Suicidal Surge : Did Ahmed Rashid sell the Americans down the river

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Suicidal Surge : Did Ahmed Rashid sell the Americans down the river

Posted on 08 November 2008. Tags: Afghan, General Petraeus' Pakistani advisors, India, Indians jittery, USA

Did Ahmed Rashid lead the Americans down the primrose path and sell them down the river. Let us take a view from London. leftist Pakistani Britisher certainly thinks that Ahmed Rashid the journalist sold the Americans marshy swampland in Florida when he was pushing them to keep sending more troops to Afghainstan while keeping Mr. Karzai, as the puppet “Mayor of Kabul”.

The main people who consult Rashid, apart from Robert Silvers at the New York Review of Books, are US policy-makers in favor of a continuous occupation of Afghanistan. Rashid provides them with many a spurious argument to send more troops and wipe out the Pashtuns opposing the occupation. Within Afghanistan, Rashid’s principal backer and friend is Hamid Karzai who has now managed to antagonize even the tamest US liberals such as Peter Galbraith, recently sacked as a UN honcho in Kabul because he suggested that Karzai had rigged the elections. Rashid the journalist has no time for people who suggest that Karzai is a corrupt rogue, whose family is now the richest in the country, or that he manipulates US public opinion with the aid of PR companies, friends in Washington and, of course, Ahmed Rashid himself. Tariq Ali. Counterpunch. Karzai’s Scribe Ahmed Rashid’s War By TARIQ ALI

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Pakistan should not be “pressured”, because its security establishment believes that it is threatened by a US-India-Afghan alliance to dismember Pakistan.
• Pakistan’s military command continues to believe the two-nation theory and wants Kashmir to be incorporated into the South Asian homeland for Muslims. To this extent, Afganistan, they say, is “within Pakistan’s security perimeter”.
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McCain,Obama Afghan bluster on Pakistan overtaken by events. The Indian media was nervous of President Obama’s earlier remarks about Paksitan. Those events may have been overtaken by events on the ground in Afghanistan. Wile the two top presidential candidates bickered over how and when to bomb Pakistan, NATO, ISAF, the UK forces and the US commanders on the ground had decided to begin discussing peace with the Taliban and really wanted to help Pakistan. UK Brig. Smith: “We’re not going to win this [Afghan] war”.

Goyem: India support for Frankensteins will create blowback
India’s biggest migraine headache may now be a distinct reality. Nightmare scenario for India in Kabul: The Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

While the Whitehouse debates focused on COIN, nation building, surges and the arcane notion of hot to get OBL, the US military were busy reading the works of of Ahmed Rashid the brother of a former Pakistani military Chief of Staff and think tanks. Its as if the Obama Administration was too busy with Healthcare and the Economic melthdown and missed the two major earthquakes, the economic mess, and defeat in Afghanistan. We can’t defeat the Taliban: British Army Chief in Afghanistan. The country has now accepted to the new reality in West Asia. the issue was not OBL, but how quickly to get out of Afghanistan. Talibal is Indefatigable: UK Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith

Apparently the British who had led the charge of Lightbrigade were not in an economic condition to spend $500 per year on Iraq. . British tried to take up White Man’s burden in Afghanistan. It suffered badly in Kabul and could not hold it. NATO Lessons: 1880 UK defeat at Maiwand-Afghanistan. Today ISAF is making the same mistakes as the British did more than a century ago. Is NATO committing suicide in Afghanistan? The UK refused to transfer the troops to Afghanistan and many of the Europeans in Afghanistan either refused to take an active role in the war or simply wanted to bring their boys home.

The picture Rashid paints is deliberately alarmist and based largely on fantasy; throwing in China is crude but designed to appeal to the revanchists in the Pentagon. Rashid does need help. How can the West cure poor Ahmed’s depression? He would recover rapidly if the US remained permanently in Afghanistan and took over Pakistan as well but that would require half-a-million US troops and the killing of a million or more Af-Paks. It’s a heavy price to pay for making Rashid feel better. A simpler route might be to get Zardari to give him a big job, failing which, he could move to the UN since Galbraith’s job is vacant. I remember Rashid in the old days being extremely sceptical when, after attending a conference in the Soviet Union in 1985, I told him that Gorbachev was going to pull out all Russian troops within a few years. He found that, too, difficult to believe and was, no doubt, equally depressed.

Some of us have been arguing for many years that more troops and more Afghan deaths is totally counter-productive. An exit strategy that involves Iran, Russia and China as well as Pakistan and a national coalition in Afghanistan is the only medium-term solution. Washington has been negotiating privately with the Pashtun resistance and the neo-Taliban have made it clear that once a NATO withdrawal began they would work with other groups and participate in a national government. Tariq Ali. Counterpunch. Karzai’s Scribe Ahmed Rashid’s War By TARIQ ALI

It all came tumbling down…the house of cards that George built—in Kabul. The latest Indian headache emanates from a drastic change in American policy in West Asia.

US ropes in Pak security experts, India jittery Times of India - Nov 7, 2008
NEW DELHI: As new US Centcom commander General David Petraeus begins a strategy Pakistan security review in Tampa, Florida, the presence of two security analysts from as consultants have raised eyebrows here. Ahmed Rashid, an acknowledged authority on he Taliban and Afghanistan, and Shuja Nawaz, author of a book on the Pakistan army, have been named “consultants” at the classified review starting in Florida this weekend. The aim is to review the war plans in Afghanistan and Iraq as the Barack Obama administration considers the wisdom of a troop surge in Afghanistan.

About 100 military specialists, known as the Joint Strategic Assessment Team, will help with the wide-ranging assessment and are expected to report in February. They will be helped by policy officials from the participating countries.

Can American Taliban bring Peace in Afghanistan? Impact & Analysis

Pakistan still has considerable influence in Afghanistan. India took an apposite track. It recruited, trained and funded terrorists against Pakistan. This has backfired for India. Goyem: India support for Frankensteins will create blowback

India’s biggest migraine headache may now be a distinct reality. Nightmare scenario for India in Kabul: The Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

NEW DELHI : As president-elect Barack Obama gets ready to tackle the war in Afghanistan, the US strategy on Kabul and Islamabad is already undergoing a massive review. General David Petraeus, who is the new chief of US Central Command, has put together a group of consultants to review US strategy in the region with a special focus on leveraging of diplomatic and economic initiatives with nearby countries, according to a media report.

This group includes Lahore-based author and journalist Ahmed Rashid and Shuja Nawaz, the brother of former Pakistan army chief Asif Nawaz and the author of a book on the Pakistani army.

Mr Rashid in particular has been writing on the need for international intervention to resolve the Kashmir issue. Though the Bush administration has clearly not bought into this argument, Mr Obama has shown that he is open to this line of thinking.

In an article in foreign affairs, Ahmed Rashid along with Barnett Rubin, senior fellow at the Centre on International Cooperation at New York University, have made a case for addressing Pakistan’s insecurities on India in order to get Islamabad’s full attention on stabilising Afghanistan. The Economic Times. India Times. Pak man in US panel to review terror war 7 Nov 2008, 0317 hrs IST, ET Bureau

President Barack Obama has talked about solving the Kashmir problem. The Indian reaction to this is to be expected. India wants Kashmir solved in a bilateral manner. The problem with this approach is that after isolating the problem between India and Pakistan, India then comes with the stance that “Kashmir is an integral part of India, therefore there is no discussion on the subject”. So there the problem rests. Clinton: India chagrined at Obama’s Kashmir envoy proposal & U-turn in Afghan policy

India’s concern stems from the possibility that Rashid’s latest recommendation of the “grand bargain” to solve Afghanistan’s mammoth problems of security and terrorism may have found fertile ground in the Obama set. Certainly, the central argument in the article draws the same connections between “solving” terrorism in Afghanistan and “solving” Kashmir that Obama has been advocating for a while, including in the same journal some time ago.

In a much quoted article in the esteemed ‘Foreign Affairs’ journal, Rashid and America’s best known Afghanistan expert Barnett Rubin wrote that Pakistan would be persuaded to stop supporting terrorism if India can be persuaded to solve Kashmir, which they argue to be a bigger strategic threat to Pakistan than terrorists on their soil, which “can be controlled”. This is a “grand bargain” that India will not support.

It is no secret that the Indian establishment propelled by the Govorner Bobby Jindal had placed all its bet on the Republican establishment. Almost the entire American Indian community with few exceptions were either Republican or supported the Republican candidates. All this has put the Indians in a precarious condition not only in Afghanistan but also in South Asia. US ropes in Pak security experts, India jittery Times of India – Nov 7, 2008

Rupee News over the years has reported on Afghanistan. Peek into Obama’s brains: Bruce Reidel on Pakistan. Senator Biden ahs known Pakistan for decades. He worked closely with President Zia and knows the entire team of players who worked with President Musharraf. Zebig Brezinski and his many sons also have Barack Obama’s ear. All of them have a favorable opinion of Pakistan.

“Unless the decision-makers in Pakistan decide to make stabilising the Afghan government a higher priority than countering the Indian threat, the insurgency conducted from bases in Pakistan will continue,” the article headlined ‘From great game to grand bargain’ has said.

The authors have argued that the US and international community needed to remove the source of Pakistan’s insecurities on Kashmir and India’s strong presence in Afghanistan. For this they suggest the setting up of a contact group, under the UN Security Council, to initiate a dialogue between India and Pakistan on Afghanistan and finding a solution to the Kashmir dispute.

“The central purpose of the contact group would be to assure Pakistan that the international community is committed to its territorial integrity-and to help resolve the Afghan and Kashmir border issues so as to better define Pakistan’s territory,” the article said.

They argue that need of the moment is to forge a ‘a high-level diplomatic initiative’ to address Pakistan’s insecurity in order to make progress on the ground in Afghanistan. Compare this with what Mr Obama has been saying on the campaign trail.

He has repeatedly said that Pakistan needs to be convinced that militants, and not India, is the main problem and that Pakistan needs to ‘refocus’ on fighting terror within its boundaries. He has followed this up by saying that the US “should probably try to facilitate a better understanding between Pakistan and India” and try to resolve the Kashmir crisis.

“if we can get them to refocus on that, then that is going to be critical to our success not just in stabilising Pakistan but also in finishing the job in Afghanistan,” Mr Obama said. The Economic Times. India Times. Pak man in US panel to review terror war 7 Nov 2008, 0317 hrs IST, ET Bureau

Another important person affecting President Barack Obama’s foreign policy is Mr. Bruce Reidel who has written many articles on Pakistan and Afghanistan. Recently Bruce Reidel wrote an article in the CFR which mimics the current thinking of the CFR.

The Rashid-Rubin article goes on to make the following suggestions:

Pakistan should not be “pressured”, because its security establishment believes that it is threatened by a US-India-Afghan alliance to dismember Pakistan.

Pakistan’s military command continues to believe the two-nation theory and wants Kashmir to be incorporated into the South Asian homeland for Muslims. To this extent, Afganistan, they say, is “within Pakistan’s security perimeter”.

Pakistan continues to believe that the Indian threat is superior to stabilizing Afghanistan. The article goes on to recommend a “contact group on the region authorized by the UN Security Council. This contact group, including the five permanent members and perhaps others (NATO, Saudi Arabia), could promote dialogue between India and Pakistan about their respective interests in Afghanistan and about finding a solution to the Kashmir dispute.”

According to the article, the rest of the world should be involved in a single exercise – to “reassure Pakistan” that it is under no threat. And the best way to do that would be to “resolve Kashmir”. Only then will Pakistan lift its umbrella of support of terrorists and terrorism. In short, Pakistan should be rewarded for its support to terrorism.

“A central purpose of the contact group would be to assure Pakistan that the international community is committed to its territorial integrity – and to help resolve the Afghan and Kashmir border issues so as to better define Pakistan’s territory,” the article says. For good measure, the US should consider a nuclear deal for Pakistan and India should “become more transparent” about its activities in Afghanistan, it adds. US ropes in Pak security experts, India jittery Times of India – Nov 7, 2008

Saving the Pashtuns of Afghania from Afghanistan. Eradicating the Pashtun plight and ending occupation.

Erase the Durand Line: The inevitable union between Paksitan and Afghanistan. It is time to erase the Durand Line.

Many factors are giving the Indians migraine headaches. Barack Obama is not a stranger to Pakistan. President Barack Obama knows the area, has visited Pakistan and has lived in Indonesia. All these factors make him familiar with the region, the Muslim culture and Islam. President Obama have to overcompensate in front to the American public because of his ties to Islam but he surely does not have a crusader agenda run by the Neocons.

The Indians and India Americans supported the Republican machinery. Pakistanis in general and Muslims in particular supported Barack Obama and the Democratic leadership in 2008.

All this makes India nervous, very nervous!

Obama challenge: A vision for peace? Strike Grand Bargains?. After a series of assessments and proclamations by the head of NATO, ISAF, the UK forces General Petraeus has started his revaluation of the Afghan war. Indian foreign policy Titanic hits several icebergs. His conclusions are bound to make the Indians nervous. This is amply reflected by the series of news articles appearing in the usually triumphalist Indian media that caters to a tine minority of the Indians-the English speaking elite.

India has spent more than a Billion Dollars in Afghanistan supporting up an unpopular war and propping up its Afghan policy on a puppet and reviled president, often mocked as “the mayor of Kabul” whose writ does not exist beyond the Kabul palace. Karzai vs. Pakistan: After the battle is won and lost!

Karzai the biggest drug baron in Afghanistan. The Indians supported a very unpopular Afghan president who is about to lose his grip on power and will probably have to seek asylum in New Delhi. Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan run by Taliban Huge Migraine for India .Surely Mr. Karzai will not be able to return to his old asylum home in Quetta. People hate Karzai support Taliban: Afghan Senator Ahmadzai