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Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan - COMMENT : Af-Pak: reversing the reverse strategic depth — Dr Mohammad Taqi
The Taliban retreated though in the face of overwhelming US might while Pakistan is doing so sensing the US vulnerability written in red letters on the withdrawal calendar
Just before the first anniversary this week of the NATO attack on the Pakistani military check post in Salala, Pakistan has released some mid-level Taliban leaders that it held. The post-Salala saber-rattling between an angry Pakistan and an unrepentant United States almost caused the bilateral relations to snap. A frigid standoff followed the bitter spat and Pakistan blocked the NATO ground supply route through its territory. A face-saving apology of sorts was squeezed out of the US, a thaw ensued, and the supply line reopened. It was business as usual between the frenemies.
The Taliban release is purported to be not merely a goodwill token towards the Afghan High Peace Council delegation that visited Pakistan but is also being showcased to mark a ‘sea change’ in Pakistan’s notorious policy towards Afghanistan, i.e. its quest for strategic depth. A slew of reports in the western and Pakistani media appearing before and after the Taliban leaders’ release quoting Pakistani officials and analysts close to the Pakistani security establishment claim that not only has Pakistan jettisoned its strategic depth policy but has also been reaching out to Afghan groups other than its Taliban proxies.
A former chief of the ISI who was my co-panelist on a recent VOA Urdu talk show would have the world believe that this ‘paradigm shift’ is the next best thing since sliced bread. Pakistan talking to some of the erstwhile Northern Alliance Afghan leaders, helping Afghans and the US jumpstart the talks with the Taliban, and ultimately blessing a broad-based government in Kabul does sound promising. Promising to the uninitiated that is. Ironically, such PR gestures have been tried before too. Just before Pakistan put its weight behind the Taliban after failing to impose its Pashtun favorite Gulbudin Hikmatyar in the Afghan civil war (1992-1994), there was a flurry of activity involving invitations to Ahmed Shah Massoud and Rashid Dostum to visit Islamabad. The Pakistani establishment, it seems, modifies only the appearance but does not change the substance of its script. The Pakistani shenanigans sound just too good to be true.
An assessment of the level of fighting during the winter down time is fraught with inaccuracy but it is perhaps a safe bet that the US and Taliban have reached a plateau and further incremental gains are less likely. No major US offensive is expected in the summer months lest the Taliban pull off a game changer. Both sides seem to be consolidating their positions and wish to translate them into some tangible political gains. In other words, it is stalemate in Afghanistan. The US apparently has given up on the prospects of a Pakistani operation against the Haqqani network in North Waziristan and is resigned to the idea that the road to Mullah Omar goes through Rawalpindi. Pakistan is doing on the diplomatic front what the Taliban did in the battlefield of Kabul in November 2001: melt away without putting up a fight only to regroup and resurge at the time of their and Pakistan’s choosing. The Taliban retreated though in the face of overwhelming US might while Pakistan is doing so sensing the US vulnerability written in red letters on the withdrawal calendar.
The Pakistani diplomatic position clearly seems to be a tactical retreat rather than a real change of heart and strategy. The original Pakistani goal was to have its Taliban proxies at the head of the table in Kabul but for now, it would settle even for a toehold so long as that gives the US enough reassurance that its withdrawal would be on time and not bloody and messy. The Pakistani calculation seems to be that the US has no strategic objectives left in Afghanistan. And as far as immediate tactical US concerns go, a relative lull in fighting and some semblance of a coalition government in Kabul is a prerequisite for ending the US combat operations in 2013 and the pull out in 2014. The magnitude of the post-2014 residual US force is an unknown but an artificial peace may even help reduce that to a skeleton crew.
The Pakistani strategy vis-à-vis the US in Afghanistan appears to be a replay of the wily General Ziaul Haq’s modus operandi against the Soviets: keep the pot simmering but do not bring it to a boil. Pakistan may even turn the heat down a notch. The overtures to the non-Pashtun Afghans are also a page from the old Pakistani playbook of the 1990s when Saudi money and blessings were deployed to lure in Ahmed Shah Massoud and the late Ustad Burhanuddin Rabbani. The rocket barrage by the Pakistani proxies Gulbudin Hikmatyar and then the Taliban on Kabul ruled by Massoud and the elder Rabbani is the fine print in the Pakistani script the Afghans today can ignore only at their own peril. The formula is simple: say and do whatever it takes to get the US out. The mice will play once the cat is away.
In its quest for strategic depth in Afghanistan, Pakistan has kept providing reverse strategic depth to its jihadist proxies. An ideological milieu and jihadist infrastructure were created in Pakistan to groom and launch these jihadists. A conformist, puritanical Islam, sanctioned by the Pakistani state and pushed through the mosque — and now electronic — pulpit has radicalised two generations of Pakistanis. Over 50 Shia Muslims were killed and more than 300 injured in over 50 terrorist attacks, including several bombings, in the first 10 days of the Muharram month. Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik thinks that illegal mobile phone SIM cards and motorcycles are the root cause of the terror that has put the Shia — one-fifth of the country’s population — under siege. In pursuit of its strategic depth, Pakistan’s military-jihadist combine has churned out thousands of human killing machines programmed to exterminate the Shia, the Ahmedis and non-Muslims. And there is absolutely no indication that the Pakistani state is willing or even interested in decommissioning its jihadist assets. In fact, some will be launched into electoral politics soon.
The US has its circumscribed interests to look after and can opt to leave Afghanistan after securing them. The Afghans and other regional powers, and most importantly, the common Pakistanis will have to live with the consequences of what is unravelling in the run up to the US withdrawal. Without Pakistan reversing the reverse strategic depth it has given to the jihadists, this talk of ‘paradigm shift’ will remain hogwash. -
Odissi is one of the eight classical dance forms of India. It originates from the state of Odisha, in eastern India.
(via fuckyeahsouthasia)
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Traveller
Words. Walking in the midst of a crowd, enchanting in your head.
Trying to dignify your belief.
Silence. Maybe it’s time to pause. And find your own treasure
Light. At the end of your journey, trust me..you’ll see the bright. Have a faith.
Counterpoint. All of your disbelief, engravement, truth and history crashing like a storm. Identifying and struggling to find it’s own assurance.
Beauty. Defines your own perceived perfection. For beauty is a complexity of an eye of beholder
Love. Feel it as if it’s everywhere, in friendship, family and a good company of love. Love that could be intangible or even physically non-existence.
God. Eternal.
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So so true!
usually write better at night actually
hah ! fundamentally true !
(Source: vicforprez, via youstareagain)
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Hallucination
It feels like summer in the afternoon
His courage is not strong as his bones
bounded uncertainty
He drank his coffee in the same old mug
Smoke and let his burden become a nerve of cancer
They say he is a fire
But soon it will be rusty, uttered in hallucination
Let it spur and doused in a sluggish world. -
Mahmoud Darwish: The butterfly’s burden : No more no less
I am a woman. No more and no less
I live my life as it is
thread by thread
and I spin my wool to wear, not
to complete Homer’s story, or his sun.
And I see what I see
as it is, in its shape,
though I stare every once
in a while in its shade
to sense the pulse of defeat,
and I write tomorrow
on yesterday’s sheets: there’s no sound
other than echo.
I love the necessary vagueness in
what a night traveler says to the absence
of birds over the slopes of speech
and above the roofs of villages
I am a woman, no more and no lessThe almond blossom sends me flying
in March, from my balcony,
in longing for what the faraway says:
“Touch me and I’ll bring my horses to the water springs.”
I cry for no clear reason, and I love you
as you are, not as a strut
nor in vain
and from my shoulders a morning rises onto you
and falls into you, when I embrace you, a night.
But I am neither one nor the other
no, I am not a sun or a moon
I am a woman, no more and no lessSo be the Qyss of longing,
if you wish. As for me
I like to be loved as I am
not as a color photo
in the paper, or as an idea
composed in a poem amid the stags …
I hear Laila’s faraway scream
from the bedroom: Do not leave me
a prisoner of rhyme in the tribal nights
do not leave me to them as news …
I am a woman, no more and no lessI am who I am, as
you are who you are: you live in me
and I live in you, to and for you
I love the necessary clarity of our mutual puzzle
I am yours when I overflow the night
but I am not a land
or a journey
I am a woman, no more and no lessAnd I tire
from the moon’s feminine cycle
and my guitar falls ill
string
by string
I am a woman,
no more
and no less! -
Until the quiet #poem
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my third-time reading stuff from victoria schofield. i actually need more those from ayesha jalal, stephen cohen and ahmed rashid. urm. #books
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![thepoliticalnotebook:
This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism. Subscribe here to receive this round-up by email.
This round-up will be on hiatus the next two weeks (sorry), but will return!
Fierce fighting is ongoing in the Syrian town of Qusair.
Palestinians are delaying joining UN agencies, conventions and treaties in order to preserve the current peace effort.
A former Israeli border policeman killed himself and four others in a bank in Beersheba after being refused an overdraft and cash by an ATM.
Multiple days of clashes between Sunni and Alawite residents in Tripoli, Lebanon have left at least 11 dead.
Rami Khouri asks if Hezbollah is at a turning point.
Yemenis in the southern city of Aden rallied in support of an independent south.
Six Egyptian policemen and a border guard who were abducted on the Sinai peninsula last week have been released by their captors, who remain unknown.
In Tunisia, 200 Islamist protesters were arrested and one killed in clashes with security.
Karim Mezran at The Atlantic Council worries that Algeria is a powder keg.
300,000 people have been displaced by fighting in the Darfur region this year.
18 soldiers and four Islamists were killed in a gun battle in Agadex, Niger.
M23 rebels in the Congo have declared a ceasefire for the UN Secretary General’s visit.
With the executions of five Yemenis, the total number executed in Saudi Arabia this year is 47.
A wave of car bombings across Iraq on late Sunday and early Monday left 76 dead and 250 injured and on Tuesday explosions in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Tarmiyah and Tuz Khurmato added at least another 23 to the death toll.
Iranian presidential candidates Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, a former Ahmadinejad aide, and former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani have been disqualified from elections.
Iran executed by hanging two men accused and convicted of spying for the CIA and the Israeli Mossad.
Kim Jong-un sent an envoy to China.
North Korea reportedly has a new military chief.
The drug war is ramping up in the Mexican state of Michoácan.
Guatemala’s top court threw out former leader Efrain Rios Montt’s genocide and crimes against humanity convictions.
Guantánamo’s WiFi was shut off after the hacker collective Anonymous threatened disruption at the base.
The transcript for President Obama’s speech on drone policy and Guantánamo Bay is in full here.
Prior to the speech Attorney General Eric Holder publicly acknowledged what was already known: the US had killed Americans abroad with the drone program (four, to be specific).
The US State Dept’s annual International Religious Freedom Report found discrimination and bigotry against Muslims and Jews on the rise around the world [PDF].
A former friend of Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Ibragim Todashev, implicated Tsarnaev in a 2011 triple murder and then was himself killed when he reportedly attacked FBI agents during questioning.
The word terrorism is being used to describe a brutal attack on a London street that left a British soldier dead. One of the attackers recorded a video statement directly following the murder.
One attacker has now been identified as Michael Adebolajo, and has been connected on some level to the extremist group al-Muhajiroun.
The University of Kent has created a Rendition Flights Database, cataloging 11,000 individual flights to create a picture of the global renditions network.
If you would like to receive this round-up as a weekly email, you can sign up through this form, or email me directly at torierosedeghett@gmail.com.
Photo: Ramallah, West Bank: A Palestinian protester during clashes with Israeli troops near the village of Deir Jarir. Mohamad Torokman/Reuters](http://24.media.tumblr.com/0d57dd16b34b323d8576109ca79a1904/tumblr_mn91lsCMX11qchhhqo1_500.jpg)
This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism. Subscribe here to receive this round-up by email.
This round-up will be on hiatus the next two weeks (sorry), but will return!
- Fierce fighting is ongoing in the Syrian town of Qusair.
- Palestinians are delaying joining UN agencies, conventions and treaties in order to preserve the current peace effort.
- A former Israeli border policeman killed himself and four others in a bank in Beersheba after being refused an overdraft and cash by an ATM.
- Multiple days of clashes between Sunni and Alawite residents in Tripoli, Lebanon have left at least 11 dead.
- Rami Khouri asks if Hezbollah is at a turning point.
- Yemenis in the southern city of Aden rallied in support of an independent south.
- Six Egyptian policemen and a border guard who were abducted on the Sinai peninsula last week have been released by their captors, who remain unknown.
- In Tunisia, 200 Islamist protesters were arrested and one killed in clashes with security.
- Karim Mezran at The Atlantic Council worries that Algeria is a powder keg.
- 300,000 people have been displaced by fighting in the Darfur region this year.
- 18 soldiers and four Islamists were killed in a gun battle in Agadex, Niger.
- M23 rebels in the Congo have declared a ceasefire for the UN Secretary General’s visit.
- With the executions of five Yemenis, the total number executed in Saudi Arabia this year is 47.
- A wave of car bombings across Iraq on late Sunday and early Monday left 76 dead and 250 injured and on Tuesday explosions in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Tarmiyah and Tuz Khurmato added at least another 23 to the death toll.
- Iranian presidential candidates Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, a former Ahmadinejad aide, and former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani have been disqualified from elections.
- Iran executed by hanging two men accused and convicted of spying for the CIA and the Israeli Mossad.
- Kim Jong-un sent an envoy to China.
- North Korea reportedly has a new military chief.
- The drug war is ramping up in the Mexican state of Michoácan.
- Guatemala’s top court threw out former leader Efrain Rios Montt’s genocide and crimes against humanity convictions.
- Guantánamo’s WiFi was shut off after the hacker collective Anonymous threatened disruption at the base.
- The transcript for President Obama’s speech on drone policy and Guantánamo Bay is in full here.
- Prior to the speech Attorney General Eric Holder publicly acknowledged what was already known: the US had killed Americans abroad with the drone program (four, to be specific).
- The US State Dept’s annual International Religious Freedom Report found discrimination and bigotry against Muslims and Jews on the rise around the world [PDF].
- A former friend of Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Ibragim Todashev, implicated Tsarnaev in a 2011 triple murder and then was himself killed when he reportedly attacked FBI agents during questioning.
- The word terrorism is being used to describe a brutal attack on a London street that left a British soldier dead. One of the attackers recorded a video statement directly following the murder.
- One attacker has now been identified as Michael Adebolajo, and has been connected on some level to the extremist group al-Muhajiroun.
- The University of Kent has created a Rendition Flights Database, cataloging 11,000 individual flights to create a picture of the global renditions network.
If you would like to receive this round-up as a weekly email, you can sign up through this form, or email me directly at torierosedeghett@gmail.com.
Photo: Ramallah, West Bank: A Palestinian protester during clashes with Israeli troops near the village of Deir Jarir. Mohamad Torokman/Reuters
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(Source: quote-book)
