| NEW YORK | RUPEE NEWS | July 30th, 2008 | Moin Ansari | The rising decibel level out of Kabul points to the rising frustration level with Mr. Karzai, the Mayor of Kabul. Perhaps a lesson in history for the narco-druglord who supposedly just purchased an island in Dubai would be in order. The American Think Tanks are now looking at the Pakistani view point in solving the mess that is Afghanistan. A new strategy can defeat the extremists.
DEFEAT IN AFGHANISTAN- 
The story of Afghanistan and colonialism begins a long time ago. British tried to take up White Man’s burden in Afghanistan.
DEFEATS IN AFGHANISTAN: Then & Now
NATO Lessons: 1880 UK defeat at Maiwand-Afghanistan
Is NATO committing suicide in Afghanistan.
NATO lessons: UK defeat at Maiwind may shed some light on today’s situation.
Dr. Munshi has written a great book titled “The Indian Doctrine” in which he eloquently spells out the nefarious machinations of RAW against Pakistan, Bangladesh and other South Asian countries. Understanding Nehru’s India Doctrine
Lanka Letter: RAW THE RASCAL by Prem Raj in Columbo.
Rupee News has also exposed the internal attempts to neutralize the ISI which was defined by the Pakistan Army brass as a thorn in the side of the Indian intelligence agencies. Appeasing the USA: Failed coup against the ISI.
Our breaking news stories about RAW have inspired thousands of readers from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, US and the world over to throng to our site. Anatomy of Indian Intelligence Services and Alliances. Rupee News also has had several dozen articles on RAW and their design from 1968 to the present time. India admits to supporting LTTE terrorists in Sri Lanka! Pakistan to continue to help Lanka crush the Tamil Tigers.
| NEW YORK | RUPEE NEWS | July 30th, 2008 | Moin Ansari | Rupee News has exposed RAW activities in Pakistan and through our other South Asian columnists in India, Bangladesh and Nepal. What is amazing in 2008 that even Bangladeshis have clearly recognized the role of RAW in the events of 1971 and beyond. Pakistan, Nepal, China, and Bangaladesh are RAW’s enemies.
- Anatomy of Indian Intelligence Services and Alliances
- RAW facts on South Asia- India fails to occupy countries.
- LTTE was created by India
- Indian sponsored Tamil terror in Sri Lanka continues unabated
- Lanka: Indian LTTE terrorists use youth as cannon fodder
- Lanka Letter: RAW THE RASCAL by Prem Raj in Columbo
- Pakistan Sri Lanka growing military alliance
- Growing Pakistan Sri Lanka ties
New strategy ‘can beat al-Qaeda’
Al-Qaeda can be defeated if the US relies less on force and more on intelligence and policing to find its leaders, a leading US think-tank says. In a new report, the Rand Corporation suggests the US replace the term “war on terror” with “counter-terrorism”. Al-Qaeda is blamed for the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US and other attacks around the world.
Many analysts believe Osama Bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders are hiding near the Afghan-Pakistan border. Earlier this month, US Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said the situation in Afghanistan was “precarious and urgent” and the country should be the main focus of the “war on terror”.
Pakistan, a key US ally in the fight against al-Qaeda, is under increasing pressure to do more to combat militants in its lawless border areas.
‘Shift strategy’ 
“Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism,” said Seth Jones, political scientist and lead author of the study.
“The United States has the necessary instruments to defeat al-Qaeda, it just needs to shift its strategy.”
The researchers at Rand, which is funded by the US government, studied 648 militant groups which existed between 1968 and 2006 and, based on their findings, the report concluded that only 7% were defeated militarily.
Political settlements helped neutralise 43% groups and an effective use of police and intelligence information helped to disrupt, capture or kill 40% of leaders of such groups, the study says.
Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden is accused of being behind the 1998 bombing of two US embassies in East Africa and the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001.
Since then, his al-Qaeda network has been linked with many other attacks around the world.
SOLUTIONS FOR AFGHANS Saving the Pashtuns of Afghania from Afghanistan. Eradicating the Pashtun plight and ending occupation.
Brzezinski Warns On Afghanistan
Listen to this man–the day of the Iraq Invasion he warned the US of what was to come and the man was dead on (no pun intended). An article in Examiner.com by Jay McDonough:
wrote a post a couple weeks ago outlining Juan Cole’s concern over the emerging U.S. strategy to send more troops to Afghanistan in light of the increasing level of violence and a resurgence of Taliban influence. From that post:
If the Afghanistan gambit is sincere, I don’t think it is good geostrategy. Afghanistan is far more unwinnable even than Iraq. If playing it up is politics, then it is dangerous politics. Presidents can become captive of their own record and end up having to commit to things because they made strong representations about them to the public.
Afghan tribes are fractious. They feud. Their territory is vast and rugged, and they know it like the back of their hands. Afghans are Jeffersonians in the sense that they want a light touch from the central government, and heavy handedness drives them into rebellion. Stand up Karzai’s army and air force and give him some billions to bribe the tribal chiefs, and let him apply carrot and stick himself. We need to get out of there. “Al-Qaeda” was always Bin Laden’s hype. He wanted to get us on the ground there so that the Mujahideen could bleed us the way they did the Soviets. It is a trap.
Beware.
Former National Security Advisor, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, is expressing concerns as well:
“I think we’re literally running the risk of unintentionally doing what the Russians did. And that, if it happens, would be a tragedy,” Brzezinski told the Huffington Post on Friday. “When we first went into Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban, we were actually welcomed by an overwhelming majority of Afghans. They did not see us as invaders, as they saw the Soviets.”
However, Brzezinski noted that just as the Soviets were able to delude themselves that they had a loyal army of communist-sympathizers who would transform the country, the U.S.-led forces may now be making similar mistakes. He said that the conduct of military operations “with little regard for civilian casualties” may accelerate the negative trend in local public opinion regarding the West’s role. “It’s just beginning, but it’s significant,” Brzezinski said.
His own program for improving the state of affairs in Afghanistan — where U.S. casualties have surpassed those in Iraq for two months now — revolves around pragmatism. He believes Europe should bribe Afghan farmers not to produce poppies used for heroin since “it all ends up in Europe.” Moreover, he thinks the tribal warlords can be bought off with bribes, with the endgame being the isolation of Al-Qaeda from a Taliban that is “not a united force, not a world-oriented terrorist movement, but a real Afghan phenomenon.”
Many historians believe the 9 year long Soviet-Afghan War became one of the factors leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The resistance from the (U.S. backed) Afghani Mujahadeen forces took the Soviets completely by surprise and was a significant embarrassment to the mighty Soviet army. From a paper by Rafael Reuveny and Aseem Prakash (The Afghanistan war and the breakdown of the Soviet Union):
The war impacted Soviet politics in four reinforcing ways: (1) Perception effects: it changed the perceptions of leaders about the efficacy of using the military to hold the empire together and to intervene in foreign countries; (2) Military effects: it discredited the Red Army, created cleavage between the party and the military, and demonstrated that the Red Army was not invincible, which emboldened the non Russian republics to push for independence; (3) Legitimacy effects: it provided non-Russians with a common cause to demand independence since they viewed this war as a Russian war fought by non Russians against Afghans; and (4) Participation effects: it created new forms of political participation, started to transform the press/media before glasnost, initiated the first shots of glasnost, and created a significant mass of war veterans (Afghansti) who formed new civil organizations weakening the political hegemony of the communist party.
The Soviets had no idea what they were getting into when they invaded Afghanistan. Nine years later, they were forced to retreat with the tail between their legs.
I just wish I had more confidence the folks currently running the show are, at least, thinking about these issues.
Brzezinski Warns On Afghanistan
Listen to this man–the day of the Iraq Invasion he warned the US of what was to come and the man was dead on (no pun intended). An article in Examiner.com by Jay McDonough:
wrote a post a couple weeks ago outlining Juan Cole’s concern over the emerging U.S. strategy to send more troops to Afghanistan in light of the increasing level of violence and a resurgence of Taliban influence. From that post:
If the Afghanistan gambit is sincere, I don’t think it is good geostrategy. Afghanistan is far more unwinnable even than Iraq. If playing it up is politics, then it is dangerous politics. Presidents can become captive of their own record and end up having to commit to things because they made strong representations about them to the public.
Afghan tribes are fractious. They feud. Their territory is vast and rugged, and they know it like the back of their hands. Afghans are Jeffersonians in the sense that they want a light touch from the central government, and heavy handedness drives them into rebellion. Stand up Karzai’s army and air force and give him some billions to bribe the tribal chiefs, and let him apply carrot and stick himself. We need to get out of there. “Al-Qaeda” was always Bin Laden’s hype. He wanted to get us on the ground there so that the Mujahideen could bleed us the way they did the Soviets. It is a trap.
Beware.
Former National Security Advisor, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, is expressing concerns as well:
“I think we’re literally running the risk of unintentionally doing what the Russians did. And that, if it happens, would be a tragedy,” Brzezinski told the Huffington Post on Friday. “When we first went into Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban, we were actually welcomed by an overwhelming majority of Afghans. They did not see us as invaders, as they saw the Soviets.”
However, Brzezinski noted that just as the Soviets were able to delude themselves that they had a loyal army of communist-sympathizers who would transform the country, the U.S.-led forces may now be making similar mistakes. He said that the conduct of military operations “with little regard for civilian casualties” may accelerate the negative trend in local public opinion regarding the West’s role. “It’s just beginning, but it’s significant,” Brzezinski said.
His own program for improving the state of affairs in Afghanistan — where U.S. casualties have surpassed those in Iraq for two months now — revolves around pragmatism. He believes Europe should bribe Afghan farmers not to produce poppies used for heroin since “it all ends up in Europe.” Moreover, he thinks the tribal warlords can be bought off with bribes, with the endgame being the isolation of Al-Qaeda from a Taliban that is “not a united force, not a world-oriented terrorist movement, but a real Afghan phenomenon.”
Many historians believe the 9 year long Soviet-Afghan War became one of the factors leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The resistance from the (U.S. backed) Afghani Mujahadeen forces took the Soviets completely by surprise and was a significant embarrassment to the mighty Soviet army. From a paper by Rafael Reuveny and Aseem Prakash (The Afghanistan war and the breakdown of the Soviet Union):
The war impacted Soviet politics in four reinforcing ways: (1) Perception effects: it changed the perceptions of leaders about the efficacy of using the military to hold the empire together and to intervene in foreign countries; (2) Military effects: it discredited the Red Army, created cleavage between the party and the military, and demonstrated that the Red Army was not invincible, which emboldened the non Russian republics to push for independence; (3) Legitimacy effects: it provided non-Russians with a common cause to demand independence since they viewed this war as a Russian war fought by non Russians against Afghans; and (4) Participation effects: it created new forms of political participation, started to transform the press/media before glasnost, initiated the first shots of glasnost, and created a significant mass of war veterans (Afghansti) who formed new civil organizations weakening the political hegemony of the communist party.
The Soviets had no idea what they were getting into when they invaded Afghanistan. Nine years later, they were forced to retreat with the tail between their legs.
I just wish I had more confidence the folks currently running the show are, at least, thinking about these issues.
Tough talk to Pakistan of little use
August 2, 2008
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THERE was a naivety about it, but the brutal honesty in George Bush’s cross-examination of the Pakistani Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, this week was a revealing moment in the post-September 11 world.
“Who is in control of the ISI?” the US President demanded, referring to Pakistan’s all-powerful Directorate of Inter-Service Intelligence by its acronym ISI.
It was a question that might well be asked in Canberra, too, given the Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon’s, offer to Islamabad on Wednesday of a team of Australian counterinsurgency advisers – should Islamabad ask, of course.
For several years, American and NATO military and civilian officials have been losing their tempers and thumping the desks of their Pakistani counterparts in protest about the ISI nurturing the Taliban after the attacks on New York and Washington.
The latest charge Washington had nailed to the ISI door is complicity by rogue elements in the July 7 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, in which more than 40 people were killed and 140 injured.
But at the same time, the US has kept open the aid spigot, pouring billions into Pakistan for very dubious results since September 11. If seven years later Bush seriously needed to ask Gilani who was controlling the ISI, then Washington’s aid investment is a bust.
The surprise this week was not in the American message to Pakistan, so much as the messenger. As reported by Gilani’s Defence Minister, Ahmad Mukhtar, Bush accused “certain elements of the ISI of leaking information to the terrorists before they could be hit by the US or Pakistani forces”.
Some in Islamabad will dismiss the slap on the wrist from Bush as of little consequence. They will be the Pakistan generals who did not need a 32-page report by the US Government Accountability Office to reveal to them earlier this year that the American effort in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan is something of a mess.
Noting US aid contributions in excess of $US2 billion ($2.11 billion) a year, the Government Accountability Office states: “The United States has not met its national security goals to destroy terrorist threats [instead,] al-Qaeda has regenerated its ability to attack the US and has successfully established a safe haven.”
To convey just why Americans who were anxious about the haste with which the US war effort switched from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2002 might have taken comfort from new reports generated in Washington which told them that the terrorism business in the area of Pakistan to which Osama bin Laden and his followers had fled was actually being attended to, it is necessary to quote a wordy slab of this report.
“No comprehensive plan for meeting US national security goals in the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas] has been developed, as stipulated by the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism (2003), as called for by an independent commission (2004) and as mandated by congressional legislation (2007),” it states.
“Furthermore, Congress created the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in 2004 specifically to develop comprehensive plans to combat terrorism. However, neither the National Security Council, the NCTC nor other executive branch departments have developed a comprehensive plan that includes all elements of national power – diplomatic, military, intelligence, development assistance, economic and law enforcement support – as called for by the various national security strategies and Congress.”
The reality is that almost seven years after September 11 and the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, both counter-terrorism on the Pakistan border and the war in Afghanistan are going backwards. More foreign fighters are finding their way to Pakistan; there has been a 40 per cent rise in rebel activity on the Afghanistan side of the border since Pakistan adopted its policy of coddling, rather than combating the FATA-based militants; and, by some accounts, the ISI has a tighter grip on power in Islamabad than ever before.
The worry is that what the Islamabad generals offer as proof of a deep commitment to counter-terrorism – the loss of hundreds of its own troops in brawling on the border – could well be sacrificial window-dressing for what is a deeper commitment by some in the Islamabad establishment to terrorism.
Any doubt about the tissue-thinness of Pakistani democracy and the prospect of a genuine counter-terrorism effort evaporated last weekend, when the military intervened and reasserted its control over the ISI in a matter of just hours.
On Saturday, Gilani’s administration announced that the spy and security service had been brought under civilian control. By 3am Sunday the generals had snatched it back to their bosom.
And lest Washington seriously believe Bush’s description this week of Pakistan as a “vibrant democracy”, a senior official in the Awami National Party which governs in the border region, Afrasiab Khattak, told the BBC: “Given the powers that Pakistan’s army has enjoyed over successive civilian governments, there is no way the ISI can be made answerable to the Prime Minister.”
Like giving Dracula key-card access to the blood-bank, Washington pushes virtually its entire aid for the border region to the very Pakistani military machine that it has always suspected of being in league with al-Qaeda and the other Afghan and Pakistani militias. In a region of cruel privation for a population in excess of 3 million, just 1 per cent of US funding is designated for the kind of development assistance that might win hearts and minds in the area known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
The remaining 99 per cent goes to military and border security programs which, quite obviously, have failed. And of the 99 per cent, Islamabad was revealed last week to have twisted Washington’s arm to win White House approval to redirect about $US230 million, to fritter it on upgrading Pakistan’s fleet of F-16 jets – an ageing air-fleet which arguably makes no contribution to counter-terrorism.
If that’s what Islamabad does with the superpower Washington’s billions, imagine the ride on which it would take Fitzgibbon’s proposed team of Australian advisers.
The worst policy that Australia could adopt would be to turn its back on the world. But burning money and man-power in the Pakistani furnace is not a useful contribution, either. The problem in Pakistan is not that the military and security services do not know how to run an effective counterterrorism operation – it is that they choose not to do so.
When TV anchorman Jim Lehrer put the Bush question on the ISI to Gilani after his White House visit, the Prime Minister dismissed the implication out of hand. “We would not allow that,” he snapped with a certainty, which suggested that Fitzgibbons might soon get a call from Islamabad.
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/08/01/1217097529461.html
