President Barack Obama’sAfghanistan war plans took two major hits this week: First, his longtime adviser and chief diplomat in the region, Richard Holbrooke, passed away unexpectedly. Now, two classified intelligence reports, one each on Afghanistan and Pakistan and intended for congressional committees, had their contents leaked to The New York Times and their findings are not good.
The reports, called National Intelligence Estimates, represent the consensus view of 16 domestic intelligence agencies without military input, the Times reports. Members of the House and Senate committees who read the reports described them to the Times.
The NIEs claim there is limited chance of success in Afghanistan unless Pakistan hunts down insurgents operating with seeming impunity from safe havens along their porous border, something the government in Islamabad has been dragging its feet on for years.
Precisely the pseudo intellectual approach that spurs the Taliban.
What terms are you talking about?
That you will cede the Country? Or change the world into an Islamic Fundamentalist State?
No negotiations on freedom for all, period.
It is sad that this gem comes from an Analyst of a popular media, especially when we are celebrating the act of Muslims protecting Christians In Egypt.http://current.com/14qet4c#18
YUSUFZAI: If you wait for the proper time and you keep fighting in the hope that you will weaken the Taliban and you will achieve better terms in negotiations, that may not happen. I think you negotiate with the strength you have. You don’t try and keep fighting forever or [inaudible] fight for four more years. I think this is not the proper policy. And, you know, through negotiations you can moderate, you can try and moderate the Taliban position, because, you know, they also cannot get everything. Taliban also is not in a position to claim victory. They also are suffering losses. So I think that, you know, you can’t wait forever. You know, nine years is a long time. I think if you fight for four more years, so many more people would be killed, and maybe after so many more killings there will be no incentive to talk.
*RahimullahYusufzai is a Senior Analyst with the Pakistani TV channel, Geo TV, and the Resident Editor of The News International in Peshawar, an English newspaper from Pakistan. Rahimullah has served as a correspondent for Time Magazine, BBC World Service, BBC Pashto, BBC Urdu, Geo TV, and ABC News. Mr. Yusufzai has interviewed Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and a range of other militants across the tribal areas of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Rahimullah joins us from Peshawar, Pakistan.
Pakistan gets a double advantage.On the one hand it wipes out Baluchistan nationalists,on the other it gets Taliban to be re-recruited for terrorist activities
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is expressing alarm over reports that thousands of political separatists and capturedTaliban insurgents have disappeared into the hands of Pakistan’s police and security forces, and that some may have been tortured or killed
The issue came up in a State Department report to Congress last month that urged Pakistan to address this and other human rights abuses. It threatens to become the latest source of friction in the often tense relationship between the wartime allies.
The concern is over a steady stream of accounts from human rights groups that Pakistan’s security services have rounded up thousands of people over the past decade, mainly in Baluchistan, a vast and restive province far from the fight with the Taliban, and are holding them incommunicado without charges. Some American officials think that the Pakistanis have used the pretext of war to imprison members of the Baluch nationalist opposition that has fought for generations to separate from Pakistan. Some of the so-called disappeared are guerrillas; others are civilians.
PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania: Balochistan has once again been rejected as an agenda for action by the Amnesty International, reports from a conference in this steel town revealed.
A resolution that called for more action to end enforced disappearances in Balochistan was shot down 22 against 14 as key position holders within Amnesty International spoke out against it at the Mid Atlantic Regional Conference here at a local hotel.
A lone Baloch member of the Amnesty International in the USA protested why the sequence of when the resolution was to be taken was changed at the last moment, conveying to the particpants as if it was not important.
Key office-bearers of the Amnesty International, including Larry Cox, exectutve director AIUSA, Ellen Dorsey, executive director of the Wallace Global Fund, and Gouri Sadhwani, deputy executive director were among those present at the conference.
US starts with sanctions,runs out of steam,invades, places a puppet in power,faces opposition from locals,starts disbursing money; the occupied country also receives money from the power which US does not want,US leaves after assumption of office by a new president.
Predictable script from Vietnam days.
Story:
That bald acknowledgment brings out into the open two uncomfortable facts confronting the US plan to build a modern democracy in Afghanistan. Just as in Iraq, Iran is successfully buying influence with Afghan leaders. And Mr. Karzai – like many members of Afghanistan’s political class – sees bags of cash as a perfectly legitimate tool of statecraft.
Iran’s efforts may extend beyond Karzai’s palace. Members of Parliament say other politicians are taking Iranian money. And recent media reports claim that the Iranians are paying the Taliban to kill US soldiers.
What does Iran want for its bags of cash? First and foremost, Iran wants pressure put on international forces to leave its doorstep.
“The Iranians are happy with the Karzai regime being established in Afghanistan – in this way, the US and Iran are aligned. But when it comes to international forces in Afghanistan, the Iranians are quite unhappy about this,” says Waliullah Rahmani, head of the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies.
The US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan put American forces on the ground on either side of Iran. In Afghanistan, US forces at Shindand Airbase are less than 75 miles from the Iranian border.
Yankees go home
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan as a means of stabilizing the region.
Foreign policy wags often point out that the American “war on terror” has inadvertently strengthened the regional clout of US-foe Iran. Yet, Iran and the US ultimately share an ally in Karzai, since both nations are opposed to a Taliban resurgence.
When in power, the Taliban killed Iranian diplomats and oppressed the Shia minority in Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s new Constitution, written after the NATO invasion, officially recognized the rights of the Shiites for the first time in Afghanistan’s history. Karzai’s government also includes members of the Northern Alliance whom Iran supported in previous decades.
Duplicity, thy name is Pakistan.
KABUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Pakistan was actively collaborating with the Taliban in Afghanistan while accepting U.S. aid, leaked U.S. military reports showed, a disclosure likely to increase pressure on Washington’s embattled ally.
The revelations released by the online organization WikiLeaks emerged as Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned of greater NATO casualties in Afghanistan as violence mounts over the summer.
The Taliban said they were holding captive one of two U.S. servicemen who strayed into insurgent territory, and that the other had been killed. The reported capture will further erode domestic support for America’s nine-year-old war. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100726/pl_nm/us_afghanistan_10
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