Washington DC Jan 14: While U.S. President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai reached a rough understanding this past weekend on how to wind down the longest war in U.S. history, now in its 12th year, the Afghans have been fighting continuously since the Soviet Union invaded their country in 1979. ]
But the latest agreement didn’t include the key ingredient — Pakistan.
And without Pakistan, no peaceful settlement is possible. But even with Pakistan, reeling from sectarian strife that has taken some 32,000 lives this past year, an Afghan settlement would appear a bridge too far.
Karachi, a port city of 21 million, “is a violent urban jungle with an assortment of lowlifes keeping the population hostage to their bastardly instincts,” columnist Ejaz Haider wrote last week in Pakistan’s The Express Tribune.
Haider’s description of the gigantic port city: “There are the scions of Baloch and Sindhi sardars . . . who move around in SUVs with guards brandishing weapons . . . with a rural-medieval mindset.”
Then there are, adds Haider, “crooked politicians, their guards, political storm troopers, criminal gangs, ranging from thieves to land grabbers to extortionists and murderers to hired guns; cops on the take; a government split along ethnic lines; anyone who can rent a gun and settle a score.”
And at the center of all of this, “Taliban terrorists and sectarian killers and you have, dear non-Karachiite reader, what is Karachi.”
Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is the counterpart of Afghanistan’s Taliban. With a major difference: the Pakistani Taliban recruited among the low-life and its ranks now include criminal gangs, including felons and murderers.
TTP specializes in urban terrorism where the army is loath to intervene after driving terrorists from the countryside to inner cities where law enforcement lacks counterterrorism skills — and funds.
When reading about TTP’s criminal and terrorist clout in major cities, it is tempting to conclude this is just one more foreign crisis that doesn’t concern us. But Pakistan is a nuclear power.
And not to be dismissed are opportunities for secret alliances between terrorists and younger anti-U.S. army officers on duty in underground nuclear weapons sites. Many officers believe the deluge of anti-U.S. disinformation in the Pakistani media.
Some of the Pakistani officers who were banned from traveling in the United States throughout the 1990s as retaliation for the country’s secret nuclear weapons program (designed to match India’s) are now one-, two-, or three-star generals.
With the TTP’s stepped up terrorist operations, safe and secure elections in Pakistan are pure fantasy.
On Dec. 22, a suicide bomber killed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Minister Bashir Ahmad Bilour, a much-respected political figure, while he was attending a pre-election meeting. Bilour had survived three previous attempts to kill him. His crime: Raising his voice against TTP.
TTP accepted responsibility “in the name of war against secular elements in our political life.”
Bilour was a national figure and his Pakistan Peoples Party observed a national day of mourning across the country. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government shut down for three days.
TTP’s first prominent target was Benazir Bhutto, killed five years ago. Now influential moderate voices are warned they are on TTP’s hit list. And TTP also announced it planned to go international, especially against the United States.
Pakistan’s TTP terrorists, like the Afghan Taliban, have bases in the mountain tribal areas on the Afghan border and so far they appear to have escaped the U.S. drone attack strategy. They recently sent a message to the Pakistan army command about a “unilateral cease-fire in order to focus on the U.S. enemy in Afghanistan.”
Afghan peace talks cannot be conducted in isolation from a rapidly deteriorating Pakistan security situation.
TTP terrorists are executing a “devastation of Pakistan” strategy, targeting army general headquarters in Rawalpindi, the Mehran naval air station outside Karachi (where they destroyed half a dozen jet aircraft in May 2011); airports; factories; public places, including Christian, Shiite, and Sunni places of worship.
Even polio vaccination places are targeted, which forced the government to stop its anti-polio campaign.
The Taliban, reported one UPI correspondent who asked that his name be withheld for his protection, have their network of sympathizers in every walk of life. Many political and religious parties are reluctant to criticize them in public.
A number of media organs don’t report attacks by TTP. TTP moles are believed to be embedded in security agencies.
Denials notwithstanding, the Pakistani army is also protecting the “good Taliban” and crushing the “bad Taliban.”
There are no easy solutions. Political will, and security wherewithal, are missing.
A recent TTP video said, “The government will have to quit its alliance with the U.S. that will then have to abandon its war in Afghanistan that will then have to rewrite the country’s constitution according to Shariah law — and apologize for the war they launched against us.”
A mouthful — but the message and the ultimate objective are clear.
Pakistan’s nightmare scenario is an election victory for the immensely popular Dr. A.Q. Khan, the notorious nuclear black marketer, who stole nuclear bomb manufacturing secrets from the Netherlands for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, and then sold them to Iran, North Korea, and Libya.
On the same election ticket as Khan is fellow traveler Gen. Hamid Gul, a former head of Pakistani intelligence who was the first to launch the canard about 9/11 being the work of the CIA, Israel’s Mossad, and the U.S. Air Force.
Gul is also an admirer of the Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Omar, in hiding since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11. He met with Omar two weeks before 9/11.
This weekend 14 Pak soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb, a Sunni attack on Shiite Muslims killed 86 in Quetta (Baluchistan) and a “Million Man March” led by an anti-TTP cleric who spent the last six years in Canada, left Lahore for Islamabad — with 2,000 volunteers.
Forgoing is a guide for the coming week’s political upheaval in Pakistan.
Noted editor and journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave is an editor at large for United Press International. He is a founding board member of Newsmax.com who now serves on Newsmax’s Advisory Board.
Washington DC, Dec 29: On the brink of a new year, Pakistan faces an unstable future. Can the son of assassinated prime minister Benazir Bhutto break through the chaos?
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, son of Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, stepped onto the national stage for the first time this week, to give a speech marking the fifth anniversary of Benazir’s murder. Still too young to run for office, the 24-year-old Bhutto’s coming out adds more drama to what will be a pivotal year for Pakistan. National elections, turnover at the top military position, and the denouement in the war in Afghanistan all promise to make 2013 a critical year for a country that is both under siege by terrorism and the center of the global jihadist movement.
Bilawal’s grandfather, uncles, and mother all were murdered in political violence. Zulfikar Bhutto was hung in 1979 by Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, his two uncles died in mysterious plots, and his mother was assassinated by al Qaeda and the Taliban. His family story resembles Pakistan’s reality. Pakistanis a country in the midst of a long and painful crisis. Since 2001, according to the government, 45,000 Pakistanis have died in terrorist-related violence, including 7,000 security personnel. Suicide bombings were unheard of before the 9/11 attacks; there have been 300 since then. The country’s biggest city,Karachi, is a battlefield. One measure of Pakistan’s instability is that the country now has between 300 and 500 private-security firms, employing 300,000 armed guards, most run by ex-generals. The American intelligence community’s new global estimate rates Pakistan among the most likely states in the world to fail by 2030.
wanted on America’s counter terrorism list live in Pakistan. The mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai massacre and head of Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hafiz Saeed, make no effort to hide. He is feted by the army and the political elite, appears on television, and calls for the destruction of India frequently and jihad against America and Israel. The head of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, shuttles between Pakistan intelligence (ISI) safe houses in Quetta and Karachi. The emir of al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is probably hiding in a villa not much different from the one his predecessor was living in with his wives and children in Abbottabad until May 2011.
Pakistan also has the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal in the world, bigger than Great Britain’s. The nukes are in the hands of the generals; the civilian government has only nominal control. President Zardari has only nominal influence over the ISI as well; indeed it deliberately botched the security for Benazir to help get rid of her, and it has conspired for five years to get rid of him, too.
Against the odds, Zardari has survived. By next fall, he will have served five years, becoming the first elected civilian leader to complete a full term in office and pass power to another elected government. It will be a major milestone for Pakistani democracy. Zardari has served years in prison. He often has been called a criminal by many, including in his own family, and the national symbol of corruption. Yet as president he presided over an major transfer of power from the presidency to the prime minister’s office, even the titular National Command Authority over the nukes, to ensure the country is more democratic and stable.
The parliamentary election in the spring will be a replay of every Pakistani election since 1988, pitting Nawaz Sharif’s party against the Bhuttos. Needless to say, many Pakistanis are sick of the same old stale choices. But the odds favor the old parties. Both Sharif and Zardari are committed to cautiously improving relations with India and trying to reform the Pakistani economy. Both have troubled relations with the Army.
If Sharif returns to the prime minister’s job for a third time, it will be a remarkable next turn in his own odyssey. Sharif was removed from the office in 1999 in an illegal coup and barely escaped alive to go into exile in Saudi Arabia. His decision to withdraw Pakistan’s troops in 1999 during the Kargil War prompted his fall from power, but it also may have saved the world from nuclear destruction. It was a brave move. I remember talking to him and his family in the White House the day after he made the decision to pull back. You could see in his eyes that he knew the Army would defame him, but he knew he was in the right.
But many Pakistanis want a new face to lead their country. Out of desperation, some are turning to cricket star Imran Khan to save Pakistan. The ISI is probably helping his campaign behind the scenes to stir up trouble for the others. He is a long shot at best. He is much more anti-American, anti-drone, and ready to make deals with the Taliban to stop the terror at home. Yet he understands well that Pakistanis a country urgently in need of new thinking.
Whoever wins will inherit an economy and government that is in deep trouble. Two thirds of the 185 million Pakistanis are under 30; 40 million of the 70 million ages 5 to 19 years old are not in school. Fewer than 1 million Pakistanis paid taxes last year. Power blackouts are endemic. Clean water is increasingly scarce, even as catastrophic floods are more common. Growth is 3 percent, too little to keep up with population demand.
It is no wonder that the generals prefer to have the civilians responsible for managing the unmanageable while they guard their prerogatives and decide national-security issues.
So it is no wonder that the generals prefer to have the civilians responsible for managing the unmanageable while they guard their prerogatives and decide national-security issues. As important as the elections next spring will be, the far more important issue is who will be the next chief of Army staff.
The incumbent, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, was given an unprecedented three-year extension in 2010. He is the epitome of the Pakistani officer corps and the so-called deep state. Pervez Musharraf made him director general of the ISI in 2004. On his watch, the Afghan Taliban recovered and regrouped inQuetta, Osama bin Laden built his hideout 800 yards outside Kayani’s alma mater—the Kakul Military Academy in Abbottabad—in 2005, and planning began for the 2008 Lashkar-e-Taiba attack on Mumbai. His term expires in September.
The history of civilians choosing chiefs of Army staff is not encouraging. Zulfikar Bhutto chose Zia ul-Haq, whom he called his “monkey general” because he thought he was apolitical. Zia staged his own coup and then hanged Zulfi. Nawaz Sharif picked Pervez Musharraf, quarreled over the Kargil War, and fired Pervez, who then staged his coup. No wonder Zardari just rolled over Kayani for another three years in 2010. It was the easy way out.
The next COAS will come from the shadowy group of a dozen corps commanders who run the Army. They do not advertise their political views as a rule. By next summer, a consensus will probably emerge in the inner circle on who should succeed Kayani, and the whole world will try to decipher the implications of the choice.
Washington will be watching all of this carefully. U.S.-Pakistan relations are at a low point and may get worse. It is in Afghanistan that the relationship will be most tested in 2013. This past September, the Taliban attacked a base called Camp Bastion, destroying eight U.S. Marine jet aircraft and killing two Marines. The interrogation of the surviving Taliban fighter indicated the attack was planned at an ISI safe haven in Pakistan with Pakistani army expertise. Then in December, the head of Afghan intelligence, Asadullah Khalid, was almost assassinated by a terrorist who the Afghans say came from Pakistan and was sent by the ISI. Incidents like these promise to make 2013 another year of strained relations in the U.S.-Pakistan deadly embrace.
Ankara summit with heads of Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan (Credit: afpak.jpg)
Kabul/Islamabad, Dec 13: Afghan officials say Pakistan has released a new batch of Taliban prisoners, in the latest of a series of concessions to Kabul that could signal greater Pakistani support for a peace deal in Afghanistan.
According to sources in Kabul, Pakistan released nine middle-ranking Taliban commanders, making a total of 18 such prisoners let out of Pakistani jails since last month. Afghan and western officials said most of the Taliban prisoners had been arrested because they had shown interest in making peace, without the permission of the Pakistani military, which has long seen its backing for the insurgents as a strategic bargaining chip.
The prisoner releases come amid a flurry of bilateral meetings and a significant warming in the Afghan-Pakistan relationship, which is almost universally seen as critical to hopes of peaceful settlement in the 11-year Afghan conflict.
A hotline has also been established between the leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey. The Ankara summit followed a meeting of security officials in London on 5 December, and a visit to Pakistan by Afghanistan’s high peace council last month.
The head of the council’s executive, Masoom Stanekzai, said: “You can see two things. One is there is a change of language. Second is they are taking some practical steps.”
He added that the prisoner releases “sent a positive message in terms of building confidence both among the public and with the Taliban”.
Another Afghan official, speaking off the record, said: “If Pakistan co-operates, there could be a major breakthrough in 2013, and that means a sustained period of face-to-face negotiations, and a ceasefire leading to Taliban participation in the [2014] election.”
However, there is still significant scepticism about Pakistan’s motives in Kabul and western capitals, which for years have accused it of stoking the insurgency while paying lip service to peace. “We don’t yet know if this is a tactical or strategic shift,” an Afghan official said.
Pakistan has still not released its most senior Taliban prisoners, most importantly the former second in command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who Kabul believes could be a key participant in any future peace talks. The Pakistani foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, said on Wednesday that it was still too early to discuss Baradar’s release but that Pakistan would continue to release Taliban inmates.
Afghan officials would also prefer to have had a chance to talk to the Taliban prisoners on their release, but they were instead allowed to disperse. Most are thought to have gone back to their families in Pakistan, though one mid-level official is said to have gone to Saudi Arabia, where he has family, and there were unconfirmed reports that at least one had returned to the fight in Afghanistan and another had been re-arrested.
“The litmus test is the insurgency and that has continued unabated,” said one doubtful western expert on the Taliban. “There is no sign that they have reined in these guys because they still think they are their best asset to get the government in Kabul that they want.”
Optimists inside the Karzai government insist that such views do not take into account the dramatically different atmosphere in the most recent talks. They believe there that is now substantial evidence that Pakistan is taking a new view of its long-term interests and preparing for the possibility of the success of an Afghan settlement rather than its failure. They say the Pakistani leadership appears less preoccupied by the longstanding fear that Afghanistan could become an Indian client state that would contribute to Pakistan’s encirclement.
“That is a real change. They didn’t even mention India,” said a participant in recent talks. “They didn’t ask for India to close its consulates. They didn’t talk about their need for a ‘friendly’ Afghanistan. They said they needed a stable Afghanistan.”
He said Pakistan had made further concessions, agreeing to guarantee safe passage to a Taliban delegation to forthcoming informal talks in Chantilly, outside Paris. The Afghan and Pakistani leadership have also discussed deepening military co-ordination. Stanekzai said that there was agreement to organise a joint meeting of Afghan and Pakistani Islamic clerics early in the new year, focused on “how to change the narrative of violence to a narrative of peace”.
Stanekzai would not comment on reports that Afghan officials had visited Baradar in jail in Pakistan, but US officials said that at least one such meeting took place. It is also believed that senior Taliban inmates in Pakistan have been placed under a more liberal regime, such as being allowed to make telephone calls under supervision.
In light of Pakistan’s more positive approach, Stanekzai said, Kabul was determined that last week’s assassination attempt against its national security director would not derail the improvement in the bilateral relationship, although Afghanistan had evidence that the would-be killer – who hid explosives in his underpants – came from Quetta in Pakistan.
“No doubt there are enemies of the peace [process] everywhere and they don’t want this reconciliation to move forward, people who benefit from the continuation of conflict and war,” he said. “They will always create obstacles in order to prevent it, and every time we make some progress there is an incident that happens”
He also called on the Obama administration to release Taliban commanders from Guantánamo Bay, so they could take part in a peace process that began and then stalled in Qatar earlier this year. The release of five Taliban inmates has been delayed because of a lack of agreement between the US and the insurgent leadership on guarantees that they would not re-enter the conflict.
“We do hope that issue is resolved quickly, as this can be a step forward,” Stanekzai said, adding that in return, the Taliban would have to commit to direct peace talks and a ceasefire. He said: “In negotiation and peace talks, you have to give something and you have to get something.”
Washington, Dec 1: The Pentagon will send hundreds of additional spies overseas as part of an ambitious plan to assemble an espionage network that rivals the CIA in size, U.S. officials said.
The project is aimed at transforming the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has been dominated for the past decade by the demands of two wars, into a spy service focused on emerging threats and more closely aligned with the CIA and elite military commando units.
When the expansion is complete, the DIA is expected to have as many as 1,600 “collectors” in positions around the world, an unprecedented total for an agency whose presence abroad numbered in the triple digits in recent years.
The total includes military attachés and others who do not work undercover. But U.S. officials said the growth will be driven over a five-year period by the deployment of a new generation of clandestine operatives. They will be trained by the CIA and often work with the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, but they will get their spying assignments from the Department of Defense.
Among the Pentagon’s top intelligence priorities, officials said, are Islamist militant groups in Africa, weapons transfers by North Korea and Iran, and military modernization underway in China.
“This is not a marginal adjustment for DIA,” the agency’s director, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, said at a recent conference, during which he outlined the changes but did not describe them in detail. “This is a major adjustment for national security.”
The sharp increase in DIA undercover operatives is part of a far-reaching trend: a convergence of the military and intelligence agencies that has blurred their once-distinct missions, capabilities and even their leadership ranks.
Through its drone program, the CIA now accounts for a majority of lethal U.S. operations outside the Afghan war zone. At the same time, the Pentagon’s plan to create what it calls the Defense Clandestine Service, or DCS, reflects the military’s latest and largest foray into secret intelligence work.
The DIA overhaul — combined with the growth of the CIA since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — will create a spy network of unprecedented size. The plan reflects the Obama administration’s affinity for espionage and covert action over conventional force. It also fits in with the administration’s efforts to codify its counterterrorism policies for a sustained conflict and assemble the pieces abroad necessary to carry it out.
Unlike the CIA, the Pentagon’s spy agency is not authorized to conduct covert operations that go beyond intelligence gathering, such as drone strikes, political sabotage or arming militants.
But the DIA has long played a major role in assessing and identifying targets for the U.S. military, which in recent years has assembled a constellation of drone bases stretching from Afghanistan to East Africa.
The expansion of the agency’s clandestine role is likely to heighten concerns that it will be accompanied by an escalation in lethal strikes and other operations outside public view. Because of differences in legal authorities, the military isn’t subject to the same congressional notification requirements as the CIA, leading to potential oversight gaps.
U.S. officials said that the DIA’s realignment won’t hamper congressional scrutiny. “We have to keep congressional staffs and members in the loop,” Flynn said in October, adding that he believes the changes will help the United States anticipate threats and avoid being drawn more directly into what he predicted will be an “era of persistent conflict.”
U.S. officials said the changes for the DIA were enabled by a rare syncing of personalities and interests among top officials at the Pentagon and CIA, many of whom switched from one organization to the other to take their current jobs.
“The stars have been aligning on this for a while,” said a former senior U.S. military official involved in planning the DIA transformation. Like most others interviewed for this article, the former official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the program.
The DIA project has been spearheaded by Michael G. Vickers, the top intelligence official at the Pentagon and a veteran of the CIA.
Agreements on coordination were approved by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, a former CIA director, and retired Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who resigned abruptly as CIA chief last month over an extramarital affair.
The Pentagon announced the DCS plan in April but details have been kept secret. Former senior Defense Department officials said that the DIA now has about 500 “case officers,” the term for clandestine Pentagon and CIA operatives, and that the number is expected to reach between 800 and 1,000 by 2018.
Pentagon and DIA officials declined to discuss specifics. A senior U.S. defense official said the changes will affect thousands of DIA employees, as analysts, logistics specialists and others are reassigned to support additional spies.
The plan still faces some hurdles, including the challenge of creating “cover” arrangements for hundreds of additional spies. U.S. embassies typically have a set number of slots for intelligence operatives posing as diplomats, most of which are taken by the CIA.
The project has also encountered opposition from policymakers on Capitol Hill, who see the terms of the new arrangement as overly generous to the CIA.
The DIA operatives “for the most part are going to be working for CIA station chiefs,” needing their approval to enter a particular country and clearance on which informants they intend to recruit, said a senior congressional official briefed on the plan. “If CIA needs more people working for them, they should be footing the bill.”
Pentagon officials said that sending more DIA operatives overseas will shore up intelligence on subjects that the CIA is not able or willing to pursue. “We are in a position to contribute to defense priorities that frankly CIA is not,” the senior Defense Department official said.
The project was triggered by a classified study by the director of national intelligence last year that concluded that key Pentagon intelligence priorities were falling into gaps created by the DIA’s heavy focus on battlefield issues and CIA’s extensive workload. U.S. officials said the DIA needed to be repositioned as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan give way to what many expect will be a period of sporadic conflicts and simmering threats requiring close-in intelligence work.
“It’s the nature of the world we’re in,” said the senior defense official, who is involved in overseeing the changes at the DIA. “We just see a long-term era of change before things settle.”
The CIA is increasingly overstretched. Obama administration officials have said they expect the agency’s drone campaign against al-Qaeda to continue for at least a decade more, even as the agency faces pressure to stay abreast of issues including turmoil across the Middle East. Meanwhile, the CIA hasn’t met ambitious goals set by former president George W. Bush to expand its own clandestine service.
CIA officials including John D. Bennett, director of the National Clandestine Service, have backed the DIA’s plan. It “amplifies the ability of both CIA and DIA to achieve the best results,” said CIA spokesman Preston Golson.
Defense officials stressed that the DIA has not been given any new authorities or permission to expand its total payroll. Instead, the new spy slots will be created by cutting or converting other positions across the DIA workforce, which has doubled in the past decade — largely through absorption of other military intelligence entities — to about 16,500.
Vickers has given the DIA an infusion of about $100 million to kick-start the program, officials said, but the agency’s total budget is expected to remain stagnant or decline amid mounting financial pressures across the government.
The DIA’s overseas presence already includes hundreds of diplomatic posts — mainly defense attachés, who represent the military at U.S. embassies and openly gather information from foreign counterparts. Their roles won’t change, officials said. The attachés are part of the 1,600 target for the DIA, but such “overt” positions will represent a declining share amid the increase in undercover slots, officials said.
The senior Defense official said the DIA has begun filling the first of the new posts.
For decades, the DIA has employed undercover operatives to gather secrets on foreign militaries and other targets. But the Defense Humint Service, as it was previously known, was often regarded as an inferior sibling to its civilian counterpart.
Previous efforts by the Pentagon to expand its intelligence role — particularly during Donald H. Rumsfeld’s time as defense secretary — led to intense turf skirmishes with the CIA.
Those frictions have been reduced, officials said, largely because the CIA sees advantages to the new arrangement, including assurances that its station chiefs overseas will be kept apprised of DIA missions and have authority to reject any that might conflict with CIA efforts. The CIA will also be able to turn over hundreds of Pentagon-driven assignments to newly arrived DIA operatives.
“The CIA doesn’t want to be looking for surface-to-air missiles in Libya” when it’s also under pressure to assess the opposition in Syria, said a former high-ranking U.S. military intelligence officer who worked closely with both spy services. Even in cases where their assignments overlap, the DIA is likely to be more focused than the CIA on military aspects — what U.S. commanders in Africa might ask about al-Qaeda in Mali, for example, rather than the broader questions raised by the White House.
U.S. officials said DIA operatives, because of their military backgrounds, are often better equipped to recruit sources who can answer narrow military questions such as specifications of China’s fifth-generation fighter aircraft and its work on a nuclear aircraft carrier. “The CIA would like to give up that kind of work,” the former officer said.
The CIA has agreed to add new slots to its training classes at its facility in southern Virginia, known as the Farm, to make room for more military spies. The DIA has accounted for about 20 percent of each class in recent years, but that figure will grow.
The two agencies have also agreed to share resources overseas, including technical gear, logistics support, space in facilities and vehicles. The DIA has even adopted aspects of the CIA’s internal structure, creating a group called “Persia House,” for example, to pool resources on Iran.
The CIA’s influence extends across the DIA’s ranks. Flynn, who became director in July, is a three-star Army general who worked closely with the CIA in Afghanistan and Iraq. His deputy, David R. Shedd, spent the bulk of his career at the CIA, much of it overseas as a spy.
Several officials said the main DIA challenge will be finding ways to slip so many spies into position overseas with limited space in embassies. “There are some definite challenges from a cover perspective,” the senior defense official said.
Placing operatives in conventional military units means finding an excuse for them to stay behind when the unit rotates out before the end of the spy’s job.
Having DIA operatives pose as academics or business executives requires painstaking work to create those false identities, and it means they won’t be protected by diplomatic immunity if caught.
Flynn is seeking to reduce turnover in the DIA’s clandestine service by enabling military members to stay with the agency for multiple overseas tours rather than return to their units. But the DIA is increasingly hiring civilians to fill out its spy ranks.
The DIA has also forged a much tighter relationship with JSOC, the military’s elite and highly lethal commando force, which also carries out drone strikes in Yemen and other countries.
Key aspects of the DIA’s plan were developed by then-Director Ronald L. Burgess, a retired three-star general who had served as intelligence chief to JSOC.
The DIA played an extensive and largely hidden role in JSOC operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, sending analysts into war zones and turning a large chunk of its workforce and computer systems in Virginia into an ana-lytic back office for JSOC.
The head of U.S. Special Operations Command, Adm. William H. McRaven, who directed the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, has pledged to create between 100 and 200 slots for undercover DIA operatives to work with Special Forces teams being deployed across North Africa and other trouble spots, officials said.
“Bill McRaven is a very strong proponent of this,” the senior Defense official said.
The hosting of the Developing Eight Summit in Islamabad, which commenced on November 22, means more than a gathering of eight Muslim nations, as far as Pakistan goes. The meeting, at which President Asif Ali Zardari took over the chairmanship of the group from his Nigerian counterpart, offers Pakistan a chance to pull itself back into the mainstream of global life from the fringes to which it has been pushed, chiefly due to security reasons. The fact that five heads of state attended the event, with Bangladesh and Malaysia represented at the adviser and ministerial levels respectively, marks a rare success for Pakistan — a nation that stands increasingly isolated.
The D-8 group consists of eight nations with a combined estimated total population of one billion. The theme of the summit was ‘Democratic partnership for peace and prosperity’. Pakistan remained keen to focus on trade issues and economic cooperation during the Summit, the events in Gaza overshadowed Summit proceedings to a considerable degree, especially since Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Egyptian leader Mohamed Morsi and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan are all key players in the Middle East crisis. Pakistan was also able to bring up the main item on the agenda: increasing trade between member countries from $130 billion to $507 billion by 2018.
As significant as the discussions were, the symbolism involved in the Summit, marked a major triumph for the government. The visit by Goodluck Jonathan was the first by a Nigerian leader in 28 years. To ensure safe movement to their respective destinations, massive security was put in place, creating a traffic logjam for the locals. This, however, is the price we pay for the militancy that lives on in the country — an issue also discussed at the Summit. We must hope the meeting with key leaders can bear fruit as intended by the objectives of the Summit.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 23rd, 2012.
More than three years ago, I sat in an overflow room in Washington, DC’s Willard Hotel listening to General David Petraeus explain (pdf) how the only solution for the failing war in Afghanistan was a “comprehensive counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy”, modeled after the one that had allegedly achieved so much success in Iraq.
Petraeus’s speech came at the annual meeting of the Center for New American Security, a DC-based thinktank that had become a locus of COIN thinking in DC. And Petraeus was at the peak of his power and acclaim – heralded by both Democrats and Republicans as the man responsible for saving the Iraq war.
The four-star general’s in-depth powerpoint presentation (pdf), with its discussion of securing and serving the population, “understanding local circumstances” separating irreconcilables from reconcilables and living “among the people” was the apogee of COIN thinking, which dominated national security debates in Washington in 2008 and 2009. But, like Petraeus’s career, COIN and its usefulness as a tool for US military planners now lies in tatters.
With last week’s revelations that Petraeus was having an affair as director of the CIA with his biographer Paula Broadwell, this tawdry story is likely to become the most glaring black mark on Petraeus’s career. But while his behavior was reckless, arrogant and, frankly, just plain stupid, it’s ironic that Petraeus is likely to be remembered more for that one personal act rather than his most grave professional mistake – namely, that same counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan for which he was one of Washington’s most influential proponents.
The event at CNAS was the quintessential example of the blinders and hubris that were so pervasive among COIN boosters and, in particular, Petraeus. They were convinced that the surge in Iraq and the use of counterinsurgency tactics there had turned the tide. But as we know now – and should have even been aware then – the reality was far more complicated.
In truth, a number of key social and political shifts occurred in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, which coincided with the US surge. There was the decision by Sunni militias to turn against al-Qaida in Iraq, a group that was responsible for initiating much of the country’s horrifying violence in 2006; there was the ethnic cleansing and enclaving that took place in Baghdad, which turned a once Sunni-dominated city into one controlled by Shiites, and gave both sides in the civil war fewer individuals to seek out and slaughter; there was the mass exodus of refugees out of the country; and later, there was the Sadr ceasefire.
What’s more, those who pushed the Iraq surge narrative suggested that a more humane and civilian-focused approach there had brought success. In reality, the number of civilians killed by US airstrikes had increased nearly four-fold in Iraq; the number of Iraqis in detention jumped 50%. This is not to suggest Petraeus deserves no credit; he smartly took advantage of these larger shifts in Iraqi society to seek an endgame to the conflict.
But the reality is that much of the decline in violence attributed to the actions of US forces was the result of decisions and actions taken by the Iraqis themselves. The US role was important, but hardly decisive.
This, of course, was a much more complicated explanation for what happened in Iraq – and one far less gratifying to US policy-makers. This more nuanced reality did little to prevent Petraeus and his acolytes from not simply taking a victory lap but far worse, using the supposed “lessons of Iraq” to justify a similar course of action in Afghanistan.
Indeed, around the same time as Petraeus’s speech, COIN boosters were regularly arguing that the key to success in Afghanistan was reducing civilian casualties – and that such a goal could be achieved by the application of counter-insurgency tactics.
In reality, the assumptions of COIN advocates were badly flawed and based on unrealistic views of what the US could accomplish. It failed to take account the key ways in which Afghanistan differed from Iraq: the resilience of and public support for the Taliban insurgency; the presence of safe havens across the border; the incompetence of the central government in Kabul; the delusion that US soldiers could be turned into miniature anthropologists with the wherewithal to have a full appreciation of Afghan cultural idiosyncrasies; and finally, an abject refusal to factor in the lack of political support in the United States for a drawn-out counterinsurgency campaign.
Worst of all, COIN advocates committed the cardinal sin of believing that a shift in military tactics or a new commander would be enough to win a military conflict in which the US was engaged. As the great Chinese war philosopher once wrote, “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”. That is a lesson that Petraeus, among others, simply forgot. Indeed, it’s worth remembering that when asked by President Obama, point blank, if a surge of troops to Afghanistan could turn things around in 18 months, Petraeus responded:
“Sir, I’m confident we can train and hand over to the ANA [Afghan National Army] in that time frame.”
Petraeus was wrong – badly wrong. And more than 1,000 American soldiers, and countless more Afghan civilians, have paid the ultimate price for his over-confidence in the capabilities of US troops. And it wasn’t as if Petraeus was an innocent bystander in these discussions: he was working a behind-the-scenes public relations effort – talking to reporters, appearing on news programs – to force the president’s hand on approving a surge force for Afghanistan and the concurrent COIN strategy.
But when he took over as commander of the Afghanistan war in 2010, Petraeus adopted the harsh military strategy that he’d claimed the new, more civilian-focused COIN military plan would eschew. He ramped up airstrikes, which led to more civilian deaths. He increased the use of special forces operations. Perhaps worst of all, he sought to hinder the implementation of a political strategy for ending the war, seeking, instead, a clear military victory against the Taliban.
The greatest indictment of Petraeus’s record is that, 18 months after announcing the surge, President Obama pulled the plug on a military campaign that had clearly failed to realize the ambitious goals of Petraeus and his merry team of COIN boosters. Today, the Afghanistan war is stalemated with little hope of resolution – either militarily or politically – any time soon. While that burden of failure falls hardest on President Obama, General Petraeus is scarcely blameless. Yet, to date, he has almost completely avoided examination for his conduct of the war in Afghanistan.
In an age in which military officers are practically above public reproach – glorified and exalted by politicians and the media – the repeated failures of our military leaders consistently escape analysis and inquiry. This can have serious national security implications. As Joshua Rovner, associate professor of strategy and policy, US Naval War College, said to me in an email conversation, this lack of scrutiny has had grave consequences:
“[W]e have misunderstood our recent history in Iraq and Afghanistan; we have created new myths about strategy that will persist for many years despite their manifest flaws; and we may make bad decisions about intervening in other civil wars based on these myths.”
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were more than just bad strategy; they reflected poor military tactics and generalship. Self-interested and incomplete interpretations of what happened in Iraq led to predictably disastrous results in Afghanistan.
Perhaps we should spend a bit more time looking at that issue, rather who was sleeping with whom.
ISLAMABAD, Nov 14 — Pakistan said it had released at least seven senior Afghan Taliban prisoners on Wednesday, rekindling fragile hopes that Islamabad may be ready to help broker peace talks with the militants as the Western military withdrawal from Afghanistan looms.
A senior Pakistani security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that “seven to eight” Taliban prisoners had been set free but refused to name them. A Western official said the figure could be as high as 14 prisoners. News reports citing Afghan officials said the freed prisoners included Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, a former Taliban justice minister and religious hard-liner.
It was unclear whether the men were to be transferred to Afghan custody or released in Pakistan. But the announcement was mostly seen as an initial sign of good faith by the Pakistanis — perhaps to Afghan Taliban leaders in exile in Pakistan, perhaps to Afghan or American officials who seek to open talks, most likely all of the above — in a slow-moving negotiations process that has been blighted by deep mistrust on all sides.
“Things are starting to move,” said Najam Sethi, a veteran Pakistani commentator. “This is definitely an attempt by Pakistan to change tack and show both sides that they are serious about a settlement and an endgame.”
For years, the ability of the Pakistani Army’s intelligence agency to limit the movement of Afghan Taliban leaders has been seen as a political trump card — an insurance policy that any deal between the insurgents and the Americans or Afghan government would have to go through Pakistan first. Both countries have lobbied the Pakistanis to at least agree in principle to allow more freedom for Taliban leaders to travel in order to make any attempt at peace talks possible.
The release on Wednesday came at the end of a three-day visit to Islamabad by a delegation of Afghan officials from the High Peace Council, which is spearheading the effort by the government of President Hamid Karzai to draw the Taliban into peace talks.
Prisoner releases have been a core demand of the delegation, which had canceled two trips to Pakistan over disagreements with the Pakistanis. “Our demand was that they should hand over some of those Taliban prisoners to us,” Maulavi Shafiullah Nuristani, a member of the High Peace Council, said in Kabul.
In return, the members of the Afghan delegation presented Pakistani officials with a document outlining their intentions for the faltering peace process, known in Afghanistan as “reconciliation,” for the idea that Taliban representatives could perhaps be brought into the national government in return for ending their campaign of violence.
A joint statement issued by Pakistan and Afghanistan on Wednesday evening noted that Pakistan “supports Afghanistan’s vision and road map for achieving durable and lasting peace” and that all sides would “facilitate safe passage to potential negotiators to advance the reconciliation process.”
The two countries agreed to hold a conference of religious scholars, possibly in Saudi Arabia, to discuss Islamist militancy. And they reiterated calls for the Taliban to cut its ties to Al Qaeda — a major American demand.
It was unclear how many of the freed prisoners were high-level Taliban officials. If his release is confirmed, Mullah Turabi would certainly fall in that category: He was the Taliban’s justice minister, and he had legal responsibility for the brutal public executions during Taliban rule in the 1990s and for the destruction of the Buddha statues in Bamian Province in 2001. He was set free by the Afghan government in 2002 in controversial circumstances, only to be later detained in Pakistan.
The Pakistanis made a point, however, of noting that another influential name was not on the release list: Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a former deputy Taliban leader who was captured with American help in February 2010. Afghan officials say he may hold the key to unlocking a tentative negotiation process with the Taliban.
That process is seen by American officials as a crucial part of their military withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 — even as they continue to try to weaken the Taliban’s military footing within Afghanistan. But there are many hurdles to opening talks, with distrust running deep among all four potential parties — the Taliban, the Americans, the Afghans and the Pakistanis.
Hopes of starting a negotiating process seemed to collapse in March, when the Taliban publicly rejected American efforts to set up a back channel in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar amid the Americans’ refusal to release Taliban figures held in the Guantánamo Bay prison camp in Cuba.
American officials believe that an intense debate is under way inside the Taliban leadership over whether to engage in any peace talks or to continue fighting until the bulk of Western forces are gone.
On the Afghan side, even as Mr. Karzai has repeatedly reached out to the Taliban to reconcile with his government, they have rejected the overtures, with some senior figures vowing they will never relent as long as Mr. Karzai or his allies hold power in Kabul. Further complicating matters, Mr. Karzai is suspicious of American overtures toward the Taliban that he views as attempts to go behind his back.
The Pakistani position is also mired in complexity. The United States and Afghanistan have long accused Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency of providing shelter to Taliban leaders and fighters in the western province of Baluchistan and the sprawling port city of Karachi, where Mullah Baradar was captured. The ISI admits to some contact with insurgents, but insists it has no influence over militant operations.
The most contentious issue is the ISI’s hold over the Taliban ruling council, known as the Quetta Shura, named after the capital of Baluchistan, although experts believe meetings now take place in districts around the province.
In recent years, however, that grip has loosened, according to some Western officials and Pakistani analysts.
The new ISI chief, Lt. Gen. Zaheer ul-Islam, is said by some officials to be seeking to mend fences in order to strengthen his hand at any future negotiating table.
Jawad Sukhanyar contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.
Islamabad, Nov 7 – As news of President Obama’s victory reaches Pakistan, many say they do not expect any substantial change in US foreign policy toward the country.
But some Pakistani officials and politicians are quietly hoping that perhaps a cabinet reshuffle and a strengthened mandate, now that reelection pressures are eased, could soften an otherwise tense relationship between the two countries.
And rumors that Sen. John Kerry (D) from Massachusetts could replace Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has some officials hoping that the former’s many-year relationship with Pakistan could pave the way for an even smoother cooperation.
“It is of course up to the US president to appoint the Secretary of State. However, if speculations about Kerry become true, then that would be a positive development – and a lot easier. Kerry has many friends in Pakistan. He obviously knows the region, and the ins and outs of our relationship,” says Fawad Chaudhury, a special assistant to Pakistan’s prime minister.
Kerry was one of the US senators who sponsored the $1.5 billion annual Kerry-Lugar-Berman aid package to Pakistan, and is known for his relationship with the country. He paid visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan following the Navy Seal raid that killed Osama bin Laden, in an effort to save the rocky partnership.
Some within the security establishment agree. “I think he is more soft and understanding toward Pakistan. There may be a better relationship between the two as a result,” says a security official who preferred to remain unnamed.
The official also predicts that Obama’s reelection could have given him a strengthened mandate to pursue the foreign policy line – and vision – that he laid out during his first presidential campaign.
“This time he might be more bold, and have more space to make his own decisions. In the first term, the CIA and Pentagon were calling the shots. Now Obama is less worried about reelection, and can ensure that the State Department sets the line,” says the official.
In an interview before the election, cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan said he tentatively agreed that an Obama win would benefit Pakistan. “Obama’s instincts are basically right. Let’s hope if he wins the second term, we see a different Obama,” he said.
Even Pakistan’s right-wing Islamist political party Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) appears hopeful. “Less pressure on Obama could create some space for small changes in their policy. Perhaps Obama could move closer toward the message he gave the Muslim world in his Cairo speech. But time will tell,” says Fareed Ahmed Paracha, JI’s deputy secretary general.
But Dr. Paracha also echoed the broader apparent disinterest of the Pakistani public in Obama’s victory. “The bottom line is that we need to get our own house in order,” he says. “The US, as such, does not matter.”
Not only does Balochistan have vast mineral resources (resources at Reko Diq alone are estimated in hundreds of billions, if not over a trillion, in dollars, sufficient to put our economic house in order for a decade or so), it also has the largest coastline available to us, housing the only deep sea port at Gawadar. But its real strategic significance is really far greater and durable than that.
Balochistan (and Gawadar) are the essence of our oft repeated ‘strategic location’.
It links us through Iran to the Middle East, and is the outlet for flow of resources from Central Asia, Western China, and Afghanistan. This is also China’s safe outlet to the Atlantic. A cursory look at the map will suffice to comprehend that from China’s eastern ports, sea-borne traffic via the Pacific poses no difficulty but to get to the Middle East or via the Gulf of Aden to the Atlantic is not merely a lengthy, circuitous route via the bottleneck at Straits of Malacca, it is peppered with US naval bases which can interdict traffic at will.
From Gawadar, however, Chinese vessels are at the mouth of the Arabian Gulf and a mere 1400 kms from the Gulf of Aden; what is more, this route is unthreatened. With the growing Chinese industry in the Chinese province of Xinkiang, coupled with an expanded KKH and a parallel rail link, this Strategic Commercial Corridor has become of vital strategic significance to China.
Finally, a Chinese naval presence at Gawadar in the not too distant future will multiply China’s options of power projection. It is in this backdrop that the Chinese warning to the US, in the aftermath of the US raid to execute Osama bin Laden on May 2nd this year when China stated that, “any future attack on Pakistan will be considered an attack on Beijing”, is comprehensible. Pakistan is, for the first time, in a position to be an equal partner in the (so-far) lopsided Sino-Pak relationship!
No wonder then, that Balochistan hosts so many international actors working to our detriment!
While ethnic based target killing has reduced in recent months, militants have now started targeting the pro-Pakistan loyalists. One example is the recent killing of Dr. Lal Bakhsh Baloch of the National Party. Reportedly, his death was ordered by Dr. Allah Nazar, BLF.
An apparently unusual development, but one which is understandable, is that the, usually peaceful Zikri community along the coast has joined the “Baloch Sarmakar”, a title denoting all Baloch insurgents. The Zikris, as we all know, have always been held in low esteem and discriminated against. To prove their “Balochness”, they have joined the insurgents and, very interestingly, I am told that Nadeem Baloch, a Zikri, has been appointed second in command by Allah Nazar!
As of last year, the area of major insurgent activity, which had rooted itself in the area ranging from Kalat to Khuzdar and Naushki, has extended to portions of the Mekran coast, due to afore-stated developments.
Traditionally, the anti-Sardari element among the Baloch were the youth and the very small middle class; these were also (mostly) patriotic and pro-Pakistan. The youth are alienated and, therefore prepared to accept distortions of their history, and are turning into insurgents; the Middle Class has gone into hibernation.
Traditional hold of Baloch Sardars is no longer very strong. All Baloch tribes have divided loyalties under sub-Sardars; all scions of the original Sardar family; most of them fighting each other. The most noteworthy exception is Sardar Khair Bakhsh Marri who enjoys the following of the bulk of his own tribe, as well as that of Baloch militants (and potential militants) and, to a far lesser degree, Ataullah Mengal.
The extent and depth of the corruption in the provincial government is well known and accepted. While many Baloch Pashtun are vehemently resentful of the rampant corruption, most Baloch seem to think it is a way of compensation to the Baloch! They seem to view the corruption as ‘stealing from Pakistan (or Punjab)’. Few, except the middle class, including Pakistan-loyalists who are relatively sidelined, advert to the fact that this corruption has actually deprived them of the development; the lack of which is their current complaint. Few are even aware of the billions of rupees that have been donated by the central government for socio-economic development, education, and human resource development, over the last decade, in addition to the annual budget.
In one instance, Zulfiqar Magsi has been quoted as having responded to a question, by Khair Bakhsh Marri, who asked him, “kiya ho raha hei?” Magsi responded, “Sab mil ke Balochistan kee XXXX XXXX rahe hein!”
Over the last year or so, resentment against the army has begun to decline and the army’s efforts to assist in health, education, and socio-economic welfare have begun to be appreciated. However, the ‘execution’ of Nawab Akbar Bugti still sticks in the Baloch craw, for which they cannot forgive the army, even though most of them are conscious of, and state, that it was on Musharraf’s orders.
On the other hand, naval cantonments along the coastline are a very sore point with the Baloch. Apparently, Naval Cantonments have made no effort to provide locals the kind of facilities that are associated with army cantonments. Very little, if any, effort is being made by PN to extend, health, education, sanitation, or social welfare. In the words of the Baloch, “They (PN personnel) are like foreigners occupying our land who treat us like dirt. We can do manual labor for them, but under armed escort. Even those (Baloch) permitted into their hospital are escorted by an armed guard”. I am not personally witness to this; however, even if this view is an exaggerated one, as we are all aware, in such instances, perceptions are more important than realities.
The general impression, with which I concur, is that there is no coordination between the various organs of the intelligence services in Balochistan, or between any of them and the FC. Consequences are frequently chaotic.
Smuggling arms, weapons, explosives, and drugs continues unabated. The general impression is that this is being done in collaboration with individuals in the intelligence agencies and the FC, in the case of the latter, almost without exception. This accusation is difficult to dispute. I have been given the name of one prominent smuggler, who is known by his pseudonym, “Beer”. Whether or not he belongs to the tribe, he now calls himself a Bizenjo and, reputedly, enjoys political patronage. Three different influential (but middle class) individuals, two of whom I consider fairly reliable, have told me that, along the border with Afghanistan/Iran, posts are vacated at certain times to facilitate free movement of smugglers.
Siraj Raisani is credited with most of the smuggling and he is laying claim to most of the killings and “missing persons”. However, he sells himself as one who enjoys support from GHQ and claims to be acting on behalf of the army/ISI.
A number of the Baloch have used words to the effect that, “if you send majors, Lt Cols, or even Brigs to such assignments, who have no future left in the army, why should they not seize the opportunity to enrich themselves”.
Some individuals have pointed out that (some) very senior officers have also taken the opportunity to make profits, if not through outright corruption, through misuse of authority. Shares procured by senior officers in various mining projects, by exerting influence, and jobs procured by them for close family members are cited as examples. I am not in a position to verify this and put it down merely to emphasize that the general view is that “Balochistan is a land that provides opportunities to rape it and enrich both; politically powerful Baloch and military officers/bureaucrats for the duration of their stay”.
Intelligence agencies and the ISI in particular, are still held responsible for the majority of deaths and ‘disappearances’. In private, however, some individuals, albeit reluctantly, acknowledge the fact that under the garb of accusations against the ISI, numerous personal vendettas, internecine rivalries, including political rivalries, inter and intra tribal ones, and between smugglers are responsible for a large number of killings, including those who are tortured; and that all these are laid at the door of the military/ISI.
In the last few years, there has been a demographic change in the population of Balochistan due to the influx of Afghan Pashtuns and Hazarvis, as well as Pashtum from Tribal Areas. The Baloch are very conscious of this fact and of the fact that, over decades past, the Pashtun of Balochistan have outstripped the Baloch in all respects: financially, in education, in employment opportunities; in every conceivable sphere.
They are also convinced that there is a deliberate effort by “Pakistan” to favor the Pashtun so as to diminish the intensity of the insurgency. If this is a policy, it might succeed in the interim but, in the long term Baloch grievances will have to be addressed.
With reference to above, some contradictory clarification is necessary, since the Pashtun complain of being under-represented in the political dispensation. Many, ethnically Pashtun Baloch tribes have adopted Baloch ways. Not only do they exclusively speak Balochi language, they claim Baloch ethnicity, like the Raisani tribe. Consequently, while Balochistan’s corrupt CM is ethnically Pashtun, for all practical purposes, from the Governor down to the IG Police; all posts are actually held by Baloch or Barahvis.
As a consequence, the traditional hostility between the Barahvi and Baloch has virtually disappeared. They have, more or less united against the common threat from Pashtun dominance engineered by “Pakistan/Punjab”. That being stated, the “Barahvi Ittehad” continues to exist.
However, the hard core Baloch militants are not, in my estimation, too large a number. I estimate them to be well under 10,000. They do, however, enjoy the willing support of their extended families, their tribe, and other Baloch.
The greatest and most urgent problem is that there are between 500,000 to 750,000 (so-called) ‘educated’ youth, some with college, others with university degrees, in search of gainful and respectable employment. They are fully conscious that their degrees are worthless and they are unfit to find respectable employment in a competitive selection. They are too proud to take up manual labor and angry enough to become potential militants and/or their supporters. I have frequently heard these words spoken in anger, even hate, but the plaintive cry beneath them is audible if one is listening, “Hum par Jihalat kyoon musallat kee jaa rahee hei”.
The youth are being fed, not only distortions of their real history, they are being fed the spiel that, “The Americans are coming. They will divide Balochistan into a Pashtun region and a Baloch region. Each Baloch family will receive a grant of $ 500,000/-“. Very few actually believe this but it serves as a “fall-back” belief, if all else fails—a ray of hope, if you will. Khair Bakhsh Marri is the main individual responsible for selling this view.
In brief, the all-pervasive view among the new generation of Baloch is that they are unequal citizens of Pakistan and are not stake-holders with a future or any hope of a future.
The fact that numerous ‘foreign hands’ are involved in stoking unrest in Balochistan is now accepted by numerous international journalists as well. This fact comes as no surprise to me or to the audience this document is addressed to. After a lengthy discussion, one young man who burst out in anger, while explaining that, with a university degree, all he could really qualify for is manual labor and added, “why should I not earn $ 100/- a day?” Since I wanted to goad him into saying more, I also asked in pretended anger, “who the hell will pay YOU $ 100/- a day?” and he immediately replied, “Indians pay $ 75/- through Iranian conduits and the CIA pays $ 100/- through Pakistani agents in Quetta.
This view has been expressed by some middle class Baloch and Punjabis, settled in Quetta for over a generation. “You (meaning Pakistan, the army, or government—take your pick) have turned Pakistan into a country of Muslims, not Pakistanis. Consequently, all Muslims from all over the world are here. The current war for control of Quetta is being fought between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Saudi supporters (presumably meaning Taliban) are occupying Kuchlag and Iranian supporters (Shias including Hazarvis) are centered round the Quetta Medical College. Kuchlag is, as you know, Pashtun, and the area was once under the iron hands of the father of Maj Ashraf Khan Nasir, former Chief Secretary Balochistan), whom I know well. There are a couple of nuances in this assessment, which need to be highlighted, since most Pakistanis refuse to acknowledge the damage done to us by Saudi Arabia and focus exclusively on the US. Firstly; that Saudis are a major part of the problem and, secondly; that, when it comes to Iranian interests, Jundallah (a Sunni organization) and Irani Shias (including the Iranian chapter of Hizbollah) and Hazarvis join hands. This opinion is shared by some Baloch Shias as well, but I am not certain that this is necessarily true.
Taliban: When the so-called “Quetta Shoora” initially moved into Quetta from Afghanistan and attempted to exert itself; it was soon silenced and, over time the prominent member of the Shoora shifted to Karachi. During my visits, between 2003 and 2009, I saw numerous Taliban roaming the streets of Kuchlag, Loralai and other Pashtun dominated regions. However, they went unarmed during daylight. My impression was that local Pashtuns were prepared to host them but kept them firmly under control. Ashraf Nasir also assured me that my impression was accurate. In 2009, however, for the first time, Ashraf Nasir sent me back to Quetta after dinner, under a heavy escort. Early this year (2011), in response to my query on Taliban, he reiterated his earlier claims of their being firmly under control, but my impression was that that was no longer true. Taliban had become independently strong.
This was very visible in other Pashtun dominated regions, including Chaman. (My impression is that this may be a deliberate response by the Pashtun of Balochistan due to being excluded from the corridors of political power.) The Pashtoonkhwa Party is being revitalized, which might also be a reactionary response.
From the above, I conclude that the claim of a ‘turf war’ between Taliban and Iran supported groups is probably a gross exaggeration but with, at least, a grain of truth. Recent events like the attack targeting the DIG FC and the one killing over two dozen Hazrvis lends some credence to this conclusion.
Underneath a rather large paint of hate to be found in the Baloch activists, is a yearning for peace and a return to normalcy. However, they are proud people who have a stated position and, therefore, need to be “seen to have won” (something) so as to acquiesce to a return to the Pakistani bosom.
I have, for long held the view that Counter Insurgency, COIN, is NOT really a military function. And, that if there is an insurgency, it is due to genuine (or perceived) socio/politico/economic grievance(s), or a combination of these. That if they have taken recourse to violence, it is because of the feeling that, without violence, their voice does not reach their target audience. Consequently, COIN as a strategy must seek to redress those grievances. To coin a phrase, insurgencies cannot be suppressed; a COIN campaign can only succeed by “out-governing” the insurgents!
This in no way implies that there is no role for the use of force, whether overtly, by security forces or covertly, by intelligence agencies. But the use of force, by either means, is only to create a situation favorable for COIN to succeed. This is a link to an article by me, originally carried in the US by Counterpunch, where I have attempted to explain my perspective of why American COIN is a perpetual failure, but it includes illustrations by example, of the selective use of force—-for those interested in wasting another 10 minutes: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/alochona/message/21219!!
It is my considered view that unless we can, with immediate effect, initiate a meaningful two-pronged COIN strategy, addressing the immediate and the mid/long term, we might end up alienating the Baloch forever.
Since the success of a comprehensive COIN strategy hinges around its effective utilization of resources, it will have no chance, if funds are routed through the corrupt provincial government or NGOs. Consequently, I find myself left with only one option i.e. organizing this through the army! I am fully conscious of the irony of this proposal after having stated above, so vehemently, that COIN is not the function of the military.
However, our political leadership is, not only magnificently unaware of this fact (that COIN is a non-military function), it has willingly been ceding in Swat and SWA all socio-economic development projects to the army’s supervision (including our very successful venture titled “Sabaoon”) and, I am certain, would willingly cede ALL aspects relating to COIN in Balochistan as well.
I am also very conscious of the fact that GHQ is overworked and would be very reluctant to assume a larger role. However, my proposal will attempt to reduce its direct involvement to a bare minimum. Nonetheless, it will have to be GHQ and the ISI that pushes for this proposal; otherwise it will not take off.
Under the garb of COIN; using the excuse that the provincial government itself offers an excuse i.e. its inability to access remote areas and those areas threatened by violence, GHQ/JCSC should assume responsibility for ALL projects relating to health, education, and socio-economic welfare of the people of Balochistan, on behalf of the provincial government, the last clause is of prime importance since then GHQ/JCSC will be seen as acting within the mandate of the 18th Amendment and not in violation of it by acting on behalf of the central government.
As stated earlier, the immediate problem is a large proportion of (supposedly) educated youth who are unemployed and have no hope of getting respectable employment, expected by young boys/girls, with college/university degrees. My short term recommendations deal with this issue.
Start numerous Vocational Institutions located in or close to all military cantonments, for the young with college degrees, youth of upto 25, though individuals elder than that need not be excluded automatically. These institutes could include basic computer skills, alongside the field of actual specialization, sewing, knitting, embroidery and similar subjects for young ladies; mechanical skills, carpentry, masonry, electrician, plumbing, etc for men.
Young men should be encouraged to move to other cities in the country to seek employment opportunities there. Even Fauji Foundation could induct a certain percentage of these youth. If they are skilled labor and acquire their skills and are employed away from home, they will earn a respectable living, without being exposed to the humiliation of having to do such work where they might be exposed to ridicule by their peers.
Young ladies, on the other hand, should be encouraged and assisted to find employment close to home. Askari Bank might be encouraged to start a venture akin to the famous “Grameen Bank” in Bangladesh, which provides small loans to (almost exclusively female “members”) to enable them to begin small business ventures on their own. Some young ladies could be encouraged to begin such ventures collectively.
Most young men over 25 might be reluctant to join vocational institutes. Those willing to, should be encouraged to move to larger cities, where job opportunities are greater. They can be assisted in finding semi-respectable employment e.g. when I ordered a V Sat connection from PTCL, two respectably dressed young men on a motorcycle, turned up to set up the gadget and explain how it works. I am certain that there are numerous other such opportunities for semi-skilled work, for which limited necessary expertise is more easily acquired. Others can be encouraged to turn to agriculture as desalination plants spring up along the coast.
Small industries for fruit packaging and export should be encouraged around Quetta. This is one industry for which, unlike the ill-fated venture of textile industries, no raw material need be imported and, logically, the packaging plant(s) should be as close to the source as possible. This too will generate employment opportunities and will be profitable. In fact Fauji Foundation or AWT could espouse this venture and set aside a fixed percentage of the profits for other welfare projects in Balochistan.
A variation on the “Sabaoon” theme is required for the Baloch youth. I am not yet in a position to spell out how or what. But as soon as I can, I will consult with people and make a separate suggestion on this.
The Baloch plea against “Jihalat” being forced upon them is both moving and merited. It must be addressed immediately, and be seen to being addressed in the long term. We have to revive their hope for a better future for the future Baloch generations in a united Pakistan.
PARIS, Oct 28: An aide of French former president Nicolas Sarkozy was on Monday charged in an illegal political funding scandal known as the “Karachi Affair,” a complex probe into alleged kickbacks on arms deals.
Nicolas Bazire, the current number two of luxury group LVMH, was heard by judges for four hours and accused of handling illicit funds used for political campaigns.
A former campaign manager for ex-prime minister Edouard Balladur, Bazire had been under investigation since September.
Investigators are looking into irregularities in the financing of Balladur’s 1995 presidential campaign. Sarkozy was Balladur’s campaign spokesman and budget minister at the time.
Judges suspect Balladur’s campaign of receiving illicit “retro-commissions” from the sale of French submarines to Pakistan. Two Sarkozy political aides and a former minister are under formal investigation over the affair.
Judges are also probing claims that a 2002 bombing in Karachi that killed 11 French naval engineers was carried out by Pakistani agents in revenge for the cancellation of bribes secretly promised to officials.
The payment of arms sales commissions was legal in France until 2000, but the payment of kickbacks back to France was and is illegal.
The probe focuses on the 1994 sale of submarines to Pakistan and frigates to Saudi Arabia.
