India out of the loop on Af-Pak

nrj

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The Day the USA Leaves Afghanistan will be the Day it looses everything it ever built up, Just like the Soviet Union did in the late 80s. The Jihadis will Yell Victory, and Claim Victory Rightly so, because they will prove once again its divine intervention in support of their repressive ways of life. It will embolden many sleeper cells in USA to rise up too. The Best thing for the USA to do is to vacate Iraq, focus on Afghanistan. Thats what I would do! But then, Oil matters! :D

Bull's eye ahmedji!
I guess the Obama administration will step down as the worst ever after Nixon ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, or maybe worse than Nixon...
whatever media may hype but the "What will be earned at the end?"

God help America....
 

ajtr

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The Day the USA Leaves Afghanistan will be the Day it looses everything it ever built up, Just like the Soviet Union did in the late 80s. The Jihadis will Yell Victory, and Claim Victory Rightly so, because they will prove once again its divine intervention in support of their repressive ways of life. It will embolden many sleeper cells in USA to rise up too. The Best thing for the USA to do is to vacate Iraq, focus on Afghanistan. Thats what I would do! But then, Oil matters! :D
Obama's Indecent Interval

Despite the U.S. president's pleas to the contrary, the war in Afghanistan looks more like Vietnam than ever.

As German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said, truth is ridiculed, then denied, and then "accepted as having been obvious to everyone from the beginning." So let's start with the obvious: There isn't the slightest possibility that the course laid out by Barack Obama in his Dec. 1 speech will halt or even slow the downward spiral toward defeat in Afghanistan. None. The U.S. president and his advisors labored for three months and brought forth old wine in bigger bottles. The speech contained not one single new idea or approach, nor offered any hint of new thinking about a conflict that everyone now agrees the United States is losing. Instead, the administration deliberated for 94 days to deliver essentially "more men, more money, try harder." It sounded ominously similar to Mikhail Gorbachev's "bloody wound" speech that led to a similar-sized, temporary Soviet troop surge in Afghanistan in 1986.


But the Soviet experience in Afghanistan isn't what everyone is comparing Obama's current predicament to; it's Vietnam. The president knows it, and part of his speech was a rebuttal of those comparisons. It was a valiant effort, but to no avail. Afghanistan is Vietnam all over again.

In his speech, the president offered three reasons why the two conflicts are different. And all are dead wrong. First, Obama noted that Afghanistan is being conducted by a "coalition" of 43 countries -- as if war by committee would magically change the outcome (a throwback to former President George W. Bush's "Iraq coalition" mathematics). The truth is, outside of a handful of countries, it's basically a coalition of pacifists. In fact, more foreign troops fought alongside the United States in Vietnam than are now actually fighting with Americans today. Only nine countries in today's 43-country coalition have more than 1,000 personnel there; nine others have 10 (yes, not even a dozen people) -- or fewer. And although Australia and New Zealand have sent a handful of excellent special operations troops to Afghanistan, only Britain, Canada, and France are providing significant forces willing to conduct conventional offensive military operations. That brings the coalition's combat-troop contribution to approximately 17,000. Most of the other 38 "partners" have strict rules prohibiting them from ever doing anything actually dangerous. Turkish troops, for example, never leave their firebase in Wardak province, according to U.S. personnel who monitor it.

In Vietnam, by contrast, there were six countries fighting with the United States. South Korea alone had three times more combat troops in that country (50,000) than the entire coalition has in Afghanistan today. The Philippines (10,500), Australia (7,600), New Zealand (500), Thailand (about 1,000), and Taiwan also had boots on the ground. So the idea that Afghanistan's coalition sets it apart doesn't hold water.

The president went on to assert that the Taliban are not popular in Afghanistan, whereas the Viet Cong represented a broadly popular nationalist movement with the support of a majority of the Vietnamese. But this is also wrong. Neither the Viet Cong then, nor the Taliban now, have ever enjoyed the popular support of more than 15 percent of the population, according to Daniel Ellsberg, the senior Pentagon official who courageously leaked the Pentagon Papers revealing the military's endemic deceit in the Vietnam War.The president's final argument, that Afghanistan is different because Vietnam never attacked American soil, is a red herring. History is overflowing with examples of just causes that have gone down in defeat. To suggest that the two conflicts will have different outcomes because the U.S. cause in Afghanistan is just (whereas, presumably from the speech, the war in Vietnam was not) is simply specious. The courses and outcomes of wars are determined by strategy, not the justness of causes or the courage of troops.

The reality on the ground is that Afghanistan is Vietnam redux. Afghan President Hamid Karzai's regime is an utterly illegitimate, incompetent kleptocracy. The Afghan National Army (ANA) -- slotted to take over the conflict when the coalition pulls out -- will not even be able to feed itself in five years, much less turn back the mounting Taliban tide. The U.S. Center for Army Lessons Learned determined by statistical analysis that the ANA will never grow larger than 100,000 men because nearly 30 percent either desert or fail to re-enlist each year. The ANA is disproportionately Tajik, drug use is a major problem, all recruits are illiterate, and last month the ANA reached only half its modest recruiting goal despite 40 percent unemployment nationwide. The American media, in its own regression to 1963, simply regurgitates Pentagon press releases that vastly inflate the actual size of the Afghan military, which is actually less than 60,000 men, just 32,000 of whom are combat troops.

The strategy's other component for dealing with the Taliban, "negotiating with moderates," is also ludicrous to anyone who is familiar with the insurgents. The Taliban are a virus. There is no one to negotiate with, and from their perspective, nothing to discuss. And the Taliban know they are winning. Meanwhile, commanding Gen. Stanley McChrystal's plan to secure the urban areas (rather than the rural countryside where the insurgency is actually metastasizing) is plagiarized from the famous never-written textbook, How to Lose a War in Afghanistan, authored jointly by Alexander the Great, the British Empire, and the Soviet Union.

Most critically of all, Pakistan's reaction to Obama's speech was to order its top military intelligence service, the ISI, to immediately begin rebuilding and strengthening covert ties to the Afghan Taliban in anticipation of their eventual return to power, according to a highly placed Pakistani official. There will be no more genuine cooperation from Pakistan (if there ever was).And that is why the United States is now headed for certain defeat in Afghanistan. Obama's new "strategy" is no strategy at all. It is a cynical and politically motivated rehash of Iraq policy: Toss in a few more troops, throw together something resembling local security forces, buy off the enemies, and get the hell out before it all blows up. Even the dimmest bulb listening to the president's speech could not have missed the obvious link between the withdrawal date for combat troops from Iraq (2010), the date for beginning troop reductions in Afghanistan (2011), and the domestic U.S. election cycle.

So we are faced with a conundrum. Obama is one of the most intelligent men ever to hold the U.S. presidency. But no intelligent person could really believe that adding 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, a country four times larger than Vietnam, for a year or two, following the same game plan that has resulted in dismal failure there for the past eight years, could possibly have any impact on the outcome of the conflict.

Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes used to say that "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." The only conclusion one can reach from the president's speech, after eliminating the impossible, is that the administration has made a difficult but pragmatic decision: The war in Afghanistan is unwinnable, and the president's second term and progressive domestic agenda cannot be sacrificed to a lost cause the way that President Lyndon B. Johnson's was for Vietnam. The result of that calculation was what we heard on Dec. 1: platitudes about commitment and a just cause; historical amnesia; and a continuation of the exact same failed policies that got the United States into this mess back in 2001, concocted by the same ship of fools, many of whom are still providing remarkably bad advice to this administration.

We believe the president knows perfectly well that Afghanistan is Vietnam all over again, both domestically and, as we wrote in Military Review this month, in Kabul and out in the Afghan hills, where good men are bleeding and dying. And he's seeking the same cynical exit strategy that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger did in 1968: negotiating the best possible second-place position and a "decent interval" between withdrawal and collapse. In office less than a year, the Obama administration has already been seduced by the old beltway calculus that sometimes a little wrong must be done to get re-elected and achieve a greater good.
 

ajtr

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The priority of the Obama admin will be to "stabilize" (or make it appear so) and then withdraw leaving the Taliban in share of power. Eventually the Taliban will displace the others and revert back to their Caliphate agenda. The portion of Taliban allied with the Jihadist core of ISI-PA will then launch their longer term Caliphate agenda expanding both north-west [coming into conflict with Iran and the Tajiks] and South east into the rest of Pakistan and India.

Now where is India in all this? India at the moment is not anywhere in the picture - at least not in a strategic sense. Primary reason is that GOI has no clear cut target about what it wants eventually to happen to Pakistan, what its policy w.r.t Islamism and Jihadism is going to be. GOI policy typically has been reactive for most part and not pro-active. So this lack of inner long term strategic vision and a forward "agenda", makes the whole thinking defensive and conservative.

Many sections of GOI are perhaps quite worried and concerned about possible major and sustained terror moves against India. There could be real intelligence behind this or careful manipulation by external agencies and double agents. The main concern is not terror attacks per se, but what it could mean for internal electoral politics . There could also be manipulated images of coordinated Sino+Taliban+ISI-PA moves combined with internal enemies like the Maoists/escaped LTTE/D-gang/internal Jihadis and separatists.

It is a paralysis of decision-making, since any initiative from GOI side now means taking up military and geo-strategic steps which will accelerate the conflict situation between Pakistan and GOI over Afghanistan and which can therefater only lead to increasing GOI commitments against Jihad and inevitable ultimate moves to eliminate Pakistan. That can be potentially suicidal for the current political regime in India becuase it may face a coordinated electoral opposition from various fronts and sympathisers of Islamism as well as Maoism etc. That can be significant because of current low levels of electoral vote proportions which make up governments. On the other hand, any military initiative that has a roll-back retreat - is likely to decimate the chances of ever the current regime returning to power.

History has a way of overtaking those who cannot decide out of fear of losing it all and who hedge too much.
 

p2prada

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India was never in the loop to begin with. I don't see how we can influence Karzai without Iran's help once Taliban comes back into the country. The only ones who benefit from an American withdrawal is Taliban and Pakistan. Afghanistan will only get worse.
 

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You can say a lot of bad things about the Bush administration, but one good thing about them was their resolve to fight. I believe the Obama administration setting the date for withdrawal for Afganistan was a stupid mistake. Now the Taliban know how long they have to hold out before they can claim victory. It also emboldened the Pakistanis, they realised how long they have to play the double game before they can get back their 'Strategic Depth'.
 

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In a State of Denial
Ayaz Amir

19 March 2010
If FATA represents the cutting edge of terrorism in the name of Islam, Punjab, unfortunately, is the hinterland of this phenomenon. Or, to borrow a phrase from the repertoire of military folly, Punjab is the strategic depth of bigotry and extremism masquerading in the colours of Islam.
Religious extremism took roots in the soil of Pakistan — thanks to the so-called Islamisation policies of Gen Ziaul Haq and his role in pushing the first Afghan ‘jihad’. The dragon’s teeth of our sorrows were scattered by Zia. We are reaping the harvest.
Next in the line of military saviours, Pervez Musharraf—may Pakistan for all its faults never have such a saviour again—could have reversed the trend of the Zia years. But he had only a limited understanding of things. President Asif Zardari is not the first of our accidental leaders. Musharraf was another product of accident and circumstances. Had he not been plucked out of Mangla and made army chief, Pakistan would have been spared of the misfortunes it had to endure under his star.
He signed on with the Americans in 2001 but despite the two assassination attempts on him, he was never serious about cleansing the Frontier havens where the fleeing Taleban from Afghanistan had taken refuge. Far from eradicating the Taleban, his vacillation and lack of true commitment allowed the problem represented by the Taleban to grow.
The extremism Pakistan is now battling is thus a gift whose line of descent can be traced from Zia to Musharraf. The army’s predicament can be imagined. The ghost it is trying to lay to rest was conceived and tested in its own laboratories. This is the Pakistani way of doing things. First create a problem and then invoke the power of heaven to eliminate it.
As an aside I can’t help adding that one of the key figures instrumental in getting the US Congress to fund the Afghan resistance was Congressman Charlie Wilson of Texas. Wilson was fond of a hard drink and fond of good-looking women, tempting qualities that suggested a swashbuckling knight-errant. (Most men have Wilson’s inclinations. But it is not given to everyone to fulfill them.)
Wilson had all the fun while it lasted. On his frequent visits to Pakistan during that period he was never without one or two striking companions. The Pakistani generals he interacted with were content to make a lot of money, some of which shows in the prospering business enterprises of their lucky offspring.
But to return to the complex relationship between the Frontier and Punjab in that clash of arms, fought for the greater glory of Islam, the former was the staging post or the launching pad of that ‘jehad’ while Punjab was what might be called, in military terminology, the concentration area.
Meanwhile, Zia’s missionary zeal, backed by Saudi money, was beginning to transform the Punjabi landscape. Madrasas or religious schools began cropping up everywhere, including Islamabad. Backed by state patronage, mullah power, hitherto not much of a factor in Pakistani politics began to show its muscles.
There was a ban on politics in any case. The only thing to do under Zia was to either watch Indian movies at home or perform the various rituals of religious hypocrisy in public. Pakistan became a very pious and hypocritical society. Even army promotions began to be affected by one’s reputation for religious observance or otherwise.
When with the departure of the Soviet army and the victory of the Saudi and Charlie Wilson-funded ’mujahideen’, the Afghan war wound down, the fighters who had gained battle experience in Afghanistan were shifted to an entirely different front: Kashmir, where in a protracted struggle they managed to tie down half a million Indian troops.
Their godfathers in the security establishment felt elated. Forgetting the role of hard-drinking Charlie Wilson and the Saudis, they wrote a self-glorifying narrative in which it was claimed that not only had the power of faith defeated the Soviets. It had also hastened the end and break-up of the Soviet empire. If a superpower could be thus defeated, zeal and the spirit of ‘jihad’ could work similar miracles in Kashmir.
Our rendezvous with our present extremist-flowing troubles did not come about from out of the blue. We had ploughed the land and watered it for a long time.
When the Americans attacked Afghanistan post-Sept 11, the theatre of ’jihad’ shifted again: back to Afghanistan. The Bush administration, of course, screwed things up for itself by going on to attack Iraq before finishing the job in Afghanistan, a piece of folly sure to haunt the US for a long time to come. But Afghanistan was bad enough by itself. It reignited the fires of holy war and, given the iron dictates of geography, it was inevitable that Pakistan sooner or later would have its hands burned by another conflict raging in Afghanistan.
But now that under a new sun and a new sky we are finally embarked upon a new course—which marks a true break with the past—we have to realise the extent and magnitude of the problem. The terrorism we are now fighting is not a provincial subject. It is not confined to any one province. It is a composite whole, organically tied together, growing not from any isolated virus but from a sickness of the mind and soul which had the whole of Pakistan, or at least its strategic quartermasters, in its grip.
If Pakistan is to become something, realising its dreams and potential, if it has to enter the real world and leave the world of dreams and fantasies behind, then there is no course open to it except to tackle this sickness, no matter what it takes and what sacrifices it entails, without ifs and buts, and without any misconceived appeals to the Taleban.

Ayaz Amir is a distinguished Pakistani commentator and Member of National Assembly (parliament). For comments, write to [email protected]


http://www.khaleejtimes.com/Display...10/March/opinion_March114.xml&section=opinion
 

ajtr

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Cornered in Kabul

Counter strategy

Indians have been advised to move in groups, alter their timings and take different routes to work.
Send additional security personnel from the ITBP to Afghanistan to protect Indians and Indian projects.
Plans to move Indian transit personnel in Kabul to a more secure location.
Initiate a training programme for Afghan army personnel, including the supply of tanks and field guns.


Killing fields

February 26, 2010: A suicide attack in Kabul kills 10 Indians, including two Indian Army doctors. The Taliban claim responsibility but Pakistan hand suspected
October 9, 2009: Suicide bomber triggers explosives near the Indian Embassy in Kabul killing 12 people
July 7, 2008: Two senior Indian diplomats killed besides 41 others when suicide bombers rammed a vehicle into the Indian mission. The Afghan and US intelligence confirm the involvement of the ISI.


Pak gameplan

Provide sanctuary to Taliban in Federally Administered Tribal Areas/North-Western Frontier Province and Balochistan. Ensure its survival.
Lobby with Americans to keep the size of the Afghan National Army small and sub-optimal.
Prevent natural economic linkages between Afghanistan and India--the most viable market for high value Afghan agricultural exports.



"This was a terrorist attack against Indian citizens who are working to help rebuild Afghanistan. We will provide security to Indians and will do everything possible to nab the perpetrators of this attack."
HAMID KARZAI, President, Afghanistan
Amongst the many well-kept secrets in the Foreign Office in South Block is an all-weather telephone connection through a Government exchange that connects directly to India's diplomatic mission in Kabul. These days it brings mostly bad news, as it did on February 26, with another major suicide attack in Kabul targeting Indians and Indian interests in a hotel close to the Indian mission which was used by the Indian Embassy as a transit accommodation for its staffers.

The terrorist strike killed 10 Indians, including army Major Dr Laishram Jyotin Singh, Major Deepak Yadav, engineer Bhola Ram, tabla player Nawab Khan, staffer of the Kandahar Consulate Nitish Chibber and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) constable Roshan Lal. The suicide bombers targeted guesthouses, particularly the Park Residence, rented out by the Indian Embassy for its staffers and those linked to India's development work in Afghanistan. The attack follows the one last October which killed 17 people and the most serious one in July, 2008, which left 60 dead, including senior Indian diplomats.

"Last Friday's attack was clearly focused on targeting Indians. The suicide attackers chose the early hours of a holiday when the chances of finding a large group of people was highest," says Shrinivas Rao Sohoni, senior adviser in the Office of the President of Afghanistan (cabinet secretariat).Delhi had no doubt about the identity of the suicide attackers, hinting at the established nexus between Pakistan's ISI, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and the Haqqani faction of the Taliban. Official Afghanistan Police statements also blamed the LeT but for India, it is a serious setback to their efforts to establish a strategic presence in Afghanistan through a wide range of developmental projects.
Afghanistan has been a priority area for India's foreign policy, and for its $1.2-billion development diplomacy in Afghanistan which has earned considerable goodwill from the Afghan population. Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President, termed it a "terrorist attack against Indian citizens who are working to help rebuild Afghanistan".

Diplomatically, it represents India's biggest challenge in a region where US-led NATO forces have been battling the Taliban in a major new offensive and where a new great game is being played out by regional actors. Both India and Pakistan are trying to limit each others' stakes and influence in the land-locked country. India's strategic priority is to limit Pakistan's influence in Afghanistan while Islamabad has exactly the same objective vis-a-vis India. Afghanistan's strategic importance for India also lies in the fact that instability in the country affects India's security.

According to US Secretary of Defence and former CIA director Robert Gates, during the Taliban regime of 1996-2001, nearly 22 per cent of the terrorists operating in Jammu and Kashmir were either from Afghanistan or had been trained there.

For New Delhi, the stakes are considerably higher because of the nearly 4,000 Indians working on various Indian Government-funded projects in that country.

Pakistan, on the other hand, seeks Afghanistan for 'strategic depth' and even by US estimates, uses the Taliban for strategic leverage inside Afghanistan. It is extremely uncomfortable with the Indian presence in Afghanistan and it had arm-twisted the US and UK to keep India out of the Afghanistan donors' conference. The other side of the strategy is to use terror groups under its control to force India out of Afghanistan.

"The terrorists targeted those Indians who were engaged in helping Afghan people and building partnership between the two countries," says Indian Ambassador Jayant Prasad.Pakistan knows that India's goodwill diplomacy in Afghanistan has eroded its own strategic aim of having control of the country once the American and NATO forces leave. Moreover, a favourable government in Kabul also provides India access to Central Asia, which is important for Indian trade.
While the latest attack will not deter India from carrying on its development mission in Afghanistan, it will have to reassess its security options since it is obvious that Indians are more vulnerable than before. Only around a hundred personnel work at the Indian missions in Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat, Kandahar and Jalalabad, while the rest work on the Indian projects spread all over the country and are sitting ducks for similar attacks.


Rohit Verma, an Indian working for a foreign aid agency in Kabul for the past two years, has by now mastered the art of looking over his shoulder. Ever since the spate of attacks targeting Indians in Afghanistan since 2008, he keeps a very low profile. His survival mantra is simple.

"Don't visit places frequented by Indians, keep changing guesthouses, don't follow any predictable pattern to work and maintain good relations with the local community who will warn you of any attack."

In fact, one of India's big ticket projects--the construction of the Afghan Parliament--was delayed by two years because of security fears as no contractors could be finalised. Now the worry is that other projects like the Salma Dam project in the Herat province may also get affected if the security situation worsens.

"We have beefed up security considerably, and an elaborate plan is being implemented but our doctors and engineers working on our different projects around Afghanistan are the ones who are most vulnerable," a senior official told INDIA TODAY.

Under the new security procedures, Indians have been advised to move in groups, alter their timings and take different routes to work, but the big worry is that the morale of the staffers is low following the spate of attacks. Another serious worry is that India may be losing strategic ground in Afghanistan.

Last year the top US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, said in a report that India's growing influence in Afghanistan could "exacerbate" regional tensions and encourage Pakistani "countermeasures" in Afghanistan or India.

"While Indian activities largely benefit Afghan people, increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures in Afghanistan or India," added McChrystal.

Besides there is another added dimension. Analysts believe that with India beginning a dialogue with Pakistan without any tangible returns, the terrorists are getting emboldened."Having refused to use economic and diplomatic levers, India is already undermining its position by talking to Pakistan. There is a connection what these attacks in Kabul and Pune demonstrate that far from autonomous, the military establishment in Pakistan is able to use terror groups at will against India," feels strategic analyst Brahma Chellaney.
Besides South Block's own assessment is that US policy of engaging Taliban may lead to an increase in terror emanating from Afghanistan and Pakistan as the Taliban may get even more confident following international efforts to woo them.

At last month's London conference to discuss the future of Afghanistan, most countries including the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the US, the UK, Russia, China, and France) overwhelmingly supported the policy of talking to the Taliban. This stems from the assessment that the US and its NATO allies perceive Afghanistan to be a protracted battle and now want to look for quick-fix solutions that will help them exit the country early.

For Delhi, it is bad news, as was the snub which kept them on the margins of the London conference. National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon's visit to Kabul scheduled for March 5 is an indication that, pushed to the wall, India will be desperately seeking to formulate a new strategy, diplomatically and in terms of security.

India is left with few options. It has no say in the international community's "good Taliban" strategy and will continue to engage closely with the Hamid Karzai Government and provincial satraps. In addition, it can use back-channels to try and keep communications open with those Taliban elements who shun violence as they could eventually find space in the political mainstream. India is looking to bolster its security personnel as also its current training programme for Afghan officers.

The ITBP earlier had a presence of around 350 personnel when India's largest effort--the 218-km Zaranj-Delaram highway was being built. The ITBP currently has a force of 150 troopers guarding the Indian embassy in Kabul and the consulates at Mazar-i-Sharif, Jalalabad, Herat and Kandahar. A review of the security is to be carried out following Menon's visit.Deploying Indian troops in Afghanistan to safeguard Indian interests has been entirely ruled out. However, a growing consensus has been building within Indian military think tanks for training at least two divisions of the Afghan National Army (ANA). A net assessment presented last month for the Centre for Joint Warfare Studies (CENJOWS), the think tank for the triservices' HQ Integrated Defence Staff, calls for the capacity building of the ANA.


"India could offer to pay for and equip and train up to two Afghan divisions-- an artillery and armoured brigade each of the ANA--over and above the sanctioned strength of 1,34,000," says Major General (Retd.) G.D. Bakshi , who headed the study. CENJOWS has also suggested that India could provide T-55 tanks and field guns or howitzers.

But while providing military equipment may help, India must expose the role of Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI behind the earlier attack on the Indian mission in Kabul, and its alleged links with the attackers of the recent blast more forcefully. Whatever steps India finally takes, its Afghanistan strategy needs a major rethink. After February 26, the rules of the great game have drastically changed.
 

ajtr

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Taliban talks halted by Pakistan arrests: UN envoy

LONDON: The arrest of key Taliban leaders in Pakistan stopped a secret channel of communications with the United Nations, the former UN special representative to Afghanistan said Friday in a BBC interview.
Kai Eide, who stepped down from the post earlier this month, confirmed for the first time that he had been holding talks with senior Taliban figures and said they started around a year ago, AFP reported.

Face-to-face talks were held with “senior figures in the Taliban leadership” in Dubai and other locations, said the diplomat, adding he believed the movement's leader Mullah Omar had given the process the green light.

“Of course I met Taliban leaders during the time I was in Afghanistan,” the Norwegian diplomat told the broadcaster at his home outside Oslo.

“The first contact was probably last spring, then of course you moved into the election process where there was a lull in activity.”

Eide said that “communication picked up when the election process was over, and it continued to pick up until a certain moment a few weeks ago.”

He was referring to the arrest of senior Taliban commanders in Pakistan in recent weeks, a move which had been welcomed in the United States as a sign of the country's increasing willingness to track down Afghan militant leaders.

But the diplomat said the detentions had a “negative” effect on attempts to find a political solution to the eight-year-old Afghan war and suggested Pakistan had deliberately tried to undermine the negotiations.

He also said there were now many channels of communication with the Taliban, including with representatives of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Eide said these contacts were “in the early stages ... talks about talks”, adding it would take a long time before there was enough confidence between both sides to really move forward.

“The effect of the arrests, in total, certainly was negative on our possibilities to continue the political process that we saw as so necessary at that particular juncture,” he said.

“The Pakistanis did not play the role they should have played. They must have known about this,” said Eide.

“I don't believe these people were arrested by coincidence. They must have known who they were, what kind of role they were playing — and you see the result today.”

Pakistani officials have insisted the arrests were not aimed at wrecking the talks, the BBC reported.

Taliban military commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was captured last month in the southern Pakastani city of Karachi, in what US media said was a joint operation with American spies.

Other senior Taliban commanders have also reportedly been captured in Pakistan recently.

Reports first emerged that Eide met Taliban figures after an international conference on Afghanistan in London in January.

Asked about the level of contact in the talks, Eide told the BBC: “We met senior figures in the Taliban leadership and we also met people who have the authority of the Quetta Shura to engage in that kind of discussion.”

The Quetta Shura is the name given to the Taliban leadership council, which takes its name from the city of Quetta where the senior members of the militia are thought to have been based.

Asked whether the leader of the Taliban movement Mullah Omar would have known about the talks, he said: “I find it unthinkable that such contact would take place without his knowledge and also without his acceptance.”

Eide stepped down from his position as United Nations representative in Afghanistan earlier this month after two years in the post which saw violence escalate and the UN role in fraud-tainted elections mired in controversy.
 

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Pakistani Analysts Respond to Former UN Official's Criticism

The former envoy to Afghanistan for the United Nations, Kai Eide, has criticized Pakistan for arresting top Taliban leaders, such as the group's second-in-command Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar last month. Speaking to the BBC, Eide said the arrests hurt reconciliation efforts by stopping secret talks between the United Nations and the Taliban, which started about a year ago.

In a recent television interview, the U.N.'s former special representative to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, said he believes "the Pakistanis did not play the role that they should have played" when they arrested top Taliban leaders.

He said he believes the Pakistani government must have known about the U.N.-brokered peace talks with the Taliban and that the arrests were counterproductive to those efforts.

Pakistan's former interior minister, Aftab Sherpao, says he would like to remind the former U.N. representative that Pakistan has carried a heavy burden since the U.S.-led invasion into Afghanistan toppled the Taliban eight years ago.

"I think the role Pakistan has played, no other country has played that role," he said. "And if you look at the casualties, you look at the human suffering, you look at what we are going through, our economy has suffered, everything has suffered."

He says he believes the Pakistani government made these arrests under the impression that they were in the best interest for the Pakistani people and the rest of the region.

Ishtiaq Ahmad, an associate professor for international relations at Islamabad's Quaid-i-Azam University, says Kai Eide's comments reflect a concern that Pakistan is trying to sabotage the Afghan government's efforts to reconcile with the Taliban.

He says the reasoning for this comes from the perception that Kabul is leaving Islamabad out of the reconciliation process by approaching the Taliban leadership directly without any Pakistani help.

"It might have created, you know, some kind of insecurity among Pakistanis and they might have taken this action, but again, it is all speculative," he said.

Ahmad also says Pakistan now finds itself in an even more complicated diplomatic position.

He points to years of U.S. pressure on Pakistani authorities to "do more" to target Taliban members who fled from Afghanistan to Pakistan.

"If Pakistan does not arrest a Taliban leader, then there is a complaint that Pakistan is not doing enough," he said. "And when it does arrest, and then there is, you know, this new kind of complaint."

Ahmad says that in the end, a political resolution to the Afghan conflict is in the interest for all of Afghanistan's neighbors and stakeholders in the war-torn country.

http://www1.voanews.com/english/new...o-Former-UN-Officials-Criticism-88695267.html
 

DaRk WaVe

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Eide "greatly exaggerating" Taliban talks, former deputy says

Former U.N. representative in Afghanistan Kai Eide is greatly exaggerating his new claims that he had months of discussions with senior Taliban leaders, his former top deputy tells The Cable.

"He was not meeting with senior Taliban leaders," said Peter Galbraith, who was Eide's No. 2 and close friend until Eide fired him for raising questions about the U.N.'s lack of action over the massive election fraud perpetrated by President Hamid Karzai's government last September, in an interview. "He's greatly exaggerating."

Galbraith, who was aware of the meetings but did not participate in them, said that they were with lower-level people who may or may not have had ties to the Taliban.

"The meetings were not particularly often and it was never clear where these people stood and what their connections were to the Taliban," he said, suggesting they might have been disgruntled former Taliban associates.

Galbraith also rejected Eide's contention that the recent arrests of Afghan Taliban leaders by the Pakistani military was the reason the talks broke down, as Eide claims.

"The discussions ended when he left UNAMA," he said, referring to the removal of Eide by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in December. "The arrests have nothing to do with it."

Galbraith is clearly no disinterested observer, but Special Representative Richard Holbrooke also said Friday that the recent arrests and the drive to pursue reconciliation with the Taliban have nothing to do with each other.

"We are extremely gratified that the Pakistani government has apprehended the No. 2 person in the Afghan Taliban ... this is a good thing," Holbrooke said. "It's not related [to reconciliation] ... We don't see this as linked."

The U.S. government was aware of Eide's discussions. "He had mentioned this to us in a general way," Holbrooke said, responding to questions posed by The Cable at a Friday press conference, adding that there was no U.S. involvement in the talks.

Holbrooke had called the press conference to discuss the next week's landmark meetings between the United States and Pakistan in Washington, the first round of the new "strategic dialogue" between the two countries.

"It's a major intensification of our partnership," said Holbrooke. "This is not a photo op ... this is an intense, serious dialogue between the U.S. and Pakistan."

The Pakistani delegation will be led by Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and will also include Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, incoming Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, Army Chief of Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Prime Minister Zardari's advisor Wazir Ali, Ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani, and many others.

The U.S. contingent will be led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and will include Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Holbrooke, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson, Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew, NSC Senior Director David Lipton, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, Under Secretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy, and many others.

The trilateral dialogue between the United States, Afghanistan, and Pakistan will still go on and another meeting could come later this year, according to Holbrooke. Holbrooke is headed back to the region next week, stopping off in Brussels before going on to Afghanistan. He was going to stop in Pakistan but that became unnecessary because the Pakistanis are coming to Washington, he said.

The question of how to disperse billions of dollars of new aid to Pakistan, a point of contention between Holbrooke and Senate leaders, was discussed during a high-level meeting at the White House Friday morning, Holbrooke said, where "almost every senior person in the United States foreign policy community was in the room."

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/p...exaggerating_taliban_talks_former_deputy_says
 

ajtr

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India against US reconciliation with Taliban

India has advised the United States against any attempt for ''reconciliation'' with the Taliban, as it might take Afghanistan back to the pre-9/11 days with an ''obscurantist and mediaeval regime'' back to power in the country.

New Delhi believes that Washington needs to decide if it wants to be responsible for establishing a regime that is “a complete antithesis to the lofty ideas of human rights and women’s empowerment that the US champions worldwide.” Highly-placed sources said that New Delhi conveyed its concern over the pitfalls of a move for reconciliation with the Taliban to the visiting US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian affairs Robert Blake.

Blake was in a tour to India from Thursday to Saturday. He will also travel to Pakistan and Afghanistan. “There cannot be a distinction between good Taliban and bad Taliban. There is nothing called good Taliban, and we still believe the Taliban are bad,” said a senior official.

He, however, pointed out that New Delhi was in favour of reintegration of Taliban elements into the system of governance in Afghanistan, if they eschew violence.
“This is what we are doing with the insurgents and extremists in our country too and we think this is what can be done to initiate a political process in Afghanistan if the international community believes that the problem could not be resolved militarily,” he added.

Military training

New Delhi also made it clear that it would not scale down its “development partnership” with Afghanistan in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Kabul on February 26 last, and was even ready to provide military training to a larger number of personnel of the Afghan National Army in institutions in India, if President Hamid Karzai’s government asked for it.

The terrorist attack in Kabul on February 26 last resulted in the death of 16 people, including six Indians. The terrorists apparently targeted the Indian Medical Mission.
 

DaRk WaVe

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Afghans say Iran arming Taliban, India in a fix

NEW DELHI: Even before India's efforts to engage Pakistan on the Afghanistan issue could gain momentum, claims by Afghan agencies that Iran was secretly helping the Taliban have further compounded India's concerns.

The disclosure that Iran was supplying weapons to the Taliban, accompanied by "evidence" in the form of seizure of arms in Herat, comes just ahead of foreign minister S M Krishna's crucial visit to Tehran.

Iran is one of the few countries which has repeatedly said that it doesn't believe there is any good Taliban, something which has encouraged India to reach out to Tehran for keeping Taliban out of any major role in the Kabul government in the event of a reconciliation.

Iran has denied helping the Taliban after Afghan border police chief Rahmatullah Safi displayed the arms seized in Herat saying that these were manufactured in Iran.

While officials said that India would still go by Iran's official position, they admitted there were concerns because the US too in the past has accused Iran of playing a "double game" in Afghanistan.

Earlier this month, American defence secretary Robert Gates had accused Tehran of helping the Taliban in its attempts to undermine the work being done by the Nato forces. Later, however, he said that Iran's influence with the Taliban was limited.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...aliban-India-in-a-fix/articleshow/5709994.cms
 

Dark_Prince

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With India well entrenched in development and training programs, with over 1 Billion USD of AID to Afghanistan, only time will tell who will be out; keeping in mind US and its policies towards Pakistan, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, Iran etc.
 

ajtr

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India shall not lose its grip

From Day 1, when the USA decided to attack Afghanistan, it considered Pakistan an essential partner for achieving its objectives in Afghanistan which is understandable. Afghanistan is surrounded by Iran, Russia and Pakistan and Pakistan is the only country which the US can use for its operations in Afghanistan.
However, the way the US handled Pakistan has been totally wrong. The American government’s attitude of ignoring Pakistan’s treacherous behaviour has not only delayed the achievement of its objective, it would be a miracle if the US will ever achieve its goal. When American forces occupied Afghanistan, Pakistan allowed a number of Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders to escape arrest and even provided shelter and intelligence to them and is still doing so. However, the US continues to ignore all these things because it believes Pakistan’s help is essential.
The old contacts between the CIA and the ISI and military officials of both countries also helped in softening America’s attitude towards Pakistan. Pakistan cleverly used all these factors and squeezed billions of dollars from the US and also obtained a promise first from President Bush and then from President Obama to pressurise India to give concessions on Kashmir and Siachan.
Fearing this pressure, Atalji initiated the peace process with Pakistan and Kashmir’s separatist groups (he confided this to me). When Manmohan Singh became the PM, the American pressure increased tremendously. Manmohan Singh has always been soft to America and easily succumbed to this pressure. He agreed to grant autonomy to Kashmir and to withdraw military from the peak of Siachen. When I contacted him and protested (my contacts with the PM have been always indirect), he stated that the NDA had agreed with these concessions. I contacted George Fernandes and Atalji and both confirmed the NDA’s agreement.
I wrote a strong letter to Manmohan Singh and some of the Indian military officers also objected strenuously. The PM asked me whether the RSS could pass a resolution opposing both the concessions. At my request to P.P. Sudarshanji, the Sangh passed a resolution at the Chitrakoot Prininidhi Sabha Baithak. The PM backed off from the concessions and luckily, President Bush did not push India much. President Obama is determined to get out of Afghanistan and is pressurising Pakistan to help the US to get at least some success in Afghanistan. In return, he has promised Pakistan that he would pressurise India to grant autonomy to Kashmir. He has appointed two high-level bureaucrats to pressurise India.
The February 24 issue of the Washington Post confirmed that India agreed to initiate talks with Pakistan under American pressure and the US will continue to pressurise India on Kashmir. A number of articles, requiring India to agree to resolve the Kashmir problem, have been appearing in the American media. Recently Pakistan has helped the US in capturing some high level Taliban and Al Queda leaders and is now demanding the US to deliver its promise on Kashmir. My fear is that Manmohan Singh will crumble this time.
Therefore, it is essential that all Sangh Parivar organisations including the BJP become very vocal on this issue and build a national consensus not to give any concession on Kashmir.
There is no harm in talking with Pakistan. However, resolving Kashmir is not in India’s interest. In fact, I was able to convince at least three Indian prime ministers that the unresolved Kashmir issue is bleeding and ruining Pakistan as its focus is mainly on Kashmir and is spending a lot more on arms than it can afford.
Terrorist activities in Kashmir kill more Muslims than Hindus and India can absorb the financial burden. Pakistan cannot. Some Pakistani intellectuals are realising this situation and want Pakistan to forget Kashmir, make up with India and concentrate on economic development.
I am also trying to convince the American government that any concession on Kashmir will result in increasing the influence of Taliban and al-Qaeda in Kashmir. As his approval rating has gone down considerably, Obama is focusing more on some short term gains and is ignoring America’s long term interests. Anytime America can claim some victory in Afghanistan, it will move out which will result in the fall of Afghanistan again to Taliban and al-Qaeda, and soon after, Pakistan will also fall and the autonomous Kashmir will follow too. Such a situation will be a disaster for India and is not good for the US, and even for China and Russia which also have serious Muslim problems.
 

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Pakistan movesto influence shape of postwar Afghanistan

Meetings in Washington, D. C., this week between a Pakistani delegation led by the heads of the army and the intelligence service and top administration officials aim to map the endgame of the Afghanistan conflict and shape the allegiances of a postwar government in Kabul.

The summit is a significant victory for Pakistan's head of the army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and the chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who have supplanted the authority of the weak civilian government to take control of the strategic relationship with the United States.


After several years of discord with Washington and mutual suspicion, especially America's questions over Pakistan's willingness to confront the Taliban insurgents it created, the two generals have turned the situation around in a matter of months.

Kayani and Pasha have calculated that the current surge in American deployment of forces in Afghanistan ordered by President Barack Obama is a prelude to an exit by U.S. and other allied forces, including Canadians.

Pakistan is already suspicious of the involvement and influence of its arch-enemy India with the Kabul government of President Hamid Karzai.

Islamabad -- and especially the generals -- believes India is purposefully seeking influence in Kabul so as to encircle Pakistan.

They believe who rules in Afghanistan is a matter of strategic life or death for Pakistan.

Kayani and Pasha therefore decided last year to dramatically change their policy toward the Taliban in order to win U. S. support.

Their objective was not just to win a seat at the table when the future of Afghanistan was being debated, but to exert definitive influence on the outcome of those debates.

The meetings this week in Washington will give some indication of how successful the generals have been so far.

The formal leader of the Pakistani delegation is Shah Mahmood Qureshi, the foreign minister in the semi-functional government of President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, but there is no doubt the generals, and Kayani in particular, are running the show.

To make the point that he is in charge of at least of this aspect of Pakistan's foreign policy, Kayani had all the civilian officials involved in the Washington visit come to his office for the pre-departure briefings.

On Monday Kayani met with Defence Secretary Robert Gates and the chairman of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who has invested much time and effort in developing a working relationship with the Pakistani general.

On Wednesday both Kayani and ISI chief Pasha will be front and centre when foreign minister Qureshi meets Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the formal summit.

Several actions by Pakistan have got them a place at the table.

One was to reverse the previous, much-criticized policy of making peace deals with the Taliban in the lawless tribal border regions from which insurgent attacks are launched into Afghanistan. Last year Kayani's forces made major and largely successful offensives against Taliban strongholds in Pakistan.

The Pakistan government and the military also cooled previous criticism of cross-border operations by American missile-armed drone aircraft which appear to have decapitated some Taliban and al-Qaida networks based in the tribal areas.

But what seems to have sealed Pakistan's claim to a voice in Afghanistan's future is the recent arrests of about a dozen Taliban leaders in joint actions by ISI and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Among them was the Taliban second-in-command Abdul Ghani Baradar.

Not everyone is delighted. The United Nations' former chief representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, complained bitterly last week that these arrests had closed down incipient talks with the Taliban aimed at including them in a peace settlement.

Others, including Eide's former deputy, say he exaggerated the status of both the talks and the Taliban involved.

But Washington has never been keen on involving hard line Taliban leaders anyway.

Indeed, Afghan President Kharzai may have done himself no good on Monday by ostentatiously meeting one of Washington's most wanted Taliban warlords, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, of Hezb-I-Islami.


By demonstrating its ability to detain and control the Taliban leadership in Pakistan, the Islamabad government has also shown its capacity to ensure only its proxy Taliban are part of the settlement in Kabul.

Pakistan movesto influence shape of postwar Afghanistan
 

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