Angry words lately between Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and the administration of Barack Obama have raised questions about whether they can work together to stabilize the war torn country.
The relationship between Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and President Barack Obama has come to resemble a loveless marriage succumbing to the strain of keeping up public appearances.
An imminent split seems unlikely. The US remains Afghanistan’s chief international backer and the Obama administration’s ambitious plan to transform the war-torn country needs Mr. Karzai if it’s going to succeed.
But the angry words tossed between Kabul and Washington lately have amply demonstrated the strain between a US administration that says it is committed to political reform in Afghanistan and an Afghan leader empowered by an election widely thought to have been marred by fraud.
There is a window of opportunity for peace in Afghanistan. It has to be grabbed. For the first time in a decade the U.S. and the U.K. are acting in concert with Pakistan to proffer real solutions for Kabul. The former allies, turned protagonists, turned friends are once again on the same side–this time working for peace.
Mr. Karzai is once again calling his favorite friends for a big powwow which he calls a “Jirga” or tribal council. It is to be held in Kabul in two weeks. Pakistan is working with the UK and the US to ensure that this Loya Jirga represents all the Pakhtuns so that it becomes a vehicle for peace in West Asia. Islamabad has offered to hold a joint Loya jirga between the Afghan and Pakistani Pakhtuns. The last time Mr. Karzai hijacked the societal consensus for ending the war through the traditional means of a consultative assembly. Mr. Karzai used the grass-roots method to rubber stamp his own brand of government. Obviously the corruption, lack of peace, and loss on the ground has proven that a repeat of the previous methodology will not work.
‘India is a close friend of Afghanistan, but Pakistan is a twin brother’ – Karzai
Foreword by Ahmed Quraishi: This coming from the same man who spent the past eight years working closely with the Indians and CIA to build BLA and TTP and send terrorists to Pakistan. But thanks to Afghan Taliban, they all had a falling out and everyone wants to save his hind. That’s why all of a sudden US is ready to ditch India to appease Pakistan and Karzai says India is a friend but Pakistan is a ‘brother, a twin’. We Pakistanis are certainly brothers and twins of our cousins the brave Afghans, but certainly not of the snakes planted there by others.
Reuters – Afghanistan does not want a proxy war between Pakistan and India or anybody else fought on its soil, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Thursday during a visit to Pakistan.
Baradar’s capture signifies a split within the Afghan Taliban, as he headed the minority faction more open to negotiations with the Afghan government and the US. His secret negotiations in Dubai may have angered hardliners including Mullah Omar, who have rejected the offers of negotiations and reconciliation with the Karzai government, and representatives of the US and NATO.
After 9 years of maintaining an expensive presence on Afghan soil, thousands of lives and billions wasted in aid and reconstruction efforts, not to forget bribes to warlords and drug barons, the US and its allies have come up with a real gem of an idea – trying to buy themselves a safe exit from the Afghan mess for a cool $500m.
The world leaders gathered at the Afghanistan Conference in London seem to have realised the only hope left is to save face and exit Afghanistan with some dignity intact. Their offer of cash to the Taliban, laughable as it is, is a last ditch effort to save Hamid Karzai’s government by attempting to buy out his only real opposition in Afghanistan.
Taliban today control 33 out of 34 provinces of Afghanistan and are under no pressure to negotiate with the ‘Governor of Kabul’ – as he’s mockingly called in Afghanistan due to his rule being limited to parts of the Afghan capital. The momentum is with the Taliban and they are in a position to dictate terms. Therefore the plan to rope in ‘moderate’ elements of the Taliban by promises of cash and power is a non-starter.
The decision reached at the conference to invite Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to mediate with the Taliban and Kabul’s Government seems to have little point, even though it confirms what Pakistan has been saying for years – that there will not be a solution to the Afghan problem until the Taliban – who represent Afghanistan’s Pashtun majority – are ignored.
KABUL: The Taliban launched a wave of gun and bomb attacks on Kabul on Monday, with at least 13 people injured as fierce fighting erupted in the heart of the Afghan capital.
Latest reports stated that four of the suicide bombers have died. Two suicide bombers blew themselves up and another two died in clashes, an interior ministry spokesman said.The two attackers killed by security forces had holed themselves up in a building in central Kabul, Zemarai Bashary said.
“We can confirm that four suicide bombers have been killed,” he told Al Jazeera television. He said some militants were still inside the Ariana Cinema, shooting at security forces who had surrounded the building.
“We suspect there are more bombers in the cinema building,” he said.Al Jazeera television reported that the Serena Hotel, Kabul’s only five-star hotel, is also on fire.
A series of explosions rocked Kabul, with smoke billowing out of at least two shopping centres, and intense gun battles raged between militants and Afghan security forces as police and military snipers patrolled rooftops.
“It is our work, the targets are the (presidential) palace, the finance, justice and mines ministries, and the central bank,” a purported Taliban spokesman told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.
The British government today stepped up pressure for talks with more moderate elements of the Taliban as Afghanistan announced its first provincial ceasefire agreement with the militants.
The foreign secretary, David Miliband, said the insurgency was “divided”, with many of those fighting against international forces doing so for “pragmatic” rather than ideological reasons.
URGENT: India Pays Baitullah Mehsud To Attack Pakistan’s Nuclear Sites, Plan Deployed
The Indians working with their allies in the Karzai government have designed a foolproof plan to attack Pakistani nuclear sites using hired terrorists. They think they can pull it off and permanently damage Pakistan’s standing internationally and hasten calls for denuclearizing Pakistan. Any attack on Pakistani nuclear sites in the coming days will be taken as a declaration of war by India and will be dealt with equal force. There should not be confusion on this.
This is how US helps private war-monger corrupt businesses at the expense of average American citizen’s tax money:
Another Afghan-American informed me that he was proud to have worked with an American construction company building schools with USAID funds. Taken on as a translator, he persuaded the company not only to hire Afghan laborers, but also to raise their pay gradually from $1.00 per day to $10.00 per day. “They could feed their families,” he said, “and it was all cost over-run, so cost didn’t matter. The boss was already billing the government $10.00 to $15.00 an hour for labor, so he could afford to pay $10.00 a day and still make a profit.” My informant didn’t question the corruption in such over-billing. After all, Afghans often tack on something extra for themselves, and they don’t call it corruption either. But on this scale it adds up to millions going into the assumedly deep pockets of one American privateer.”
“Yet a third Afghan-American, a businessman who has worked on American projects in his homeland, insisted that when Bush pledged $10.4 billion in aid, President Karzai should have offered him a deal: “Give me $2 billion in cash, I’ll kick back the rest to you, and you can take your army and go home.”
The U.S. demands that Pakistan’s Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), its spy agency, sever relations with the Taliban. Based on Pakistan’s own geography, this makes no sense from a Pakistani point of view. First of all, maintaining lines of communications and back channels with the enemy is what intelligence agencies do. What kind of a spy service would ISI be if it had no contacts with one of the key players that will help determine its neighbor’s future?
At the current rate, the US is unlikely to ever get out of Afghanistan with anything resembling success. After more than 7 years at war there, the Afghan Army is reported to have only a single battalion (far less than a thousand soldiers) who can operate independently. Incredible.
WASHINGTON — President Obama intends to adopt a tougher line toward Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, as part of a new American approach to Afghanistan that will put more emphasis on waging war than on development, senior administration officials said Tuesday.
Mr. Karzai is now seen as a potential impediment to American goals in Afghanistan, the officials said, because corruption has become rampant in his government, contributing to a flourishing drug trade and the resurgence of the Taliban.
Pakistanis, especially the westernized liberal elite, need to avoid the urge to get complacent with the Obama presidency. The fact is, Obama will continue to ‘soften’ Pakistan through missiles and drones just like another Democrat predecessor, Clinton, did with Iraq in the 1990s. Pakistani politicians and military need to ditch the Americans before it’s too late. If Washington does not respect its Pakistani ally now, it never will. Minimize the damage.
I am stunned that while the United States is willing to pay a heavier price to find alternative transport routes to Afghanistan through Russia or Iran, they are not ready to address Pakistani grievances and secure the existing Pakistani route. There couldn’t be a better example to show American ill-will toward Pakistan. All that Pakistanis are asking Washington is to show some respect. But America doesn’t want Pakistan to defend its water resources that India is blocking, doesn’t want Pakistan to protest the coming Indian military presence in Afghanistan. And God forbid if Pakistan asks America to ensure that the government in Kabul is Pakistan-friendly.
My advice to my people: Let’s be hopeful about President Obama. But let’s not be complacent like some of those officials in power, Pakistan’s American poodles, want you to be.
We have information that both Mr. Husain Haqqani and Mr. Husain Haroon, our ambassadors to the U.S. and U.N. respectively, were instructed by the Zardari-Gilani government to coordinate with the British and the American ambassadors to ensure that the name of former ISI chief Hameed Gul, in addition to other Pakistani citizens and organizations, are included in a Security Council resolution. We have a government with shady characters in key places, strongly backed by the Bush administration, acting and behaving as if they were representing a U.S. occupation government in Pakistan.
The recent attacks in Mumbai, while largely blamed on Pakistan’s state-sponsored militant groups, represent the latest phase in a far more complex and long-term “strategy of tension” in the region; being employed by the Anglo-American-Israeli Axis to ultimately divide and conquer the Middle East and Central Asia. The aim is destabilization of the region, subversion and acquiescence of the region’s countries, and control of its economies, all in the name of preserving the West’s hegemony over the “Arc of Crisis.”
The attacks in India are not an isolated event, unrelated to growing tensions in the region. They are part of a processof unfolding chaos that threatens to engulf an entire region, stretching from the Horn of Africa to India: the “Arc of Crisis,” as it has been known in the past.
The motives and modus operandi of the attackers must be examined and questioned, and before quickly asserting blame to Pakistan, it is necessary to step back and review:
Who benefits? Who had the means? Who had to motive? In whose interest is it to destabilize the region? Ultimately, the roles of the United States, Israel and Great Britain must be submitted to closer scrutiny.
Of all the regional countries, Pakistan has always been regarded by India as the stumbling block in her ambitions to attain regional ascendancy. Acquisition of nuclear weapons by Pakistan poured cold water on militaristic designs of India but never watered down her urge to undo Pakistan. Since application of force through direct means has become highly risky and costly because of Pakistan’s conventional and nuclear capability, Indian planners are now burning midnight oil how to weaken and destabilise Pakistan and deprive it of its nuclear weapons by applying indirect strategy. Continue Reading
The United States has chosen to allow India to establish itself in Afghanistan—Pakistan’s only regional geopolitical asset and ally, at least when it was controlled by the Taliban–at Pakistan’s expense, thereby coupling a long-term American presence and the fate of the Karzai regime with New Delhi’s continued influence inside Afghanistan.
Now that the battle in eastern Afghanistan has become desperate and the Taliban have been exploiting their safe havens in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the U.S. has been pulling all the political, military, and economic levers at its command in order to compel Pakistan’s active and effective cooperation in the struggle, and to force Islamabad to accept a security condominium in South Asia by which the U.S. is the dominant power, India its ally, and Pakistan a disrespected client of dubious loyalty and reliability.
A wake-up call for Pakistan was undoubtedly the American response to the suicide bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul in July 2008.
Rather than tacitly understanding Pakistan’s right to punish Indian meddling in its Afghan/Muslim back yard, or just shrugging its shoulders at yet another episode in the brutal South Asian dance of death between New Delhi and Islamabad, the United States came down openly and unequivocally on India’s side, dispatching a CIA official to confront Pakistan over the matter and, significantly, leaking the news of intelligence linking the ISI to the attack to the New York Times.
When energy and food price bubbles, the global recession, and a healthy dose of government mismanagement and inaction pushed Pakistan on the brink of defaulting on its foreign debt in November 2008, the United States forced Pakistan into the arms of the IMF—considered inside Pakistan a symbol of national humiliation that compromises its status as a proud regional power.
The IMF conditions for its $7.6 billion loan, including a slate of price and tax increases in a severe recessionary environment seem wrongheaded enough to exacerbate the crisis and force Pakistan’s government to become even more dependent on the so-called “Friends of Pakistan”, the group of nations that the U.S. has corralled to control the flow of further international assistance to Pakistan.
Asif has stumbled badly on Afghanistan. The macho men who wanted to defy the American juggernaut on the warpath the day after 9/11 are still amongst us, still advising defiance. The day after 9/11 this was sheer foolishness. But it is no longer the day after 9/11. Seven years of the Americans in Afghanistan and reality has changed. Pick up any report on the West’s adventure in Afghanistan and you will find two things: one, U.S. policy in Afghanistan has been a failure; two, U.S. policy in Afghanistan will not succeed without Pakistan being on board.
In the world of realpolitik, this is known as an opportunity. So why must Asif so cravenly accept the Americans letting loose their Special Ops troops and raining down missiles in Waziristan when he can happily unleash? He had every chance at his debut press conference. Instead, he bizarrely chose to speak alongside Karzai. The Afghan president is about as popular in the Pakistani Army as George W. Bush in an Al Qaeda training camp.
The Mayor of Kabul, Mr Karzai has admitted in his latest interview in TIME magazine, that his Government is falling behind The Taliban in winning the hearts and minds of his countrymen.
TIME: Last week I went to Jowzjan province where I met an 11-year old girl who had been raped about 6 months ago. Her family had to pay bribes to pursue the case in the courts. Her sister told me that under the Taliban that man would’ve been executed. “We want the Taliban back,” she said, “because they gave us justice.”
Karzai: The Taliban did provide that sort of justice. They were much better in that way. Yes, thats true.
TIME: So you are falling behind a competition for hearts and minds with a regime that was one of the most horrific in recent history?
Karzai: Unfortunately, yes.
Read the full interview – He does come across as a bit of a dickhead, detached from the realities surrounding him on the ground.
The recent attacks in Mumbai, while largely blamed on Pakistan’s state-sponsored militant groups, represent the latest phase in a far more complex and long-term “strategy of tension” in the region; being employed by the Anglo-American-Israeli Axis to ultimately divide and conquer the Middle East and Central Asia. The aim is destabilization of the region, subversion and acquiescence of the region’s countries, and control of its economies, all in the name of preserving the West’s hegemony over the “Arc of Crisis.”
Now that the battle in eastern Afghanistan has become desperate and the Taliban have been exploiting their safe havens in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the U.S. has been pulling all the political, military, and economic levers at its command in order to compel Pakistan’s active and effective cooperation in the struggle, and to force Islamabad to accept a security condominium in South Asia by which the U.S. is the dominant power, India its ally, and Pakistan a disrespected client of dubious loyalty and reliability.
When energy and food price bubbles, the global recession, and a healthy dose of government mismanagement and inaction pushed Pakistan on the brink of defaulting on its foreign debt in November 2008, the United States forced Pakistan into the arms of the IMF—considered inside Pakistan a symbol of national humiliation that compromises its status as a proud regional power.
