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Archive for category Afghanistan-Hell for Western Troops

Future Expects Tougher Times for Afghanistan by Ishaal Zehra

Future Expects Tougher Times for Afghanistan

Ishaal Zehra

 

 

 

In the changing geopolitical scenario, President Trump’s Afghanistan policy signifies tougher times for an already fallen regime.

The US urgency for an exit from this decades’ old Afghan war is being felt by the policy thinkers and onlookers though there is no working timeline given by President Trump. Determining the cost and productiveness of the troops in Afghanistan, the businessman turned President of the United States is now interested in withdrawing those troops from this costly war. The uncertainty produced in the region thus has translated into a situation where the other regional actors are responding to the reservations by aligning their own interests.

For these countries, there is no uncertainty about the bottom line. The White House is looking for an exit with the shortest considerable timeline. This has also been confirmed by the departure of ex-trump advisor on Afghanistan, H.R. McMaster, and the appointment of Iran and North Korea focused, John Bolton as his successor.

The US military commanders are seen moving quickly to finish the job. The situation has become so obscure that the other powers in the region — the two influentials, China, Russia and neighbouring Iran, India, and Pakistan — have started recognizing their security options, threats and opportunities once the United States fully withdraws, while minutely weighing in the limitations of the Kabul government.

The US is building up the strength of Afghan units with a re-energized air campaign and new advisory units emplaced with Afghan army battalions while the administration pushes for talks with the Taliban in order to bring a negotiated end to the conflict. China has made it clear that it will support Afghan government-led efforts to negotiate an end to the conflict with the Taliban – an approach which is supported by the United States. It has also signed a defence agreement with Afghanistan to build a base in northern Afghanistan and set up a trilateral contact group with Afghanistan and Pakistan to combat terrorism.

Moscow, on the other hand, has heightened cooperation between Russia and Pakistan that is empirically visible. In February of this year, Moscow appointed an honorary consul in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan. Moreover, the addition of Russian language signage in the tribal belt and even around Islamabad also reflect upon the camaraderie both the countries are enjoying. Iran’s concern about ISIS spillover beyond her boundaries can be seen as a reason behind its move to cement relation with Pakistan. In the past Iran and India have traditionally worked together at many visible times, however, as India has now moved closer to the United States and Israel, Iran has begun to take on a more adversarial tone vis-à-vis India. This became quite visible in 2017 when Iran rejected Trump’s call for greater Indian engagement in Afghanistan and criticized Indian military actions in Kashmir.

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Other small non-aligned countries like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan have joined Russia and China in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) thus putting their weight behind these big regional powers. Apparently, India seems to be the only odd man out in the aligning of interests in the region. It has a long and most of the time troubled relationship with both China and Pakistan having a history of hostile conflicts with both. Her relations with Iran have become more difficult in recent years as New Delhi deepened her relations with the United States. This new friendship with the US has actually dismissed the chances of allying with her long-gone love of the past, Russia also.

Russia is the dominant military partner for Central Asia while China takes the lead in economic activities. Owing to the changing US policies in Afghanistan, both the countries, for varied reasons, are concerned about the ability of the Afghan government to keep control of its territory and its capability to fully contain the radical elements without the support of US army. Besides, they also recognize the importance of the role Pakistan is playing in reigning in the militants. And this recognition has made them adopt a two-track policy: providing support for the Afghan government while trying to get Pakistan on board vis-a-vis the Taliban.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is coming at a time when the United States has relegated Pakistan’s role in the Afghan conflict culmination strategy and blocked the military assistance funds to Islamabad on the pretext of not doing more. The inability of the Afghan government to address the prevailing security situation is having a negative impact on her economic development consequently leading the major regional powers to look for other options to stabilize the region. Moreover, India will never put her boots on the ground because she is still been haunted by her failed experience with intervention in Sri Lanka in the 1980s. Also, given the uneasy relationship with Pakistan and Iran, the geography of the region precludes an easy way to do this and Indian army is neither trained to nor have the courage to go for a war in this terrain single-handedly.

Stakeholders in Afghanistan need to understand new ground realities. Any viable regional mechanism for taking on the Afghan cauldron cannot seem possible without having Pakistan on board. Especially at a time when both Pakistan and Afghanistan are on the course of redefining mutual relations. For a peaceful and economic exit plan, the US also cannot deny that Pakistan provides unmatchable logistic routes for the foreign forces engaged in the Afghan war. Routes through Pakistan are the shortest and cheapest and presently are the safest owing to the Pakistan army’s resolve to ascertain peace in the country. Another exit option could be through aligning the SCO with US exit policy since all the major regional powers are available under this one umbrella. Interestingly, and quite contrary to the US beliefs, the members of the SCO also trust Pakistan of being the lone brave lion to handle this menace impeccably. A better understanding of regional sensitivities will help the US to better grasp the situation in Afghanistan if she really wants to end this decades-old deadly conflict.

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FOOL’S WAR in AFGHANISTAN – by Eric S Margolis

Image result for Afghanistan Swamp

FOOL’S WAR  in AFGHANISTAN 

by 

Eric S Margolis

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fifteen years ago this week, the US launched the longest war in its history: the invasion and occupation of remote Afghanistan. Neighboring Pakistan was forced to facilitate the American invasion or ‘be bombed back to the stone age.’

America was furious after the bloody 9/11 attacks. The Bush administration had been caught sleeping on guard duty. Many Americans believed 9/11 was an inside job by pro-war neocons.

Afghanistan was picked as the target of US vengeance even though the 9/11 attacks were hatched (if in fact done from abroad) in Germany and Spain. The suicide attackers made clear their kamikaze mission was to punish the US for ‘occupying’ the holy land of Saudi Arabia, and for Washington’s open-ended support of Israel in its occupation of Palestine.

This rational was quickly obscured by the Bush administration that claimed the 9/11 attackers, most of whom were Saudis, were motivated by hatred of American ‘values’ and ‘freedoms.’ This nonsense planted the seeds of the rising tide of Islamophobia that we see today and the faux ‘war on terror.’

An anti-communist jihadi, Osama bin Laden, was inflated and demonized into America’s Great Satan. The supposed ‘terrorist training camps’ in Afghanistan were, as I saw with my eyes, camps where Pakistani intelligence trained jihadis to fight in India-occupied Kashmir.

Afghanistan, remote, bleak and mountainous, was rightly known as ‘the graveyard of empires.’ These included Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Timur, the Moguls and Sikhs. The British Empire invaded Afghanistan three times in the 19th century. The Soviet Union, world’s greatest land power, invaded in 1979, seeking a corridor to the Arabian Sea and Gulf.

All were defeated by the fierce Pashtun warrior tribes of the Hindu Kush. But the fool George W. Bush rushed in where angels feared to tread, in a futile attempt to conquer an unconquerable people for whom war was their favorite pastime. I was with the Afghan mujahidin when fighting the Soviet occupation in the 1980’s, and again the newly-formed Taliban in the early 1990’s. As I wrote in my book on this subject, ‘War at the Top of the World,’ the Pashtun warriors were the bravest men I’d ever seen. They had only ancient weapons but possessed boundless courage.

During the 2001 US invasion, the Americans allied themselves to the heroin and opium-dealing Tajik Northern Alliance, to former Communist allies of the Soviets, and to the northern Uzbeks, blood foes of the Pashtun and former Soviet Communist allies.

Taliban, which had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, had shut down 90% of Afghanistan’s heroin and opium trade. The US-allied Northern Alliance restored it, making Afghanistan again the world’s leading supplier of heroin and opium. US occupation forces, backed by immense tactical airpower, allied themselves with the most criminal elements in Afghanistan and installed a puppet regime of CIA assets. The old Communist secret police, notorious for their record of torture and atrocities, was kept in power by CIA to fight Taliban.

Last week, Washington’s Special Inspector General for Afghan Relief (SIGAR) issued a totally damning report showing how mass corruption, bribery, payoffs and drug money had fatally undermined US efforts to build a viable Afghan society.

What’s more, without 24/7 US air cover, Washington’s yes-men in Kabul would be quickly swept away. The Afghan Army and police have no loyalty to the regime; they fight only for the Yankee dollar. Like Baghdad, Kabul is a US-guarded island in a sea of animosity.

A report by Global Research has estimated the 15-year Afghan War and the Iraq War had cost the US $6 trillion. Small wonder when gasoline trucked up to Afghanistan from Pakistan’s coast it costs the Pentagon $400 per gallon. Some estimates put the war cost at $33,000 per citizen. But Americans do not pay this cost through a special war tax, as it should be. Bush ordered the total costs of the Iraq and Afghan wars be concealed in the national debt.

Officially, 2,216 American soldiers have died in Afghanistan and 20,049 were seriously wounded. Some 1,173 US mercenaries have also been killed. Large numbers of US financed mercenaries still remain in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Noble Peace Prize winner Barack Obama promised to withdraw nearly all US troops from Afghanistan by 2016.  Instead, more US troops are on the way to protect the Kabul puppet regime from its own people. Taliban and its dozen-odd allied resistance movements (‘terrorists’ in Pentagon speak faithfully parroted by the US media) are steadily gaining territory and followers.

Last week, the US dragooned NATO and other satrap states to a ‘voluntary’ donor conference for Afghanistan where they had to cough up another $15.2 billion and likely send some more troops to this hopeless conflict. Washington cannot bear to admit defeat by tiny Afghanistan or see this strategic nation fall into China’s sphere.

Ominously, the US is encouraging India to play a much larger role in Afghanistan, thus planting the seeds of a dangerous Pakistani-Indian-Chinese confrontation there.

There was no mention of the 800-lb gorilla in the conference room: Afghanistan’s role as the world’s, by now, largest heroin/opium/morphine producer – all under the proud auspices of the United States government. The new US president will inherit this embarrassing problem.

Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2016

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Pakistan, Afghanistan Fail to Reach Border Deal After Deadly Clashes

Pakistan, Afghanistan Fail to Reach Border Deal After Deadly Clashes

Ceasefire Holding, But Thousands Stranded at Border

by

Jason Ditz,

Antiwar.com

June 20, 2016

 
 

The ceasefire between Afghanistan and Pakistan is holding at the Khyber Pass border,

Negotiations don’t seem to be making much progress either, with the two nations ending a full day of talks today without anything resembling an agreement resulting from them. Pakistani officials came out of the talks, however, reiterating their intention to build the border fence.

Afghanistan and the US occupation forces there have been pressuring Pakistan for years to “control” the border, and Pakistani officials believe that fence and gates will improve their control over traffic back and forth. Pakistani officials even tried to be amicable about it, building the fencing some 30 meters into Pakistani territory.

At least by Pakistani reckoning, and that’s the problem. The 1893 deal between Afghanistan and Britain, which defines the de facto border, is roundly rejected by Afghan officials, who insist that the “real” border is dramatically further south, at the Indus River, and that Afghanistan actually spans a large portion of Pakistan as well.

So when Pakistani government forces came to build the fencing, the Afghans started shooting, and the border patrols quickly got into open combat. With nothing resolved, it remains to be seen what happens when the construction crews return.

 

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Paradigm shift in regional scenario by Brig (Retd) Asif Haroon Raja

Paradigm shift in regional scenario

Asif Haroon Raja

 

Eurasia-sketch

 

Pakistan and Afghanistan have traditionally had a complicated relationship characterized by mutual suspicion. Northern Alliance heavy Afghan regime under Hamid Karzai had remained heavily tilted towards India and had not only given high preference to India in her internal and external matters but also had adopted a hostile policy towards Pakistan. With the blessing of Washington, Karzai had given full liberty of action to India to emerge as the key country in Afghanistan and to fill up the security vacuum after withdrawal of ISAF. After signing strategic partnership agreement with India, Karzai allowed Indian military to train Afghan Army officers in their military institutions and meet Afghanistan’s defence needs. India took advantage of it and besides consolidating her hold in Afghanistan; she made full use of Afghan soil to foment insurgencies in FATA and Balochistan. India was content that this arrangement would continue under weak unity regime as well because of Dr. Abdullah. In 2014, a stage was being set to induct Indian military into Afghanistan. The US-India-Karzai led Afghan regime remained a close-knit team and remained focused towards destabilization of Pakistan. Equilibrium between the three strategic partners remained steadfast for 13 years, but with Ashraf Ghani taking over power, and the US military quitting Afghanistan after failing to defeat the Taliban, the balance got disturbed and gave birth to new equation in November 2014. Pakistan, which remained the whipping boy all these years, has replaced the most favored India. Suspicion and distrust piled up for over a decade has been replaced with goodwill, cooperation and sharing. Blame-game has almost ceased and the gap in trust bridged in the wake of ominous threats from the Taliban and other armed militant groups. China, Kabul and Washington seem to have put their faith in Gen Raheel Sharif and see him as the sole silver lining in the otherwise dark horizon. The trio is looking towards Pakistan Army to help in defeating terrorism and bringing peace in war torn region. Pakistan has long been blamed for harboring and abetting Haqqani network (HN) in its cross-border terrorism. Pakistan military had its own socio-politico-security compulsions to maintain a difference between good and bad Taliban and to target anti-Pakistan militants only. These compulsions restrained Pakistan from launching a military operation in North Waziristan (NW). The concerns were however pushed aside after the gruesome attack on Army Public School in Peshawar on December 16, 2016. A change in the outlook of new National Unity Regime under President Ashraf Ghani and CEO Dr. Abdullah and also in the thinking of Washington towards Pakistan has occurred essentially because of the across-the-board military operation in NW in which all militant groups based in NW were targeted. Uprooting of HN and Gul Bahadur groups from NW and comprehensive briefings given by Gen Raheel Sharif in GHQ to visiting President Ghani and his military team led by ANA chief Gen Sher M. Karimi, to ISAF Commander Gen Campbell, to US military officials in Pentagon and to British top officials made the difference. The other reason of extension of whole-hearted cooperation by Kabul is Pakistan’s declared stance that it has no favorites and that it would fully support Afghan led/owned reconciliation process. One more reason is Pakistan’s relatively better clout over Taliban and its critical support in a patch up. More so, it has been accepted by all and sundry that Pak Army is the only one which can fight and win battles against ideologically motivated militants. In order to reciprocate Pakistan’s laudable efforts in war on terror, while the US declared Mullah Fazlullah as the global terrorist, ANA launched an operation in Kunar against Fazlullah’s men. Five culprits having linkage with Peshawar incident have been arrested on the pointing of ISI. ANA managed to destroy some hideouts and inflicted casualties on TTP men but in the process lost over fifty soldiers. CIA operated drones are at times targeting militant hideouts in inaccessible areas in Shawal Range and along Pak-Afghan border. Both the US and China look positively and receptively towards the fast growing relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan and see it as a healthy development. While China has agreed to take active part in bringing peace in Afghanistan, the US has finally acknowledged the importance of Pakistan and is cooperating. Pak-US relations that were downhill are once again moving uphill. At the recently concluded Beijing Conference Ashraf Ghani defined five circles manifesting Afghanistan’s future foreign policy. He placed Pakistan in Ist circle (immediate six neighbors) and 2nd circle (Islamic World) and India in 4th circle (Asia). This is indeed a huge shift in thinking of Afghan leadership. What it implies is that Afghan top leadership has consented to prefer Pakistan over India. For a change, the US has readily reconciled with changed priorities of new regime without any ifs and buts. Kabul dropped another bombshell on India by declining her military aid and training assistance, and to rub salt on her wounds asked Pakistan to train Afghan officers. For the first time 16 Afghan cadets are receiving training in PMA Kakul. To add to India’s woes, Ghani made it clear that he will not allow Afghan soil for proxy war against any neighbor. He further distressed India by inviting Pakistan to host the next ‘Heart of Asia’ Conference, which earlier on was scheduled to be hosted by India. Pakistan’s reservations on use of its trade route by India from Wagah to Afghanistan have been accepted by Afghanistan, USA and China. On the military front, bilateral visits of senior military leaders and top intelligence personnel have recently increased. Gen Raheel and Corps Commanders 11 Corps and Southern Command undertook trips to Kabul. DG ISI Lt Gen Rizwan Akhtar visited Kabul thrice. Militaries and intelligence agencies of both sides are carrying out intimate coordination to manage the porous border, training matters, intelligence sharing and also taking care of each other’s security concerns. Military commanders and security officials are now regularly consulting to mutually share intelligence and coordinate security operations. Joint border control centres at Torkham and Spin Boldak have been revived to coordinate operations against the militants and share intelligence on illegal cross-border movement. The US has reconciled to the emerging changes in Afghanistan not by choice but because it has been forced by circumstances. To compensate its natural ally and strategic partner India, Obama undertook a second trip to India and skipped Pakistan. Besides removing the irritants in Indo-US nuclear agreement signed in 2008, and signing another 10 year defence pact, the visitor made the old promise of helping India to earn a permanent berth in UNSC and also elbowed India to become a leading partner in Asia-Pacific Coalition to counter China. Following conclusions can be drawn from the emerging scenario:- • Afghanistan and its immediate neighbors have come on one page to establish regional peace and usher in prosperity in this war torn region and to keep out chief trouble maker India. • Pakistan’s foreign policy has come out of its traditional apologetic and defensive policy and Gen Raheel Sharif has played a key role in making it slightly pro-active by showing the real face of India to governments of Afghanistan, US and UK. • Although Pakistan has been preferred over India by Ashraf Ghani, India which by now has penetrated in every department of Afghanistan including Army and intelligence agencies will continue with its dirty work of keeping Pak-Afghan relations tense in pursuit of its regional ambitions. • Irrespective of the US apparent affability towards Pakistan, India will continue to remain its strategic partner and Pakistan a tactical partner to serve its short term goals. • Genuine peace in Afghanistan will return once all foreign troops go home, Indian interference is curtailed, and Taliban agree to share power.

The writer is a retired Brig, war veteran/defence analyst/columnist/author of five books, Director Measac Research Centre. asifharoonraja@gmail.com

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Zaid Hamid Strategic Thinker & Analyst Proven Right After Ten Years

 

 

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