AfPak solutions: Beyond hubris, dictation, threats, sanctions, bombings, overt invasion & covert sabotage

Posted on 03 March 2009.

There are some positive developments in the US policy towards Pakistan. Recognizing the abject failure of the Ready-Fire-Aim Chengez Khan policies of President Bush, the new administration is at least on paper looking beyond the barrel of the gun. Can President Obama wean himself away from the Neocons that got America into so much trouble? That is the million Dollar question. There are vestiges of the old thinking. Secretary of Defense Gates continued to justify and promote the much hated drone bombings in Pakistan. To support his case, he mentioned that “rising stars” in the Al-Qaeda network had been eliminated. The situation on the ground does not support this view. “Rising Stars” means nothing–it is a figment of the imagination of the CIA. If the CIA had such excellent intel we would have found the WMDs in Iraq and the Taliban would not control 80% of the territory in Afghanistan.

President Bush and his administration has spent $143 Billion in aid to Afghanistan. He withheld funds from Pakistan, given them pennies on the Dollar. The total aid to Pakistan was $5 Billion. The other $5 Billion was for reimbursement for actual expenses incurred by Pakistan. Even the $5 Billion was not the real reimbursement. For example, the US uses and abuses the Pakistani transport system. Pakistan has an American style Motorway network that is the envy of South Asia. However the transport system was not built for American 16 wheeler conveys. It was not designed to transport heavy equipment on the Motorways. The US has been wily-nilly using the Pakistani roads as if they were part of some occupation army. Already stripped for cash, the government has not been able to upgrade the roads or repair them. Independent DOD calculations in 2001 put the losses to Pakistan at $20 Billion per annum. This does not include the lost opportunity costs.

Does Obama have the courage to implement the real solutions to Obama’s Vietnam (AfPak)

80% of Afghanistan is under insurgent control. Taliban sanctuaries around Kabul thumb thier noses at ISAF, NATO & US forces. Why would Taliban need safe havens far away in Pakistan?. When the US bombs Afghanistan, some of the the insurgents move to FATA. Most of them spread out to the rest of Afghan territory which they control. When the US bombs FATA the insurgents move to the settled areas. The economic hardship caused by the 350,000 refugees from FATA is incalculable. 3.5 million refugees from the first Afghan war are still in Pakistan.

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The drone attacks keep coming. Just in the month since Barack Obama took office, U.S. unmanned aircraft have killed approximately 80 people in Pakistan. The latest strike came Monday, in theTaliban-controlled tribal agency of Kurram. Reports put the death toll between 25 and 30.

“Three U.S. spy planes were seen hovering over the area during the attack,” local sources tell The News. “They said the planes fired four Hellfire missiles around 9:00 am that hit a primary school building and a
n adjoining house reportedly inhabited by Taliban militants. The residents said both the buildings were flattened in the attack, inflicting heavy losses on the inmates. According to the sources, Taliban militants had been living there for the past two years.”

According to the Long War Journal, this is the sixth strike in this new year. “There were 36 recorded cross-border attacks and attempts in Pakistan during 2008 . Twenty-nine of these attacks took place after August 31st. There were only 10 recorded strikes in 2006 and 2007 combined.” Drone War Escalates; 30 More Dead in Pakistan (Updated). By Noah Shachtman February 17, 2009 | 12:45:00 PM

WASHINGTON – In an admission that its dependence on the Pakistani military has yielded few results against the Taliban, the United States is now seeking to change its relationship with Pakistan – the world’s sole Muslim nuclear power and home of Al Qaeda’s leadership.

President Barack Obama’s first budget, released last week, proposes significant increases in nonmilitary aid to Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan. In addition, two influential senators are expected to file legislation in the coming days that would triple nonmilitary US aid to Pakistan to $1.5 billion a year and include $5 billion to stave off an imminent economic crisis.

The shift is part of an increasing awareness within the Beltway of Pakistan’s precarious position – beset by economic collapse, political weakness, and a spreading insurgency – and that more than military operations will be needed to build a stable state capable of beating back Islamic extremism in the long term.

“If we fail, we face a truly frightening prospect: terrorist sanctuary, economic meltdown, and spiraling radicalism, all in a nation with 170 million inhabitants and a full arsenal of nuclear weapons,” said Sen. John Kerry (D) of Massachusetts last week, while releasing a report about Pakistan.

Along with Sen. Richard Lugar (R) of Indiana, Senator Kerry is a key supporter of the expected new legislation on Pakistan. It mirrors a plan that Vice President Joe Biden proposed last year when he was still a senator. Then, as now, it is a thinly veiled criticism of the Bush administration’s Pakistan policy, which focused aid and relations on ousted military leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf. To stem terror in Pakistan, US looks beyond military. Washington is seeking to build the Pakistani state and its economy as a way to wean the country from Islamic extremism. By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor. from the March 2, 2009 edition

The Bush Administration did not focus on Afghanistan. It focused on Iraq. The Obama administration is obsessed with the small strip of land called FATA. It entire focus is on the hideouts in FATA. The Obama Administration forgets that the bulk of the Taliban live and control the bulk of the territory in Afghanistan. Going after the stragglers in FATA achieves nothing, except to embarrass the Pro-American government in Islamabad, destabilize the region, antagonize Pakistanis and exponentially increase Anti-Americanism in Pakistan. Robert Gates looks at Pakistan through the scope of a gun. This world view will enable the hawks in Washington only to see terrorists.

PENTAGON ON BOARD

Last week, Pentagon officials emerged from a meeting in Washington with Pakistan’s Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani to say they supported a more “comprehensive” strategy for US relations with Pakistan – albeit one that encompassed smarter and more effective military assistance. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sounded a similar note when she met with Pakistani and Afghan officials last week.

She announced that trilateral US-Afghanistan-Pakistan talks will become a regular feature of the Obama administration’s plan for region. It further points to the Obama administration’s desire to look beyond the military alone for solutions to the conflict spanning the Afghan-Pakistan border – an area he and others consider the epicenter of global terrorism.

Transforming the US-Pakistani relationship from a personal relationship with a military leader to a long-term relationship with an elected Pakistani government will require patience, says James Dobbins, a South Asia analyst at RAND Corp., a security consultancy in Arlington, Va.

“This transformation won’t change the relationship with [Pakistan] as quickly as we’d like,” he says. “But both the increase in aid and a new direction are necessary for the stability of Afghanistan and critical for Pakistan itself.”

The change in direction comes as the Obama administration gets its first taste of the complexities of Pakistan. The president’s special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, offered unvarnished words for Pakistan’s recent decision to bow to Taliban demands and cede a strategically important swatch of the nation to Islamic law. Mr. Holbrooke said the accord leaves the Swat Valley ??
? not far from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad – in the hands of “murderers, thugs, and militants.”

The Swat Valley accord has been met with deep skepticism among analysts, who note that such attempts to win over a moderate part of the militancy by working with it have only given extremists time and space to regroup.

“The history of these deals does not lead to a great deal of optimism,” says Shuja Nawaz, director of Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center in Washington.

The accord does not mean the Pakistani leadership is giving up the fight, says Mr. Nawaz. It is part of General Kayani’s mission to secure better equipment like helicopters, detection devices, and night-vision goggles to take on “the hard-core militants,” he adds.

But it does reflect a desire to separate moderate Islamists from the hardened jihadists, Nawaz says.

PAKISTAN VS. IRAQ

The design mirrors counterinsurgency strategy the US employed with the Sunni population as part of the “surge” of troops in Iraq. Despite that basic similarity, however, the differences in the two cases are stark, says Mr. Dobbins, the RAND analyst.

“We never agreed to the application of sharia [Islamic] law in Sunni areas,” he says, “and we insisted those areas had to remain integrated into the Iraqi state and under Iraqi law.”

Nawaz warns that Pakistan could face economic collapse this year, and he says the kind of emergency financial aid Senator Kerry is proposing is needed fast. But he says that the longer-term need is for broader trade – in textiles, for example – among the US, Europe, and Pakistan. That will create jobs and stabilize Pakistani society, he says. Such a transformation in relations with Pakistan won’t be easy, he adds, at a time of rising Western unemployment. To stem terror in Pakistan, US looks beyond military. Washington is seeking to build the Pakistani state and its economy as a way to wean the country from Islamic extremism. By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor. from the March 2, 2009 edition

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