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Posts Tagged Afghan Taliban Front Lines

Kashmir kept in Cold Freezer By Brig(Retd)Asif Haroon Raja

Kashmir kept in Cold Freezer

Asif Haroon Raja

When it comes to the question of honour and dignity, then the tangible superiority, or diplomatic and economic superiority doesn’t matter. For the defence of the motherland and to protect the dignity and honour of the nation, all materialist ambitions and internal feuds should be set aside, and everything in hand sacrificed to push out the offenders and to eliminate the conspirators.

The Afghan Mujahideen did it in the 1980s and the Afghan Taliban repeated it in 2021. On both occasions, the Lilliputians defeated the Goliaths because of their cohesion, unity and abiding faith in Allah. The leaders and the led fought hand in hand and they braved the difficulties equally. The TTA achieved the miracle on their own and without external support.

During Napoleon’s campaign in Russia, when the Corps of Marshal Michael Ney was encircled while withdrawing from Leningrad to Moscow and was asked to surrender, he replied, “Marshal’s do not surrender”, and he fought his way out of the encirclement after a savage fight.      

When ten times superior Indian forces invaded the encircled and isolated EP, although the heavily outnumbered troops fought with extraordinary grit and determination despite the extremely heavy odds, the senior leadership buckled down and drowned their sacrifices in the sea of humiliation. The defenders of Hilli who had blunted repeated attacks of Indian 20 Mountain Division from 21 Nov till 4 FF was ordered to withdraw on 11 Dec, had to bear the shame of surrender. Lt Gen AAK Niazi in command of 45000 regular and irregular forces could have made history had he opted to die fighting like a tiger instead of surrendering. Defiance might have opened an honorable avenue of exit and possibly a political resolution of ‘confederation’.

India, supported by the USSR, annexed East Pakistan in Dec 1971 through treachery and subversion. No Pakistani leader pledged to avenge the defeat and wash off the humiliation. All aspired for friendship with India and went an extra mile to keep India appeased.

Pakistan didn’t untie the knot with the duplicitous USA despite its betrayal in the 1965 war and in the 1971 war. A policy of one-sided appeasement was adopted.   

With this mindset, Kashmir which had emerged as the unfinished agenda of the Partition and the chief bone of contention between the two neighbours was never taken seriously and was put in the cold freezer. No long-term Kashmir policy was framed and India was given a free hand to consolidate its hold over the disputed territory. Only a reactive policy was adopted. Even on the diplomatic front, no meaningful effort was made to counter the Indian narratives and the disinformation campaign. 

Without Kashmir, Pakistan is incomplete and without the free flow of water in our rivers, Pakistan’s survival is impossible. India was allowed to build over 60 small, medium and large dams over the three eastern rivers and to indulge in water terrorism.

It is dismaying to know that all our civil and military leaders did politics with Kashmir. Many in the army earned promotions by posing as peacetime Napoleons while some made profits. 

The game started when Liaqat Ali Khan accepted Jawahar Lal Nehru’s request for a ceasefire at a time when our brave hearts had turned the tide of the 1948 war. Maj Gen Akbar who wanted the war to continue and had made plans to interdict the vulnerable lines of communication was court martialled and imprisoned. 

Nehru duped our leaders by making a false pledge that he would resolve the issue by granting the right of self-determination to the Kashmiris. Thereon he kept buying time and absorbing Kashmir into the Indian Union through fake elections, buying the loyalties of puppets in Kashmir and affecting changes in the Indian Constitution. The UN and other world powers remained tilted towards India. 

Field Marshal Ayub Khan was the only leader who made an earnest effort to liberate Kashmir through use of force, but luck didn’t favour him and Op Gibraltar and Op Grand Slam couldn’t meet its planned objectives. Yet he had made Pakistan armed forces a robust fighting machine which was able to defeat the nefarious designs of six times superior Indian armed forces that had vowed to destroy the Pak military in the battle of Chawinda in the 1965 War. He has several other feathers in his cap for which the nation should remain grateful, but the chronic army haters paint him in black.  

Tashkent Accord was not a sell off of Kashmir as falsely alleged by ZA Bhutto, but Simla Accord in 1972 was the first sell off. Bhutto agreed to convert the ceasefire line in Kashmir into Line of Control (LOC), and both mutually consented to convince their respective people to accept the LOC as a permanent border between the two Kashmirs’. Third party involvement was replaced with bilateralism which favored India since it could buy time and parry the UN intervention. 

Gen Ziaul Haq was the only leader who had a vision of liberating Kashmir. While he mandated the ISI to carry out biggest proxy war in Afghanistan in the 1980s without the involvement of any other agency, he triggered the Khalistan movement and fixed his periscope on Kashmir. After the defeat of the Soviet forces in 1988 and their readiness to quit in Feb 1989, it was very easy to take on Kashmir. India was internally at its weakest in the late 1980s and Pakistan had acquired weaponized nuclear capability. Gen Zia had planned to link Khalistan movement with the Kashmiri freedom movement. After the ten-year experience in covert war, the ISI was in sound position to push out the Indian occupying forces from IOK; Gulbadin Hikmatyar had pledged to send one lac Mujahideen to the aid of Kashmiris who had taken part in the Afghan Jihad. 

Gen Zia had gained tremendous influence and popularity in the Pashtun belt of Afghanistan, and was all set to introduce Islamic system. This was not to the liking of the western powers and it became obligatory to bump him off. He along with many generals were killed in an air crash in Aug 1988. His departure was rejoiced by Russia, India, and his detractors at home which included the PPP and the liberals. 

After his death, all the plans made for the liberation of Kashmir were shelved. Benazir, Nawaz Sharif (NS), Gen Musharraf and Zardari favored friendly ties with India and played politics to damage Kashmiri freedom movement. None exploited the armed uprising in IOK which had nailed down 7 lacs of Indian forces in the narrow Kashmir Valley. All favoured converting LOC into a permanent border, not realising that it would not quench the thirst of expansionist India. None took the Kashmiris in the loop while engaging in peace talks with India.

NS claimed that Kashmir resolution was round the corner when Vajpayee visited Lahore in Jan 1999, but lamented that his hand-picked Gen Musharraf stabbed him in the back by launching Operation Dras-Kargil on his own. In his second tenure, he cultivated personal friendship with Indian PM Gujral, and in his third term he established business ties with Modi and business tycoon Jindal. Gen Musharraf took the steam out of Kashmiri freedom struggle after signing peace deal with India in 2004, allowing India to fence LOC, floated the out of box solution and divided APHC. Zardari declared the Kashmiri freedom fighters as terrorists. To restart the suspended composite dialogue that were snapped after the Mumbai attacks in Nov 2008, NS agreed with Modi at the Uffa meeting in 2015 to accord higher priority to terrorism over Kashmir. Imran Khan (IK) desired friendship with Modi soon after he took over in 2018, but the latter declined to meet him. Reportedly, both IK and Gen Qamar Bajwa tried to arrange Modi’s visit to Pakistan in April 2021.

When India illegally annexed the disputed territory of IOK on Aug 5, 2019, that was the time when Pakistan should have gone all out to free Kashmir from the cruel clutches of fascist and racist India. Nothing else should have mattered after the jugular vein was severed. At least covert operations should have been stepped up in Kashmir and some other disturbed regions of India.

But like the former leaders, IK and Gen Bajwa favoured a similar outcome of the Kashmir dispute as envisaged by the predecessors and they continued with the old apologetic and defensive policy in spite of India’s intense firings across the LOC and Working Boundary, surgical strikes and other offensive acts. 

A tacit understanding was given to Trump and Pentagon during the visit of the two to Washington in July 2019. Trump’s mediation offer was meant to guarantee the safety of AJK and GB. Both were informed about Modi’s plan of changing the special status of IOK and they were told to control the people. 21-gun salute to Gen Bajwa by Pentagon, who was retiring in Nov that year, was a clear indication that he had consented, and it was decided that he will be given a three years extension. 

It is most distressing that Pakistan’s policy makers allowed India to usurp IOK without a whimper. The Indian brutes were permitted to carry out genocide and rapes of locked down Kashmiris in the biggest military garrison and open prison. Encouraged by pacifist response from Pakistan, Modi went ahead with his plan to change the demography and culture of Kashmir by settling non-Muslims and letting them buy lands and marrying Muslim Kashmiri girls. He is now welcoming foreign business tycoons as well as G-20 to invest and build business empires and resorts in the Kashmir Valley. 

The abject plight of the Indian Muslims, rendered stateless and treated as 2nd rated citizens of India and brutally oppressed, doesn’t bother the insensitive elite class in Pakistan, which is smug in their money-making ventures, and in infighting for power. They are least concerned about the dangerous designs of India wanting to fragment Pakistan into four parts. 

The writer is a retired Brig Gen, war veteran, defence, security & political analyst, international columnist, author of five books, Chairman Thinkers Forum Pakistan & director Measac Research Centre. asifharoonraja@gmail.com

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Stimulated instability in Af-Pak region Part-2 Brig.Gen(Retd)Asif Haroon Raja

Stimulated instability in Af-Pak region

Part-2

Asif Haroon Raja

Situation in Afghanistan

 

 

The seven Mujahideen groups duly supported by Pakistan had fought, defeated and ousted the occupying Soviet forces in Feb 1989 after a 10-year bloody war. Left in a lurch by the USA, they got embroiled in a power struggle which led to a civil war in 1992. Tehreek-Taliban-Movement (TTA) under Mullah Omar originated in Kandahar in 1994 as a consequence of the highly disturbed security situation in Afghanistan. Mullah Ghani Baradar was Omar’s trusted deputy. The Taliban were able to capture over 90% territory less Panjshir enclave in northeastern Badakhshan province.

 

 

 

After taking over power in Oct 1996, Mullah Omar established Islamic Emirate and in no time restored normalcy. Only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and UAE recognized the Taliban regime. Sharia laws helped the inexperienced rulers to make the society crimes and vices free. However, war with the Northern Alliance under Ahmed Shah Masoud duly supported by Russia, Iran and the West continued unabated in the Panjshir.       

When 9/11 happened, Afghanistan was a peaceful country. In spite of the US/UN sanctions the Taliban regime had managed to run the state affairs fairly well. Al-Qaeda was blamed for the attacks and the Taliban blamed for not handing over Osama bin Laden. These two reasons were played up to ignite the emotions of the Americans and to justify the invasion of Afghanistan in Oct 2001 and deposition of Taliban regime.    

After getting regrouped in FATA, the TTA resorted to guerrilla warfare to confront many times bigger and stronger enemies. Their strengths were religious ideology, valor, faith, will to die, suicide attacks and IEDs. All the Taliban leaders including Mullah Omar remained in hiding and couldn’t be traced by the CIA-FBI in spite of big head money announced for each wanted leader. Omar died in 2013 but his death was kept secret. His successor Mullah Mansour Akhtar operating as the de facto commander from 2013 onwards was elected the Ameer in end July 2015 after Omar’s death was revealed. He cultivated relations with Iran in order to procure arms.     

Once the tide swung in favor of the Taliban after the withdrawal of bulk of 140,000 foreign troops by Dec 2014 in accordance with Obama’s drawdown program, and it was established that the Taliban couldn’t be defeated on the battleground or divided, use of airpower and drones was maximized, peace talks with the Taliban through their political office at Doha stimulated, not to make the war-torn country peaceful, but to divide the TTA.

Map Courtesy

 

 

The Afghan national army was trained by the US, British and Indian instructors. Emphasis was on making them self-reliant to be able to fight the Taliban independently.

The CIA and RAW established Daesh-Khorasan (K) at Nangarhar in 2015 and was married up with Jamaat-al-Ahrar led by Khalid Khurasani, a breakaway faction of TTP. 

Elections were held in March 2016 in which only 10% voters from urban centres and Afghan refugees in Pakistan voted, and a unity regime formed in Sept that year in which Ashraf Ghani was appointed President and Dr. Abdullah CEO/PM. The two leaders remained locked in a power tussle which further weakened the governance and institutions, and the writ of the government got confined to Kabul only.

Corruption among the ruling regime scaled new heights and drug business kept flourishing making the country the biggest narcotic producing country of the world. Flow of dollars from the US modernized the major capital cities particularly Kabul, but also decayed the morality and values of the liberals and seculars. The downtrodden became poorer and they preferred to get recruited in TTA.  

The ANDSF also got corrupted and soldiers and policemen became addicted to drugs and other social vices including selling of weapons to the Taliban and becoming their informers. Officers minted money by recruiting ghost soldiers. Warlords and drug mafias kept filling their coffers and so did the US security and defence contractors. Raising and equipping ANA helped the US Military Industrial Complex to fatten the purses of the fat cats. The ANA on which $ 1.3 trillion was spent couldn’t win a single battle against the Taliban and in each confrontation they were rescued by NATO air support. The phenomenon of green-over-blue attacks and suicides propped up and suicide cases among occupational troops suffering from home sickness and post trauma stress disorder jumped up.

The Taliban managed their war expenditures through drug profits, seizure of NATO containers and levying tax on each passing container, or on development projects in areas under their influence. They earned $ 500 million annually from the US kitty.

These negative developments enabled India to further consolidate its influence in Afghanistan, keep the Kabul regime on a warpath with Islamabad, poison the ears of the Afghans against Pakistan, and to further bolster its clandestine operations in Pakistan.

Inequities and fault lines of the ruling regime made it unpopular, thereby giving reasons to the Taliban to dub it as illegitimate, and to refuse holding talks with it. ANA’s lack of will to fight allowed the Taliban to gain more and more space in all parts of the country.

The US government kept bestowing favors to India to enable it to achieve its ominous objectives against Pakistan. It kept pouring American taxpayers money in the kitty of Afghanistan to reinforce failure, while adopting a tight fisted and discriminatory policy against Pakistan.        

The US Alternative plans

Once the occupiers realized that stalemate on the battlefield favored the Taliban, and it was no longer possible to reverse the tide, the US made alternative plans so as not to lose Afghanistan. These were:-

  • The force level of the ANDSF was gradually raised to 352,000 (Army, commandos, air force and police) and was equipped with sophisticated weaponry. They were trained to fight the Taliban independently from mid-2013 onwards by handing over frontline security to them.
  • Divide Afghanistan on ethnic lines and hand over Eastern, Southern and parts of Western Afghanistan to the Taliban where they had a definite superiority. Retain Northern Afghanistan and integrate Central and Western parts including Kabul and Herat and continue fighting the Taliban. Major drawback in this option was the loss of the main supply route to Kabul via Torkham, and dependence upon the northern network which was dicey due to the unpredictability of Russia.
  • Instead of the whole of Northern Afghanistan, retain Mazar-e-Sharif, Kunduz, Badakhshan and Bagram airbase.
  • In the backdrop of Panjshir Valley under Ahmad Shah Masoud having remained unconquered during the rule of the Taliban in the 1990s, it was considered as an option to give last ditch battle duly backed by Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. India’s air force was to supplement the US drone attacks from Farkhor air base in Tajikistan.
  • Another plan envisaged making use of Daesh-K stationed at Nangarhar in 2015, coupled with 20,000 Blackwater elements based in Bagram base to help the ANA in retaining control over the cities. This force structure guided by CIA, RAW and NDS was considered sufficient to fill the power vacuum after the departure of US-NATO troops.
  • Regroup TTP and Baloch rebel groups, bolster Daesh-K and bring them on one platform to continue destabilizing Pakistan.  
  • Return power to the Taliban peacefully through a peace deal under a policy of give-and-take, so as to retain influence in Afghanistan. The Doha agreement was signed after 18-month long negotiations with this intent in mind. For the accomplishment of this plan, Pakistan was to be pressured to convince the Taliban to share power with Ashraf Ghani regime and to keep political Islam at bay.    

New narratives after plans misfired

Once all the plans misfired and the Taliban abruptly seized power on Aug 15, the baffled occupiers had to undertake ill-planned and disorderly withdrawal. To hide their mortification, the spoilers led by the US came out with new themes and narratives to discredit the Taliban and Pakistan.

To start with, the Indo-US-Western-Israeli media blared fake news that the monsters helped by Pak Army are on the verge of snatching power and soon there will be chaos, bloodshed, civil war and refugee exodus and the Afghan women would again be shackled. This narrative remained in play till July when 90% of territory and majority of provinces including provincial capital cities had fallen and no case of human rights violation had taken place.

Taliban’s master stroke  

Learning lesson from their first takeover of power in 1996 in which about 8% of Panjshir Valley couldn’t be captured, and it had provided an opportunity to Russia, Iran, India and the West to support the Northern Alliance, this time the Taliban changed their strategy and focused more on capturing almost the whole of Northern Afghanistan including provinces of Badakshan and Kunduz as well as the palaces of Rashid Dostum, and then homing towards Kabul. Strategy of encirclement and choking of cities was adopted. After the fall of a provincial capital city, (34 in numbers), the Taliban prisoners were released who beefed up the combat strength.

All trade points with the six neighbors and inter-provincial toll plazas were captured and kept functional to earn income. 

Wherever the ANA soldiers didn’t put up a fight and surrendered, the Taliban forgave them. This led to a chain reaction and surrender became a norm thereby providing fillip to the conquests of the Taliban.

Unlike the Bolsheviks, the French and American revolutionaries, the Saudis, the Iranians and many others who butchered their fallen foes and raped their women, the Taliban announced general amnesty, which was unique. 

By treating the captured or surrendering Afghan Army soldiers humanely irrespective of their ethnic background, the Taliban neutralized them, thereby making their task of capturing major capital cities easier.

The other notable thing was that no incident of killing, theft, and rape took place in all the captured areas. Normal routine was not disrupted, and educational institutes, offices and businesses were not closed. Their benevolence won the hearts of the people and shattered the demonizing myths. Urban dwellers welcomed them and chanted pro-Taliban slogans which further shattered the morale of Afghan soldiers. Consequently, when the Taliban knocked at the gates of Kabul on Aug 14, they encountered no resistance.         

After dominating all the roads leading to Kabul and surrounding and choking the capital city, the Taliban succeeded in entering Kabul and capturing it without firing a bullet.

After the botched drama staged at Kabul airport, the mountainous Panjshir under son of Ahmad Shah Masoud and Amrullah Saleh was played up which had been stocked with huge dumps of armaments. The Taliban managed to capture it on Sept 6 and the two leaders fled to Tajikistan.

Divine intervention 

Notwithstanding willful efforts of the US led western world to economically incapacitate the newly formed interim Taliban regime on Sept 11, the latter today has huge caches of sophisticated armaments left behind by the foreign forces which include tanks, APCs, Humvis, artillery guns, rockets, small arms, jets, gunship helicopters, night vision goggles, radars, super computers etc. Damaged equipment is repairable. According to some estimates the equipment is worth $ 85 billion, sufficient to raise several corps and air force.

They have also been gifted well-developed infrastructure, eight high-tech military bases, schools, colleges and universities, airports, dry ports, modernized provincial capital cities particularly Kabul studded with large numbers of high quality shopping malls, plazas, hotels, restaurants, gaming clubs, parks, sports grounds, water filtration plants, sewerage system, hospitals, gas and electricity projects.

India gifted parliament building, two dams, Zaranj-Dilaram Highway, several educational institutes, healthcare in rural areas, and structured RAAM and NDS intelligence outfits.

The fleeing Afghan elites have also left behind plenty of foreign currency recovered from their palatial houses.

Afghanistan has trillions of dollars’ worth untapped mineral resources which the US couldn’t extract due to insecurity.

To be continued

The writer is retired Brig Gen, war veteran, defence & security analyst, international columnist, author of five books, Chairman Thinkers Forum Pakistan, Director Measac Research Centre, Member CWC PESS & Think Tank. asifharoonraja@gmail.com    

 

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Federal Minister Fawad Chaudhry And Dr Moeed Yousuf Joint Press Conference

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Nawaz Sharif Statement on Independence day | Proof of dishonesty with Pakistan | By Imran Riaz Khan

 

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Is Pakistan Controlling Afghan Taliban? کیا پاکستان افغان طالبان کو کنٹرول کررہا ہے؟

 

Mapping Taliban Contested and Controlled Districts in Afghanistan

Description: For nearly two decades, the government of Afghanistan – with the help of U.S. and coalition forces – battled for control of the country against the ever-present Afghan Taliban. FDD’s Long War Journal has tracked the Taliban’s attempts to gain control of the territory since NATO ended its military mission in Afghanistan and switched to an “advise and assist” role in June 2014. Districts have been taken and retaken (by both sides), only to be lost shortly thereafter, decreasing the security situation. Since the U.S. drawdown of peak forces in 2011, the Taliban has unquestionably been resurgent.

Map of Afghanistan’s districts, updated daily

Methodology: The primary data and research behind this assessment are based on open-source information, such as press reports and information provided by government agencies and the Taliban. This is a living and breathing map that LWJ frequently updates as verifiable research is conducted to support control changes.

An “Unconfirmed” district colored orange has some level of claim-of-control made by the Taliban, but either has not yet been — or cannot be— independently verified by LWJ research.

“Contested” district may mean that the government is in control of the district center or buildings within the district center, or a base, but little else, while the Taliban controls large areas or all of the areas outside of the district center. Or, the Taliban may control several villages, mines and other resources, runs prisons in the district, or administers areas of the district.

“Controlled” district may mean the Taliban is openly administering a district, providing services and security, and also running the local courts. LWJ may assess a district Taliban controlled if the district center frequently exchanges hands and/or the government only controls a few buildings or villages in the district.

Beginning in Jan. 2018, LWJ incorporated district-level data provided by the Special Investigator General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), which is based on assessments by Resolute Support, NATO’s command in Afghanistan. This information was helpful in filling the gaps in reporting on districts where there was little open-source information (note: reporting on more opaque districts has improved since mid-2019).

However, Resolute Support has continually downplayed the Taliban’s level of control as well as contested districts in its reporting. For an explanation and analysis of why see LWJ report: U.S. military assessment of Taliban control of Afghan districts is flawed.

In April 2019, Resolute Support stopped producing the assessment. The U.S. Department of Defense stated that negotiations with the Taliban, and not the status of Afghanistan’s districts, was the real metric of progress. For a detailed explanation of this, see the LWJ report: US military ends reporting on the security situation in Afghanistan’s districts. Some districts may retain the Resolute Support district assessment. If there are no indications that the status of the district has changed since the time of the Resolute Support’s Jan. 2019, report, that assessment will remain and will be noted in the comments.

Population control: Due to internal displacement, flight from the country, and a lack of accurate census reporting in the active combat zones, the population numbers are disputed and subject to change. The current projection is based on data from the CIA World Factbook’s 2018 evaluation of Afghanistan. The population estimates should be used as a guide only. 

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