Pathetic Performance

Fatima Rizvi's Blog

No one in Pakistan is surprised by what Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US says because everyone understands that he has to brown- nose his masters to get brownie points so that he can stay on there and mouth the words that are music to his parent countries enemies and their lackeys. What does come as a surprise is the fact that he is invited to give testimony before a Congressional Committee and the consensus is that he in invited because they want to hear what they know he is going to say.

Mr Haqqani claims in his testimony to be speaking for the intelligentsia in Pakistan. Open any Pakistanis blog and you will find it littered with words like — scumbag, traitor, turncoat, tail-wagger, bootlicker, pathetic excuse for a man etc. totally missing are words of praise or appreciation from the so called intelligentsia he claims to represent.

He tells Congress that Pakistan is six times smaller in population and has an economy one tenth the size of India and in the same breath he says that Pakistan could ‘menace’ India if it is given F-16 aircraft and helicopters or if any kind of nuclear agreement with Pakistan is even considered. Does he think there are morons in Congress who will swallow such drivel and will they believe that Pakistan would be foolish enough to initiate conflict with India in today’s environment. He also informs what must be a singularly dense Congress that aircraft and helicopters will not be used by Pakistan in the fight against terror. So what is Pakistan using in the successful war being waged against terrorism? The US military could tell him and Congress what the Pakistan military is doing and with what and to whom and with what effect.

He goes on to say that the US has a policy of appeasement towards Pakistan and that this encourages Pakistan to have ambitions of rivaling India by achieving parity. The US appeasing Pakistan — shouldn’t it be the other way around? With the asymmetry that exists between India and Pakistan is it possible for Pakistan to rival India or aim for parity? Pakistan is doing what every other country is doing — developing capacity that deters aggression and Pakistan will keep doing this in its national interest. No one in Pakistan is drooling over the prospect of a nuclear agreement with the US — all that they want is for a special for India discriminatory policy by the US to end. This is what can fuel conflict in South Asia — conflict that neither India nor Pakistan wants. This is what having a strong military and nuclear capacity is all about — so all this talk of threats being created to match the size of the military is just pure and simple drivel.

He trots out an impressive figure in dollars that the US has given to Pakistan since 1950. He does not state what Pakistan has done for the US and what cost and not just in dollars but in human lives. The US and Pakistan have a relationship that has endured and they have the wisdom and maturity to look beyond their differences as current trends are indicating and surely Congress knows this.

Paranoid Android

It is a misnomer to continuously beat up on the Pakistani state’s ever-evolving strategic fear of India, when clearly; it should not come as a surprise that the South Asian country’s security challenges do not protrude only from the east. Moreover, this has been wholly realized within not only the country’s intelligentsia and policy circles but also within its public institutions. This can be gauzed from the changes that were earlier made with regards to the Pakistani military’s green book. For those whose memories might have proved too windy, the most pertinent threat to the country was held to be internal rather than external.

Read Full Article Here: Paranoid Android

THE INDIAN HUB

By ZoneAsia-Pk

Pakistan has officially and clearly indicated that India is involved in supporting terrorism in Pakistan. The Pakistan Army Chief is said to have personally handed over a dossier to the US during his visit to the US. It goes without saying that he must have given the information to the Afghan President, the British Prime Minister and the Chinese President during his visits and meetings. Pakistanis have always believed that India would never forego the opportunity to exploit Pakistan’s vulnerabilities to keep it destabilized. If any more proof is needed then there is the video of the Indian Security Adviser laying out a blue print for actions against Pakistan. The orchestrated violence on the LOC and the strange explosion in a boat on the open seas are the physical manifestations of the Modi-Duval policy against Pakistan.

What the US has done with the information given to it is not known besides the stated determination to eliminate the mastermind of the Peshawar atrocity. The recent visit of the US President to India was shrouded by the bonhomie generated by ecstatic first name mentions, bear hugs and wide smiles. The most tangible result seems to have been the progress on the globally destabilizing nuclear agreement, the region destabilizing defense pact and the China irritating document detailing the joint strategic vision for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions. The Joint Communiqué and the Friendship document were just the standard cosmetic outcomes of all such visits. While answering a question on Pakistan the US President did highlight the importance of a stable prosperous Pakistan and in his departing comments he pointedly referred to the dangers of religious extremism—-knowing full well that Hindu extremist organizations had fully backed Modi’s rise to power and were still influencing policies. Pakistanis watched with amusement the public antics of a man once considered a pariah for the atrocities he had committed and the President of the country that had declared him persona non grata.

Read Complete Article Here: THE INDIAN HUB

TTP's breakup a cause of concern

ZoneAsia-Pk

Pakistan’s on-going war against terrorism – the final push – has so far claimed more than 910 militants in North Waziristan and decimated hundreds of militant camps. When Operation Zarb-e-Azb was launched, defence analysts from across the board exhorted the government to take a hands-on approach and work with the Army to develop a multi-pronged strategy to defeat extremism, separate from terrorism, but as big a threat as the latter.

Yet the government initially appeared not only reluctant to endorse a boots-on-the-ground approach but also quickly became sucked into a political imbroglio that shifted the entire country’s attention away from North Waziristan and the internally displaced persons in Bannu, to the Capital. Efforts to engage all state institutions in a political drama only served to exacerbate the government’s own position and paved the path for deep-state to raise eyebrows over the government’s legitimacy.

In the backdrop of the on-going military operation, a national political crisis, regional politics immersed in Machiavellian histrionics and the international security situation held hostage by the Islamic State, a breakaway faction of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan announced itself as the true vanguard that would bring Shariah to Pakistan.

Many quarters have felt that the formation of Jamatul Ahrar signifies a victory of sorts – Pakistan’s largest militant threat developing defections from within shows weakness and a dissonance that can allow the Army and government to end the TTP question once and for all. Fragmentation can only mean smaller weaker targets, easy to take out. The first sign of defeat for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was when it broke into factions, maybe the stratagems that ended Sri Lanka’s 30-year-old war could also put an end to militancy in Pakistan.

However, this needs to be examined in a larger context and it might just be too soon to bring out the champagne.

The TTP claims a certain a ideology. Their’s is a war to reassert orthodox Islamic values in their own vein of interpretation. The seed of war here stems not from social injustice, a sense of deprivation or against foreign occupation – the seed is an idea. When the government decided to hold talks with the TTP, there was an outcry from within TTP structures that believed that there could no compromise on ideas – that would be compromising divine mandate.

It was in the midst of these talks that dissenting groups from within the TTP held attacks under the banner of Ahrarul Hind to jeapordise negotiations. The bombing of a district sessions court in Islamabad and the decapitation of Pakistan Army soldiers was their handiwork. Brutal at best, one could compare their line of ideology and strategy with the IS. The only difference was that all factions claimed allegiance to Mullah Omar, head of the Afghan Taliban under the Al-Qaeda umbrella.

The Jamat, with all the media-savyness of former TTP spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan, claims the support of 70 to 80 TTP commanders. In an hour and a half long video, Maulana Qasim Khorasani (former TTP commander of Mohmand Agency chapter and inline to succeed Hekimullah Mehsud) announces that the TTP has fallen prey to self-seeking individuals (cue Mullah Fazalullah and all the commanders who pushed for talks). Their war is to build a global Caliphate and they will start from Pakistan. The group demonstrates no qualms about violence, they justify it through religion.

Ehsan, in a statement released last week, mentioned that while they were allied with the Afghan Taliban, the IS provided a good example as to how they planned to operate.

This should not serve to alleviate fears regarding militancy in Pakistan, this should serve to alarm. The group is headed by emir Maulana Qasim Khorasani, and Ihsan is its spokesman. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar’s shura, or executive council, includes: Omar Khalid al Khorasani, the powerful commander from Mohmand; Mansoor Nazim Shura and Maulana Haidar from Arakzai; Maulana Adbullah from Bajaur; Qari Ismail from Khyber; Qari Shakil Haqqani from Charsadda; Mufti Misbah from Peshawar; and Maulana Yasin from Swat. The Jamat includes Taliban factions from the tribal agencies of Mohmand, Bajaur, Khyber, and Arakzai, and the districts of Charsadda, Peshawar, and Swat.

By providing these groups an alternative to peace talks, we see the emergence of a new umbrella organisation, seemingly as big as the TTP if not bigger (if Ehsan is to be believed). The group claims that it will stop at nothing to achieve it’s goal of Islamic dominance in the world and they were willing to sacrifice for it.

This leaves the government with no excuse. The Pakistan National Security Council needs to come into action and develop a strategy to deal with new emerging threats. What with the announcement of an Al-Qaeda wing in India, these threats cannot be taken lightly. In a region where physical borders are more than just porous, collective action by the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India is the need of the hour. There is no question of complacency here.

FORK TONGUED PALEFACES

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA man and now affiliated with a Washington think-tank is no friend of Pakistan. This much was always clear from his writings. Now an article written by him and published in India’s Hindustan Times seems to indicate that he is no friend of India’s either. What he has proposed as an agenda for India’s new Prime Minister could lead to a disastrous situation in South Asia.

Mr Riedel and many others in the think-tank community are in a time warp. Their mind sets have not changed. They refuse to believe that countries like India and Pakistan can ever think straight and that they are forever condemned to stew in their own juices. They cannot see the changes sweeping the region or refuse to see those changes because if they did how would they justify the dire predictions that they need to make to stay in their think-tank jobs. There are many such experts around. One of the funniest sights on the Track II circuit is a group of eminent Indians and Pakistanis sitting around a table in discussions moderated and funded by Western think tanks with a ‘paleface’ telling the ‘Indians’ what is good and what is not good for them. Sad but true.

Mr Riedel seems to be telling Mr Modi that Pakistan is firmly and irrevocably wedded to the strategic depth doctrine and that come 2015 Pakistan’s ISI will team up with the Taliban to orchestrate a take-over in Afghanistan. Something that did happen once in the 1990’s but since then a lot has changed. Based on this hypothesis he goes on to advise Mr Modi to confront and rout the ISI in Kabul. He is unabashedly suggesting an India-Pakistan confrontation in Afghanistan. An unstated, but sinister design, in this suggested strategy maybe the idea of Washington, Delhi, Kabul and others putting their heads together to do in Pakistan and its ISI should such a confrontation become a reality. What happens to India and Pakistan—two nuclear weapon states—after that does not seem to be a concern.

Mr Riedel’s suggestion in the past was for US intervention to involve China and Saudi Arabia to coerce India to compromise on Kashmir. He thought at that time that with Kashmir resolved India and Pakistan would not face off in Afghanistan and the US would have its way there. The implication being that it was the India –Pakistan rivalry and not flawed US strategy that was the problem in Afghanistan. Now with the US leaving his thinking has changed to exactly the opposite—an India-Pakistan confrontation in Afghanistan. If this is also what the US wants then it does not make sense for it to roll over and play dead—it should be up and about with its Drones and other fire power decimating the Taliban so that the ISI strategy never takes off unless the idea is to actually let India and Pakistan confront each other so that India falls into the US lap.

Mr Modi has been voted in by his people in the hope that he will better the lot of all Indians and he has promised to do so. He can be a strong leader with an independent bent of mind and this is what disturbs the US think-tank community. Modi will think of India first. His focus will be the economy and domestic harmony. Confrontation with Pakistan is not likely to be his agenda unless such a situation is engineered by external interference. Pakistan is no longer for strategic or any other kind of depth. Pakistan wants internal stability and an end to violence and for this it needs to have good bilateral relations with it neighbors including India and Pakistan. Pakistan will not want confrontation—it will compete but it will cooperate. Like India its focus will be on the economy and its people. Those who think otherwise do so because they do not understand the changed dynamics in Pakistan or because they do not want to.

The future of their countries and the region is in the hands of two elected Prime Ministers—Mr Modi of India and Mr Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan. They will be wise if they keep external meddlers away and interact with each other for the sake of their people.

By Ghalib Sultan

The author is a freelance writer & thinker. Readers may contact the author through his blog: http://ghalibsultan.wordpress.com