.

Like their countrymen in the east, the Pashtuns - and the even more disaffected Baluch minority in the south - are Muslim, but they share little else in common in terms of culture, language, allegiance or history. So it comes as no surprise that they have periodically agitated for greater autonomy, independence or even incorporation into Afghanistan. As the saying goes, the Afghans have a terribly weak state but a cohesive national identity. In Pakistan, the strong, military-run state is in part compensation for its fragile national identity.

Consequently, Islamabad is hypersensitive to ethnic nationalism and separatism. Pakistan already lost nearly half its territory - East Pakistan - to another disgruntled ethnic minority in the 1971 war that created Bangladesh. To complicate matters further, successive Afghan governments, including the Pakistani-backed Taliban regime of the 1990s, have refused to recognize the Durand Line. Pakistan fears that a strong and independent Afghanistan - let alone one allied to India - could challenge their artificial border and agitate Pashtun or Baluch nationalists, undermining Pakistan from within. A friendly, Taliban-led regime in Kabul is thus seen by Islamabad as the best defense against this possibility and against Indian "encirclement."

Of course, none of Pakistan's "interests" in Afghanistan justify its backing fanatical jihadists that slaughter the innocent, the majority of which are Muslim. But Washington must better understand the misguided logic behind Pakistan's double game if it insists on being a party to it until 2014. Pakistan, on the other hand, has been obsessing for so long over a phantom menace, it is blind to the real threat to its strategic interests: a fundamental split with the United States. Ten years of supporting America's Islamist enemies has poisoned its reputation in America. Its once-mighty defenders in Washington are isolated and shrinking in number, while a younger generation of policymakers knows nothing of Pakistan but militancy, corruption and deception. When the United States inevitably departs Afghanistan, so too, will Pakistan's "leverage" over America. Only then will Pakistan's leadership realize the true cost of their double game.

Jeff M. Smith is a fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council.

[G M]

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/04/27/richard-north-patterson-pakistan-dangerous-place-earth/

RICHARD NORTH PATTERSON: Why Pakistan Is the Most Dangerous Place On Earth
 
By Richard North Patterson
 
Published April 27, 2011
 
| FoxNews.com


In recent years, American and Israeli fears of nuclear proliferation have focused on Iran. The consequences of an Iranian bomb could be grave indeed: a chain reaction of nuclear armament among Arab countries, some of whom are threatened by, or may collaborate with, jihadists.
 
It is unlikely, however, that Iran would start a nuclear war: its regime has a return address, and Israel could annihilate them. That is why nuclear terrorism by non-state actors like Al Qaeda is the West’s ultimate nightmare and why Pakistan, not Iran, is the most dangerous place on earth.
 
Imagine this: Three jihadist groups in Pakistan—Al Qaeda, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba (“LET”)—forge an operational alliance to steal a nuclear bomb from the Pakistani arsenal in order to destroy a major Western city. Pursuant to the plan, LET—which carried out the Mumbai attacks—destroys the Taj Mahal and attacks the Indian Parliament, precipitating a state of nuclear alert between India and Pakistan, whose intelligence agency is the chief sponsor of LET.
 
When a Pakistani convoy moves a bomb from its secret storage facility to an Air Force base near the border, a group of Pakistani Taliban—directed by Al Qaeda and tipped off by a military insider—attacks the convoy and steals the bomb. From there, Al Qaeda has several routes for smuggling the bomb to America, Europe, or Israel.
 
This is not a Bondian fantasy. What is so frightening about this scenario is its realism: every detail is of grave concern to the national defense and intelligence communities. But almost as disturbing is how little most Americans know about this threat.
 



There is no country with more active terrorists than Pakistan, and few with more nuclear weapons. The spur for nuclear armament is Pakistan’s bitter rivalry with India, focused on the violent sixty-year-old dispute over Kashmir. The unintended consequences could be lethal: a jihadist capture of nuclear weapons or materials for use against the West.
 
This could happen in several different ways: the clandestine acquisition of nuclear materials; seizure of a nuclear facility by a rogue military officer; a jihadist takeover of the Pakistan government; and the theft of a nuclear weapon.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/04/27/richard-north-patterson-pakistan-dangerous-place-earth/

[ya]

The article is certainly Bondesque  ...
Initially, the American thinking was that an India-Pak nuclear exchange while undesirable, was without risk to the US and so the US  turned a blind eye to Chinese proliferation support to Pak. Today, the thinking on Indian defense sites is that the jihadis hate the US and Israel more than they hate India (infact polls show that). Anytime the pakis hate someone more than India, that's a major achievement....ie the nukes may come back and bite us in the US and not India. I for one dont doubt the plausibility of the scenario.

The paki army is highly jihadized, their motto is "Iman, Taqwa, Jihad fi Sabilillah". Translated into English, it means "Faith, Piety and Fight in the path of God". They now claim to have more nukes or weapons grade material than the UK. Continuing the story...I forsee a jihadi general allocating a couple of rough nukes for shipment to the US. The general would know that the retaliation from the US would be painful, so I would expect that the general would move out of Pak to some mid east country until things settle.

[ya]

Found this interesting picture...Lyndon Johnson extending hand, while field marshall Ayub Khan (ex dictator of pureland), playfully wanting to slap him. Nothings has really changed today...

[Crafty_Dog]

Amazing foto YA!

[Crafty_Dog]

Red Alert: Osama bin Laden Killed
May 2, 2011 | 0249 GMT

The United States has killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and recovered his body, according to numerous media reports May 1 citing U.S. officials. U.S. President Barack Obama is scheduled to make an announcement on the subject. It is not clear precisely how bin Laden was killed or how his body was recovered, but the assertion that he is dead is significant.

Bin Laden had become the symbol of al Qaeda, even though the degree to which he commanded the organization was questionable. The symbolic value of his death is obvious. The United States can claim a great victory. Al Qaeda can proclaim his martyrdom.

It is difficult to understand what this means at this moment, but it permits the Obama administration to claim victory, at least partially, over al Qaeda. It also opens the door for the beginning of a withdrawal from Afghanistan, regardless of the practical impact of bin Laden’s death. The mission in Afghanistan was to defeat al Qaeda, and with his death, a plausible claim can be made that the mission is complete. Again speculatively, it will be interesting to see how this affects U.S. strategy there.

Equally possible is that this will trigger action by al Qaeda in bin Laden’s name. We do not know how viable al Qaeda is or how deeply compromised it was. It is clear that bin Laden’s cover had been sufficiently penetrated to kill him. If bin Laden’s cover was penetrated, then the question becomes how much of the rest of the organization’s cover was penetrated. It is unlikely, however, that al Qaeda is so compromised that it cannot take further action.

At this early hour, the only thing possible is speculation on the consequences of bin Laden’s death, and that speculation is inherently flawed. Still, the importance of his death has its consequences. Certainly one consequence will be a sense of triumph in the United States. To others, this will be another false claim by the United States. For others it will be a call to war. We know little beyond what we have been told, but we know it matters.

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Question of Pakistani Cooperation in bin Laden Strike
May 2, 2011 | 0421 GMT
U.S. President Barack Obama announced late May 1 that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is dead and that the body of the jihadist leader is in U.S. custody. Obama said bin Laden was killed in a firefight with U.S. special operations forces in Abbottabad, about 56 kilometers (35 miles) north of Islamabad. Prior to Obama’s announcement, Pakistani intelligence officials were leaking to U.S. media that their assets were involved in the killing of bin Laden. Obama said, “Over the years, I’ve repeatedly made clear that we would take action within Pakistan if we knew where bin Laden was. That is what we’ve done. But it’s important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding.” Obama said he had called Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and that his team had also spoken to their counterparts. He said Islamabad agreed it is “a good and historic day for both of our nations and going forward its essential for Pakistan to join us in the fight against al Qaeda and its affiliates.”

The detailed version of what led to the hit and the extent of U.S.-Pakistani cooperation in the strike is not yet publicly known, but reports so far claim that bin laden and his son were hiding in a massive compound with heavy security and no communications access when they were attacked. Two key questions thus emerge. How long was the Pakistani government and military-security apparatus aware of bin Laden’s refuge deep in Pakistani territory? Did the United States withhold information from Pakistan until the hit was executed, fearing the operation would be compromised?

Major strains in the U.S.-Pakistani relationship have rested on the fact that the United States is extraordinarily dependent on Pakistan for intelligence on al Qaeda and Taliban targets and that Pakistan in turn relies on that dependency to manage its relationship with the United States. Following the Raymond Davis affair, U.S.-Pakistani relations have been at a particularly low point as the United States has faced increasing urgency in trying to shape an exit strategy from the war in Afghanistan and has encountered significant hurdles in eliciting Pakistani cooperation against high-value targets.

Now that the United States has a critical political victory with which to move forward with an exit from the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan now faces the strategic dilemma of how to maintain the long-term support of its major external power patron in Washington.

[G M]

And Pakistan is shocked, SHOCKED, to find out OBL was hiding in Pakistan.