Noticias de Rupia | Nouvelles de Roupie | Rupiennachrichten | ??????? ????? | ???? | Roepienieuws | Rupi Nyheter | ??????? | Notizie di Rupia | PAKISTAN LEDGER | ???????? ????? | Moin Ansari | ???? ??????? | Updated March 21st, 2009 |

The amount of aid being planned for Pakistan is peanuts. Compare the 7.5 Billion being promised to Pakistan with the 143 Billion wasted in Afghantan and the $605 Billion thrown away in Iraq. Turkey was offered $38 Billion for participating in the first war in Iraq and Egypt’s loan of $34 Billion was waived. Israel gets Billions per annum. The headlines about Pakistan in the media: Understanding the Rupert Murdock-Neocon-Hinduvata doomsayer machine which is running scared of defeat and retreat

The centerpiece of Newsweek’s story is how Biden has become the chief White House skeptic on escalating the war in Afghanistan, specifically arguing against Gen. McChrystal’s request for 40,000 more troops to pursue a counterinsurgency strategy there.

The piece, by Holly Bailey and Evan Thomas, opens with details of a September 13th national security meeting at the White House. Biden speaks up:

“Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?” Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. “And how much will we spend on Pakistan?” Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. “Well, by my calculations that’s a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we’re spending in Pakistan, we’re spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?” The White House Situation Room fell silent. Reported by Ariana Huffington: Huffington Post

American Aid is a waste of money. The US should see how the Chinese spend their money--creating immense goodwill

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration may triple development aid to Pakistan while also boosting military assistance to secure more help in fighting the insurgency in Afghanistan, a U.S. official said on Friday.

The official, who spoke on condition that he not be named because President Barack Obama has yet to unveil his fresh strategy on Afghanistan, said non-military assistance could rise to three times the current roughly $450 million a year.

Military aid, now running at $300 million a year, could also rise, although by a lesser amount, the official added, saying that conditions could be attached to the defense funds but not to the development money.

The steps aim to win greater Pakistani cooperation to address what is seen as a major weakness of the current U.S. approach in Afghanistan: the existence of safe havens in Pakistan from which insurgents launch attacks in Afghanistan.

The fighting in Afghanistan is now at its most intense since a U.S. invasion seven years ago toppled the Taliban government that sheltered the al Qaeda group behind the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Obama made shifting resources to the war in Afghanistan a feature of his presidential campaign and he has ordered the deployment of 17,000 additional U.S. troops to the country on top of the 38,000 already serving there.

If it boosts development aid to Pakistan, the White House would embrace an approach laid out by Vice President Joe Biden when he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and by the panel’s senior Republican, Senator Richard Lugar. Fri Mar 20, 2009 8:46pm By Arshad Mohammed

What is clear today is that the US aid of just over $600 million per year (the rest is based on invoices and is reimbursement for actual services rendered) is peanuts (to borrow a term from yesteryear’s Zia).

 Renegotiating the US-Pakistan alliance: Correcting the price tag. GWOT counterpoints to USA

Biden in an op-ed column in the New York Times talks about a “Marshall Plan for Afghanistan” but only a tripling of the US aid to Pakistan. In 1980 Zia ul Haq settled for a mere $1.2 Billion and it was not enough to compensate Pakistan for the drug and Kalashnikov culture that permeated Pakistani society. The Afghan war which led to the implosion of the USSR interrupted and then halted our progress towards Asian Tiger status.

In 2001 Musharraf was threatened on being bombed back to the stone age. Musharraf accepted all seven of the diktats presented, hoping that this would bring about American largess. It did not. Pakistan has been losing about $10 Billion per year (estimated by the US DOD), and getting only about $ 1 Billion per year. This accounting does not include the opportunity cost, or the loss to the Pakistani economy.

This simple accounting does not include the cost to the Pakistani nation, in terms of softer costs like lives, fear, loss of business, and loss of foreign investment. The resilience of Pakistan and the nation’s continuing collective refusal to do what the west would like it to do

Pakistan should ask for the actual number calculated by our brilliant economists. Certainly just $1.3 Billion per year of economic aid is not the right amount, and a sycophantic and obsequious PPP government should not accept this miserly amount if compared to aid packages to Israel ($ 60 Billion), Egypt ($ 30 Billion) and if compared to what was offered to Turkey during the first Iraq war ($48 Billion).Pakistans 7 invoices from the stone age. New Pakistani Governemnt. New bill. Old aid bill was signed under duress

Can Obama duplicate Swat peace deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan Fixing Afpak: Inability to define exit strategy spells inevitable US military catastrophe in Kabul Obama’s sane policy: Negotating with the Taliban Betrayals, blackmail in Bakiyev cloaking failure as success hiding the defeat declaring victory withdrawing from Afghanistan within 12 months Obama to unveil new policy: Marshal Plan & end to bombing raids in Pakistan

Convincing the US tin ear of the Pakistani point of view Peek into Obama’s brains: Bruce Reidel on Pakistan Growing consensus in the Obama team: Much of Pakistan’s problems originate in Afghanistan

Obama advisor Weinbaum predicts total Afghan policy review: Sees focus on talks & Reconciliation Afghanistan: Gen. Petraeus’ Pakistani advisers: Indians jittery Obama adviser gives deep insights into new Afghan policy

Why the surge in Afghanistan is doomed to failure?

Legislation backed by the two, and by the panel’s new chairman, Democratic Senator John Kerry, called for giving an extra $1.5 billion a year in non-military aid to Pakistan over five years, amounting to a total of $7.5 billion.

“The basic approach to Pakistan is the one that comes out of the … legislation, and that is that the first thing that you have got to do with Pakistan is convince Pakistanis that you are there with them for the long term and that you don’t just love them for their terrorists,” said the official.

“The approach in the legislation was to increase the non-military assistance dramatically to help build a more stable modern Pakistani society and government and then provide military assistance that helps them fight terrorism,” he said.

He said the military aid was likely to come with conditions to ensure it would be used against insurgents, but said this was “very complicated because you don’t want to end up cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

“You might call it a bargain, rather than conditions: If you are committed to transforming your army into a capable counter-insurgency force, these are the kind of things we can do for you,” the official said, saying assistance could include helicopters or night vision goggles.

Britain’s ambassador to the United States, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, said Washington could help Islamabad “bear down on the rise in extremism” in Pakistan by providing more aid.

“If there is a more broadly based program of assistance from this country to Pakistan, focusing on the building up of infrastructure and on economic development as well as on military assistance, I think that will help,” he told Reuters.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan has a long history of political instability and has spent more than half its 61-year existence under military rule.

The year-old civilian government defused its latest crisis on Monday when it agreed to restore Pakistan’s top judge, ending a confrontation between the country’s two biggest political parties that looked set to spark street violence.

U.S. policymakers fear Pakistan’s political turmoil could distract the country from fighting insurgents on its territory, further worsening the situation in Afghanistan.

“I feel like the real war on terror is not in Iraq, and it’s not in Afghanistan,” said David Kilcullen, an expert on guerrilla warfare and the author of “The Accidental Guerrilla,” a study of counter-insurgency. “It’s in Pakistan.”

“The real conceptual issue, the real strategic decision that has to be made is: what the hell are we going to do about Pakistan? How are we going to support them? How are we going to stabilize them?” he said. U.S. may boost development, military aid to Pakistan Fri Mar 20, 2009 8:46pm By Arshad Mohammed

Senator’s Kerry and Lugar and Vice President Joseph Biden has forcefully pushed for a Pro-Pakistan policy rather than a pro-Musharraf policy.  Mr. Biden is one of the few Democrats who possibly understands Pakistan. He has been dealing with Pakistani politicians for decades, and sometimes berates Zia-ul-Haq for looking him in the eye and lying about the Nuclear bomb to him. Justifying the Banality of a brutal Occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan: The Thinktanks attempt to complete the circle of complicity between a sycophantic press, and a non-inquisitive servile public. The nation is forced to accept the only argument that it is being repeatedly inundated with

Jospeh Biden wrote an OpEd column about the importance of not having a “transacitonal relationship” with Pakistan. Then he turned out and implemented a transactional relationship.

Afghanistan. THE next president will have to rally America and the world to “fight them over there unless we want to fight them over here.” The “over there” is not, as President Bush has claimed, Iraq, but rather the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

That is where those who attacked us on 9/11 came from, where the attacks in Europe since originated and where Al Qaeda is regrouping. It is the real central front in the war on terrorism.

Afghanistan is slipping toward failure. The Taliban is back, violence is up, drug production is booming and the Afghans are losing faith in their government. All the legs of our strategy – security, counternarcotics efforts, reconstruction and governance – have gone wobbly.

If we should have had a surge anywhere, it is Afghanistan. And instead of eradicating poppy crops, which forces many farmers to turn to the Taliban, we should go after drug kingpins.

We also need to make good on President Bush’s pledge for a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan. In six years, we have spent on Afghanistan’s reconstruction only what we spend every three weeks on military operations in Iraq.

Afghanistan’s fate is directly tied to Pakistan’s future and America’s security. When President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan concluded that we were not serious about finishing the job in Afghanistan, he began to cut deals with extremists in his own country.

As a result, the border area remains a freeway of fundamentalism: the Taliban and Al Qaeda find sanctuary in Pakistan, while Pakistani suicide bombers wreak havoc in Afghanistan.

The recent Pakistani elections gave the moderate majority its voice back and gives the United States an opportunity to move from a Musharraf policy to a Pakistan policy. To demonstrate to its people that we care about their needs, not just our own, we must triple assistance for schools, roads and clinics, sustain it for a decade, and demand accountability for the military aid we provide.

If Afghanistan fails or Pakistan falls to fundamentalism, America will suffer a terrible setback. The candidates should tell Americans how they will handle what may be the next president’s most difficult challenge. Pakistan. Forgotten. By JOE BIDEN,March 2, 2008, Op-Ed Contributor. Joe Biden is a Democratic senator from Delaware.

Aid should be at least 20 (twenty) times that number. Compensation for lost opportunity is seperate. $150 Billion per annum

US AfPak policy review results mimic Chinese demads given to Hillary Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived. ~Abraham Lincoln In 1821 The Taliban was a construct of the CIA and was armed by the CIA:–Congressman Dana Rohrabacher Obama’s Vietnam & Cambodiazation of the Afghan war Solutions to “Obama’s Vietnam” Kabul: The Final Spring Offensive? End of NATO? Afghanistan: The writing is on the wall. Can Obama read it? UK Brig. Smith: “We’re not going to win this [Afghan] war”
Failure and Defeat in Afghanistan: Inevitable Frustration & misdirected Payback for ally Pakistan US Charge of the Light Brigade into Pakistan is a US failure and has to stop

Pakistan’s do more list for the USA Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan & Swat run by Taliban Huge Migraine for India

Facing the Khyber poltergeist & Ganges hobgoblin NATO war: UK 1880 defeats in Afghanistan

The folly of the UKs “Charge of the Light Brigade” in Afghanistan AGAIN reminds us of Britian’s previous defeat in Afghainstan. Unfortunately the lessons of the unmitigated disaster of “Auckland’s Folly”, (First Anglo-Afghan War 1838–42) have not been taught to the Oxbridge students.

Bin Laden used Reagan’s USSR strategy to Destroy US Capitalism? Cambodiazation of the Afghan war Rescueing the Pashtuns of Afghania from Afghanistan

Unite! Erase the Durand Line Solution: Fixing “AfPak” expedites the inevitable union between Pakistan & Afghanistan The emerging “Leave Pakistan to Afghanistan” strategy goes mainstream–Extricating the US from the Lost in the Khyber

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