What’s poses the greatest danger to NATO’s effort in Afghanistan? According to Dutch Scholar Gunnar Heinsohn, the answer is clear: Afghanistan’s birth rate.
“In 2008, there are 4.5 million male Afghans within the traditional warrior age of 15 to 29 years. Out of that group come the insurgents that the approximately 35,000 NATO soldiers are now dug in to confront … and behind Read the rest of this entry »
Javier Solana, the EU’s High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, said according to AFP that he backed the new Pakistani government’s moves to hold talks with Taliban militants, but ruled out any negotiations with Al-Qaeda.
This puts Europe at odds with the United States! Not just with the Bush administration, but also with all remaining presidential candidates. Even Barack Obama, who is willing to meet with Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, seems to be against negotiations with Taliban. He wrote in Foreign Affairs last summer:
Our strategy must also include sustained diplomacy to isolate the Taliban and more effective development programs that target aid to areas where the Taliban are making inroads.
I agree with Niklas Keller, who argued in the Atlantic Community that “negotiations with the Taliban may be the West’s most effective tool to successfully ‘divide and conquer’ the Afghani insurgency.”
April 5th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Why did the ruling Pakistan People’s Party boss and Benazir Bhutto’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, choose Yousaf Raza Gilani as Prime Minister, a man who’s unlikely to act as his proxy? The answer is attempted by a wellknown Pakistani columnist Ms Mariana Baabar, who has written an interesting piece in the recent issue of The Outlook, a respected Indian magazine.
“Loyalty too tilted the balance in Gilani’s favour. A day before Gilani was elected PM, Zardari told The News, ‘Gilani sahib slept in Adiala jail without any proper bed for three months but he never contacted his powerful friends and influential relatives for help, he remained loyal to his party during his four years of jail time (served during Musharraf’s tenure), we have a lot of respect for him and he was the best available choice for the PPP for the post of prime minister’.
“Gilani has already won accolades for releasing the Supreme Court judges from house arrest. He now has to prove he can overcome the economic crisis and overpower the militants.”
We just posted at WORLDMEETS.US something that anyone interested in global affairs simply must watch.
Nearly every year at the annual Arab Summit, Libyan despot Muammar Qadhafi gives a speech to the collected rulers of the Arab world who in stony-faced silence, sit and listen to him. Invariably - it is absolutely priceless.
April 2nd, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Cricket is not only the most popular sport in the Indian subcontinent, it has now turned into a global money-spinner. And now communist China which had banned the game, describing it as a pursuit of imperialist lackeys, is turning to India and Pakistan to gain proficiency in the sport.
“A first consignment of bats, balls and other paraphernalia will be sent to China in a month or two, according to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI),” reports The Times of London.
“To help Chinese youngsters to pick their doosras from their googlies — and even their chinamen — India plans to send coaches from the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore, accompanied by umpires and groundsmen. ‘China has already taken to cricket at the schools level in a big way,’ a BCCI spokesman said. ‘It’s time to support a blossoming love of the game’.”
March 25th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
As President Prevez Musharraf was swearing in newly-elected Yousaf Raza Gilani as Pakistan’s Prime Minister on Tuesday, there came trooping in at Islamabad the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, and Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Richard Boucher, who straightaway began talks with former premier Nawaz Sharif. Later, they visited Musharraf at the presidential palace. The U.S. Embassy declined to say who else the envoys would meet.
Perhaps sending a clear message to all and sundry as to who calls the shots in Pakistan!!! Zaffar Abbas, an editor with Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper, said the visit was badly timed. “Their presence on the day when the new prime minister was inducted would signal to both Islamic extremists and moderates that ‘here are the Americans, right here in Islamabad, meeting with senior politicians in the new government, trying to dictate terms’,” Abbas said. More here…
March 24th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Is it curtains for the bluff and bluster game played by President ex-General Pervez Musharraf and his mentor in the White House, President George W. Bush, for the past eight years? The first important decision the new Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani took after being elected as prime minister was to order the release of the Chief Justice of the highest court, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry.
Justice Chaudhry and his family had been confined to his house since Musharraf declared a state of emergency in November last year and sacked 60 senior judges ahead of a Supreme Court ruling that could have invalidated his re-election as president. More here…
Now both Musharraf and Bush appear as pathetic caricatures extolling the virtues of democracy after working overtime to crush any dissidence to the totalitarian rule of Musharraf. The Pakistani president fearing that his days were numbered has started a media campaign that he would love to work with the new government and “promote democracy”.
If one reads carefully the US administration’s recent press release, it would appear that counter-terrorism is not really the main issue in engaging the Pakistan government!!! Imagine Musharraf was being promoted by the US government for eight years and given billions of dollars for the so-called “war-on-terror”.
Here is what the White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said: “We look forward to working with the new government in Pakistan. There’s lots of different areas where we can cooperate - not just counter terrorism, but across the board.”
The US State department Spokesman Sean McCormack said: “This (Gilani becoming PM) was the selection of the Pakistani political leadership and people. (Obviously…Bush & Co are still trying to somehow ensure that dictator Musharraf contiues as president.) We look forward to work with Gilani and his government. Beyond that, I don’t know that there’s much more to add other than our congratulations to his election as prime minister.” What a way to greet the return of democracy in Pakistan!!!
Why is the US administration not talking about seeking the new Pakistan government’s support for “war-on-terror”, or capturing al-Qaeda leaders or Osama-bin-Laden? Are these not the real issues? Or were these used as camouflage to ensure the survival of Musharraf all these years for some extraneous reasons?
These are serious matters which have not found proper space in the US media/blogs for some strange/unknown reasons, and may have long term impact on the US and its media’s standing/credibility in the world.
To give one example of the US backing dictators, who are despised by their people, and how this boomrangs: “The new Pakistan prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, a former house speaker who until two years ago was jailed under what he claims were politically motivated charges, beat the pro-Musharraf candidate for the premier’s slot, Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, by 264 votes to 42.”
March 22nd, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Yousaf Raza Gillani, who was Speaker of Parliament in Pakistan in the 1990s under the then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, is expected to be sworn into office as prime minister on Tuesday. Gillani has been reportedly handpicked by Asif Ali Zardari, the late Benazir Bhutto’s husband, who appears to have his own ambition to capture that chair as early as possible.
(The Zardari’s PPP party has agreed to form a coalition government with the party of ex-PM Nawaz Sharif, who was ousted by Musharraf in a coup in 1999, and other smaller groups who trounced the US-backed president’s allies in elections.)
Zardari is handicapped at the moment because he (the leader of the main party in the new Pakistan government) did not contest in the recently held Parliamentary elections. So until Zardari gets elected, probably in a few months, he has chosen a low profile politician for the prime ministerial chair and elbowed out the prominent candidates in the race.
According to the NYT: “Mr. Zardari chose Mr. Gillani over Makhdoom Amin Fahim, a much better-known party leader who ran the Pakistani Peoples Party during Ms. Bhutto’s exile abroad. He would probably have been much harder to dislodge as prime minister when Mr. Zardari was ready to take over.
“The selection of Mr. Gillani, 55, was announced after a bruising internal party fight in which Mr. Zardari, Ms. Bhutto’s widower, seemed determined to keep open the option of running for Parliament soon so he could rise to the prime minister post.
“Mr. Gillani, a journalism graduate from Punjab University in Lahore, has spent most of his life in politics, first in the Pakistan Muslim League-N, and then in the more populist Pakistan Peoples Party. He was minister with portfolios including railways, housing and environment.
“He served four and a half years in prison on charges of having put too many people on the payroll when he was Assembly speaker, though he was not convicted, said his brother, Ahmed Mujtaba Gillani. Some of his prison term, which ended in 2005, coincided with Mr. Zardari’s 11 years in prison on corruption charges.
“On Wednesday, the new coalition elected a parliamentary speaker, Fahmida Mirza, by the two-thirds majority needed for an impeachment vote. Ms. Mirza, the wife of Zulfikar Mirza, one of Mr. Zardari’s close confidants, is the first woman to be elected speaker in Pakistan.”
March 21st, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
It is a sad story…typical of incidents that are not uncommon in some Pakistani cities/towns, as well as in some parts of India, especially northern India (and Delhi in particular). To read the first-hand account of sexual harassment narrated by a young woman/writer in the blog the Pakistan Spectator please click here…
Shockingly, many incidents of harassment take place in full public view. Many times the police is are silent spectators and least helpful (something to do with lack of proper sensitization/training on the subject and cultural reasons).
It is not that the leaders in the two countries are not aware of this shocking state of affairs. But even in their own minds this subject seems to be low down in their list of priorities. Did someone say we recently celebrated “International Year of the Woman”???? The media reports such incidents (one wonders whether only to titillate their audience). Their seems to be no concerted effort to create public awareness on this issue.
There have been incidents in India when the culprits were resoundingly thrashed or even lynched. The public is increasingly taking the law in its hands because the state machinery is not doing enough to check the growing menace.
Another dimension that deserves attention is the fact the before the partition of India into two in 1947, Indian and Pakistani cities (and big towns) had areas informally earmarked where prostitution was socially accepted. The logic was that it was better that the “drain flowed in one known part of the city”. Now with the sweeping ban on prostitution “the drain has begun to flow in different parts of the cities.”
I’m not all that impressed with Obama’s plan to bomb Pakistan’s NWFP if there is “actionable intelligence against al-Qaeda.” As analyst Joshua Foust has noted, such an attack would surely turn much of the country against us and severely derail our counter-terrorism efforts in the long-haul. It’s also just lazy - an easy response to a problem that is much more complex and deeply-rooted.
But, that quibble aside, Obama generally appears to have a good read on Pakistan. When he talks about the region, he shows some understanding of the nuances of the country’s historic and current political situation. He’s skeptical of Musharraf, thinks American policy should be based on more than just anti-terrorism, and he has more of an overarching vision than any of the other candidates. Consider, for example, what he said earlier this week:
The choice is not between Musharraf and Islamic extremists. As the recent legislative elections showed, there is a moderate majority of Pakistanis, and they are the people we need on our side to win the war against al Qaeda. That is why we should dramatically increase our support for the Pakistani people – for education, economic development, and democratic institutions. That child in Pakistan must know that we want a better life for him, that America is on his side, and that his interest in opportunity is our interest as well. That’s the promise that America must stand for.
So refreshing. And especially nice to hear him point out that Musharraf is not the only alternative to Taliban rule - a myth we’re hearing a lot of these days. Particularly considering what’s par for the course on Pakistan analysis — I’m looking at you, John McCain — Obama has distinguished himself in the presidential field.
With President Bush’s would-be successors squabbling over Iraq, they are neglecting the main threat of terror that will face one of them taking office next January.
In Pakistan, Musharraf is on his way out as leaders of the two dominant parties agree to reinstate the judges he fired and try to strip him of crucial powers. (More on the nuclear dilemma here.)
“Afghanistan is slipping toward failure,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden warns. “The Taliban is back, violence is up, drug production is booming and the Afghans are losing faith in their government. All the legs of our strategy–security, counter-narcotics efforts, reconstruction and governance–have gone wobbly.”
The schedule of staying or going in Iraq is dominating the foreign policy debate in the presidential campaign, but Pakistan and Afghanistan are becoming more urgent.
“If we should have had a surge anywhere,” Sen. Biden wrote last week in the New York Times, “it is Afghanistan…In six years, we have spent on Afghanistan’s reconstruction only what we spend every three weeks on military operations in Iraq.”
The border area between the two countries, according to Biden is “a freeway of fundamentalism: the Taliban and Al Qaeda find sanctuary in Pakistan, while Pakistani suicide bombers wreak havoc in Afghanistan.”
The Bush-Cheney strategy of relying on Musharraf’s unreliable assurances about rooting them out is collapsing, but this Administration is unlikely to face that fact.
Biden sums it up: “The next president will have to rally America and the world to ‘fight them over there unless we want to fight them over here.’ The ‘over there’ is not, as President Bush has claimed, Iraq, but rather the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
Voters should be pressing Sens. McCain, Clinton and Obama to tell them what they are going to do about that.
This is just one of the allegations in Roger Faligot’s book, The Chinese Secret Services: From Mao to the Olympic Games. This specialist in intelligence retraces the history of the ties between the Middle Kingdom and al-Qaeda. According to this review of the book from Le Matin of Switzerland, the author writes, ‘The first negotiations with Osama bin Laden’s entourage are alleged to have been held in 2006 in Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province … What has China promised to prevent a suicide bomber from blowing himself up during the finals for the 100-meter dash? And most importantly, what confidence can we give any commitment undertaken by Osama bin Laden? The answer will come next August in Beijing.’
By Ian Hamel
Translated By James Jacobson
February 23, 2008
Switzerland - Le Matin - Original Article (French)
Tomorrow, the word “Guoanbu ” will be as familiar as CIA, KGB or General Intelligence . China has not only become a great world power, it has also erected the most important secret services in the world. They comprise two million spies who scrutinize your acts and gestures, especially if you’re an athlete, a sports journalist or an opponent of the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing. For the latter, China has also established a center for special intelligence equipped with a budget of $1.3 billion.
Security has become a national priority in the Middle Kingdom, which dreads nothing more than dramas like the one that occurred in Tiananmen Square in 1989 ; demonstrations by Beijing’s Uyghur opponents (a Muslim minority from West China ); or protests by the Tibetans, during the global festival of sport next August. In The Chinese Secret Services. from Mao to the Olympic Games, China expert Roger Faligot reveals that General Chen Xiaogong, the new coordinator of military intelligence, negotiated with al-Qaeda to prevent terrorist attacks during the Olympics.
MAO’S GRANDSON
There relationship between China and the Islamist movement are long-standing. At the end of 1979 beginning with the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, the Chinese decided to help the Mujahideen. Beijing provided Simonov sub-machine guns and Kalashnikov assault rifles, which have the advantage of using the same ammunition as Russian weapons. Within the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad, there is a military attaché named Kong Jining. This commander, who supplied the Islamists with weapons of war, was none other than Mao Zedong’s grandson.
“The choice of such an agent shows the importance that the Chinese placed on operations in Afghanistan. These good relations have continued with the Taliban. At the end of 2001 …
With the economy in a nosedive, the Democratic Congress is beginning to turn its anti-war focus on the dollars that are being drained by Bush’s Mideast policies.
“In a shift from last year’s failed legislative efforts to force a reduction of troops,” the New York Timesreports, “the Democrats’ new approach is…focusing on the financial cost of military operations and on the war’s implications for the nation’s troubled economy.”
This coupling comes on the heels of a new book, “The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict” by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz with Linda Bilmes, which estimates that Iraq has already cost almost ten times as much as the first Gulf War, almost a third more than Vietnam and twice as much as the First World War.
Stiglitz told a British think tank this week that war spending was a hidden cause of the current credit crunch after our central bank responded to the financial drain by flooding the American economy with cheap credit.
February 28th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
The Director of US National Intelligence Michael McConnell told the Bush administration that Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf faces the threat of being impeached if the two major parties — PPP and PML(N) — which have joined hands to form the next government get the support of independents, reports The Times of India. More here…
February 28th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
I am just adding another point to Shaun Mullen’s post on the Bush administration’s acts of, what he calls, “criminality and misdeeds”. What took my breath away was this story in The Guardian newspaper that American officials processing the payments at the US embassy in Islamabad have concluded that no one knows where 70 per cent of the American aid to Pakistan has vanished!!! Wow!
“America’s massive military aid package to Pakistan has come under scrutiny after allegations that as much as 70% of $5.4bn in assistance has been misspent. Pakistan provides over 100,000 troops and directs the fight; the US foots the bill for food, fuel, ammunition and maintenance. The cash payments — averaging $80m a month — have been a cornerstone of US support for President Pervez Musharraf.”
So is Bush and Co scared that once their man in Islamabad leaves office a lot of inconvenient questions may surface? Is it that the major threat to the US administration in the “War on Terror” does not come from terrorists but the change of guard in Islamabad? But that’s not the point. What is alarming is that no one in the US seems interested in the blatant misuse of the public money.
Let’s continue with The Guardian story: “Since 2002, the US has paid the operating costs of Pakistan’s military operations in the tribal belt along the Afghan border, where Taliban and al-Qaida fighters are sheltering.
“But over the past 18 months, as militants seized vast swaths of the tribal belt and repelled a string of Pakistani offensives, the funding has come under the microscope.
“The controversy highlights not only strains in the relationship between Washington and Islamabad but also the limits of President George Bush’s ‘war on terror’.”
February 28th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
The cussed approach of the US administration bodes ill for the emerging democracy in Pakistan and may create a serious crisis there. This is becoming clear by the latest news. The Pakistani Spectator says that the political parties that have won decisively, especially Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N party does not believe that President Pervez Musharraf would leave office voluntarily, and is lobbying hard for his impeachment.
The blog adds that Nawaz Sharif’s party has the support of the late Benazir Bhutto’s PPP and other parties, including the independents, other nationalist parties from Balochistan, and even defectors from the PML-Q (who were badly humiliated at the hustings this time) on whose support Musharraf became president before the general elections.
Leaders of political parties are meeting at the moment and once the ruling coalition gets two-thirds majority it would be an exteremly tough going for President Musharraf with impeachment staring him in his face.
The Pakistani Spectator says that in this action packed drama the US ambassador to Pakistan is playing a desperate game to ensure the survival of President Musharraf. The blog says that now it is the battle between the US ambassador and the mandate of the Pakistani people.
Wow! Is this another form of ‘War on Terror’? Or an attempt to cover up the strange goings-on between Bush and Musharraf during the past seven years with billions of dollars pouring into Pakistan’s army establishment led by the present Pakistani President? So who are the real terrorists? No one has the guts to answer that question…!!!
Meanwhile NYT reports that Nawaz Sharif increased the pressure on President Pervez Musharraf by urging him to call a session of Parliament and contending that the three opposition parties discussing a coalition had won two-thirds of the seats. Read the rest of this entry »
February 26th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
We do live in strange and brutal times. Pakistan’s Ambassador to Afghanistan, Tariq Azizuddin, went missing a fortnight ago as he was travelling by road through a volatile region in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. But there has been no international outrage or concern.
Even the media is not bothered. If it had been a case of even one missing US/British/European soldier, the media would have then woken up and gone overboard.
Shame, indeed!!!
For my earlier post on the kidnapping of this senior diplomat, please click here…
February 26th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Those in the USA panicking over the recent poll results/developments in Pakistan which resulted in a resounding defeat of America’s favourite military dictator President Pervez Musharraf, can have some hope. How? The Newsweek magazine team believes that Washington can expect to get along reasonably well with Pakistan’s (possible) next prime minister.
“The Pakistan People’s Party, the dominant partner in the newly elected ruling coalition, has chosen the eminently trusted politician Makhdoom Amin Fahim for the job, according to a PPP official who asked not to be named prior to the official announcement. Fahim, 68, is notoriously lacking in charisma, but he does have a demonstrated ability to get things done. Better yet, he possesses an attribute that makes him a rarity among the country’s senior politicians: an immaculate reputation for honesty. And he’s known to favor close military and economic ties with the United States.”
February 24th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Will he?…Will he not? The once mighty ex-general Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan has become a pathetic figure desperately trying to cling on to the presidential chair. Meanwhile the new democratically elected politicians and the Pakistani public seem adamant…and are sending a clear message that the military dictator should move out of the presidential palace.
Yesterday I saw the BBC’s “Have Your Say” programme that reflects opinions worldwide on a topical subject. The majority verdict favoured that Mr Musharraf bow out of office instead of going through the ugly drama of impeachment by the newly elected parliament in Pakistan…But the world has come to believe that Musharraf would not leave office until his mentor in the White House orders him to do so. (However, the mentor has a few more months to go before he too is reduced to a similar situation as his Pakistani protege).
The last the world heard on this subject was that Bush & Co were pleading with (or pressurising) the new democratically elected Pakistani leaders to allow Musharraf to stay on. Says so much eloquently for the USA promoting democracies in the world and fighting ‘dictators’!!!
Pakistan’s wellknown newspaper The Dawn reports: “US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has backed President Pervez Musharraf in the strongest possible term, calling him the man the United States has been dealing with as the president and wants to continue to do so. Her endorsement comes three days after President Bush telephoned his Pakistani counterpart, apparently to assure him that his administration still recognises Mr Musharraf as the president of Pakistan despite the changes that followed the elections.”
While the Hindustan Times says: “Pakistan’s president Pervez Musharraf may soon resign to avoid being pushed out by the new coalition of the Pakistan Muslim League(N) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), which will shortly assume power, according to a report in The Sunday Telegraph.
We need an International Afghanistan Study Group, modeled after the Iraq Study Group, but with representatives from Europe and Asia as well.
To save the NATO mission in Afghanistan, we have to conduct a thorough, frank and honest evaluation of all our political and military strategies in Central Asia. We have to debate fresh and controversial policy alternatives, which include negotiations with the Taliban, the replacement of the Karzai government, military incursions into Pakistan, the involvement of Iran and Russia as well as complete NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan. Every option has to be put on the table and discussed on its merits.
So far the Afghanistan debate seems to be focused on how many troops European and American nations deploy to southern Afghanistan. The United States and Canada are angry that Germany and some other European countries do not share the burden of the heavy fighting. These concerns are important, but we have to discuss strategy as well. Not just the implementation of the current US led policy. Europeans will be more likely to send troops into harms way, if they are convinced that NATO has a promising strategy in Afghanistan.
While the United States (and Canada) are pushing strongly for more European troops, the Afghan government has different priorities: President Karzai has “repeatedly urged Western allies to provide more funds and resources to the Afghan security forces, rather than send more troops,” writes Sayed Salahuddin for Reuters. He adds that a government-run daily newspaper accused Karzai of being “under the influence of foreign powers and troops led by NATO” and that “the U.S. must set a firm date for their departure from Afghanistan.” Then again, Karzai has not been a great president for his country so far. Karzai also rejected Paddy Ashdown as the United Nations special envoy for Afghanistan, although he might have contributed to better coordination among various international agencies in Afghanistan.
Therefore, North American and European governments, parliaments and think tanks need to evaluate all current Afghanistan policies and suggest bold proposals that go beyond calls for more troops. We need an Afghanistan Study Group, that takes the Baker-Hamilton commission on Iraq as a model, but includes Europeans and even Iranians, Pakistani, and Russians.
