| NEW YORK | RUPEE NEWS | August 9th, 2008 | Moin Ansari | The hawks in the Bush administration influenced by the politics of the election year as well as the Neocon and Neolib think tanks are increasingly threatening to send American troops into Pakistan.  Obama and McCain may not agree on everything, but they do agree on sending more troops to Afghanistan. WIll 3000 additional troops be able to curb the violence and trun the tide. The USSR had more than 200,000 troops and eventually had to admit defeat and retreated from the Hindu Kush.

It is very doubtful that the surge will work in Afghanistan. Pakistan to USA: “We are unclear about your intentions and you must know if you do not trust us we trust you even less”.  Forty Six strikes on Pakistani territory have created more anti-Americanism than ever before and the corollary to that equation is that each strike has created more anti-Americans. In Washington they are called Al-Qaeda or Taliban or terrorists. The question to be asked is what will happen the day after the massive US bombing of FATA and ground troops in the border areas. Kabul bombing: Ruse to send Indian troops to Afghansitan?

 “It is time for Pakistan to categorically state: enough of Pakistan bashing, enough of vacuous Kantian moralizing in a Hobbesian world, enough of the do-more mantra and enough of partisan analysis, enough of selective perceptions, enough of double standards … Pakistan will play ‘as clean as the world around it’. Take it or leave it. There is no ‘going it alone’ for any of Pakistan’s neighbors.

“No matter what anyone’s GDP [gross domestic product] may be or their nuclear arsenal, we are in this mess together … That is the message of the spreading militancy … The region will unravel if the governments in the area and those involved outsiders like Washington do not make it a common cause to jointly work to address the causes of growing militancy. The answer lies in a regional solution.” Nasim Zehra

Defeat in Afghanistan

India a secret player in Afghanistan: Bases—Lashkargarh, Qushila Jadid,Khahak,Hassan Killies.

Yet another Indian viewpoint is that it simply pays to rattle Islamabad by creating space for Afghan President Hamid Karzai. An invidious Indian argument is that Delhi should use Afghan soil to retaliate against Islamabad’s support of Kashmiri militants.

In diplomacy, maybe, it pays to sidestep historical memory. Archives may contain only chronicles of wasted time. Very few Indian strategic analysts who at present hold forth on Afghanistan seem to be even remotely aware of how, like Karzai, the then head of state in Kabul, Dr Mohammad Najibullah, was a frequent visitor to Delhi in the late 1980s.

That, too, was a twilight zone in the 30-year-old Afghan war when the conflict, like today’s, uneasily lingered in the shade. Fortunately for Delhi, though, the slow-rolling coup that worked its way through the Afghan labyrinth for months before culminating in the morning of April 16, 1992, with Najib’s ouster, didn’t come entirely as surprise. Indian diplomats soon began diligently seeking out the Afghan mujahideen in the dangerous Hindu Kush mountains, to explain to those new masters the cold rationale of India’s exceedingly warm friendship with Najib. M. K. Bhadrakumar

The day after the attack on Pakistan or US troops cross the Durand Line, the Pakhtun internecine rivalry, the shia-sunni rift and the inter-sunni competitiveness will disappear and a huge tsunami will erupt in Kabul. Pakhtuns to India: Get out of Afghanistan   

Can PM Gilani make himself heard above the USA “Do More” rhetoric? Pakistan: Deflecting the US “Do more mantra” Bush & Obama both war mongers. Barack wants a different war Comprehending the consequences of the “Do More” chorus

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A troop “surge” is credited with stemming violence in Iraq, but could a similar strategy work in Afghanistan? A top U.S. military commander isn’t counting on it. Afghanistan: Why was India attacked in Kabul?    

http://rupeenews.com/2008/07/08/afghanistan-why-was-india-attacked-in-kabul/

 http://rupeenews.com/2008/07/08/5288/ Afghanistan audacious attack: Karzai-Kabul weaknesses exposed

U.S. Marines arrive in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan earlier this year to fight the Taliban. In 2007, as part of the surge strategy, President Bush sent roughly 30,000 additional troops to Iraq in an attempt to improve security. That effort coincided with a drop in violence, and, now that the troops in Iraq are returning to pre-surge levels, the Army is identifying combat units that could go Afghanistan to fill the need for 10,000 additional troops, military officials said. But a different type of surge is needed in Afghanistan, said Gen. David McKiernan, the top NATO commander there.

“There is no magic number of soldiers that are needed on the ground to win this campaign,” McKiernan said. “What we need is security of the people. We need governance. We need reconstruction and development.”Watch McKiernan call for a ‘comprehensive approach’ to Afghanistan. More troops alone cannot solve one of the biggest problems in Afghanistan: the militants’ safe haven in the tribal-controlled areas across the border in Pakistan. View a map of the tribal areas in Pakistan The Pakistan Afghan border map

U.S. troops are barred from going after militants once they enter Pakistan. Meanwhile, Taliban and al Qaeda militants cross the border freely, U.S. officials said.
“Unless you stabilize that border with Pakistan and uproot the terrorist safe haven that has developed in the Pakistan tribal areas, you’re not going to be able to stabilize Afghanistan,” said Lisa Curtis of the Heritage Foundation.

Top military and intelligence officials in the Bush administration are urging the president to allow U.S. troops to pursue militants across the border, The Associated Press reported Friday.

Another challenge is Afghanistan’s unchecked drug trade, which reportedly is financing the violence.

“Ninety percent of the world’s opium comes from Afghanistan, and much of that money ends up in the hands of warlords and other militants,” Curtis said.

McKiernan said, “There is a clear linkage between ‘narco’ trafficking and financing of the insurgency.”

Some analysts said there is one positive difference between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: Unlike the Iraq army, the Afghan army is eager to challenge its enemies.

“There is a sense of commitment from those troops, and when they go in for the fight, they go in with everything they’ve got,” Curtis said.

The Mayor of Kabul does not even have the loyalty of his own troops

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will endorse a $20 billion plan to increase the size of the Afghan army, The New York Times reported Friday

“Americans were not interested in disrupting the Kabul-based fountainhead of terrorism in Balochistan nor do they want to allocate the marvellous predator resource to neutralise the kingpin of suicide bombings against the Pakistani military establishment now hiding near the Pak-Afghan border.”

“In the strongest evidence-based confrontation with the American security establishment since the two countries established their post-9/11 strategic alliance, Pakistani officials proved Brahamdagh Bugti’s presence in Afghan intelligence safe houses in Kabul, his photographed visits to New Delhi and his orders for terrorism in Balochistan.”

“We wanted to know when our American friends would get interested in tracking down the terrorists responsible for hundreds of suicide bombings in Pakistan and those playing havoc with our natural resources in Balochistan while sitting in Kabul and Delhi”

American Loose Nukes. Pakistan Expresses concerns and offers help

Pakistan’s complaints do not end here. It accuses the Americans, who are the power behind the puppet Afghan government, of allowing anti-Pakistan activities to take place on Afghan soil. They have allowed the Indian government to establish consulates in various places near the Pakistani border that have only one purpose; to create trouble in Baluchistan and engage in sabotage and terrorism in other parts of the country. They have also through the puppet Afghan government provided sanctuary to anti Pakistan elements such as Brahamdagh Bugti and others. Kabul bombing: Ruse to send Indian troops to Afghansitan?