Pakistan
Posted at 11:00pm on Jun. 10, 2008 The peace agreements between Pakistan and the Taliban (that you probably haven't heard of)
By Jeff Emanuel
An Erstwhile "Ally" in the War on Terror Sells its Soul for Thirty Pieces of Silver and an Agreement its Enemies will Never Live up to
On February 17, the Pakistani government and the Taliban jointly signed a peace treaty dealing with the North Waziristan region of the Afghan/Pakistani border area (see graphic at right, and click for more detailed map). The agreement was shrouded in secrecy, with its terms being kept under wraps by both parties.
This weekend, a Pakistani news organization, the Daily Times, managed to obtain a copy of the agreement, which they roughly outlined on their web site.
They report that the agreement, "inked between the government and the Utmanzai tribes on February 17 to fight Taliban-linked militancy through support from the local population," contains the following terms:
- • Sharing the agreement’s contents with the media violates the terms laid down in the document [Auth. note: There is no information available yet as to how this leaking of the peace agreement to the Daily Times will affect the overall agreement, given this requirement]
- • "Al Qaeda-linked militants" are allowed to live in North Waziristan "as long as they pledge to remain peaceful"
- • "All foreigners" are required to "leave the area"
- • No "parallel government of suspected Taliban militants" will be tolerated
- • There will be "no attacks on security personnel or government employees" and no "target killings" will be "initiated" [Auth. note: The Daily Times points out that "suspected Taliban militants continue to blow up CD shops in Miranshah and target killings have continued despite the February 17 peace deal"]
- • Any violator of the peace accord will be fined 50 million Pakistani Rupees [Auth. note: Approximately U.S. $742,000]
Posted in Al Qaeda | appeasement | Foreign Affairs | foreign policy | GWOT | Pakistan | Taliban | War — Comments (19) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 6:55pm on May 26, 2008 The Unraveling.
No, not quite a metaphor for the Obama campaign.
By Moe Lane
Yet. But the Senator's going to have to address the details of this TNR piece (via Glenn Reynolds) on the way that Al Qaeda's name is rapidly taking on the characteristics of mud among the very groups and cultures that they were hoping to impress with 9/11. Particularly since, as a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Senator Obama is theoretically in a perfect position to either confirm or deny the arguments made by TNR. Although that doesn't explain why he hasn't talked about it before now: well, one more thing for him to clear up.
Senator Obama is welcome to take his time, of course. Every day that he sticks to his current narrative that the war is lost, and we must flee is one more day where he becomes ever more inextricably attached to that narrative - for good, or for ill. Probably ill, in his case... given that reality is showing a distressing tendency to not care about Senator Obama's election prospects. None the less, he can still get out of this.
All Senator Obama has to do is go on the air and admit that he was wrong.
Posted in Al Qaeda | Barack Obama | Iraq | Pakistan | War — Comments (12)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 8:01pm on May 13, 2008 Deadly bombings in India have "hallmarks of an al Qaeda operation"
It truly is a *global* war on terror
By Jeff Emanuel
Eight bombs were detonated today in Jaipur, India, killing at least 60 people and injuring at least 200. A ninth bomb was found and disarmed by Indian authorities.
The blasts occurred within a dozen minutes of each other, according to the Times of India. Indian authorities have said that early evidence points to the terrorist attacks being the work of the Bangladesh-based al Qaeda affiliate Harkat ul Jihad al Islami, or "HuJI-B."
The Long War Journal is reporting that "some officials believe the Pakistani-based Jaish-e-Mohammed terror group assisted in the attacks," as well.
Read on.
Posted in Al Qaeda | Bangladesh | GWOT | India | Long War Journal | Pakistan | terrorism | War — Comments (4)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 1:28pm on Apr. 29, 2008 Great Game Redux
By streiff
Geopolitics, like nature, abhors a vacuum.
From India Defence:
Indian television news channel 'NDTV' reports that a team from the Indian Army will be actively training the Afghan National Army (ANA) later this year. The team is heading to Kabul in the upcoming months.
The Indian Military team will be in Afghanistan as soon as May end to conduct infantry and education corps related training. Another team is to be dispatched to Uzbekistan in the next six months for a similar training programme. Besides teaching English to the troops, it will train them in weapon handling, map craft and fundamental battalion procedures.
'NDTV' quotes "top military officials" as making the revelations to the news channel.
The decision is bound to raise eyebrows in Rawalpindi, which forever has thought of Afghanistan as a Pakistani colony and has been following the "strategic depth" policy for over 3 decades with reference to Kabul.
Since 2001, several Indian military delegations have visited Afghanistan but this is the first time a full-fledged military team will be stationed there. India already has BRO jawans in Afghanistan engaged in various security missions.
The decision to send the team to Kabul was taken in February, and on last Friday the annual Army Commanders' conference also approved plans to send a similar team to Uzbekistan reports NDTV.
Although India is one of the largest contributors to UN peacekeeping forces around the world it is for the first time in the past decade that India is getting involved in a non-UN military mission.
Afghanistan is a important country in the region and security and stability in Afghanistan is critical for stability in India and South Asia as a whole.
Read on.
Posted in Afghanistan | Foreign Affairs | India | Pakistan | the great game — Comments (1)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 1:24am on Feb. 19, 2008 The Pakistani Powder Keg
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
As might have been expected, the government of Pervez Musharraf has suffered a comprehensive defeat in parliamentary elections. The smart thing for Musharraf to do at this point is to try to work with the Pakistan People's Party in creating some form of political consensus in the country. Instead, what is likely to happen is that the Musharraf government will try to curb the PPP's power by fomenting some form of confrontation. The Bush Administration would do well to immediately call on the government to respect the results of the election and it should reach out to the winners to create ties that may be needed in the event that Musharraf falls.
We are at the end of the beginning when it comes to Pakistan. If, dear reader, you have a nagging and uncomfortable feeling that things are about to get tense and bloody in the country . . . well . . . I hope that you are wrong, but your nagging and uncomfortable feeling would show that you are quite familiar with Pakistan's political history.
Posted in Foreign Affairs | Pakistan — Comments (3)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 2:31pm on Dec. 29, 2007 Bhutto Assassination Renews Concern About Huckabee's Foreign Policy
By California Yankee
Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's first reaction to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto was a diplomatic blunder. Huckabee expressed "our sincere concern and apologies for what has happened in Pakistan." After criticism, Huckabee's campaign said he meant to say "sympathies" not "apologies." In the same statement, Huckabee revealed that he was unaware that martial law was lifted in Pakistan about two weeks ago.
Posted in 2008 | Bhutto Assassination | foreign policy | Immigration | Mike Huckabee | National Security | Pakistan — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:00am on Dec. 28, 2007 Al Qaeda Opens a New Front
Does Bhutto’s Death Mean the End of Iraq?
By Mark I
Al Qaeda’s military commander in Afghanistan claims that the terror group coordinated the effort that led to the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi, Pakistan yesterday. In a telephone interview with Asia Times Online (NSA boys, did you get this one on tape?), Mustafa Abu al-Yazid said that the killing was part of an al Qaeda plan to destabilize Pakistan by hitting at “precious American assets” there.
”We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat mujahideen. This is our first major victory against those who have been siding with infidels in a fight against al-Qaeda and declared a war against mujahideen.”
Al-Yazid goes on to describe a fairly elaborate effort at tracking and targeting Bhutto and President Pervez Musharraf involving indigenous extremist groups acting on orders from al Qaeda. California Yankee reports that US Intelligence agencies have not yet confirmed that al Qaeda was responsible. But couple the claim with reports from earlier this month that defeated al Qaeda forces were moving out of Iraq and heading back to Afghanistan, and it begs the question: Does Bhutto’s death mean that the Iraq war is essentially over?
Read on…
Posted in Afghanistan | al-Qaeda | Benazir Bhutto | Iraq | Pakistan | Pervez Musharraf | War | War on Terror — Comments (9)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 4:14pm on Dec. 27, 2007 And Pakistan Goes Insane
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
Anyone who thinks that foreign policy is not going to be a big issue in the upcoming Presidential campaign has likely had his/her world rocked by the assassination of Benazir Bhutto today:
Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday in a suicide attack that also killed at least 20 others at a campaign rally, aides said.
Bhutto's supporters erupted in anger and grief after her death, attacking police and burning tires and election campaign posters in several cities. At the hospital where she died, some smashed glass and wailed, chanting slogans against President Pervez Musharraf.
The death of the 54-year-old charismatic former prime minister threw the campaign for the Jan. 8 parliamentary elections into chaos and created fears of mass protests and violence across the nuclear-armed nation, an important U.S. ally in the war on terrorism.
Musharraf convened an emergency meeting with his senior staff where they were expected to discuss whether to postpone the election, an official at the Interior Ministry said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.
Read on . . .
Posted in Benazir Bhutto | Foreign Affairs | Pakistan | Pervez Musharraf | terrorism — Comments (29)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 12:39pm on Dec. 27, 2007 America Needs Men like Musharraf
By Ben Domenech
The death of Benazir Bhutto is tragic, yes. But it was also absolutely a predictable event. I am convinced that Musharraf himself made every effort to protect Bhutto, but ever since she arrived in Pakistan after the U.S.-brokered deal for her return and rejected the government security efforts, the efforts to assassinate her were inevitably going to succeed. Her insistence on relying on her own greenhorn security forces, and speaking to her supporters in the old way - the large rallies, the public demonstrations - were decisions that doomed her to martyrdom. There is a point where courage becomes recklessness, and Bhutto was far beyond that point.
Talk that Musharraf was a tacit supporter of this assassination is balderdash in my mind - he was never one who wanted Bhutto dead, nor the political pressure that will come with it. The man has stuck his neck out for American interests on more than one occasion, he's now taken off his uniform, he was willing to participate in a negotiated power-sharing alliance - and in return, he was blasted for announcing a crackdown and state of emergency that, in retrospect, was more than deserved.
It is a sad day for freedom and democracy in Pakistan and around the world - but a predictable one.
Posted at 3:58am on Nov. 7, 2007 Potential Good News?
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
It may be that the Pakistani government was forced to back down from its claims that elections would be postponed in the wake of the current emergency declared by President Musharraf. If so, this is very good news and apparently, very adroit maneuvering by the White House. It is a relief to see that the United States appears to have a great deal of influence with Islamabad. It was--and is--sorely needed to see us through the current crisis in Pakistan.
Posted at 1:35pm on Nov. 6, 2007 Pakistan and our democracy problem.
By Paul J Cella
Well this Pakistan situation has put our Democracy Project under some embarrassing pressure, hasn’t it?
Consider the question: should it even be our long-term policy to open a place like Pakistan to the wild winds of popular opinion, in other words, to push it toward democracy? The country is not, in fact, teeming with responsible liberals and democrats. There are some of these brave and heroic souls, yes; but what Pakistan really teems with is various lunatic factions of the Jihad. Factions that are a heartbeat or two away from a nuclear arsenal.
Read on.
Posted in democracy | Foreign Affairs | Islam | Pakistan | the Jihad — Comments (15)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 12:46am on Nov. 5, 2007 Pakistan
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
Quite a pickle indeed. In fairness to the White House, it should be pointed out that it will probably take a fair amount of time before any realistic options can be clear. Additionally, it should be noted that an imperfect Musharraf probably is preferable to the alternative, as the story references. But at the same time, an imperfect Musharraf will probably eventually lead to those significantly worse alternatives.
Posted at 5:42pm on Nov. 3, 2007 Okay, So We Have Problems In Pakistan
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
Gen. Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Pakistan on Saturday, suspending the constitution, replacing the chief justice before a crucial Supreme Court ruling on his future as president, and cutting communications in the capital.
Pakistan's main opposition leader, Benezir Bhutto, flew back to the country from Dubai and was sitting in an airplane at Karachi's airport, waiting to see if she would be arrested or deported, a spokesman said. Dozens of paramilitary troops surrounded her house.
Seven of the 18 Supreme Court judges immediately condemned the emergency, which suspended the current constitution. Police blocked entry to the Supreme Court building and later took the chief justice and other judges away in a convoy, witnesses said.
The government halted all television transmissions in major cities other than state-controlled Pakistan TV. Telephone service in the capital, Islamabad, was cut.
A copy of the emergency order obtained by The Associated Press justified the declaration on the grounds that "some members of the judiciary are working at cross purposes with the executive" and "weakening the government's resolve" to fight terrorism.
Obviously, this situation will require restraint on all sides for the various parties to be able to sit down and settle their disputes. But the long term issue at stake here appears to be Musharraf's fear that by relinquishing his position as Army chief of staff in anticipation of renewing his term as President of Pakistan, he will give up massive amounts of political power and in fact be vulnerable to a coup in the future.
American policy should remain consistent in urging Musharraf to step down as Army chief of staff. Musharraf will keep finding reasons not to do so. In the immediate term, this spells deep trouble for Pakistan and a significant challenge for American foreign policy. And the fact that this crisis is occurring while American and Pakistani forces are working to further curb al Qaeda's reach and influence makes resolving the issue all the more important and urgent.
Posted in Foreign Affairs | Musharraf | Pakistan — Comments (6)/ Email this page » / Read More »
