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Posted by Fawad Mir in Foreign Policy, Pakistan Security and Defence: Enemy & Threats (Internal & External) on April 15th, 2013
| And hold fast, all together, by the rope which God (stretches out for you), and be not divided among yourselves; and remember with gratitude God’s favour on you; for ye were enemies and He joined your hearts in love, so that by His Grace, ye b ecame brethren; and ye were on the brink of the pit of Fire, and He saved you from it. Thus doth God make His Signs clear to you: That ye may be guided. |
Posted by admin in "Jihadi" Outfits of Terrorism, Asif Zardari Crook Par Excellance, BOOT THE SCOUNDRELS OR SHOWDAZ, Corruption, Defense, Domestic Policy, Foreign Policy, Looters and Scam Artists, Pakistan's Ruling Elite Feudals Industrialists, Pakistan-US Relations, PML (N) CORRUPTION on March 2nd, 2013
Iqbal Baig, the biggest heroin smuggler to US is building a Shopping Arcade on Hall Road in Lahore. He has torn down historic and architecturally unique flats built in 1920s and 30s, which were part of Pre-Partition Lakhshmi Mansion. Therefore, another, beautiful landmark of Lahore has been victim of corruption and malfeasance of the Sharif brothers dynasty.
How did Iqbal Baig manage to get approval for destruction of a historic landmark? Simply, by bribing the Punjab Government, whereby he was able to get a permit to destroy these historical buildings. This is another example of Punjab Government’s expedient cooperation with crooked builders like Malik Riaz and Iqbal Baig.
Hall Road shopkeepers have watched helplessly as this drug lord rolls over their property rights and create clouds of dust and debris in one of the biggest electronics market in Asia. The Punjab Government is in cahoots with this drug smuggler, who finances his activities by money laundering and uses mules to smuggle drugs to the West.
Why is the West silent on the rapid growth of the Empire of Drug Baron, Iqbal Baig in Lahore, Pakistan? What is the nature of relationship, between Shahbaz Sharif & the Sharif Family with this known drug kingpin? These are the questions, which have caused considerable distress in the minds of Hall roads business community. But, these concerns may be short lived, as Iqbal Baig can use strong-arm tactics and considerable financial clout to silence his most vocal critics.
Many businessmen on Hall Road are appalled at the blatant criminal activities of a known heroin smuggler. It seems the US DEA has all but forgotten about Iqbal Baig’s narcotic empire and his partnership with Al Qaeda and Taliban? However, this criminal is more dangerous than ever, because now he is acquiring a cover of legitimacy. Although, convicted in a US court, this criminal will try to beat the system through use of couriers, instead of getting himself involved in heroin smuggling. Nowadays, due to a weak and corrupt government, Pakistan is awash with narcotics. Iqbal Baig will continue to indulge in his drug smuggling activities, and finance them with money earned through of legitimate business enterprise, like the Hall Road Project. This also provides a conduit to launder drug money and stash it in Middle Eastern Banks. In the process people like Iqbal Baig destroy not only young peoples lives in the West, but also in Pakistan. They buy greedy politicians like the Nawaz Sharif by “donating,” to their electioneering. It is a creative form of indirect bribery, where the “obligated” politician looks the other way at the illegal activities of their benefactors.
It is imperative that US Ambassador pressure the Punjab Government to crack down on such criminals turned legitimate entrepreneurs. Otherwise, they will come to bite back by destroying the lives of people in East and West in the garb of their worst terrorist nightmares. Heroin smuggling, legitimate business, and terrorism are an explosive mix, which the global community should help Pakistan, nip in the bud. However, Pakistani politicians are always drooling for illegal gratifications in the form of bank deposits in Dubai, Cayman Islands, and Isle of Wight made by the likes of Iqbal Baig, Tapi, and Malik Riaz.
Iqbal Baig is well known to most of Lahorites, who often wonder, why US, which has waged a War on Terror, does not protest to the Punjab government, about the money laundering, property acquisition, and funneling of drug money into legitimate businesses. In Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, and Mexico, US has used its DEA agents to stop drug kingpins from infiltrating legitimate commercial enterprises. But, in Pakistan, heroin smugglers and money launderers are roaming around scott- free. Almost every person in Lahore knows about this drug kingpin and are surprised that the US Embassy or the Lahore Consulate or DEA have not raised Malik Iqbal’s burgeoning empires issue with the Pakistan or at least the Punjab Government. It is non-productive for DEA to chase small time drug mules, and leaving the barracudas among heroin. Smugglers untouched. It also earns the ill will of a nation, where US is spending considerable amount of money to build its image. US government should proactively, coaxing the Punjab Government to cut off money laundering activities of the Iqbal Baig Empire. This will go a long way in improving the image of US in Lahore, a city, which is the political capital of Pakistan. At the same time it will also earn the considerable goodwill from the people of Lahore, where the image of US suffered during the Raymond Davis Affair. And it will also go a long way in restoring good relations with the people of Pakistan. Otherwise, the question, as to why people of Pakistan, will remain unanswered.
The Taliban and tobacco
By Aamir Latif and Kate Willson June 29, 2009, 10:15 am
http://www.icij.org/project/tobacco-underground/taliban-and-tobacco
Tumman Khan is a poor, aging farmer who tills another man’s land in the restive northern tribal belt of Pakistan. For him and others in the Khyber Agency region, Sahib Ayub Afridi is considered an angel. The illiterate 70-year-old tribal leader finances construction of water pumps, streets and lighting, builds mosques and madrasahs, and supports the penniless and widowed.
But there’s another side to Afridi.
A one-time notorious drug kingpin who in the 1980s armed the Afghan Mujahidin at the CIA’s behest, Afridi churns out millions of counterfeit cigarettes to smuggle across central Asia, China, and Africa, and splits the proceeds with the pro-Taliban militants who control the swath of mountainous borderland, according to Pakistani intelligence and customs officials. The leaders of some of these militant groups are on the U.S. most-wanted list in the region — among them, Baitullah Mehsud, who has claimed responsibility for bloody attacks in Pakistan and has sworn to strike Washington, D.C. U.S. officials have responded by putting a $5 million price on Mehsud’s head.
A tax for terrorism
As government sanctions restrict traditional sources of terrorist financing, Pakistani militant groups increasingly rely on proceeds from counterfeit cigarette production and smuggling, intelligence sources say. Although income figures are rough estimates at best, profits from the illicit cigarette trade account for as much as 20 percent of funding for these militant groups, second only to heroin production, according to terrorism experts in Pakistan. “Taliban and other militant groups do not have to do much,” says Ikram Sehgal, a senior defense and security analyst who heads SMS Security, Pakistan’s leading private security company. “They simply receive taxes on a regular basis from owners of illegal and legal cigarette factories and later for the safe passage they provide to the convoys.”
Sahib Ayub Afridi: top cigarette counterfeiter in Pakistan.
The Afridi case is part of a broader trend of terrorism groups relying on contraband to finance their activities, experts say. Even if efforts to cut the region’s booming heroin production are successful — an unlikely prospect — the lucrative tobacco trade suggests how hard it will be to stanch funding to terrorists and insurgents in areas far from government control. The world’s longest-running civil wars are fueled by contraband according to a 2002 study by Stanford University’s James Fearon. Cocaine smuggling has largely propelled FARC’s 40-year insurgency in Colombia. Diamonds have funded civil wars in Sierra Leone and Angola. Opium has led to drawn-out conflicts in Afghanistan and Burma.
In the badlands of the Afghan-Pakistan border, the challenges are particularly daunting. U.S. President Barack Obama recently deemed the region “the most dangerous place in the world” for Americans. The growing power of the Taliban and other militant groups, combined with new waves of terrorism, has put Pakistan’s weak government on the defensive. The risks are indeed high: as much as two-thirds of the nuclear-armed country is ruled not by a central government but by insurgents, militants, tribal leaders, or warlords.
Overlooked in the Pakistani Taliban’s growing power is the role of tobacco smuggling.
As U.S. and NATO forces attacked the Taliban in Afghanistan, the predominantly Pashtun fighters increasingly sought sanctuary along the ungoverned border of Pakistan. The Khyber Agency — a border province boasting the most-traveled trade route between the two countries — is also the hotbed of cigarette counterfeiting in Pakistan. And its renegade factories have become the region’s largest employer, according to Pakistani intelligence sources.
Fateh Mohammed, a senior Pakistani tax official, said counterfeit cigarette production is on the rise, costing the government an estimated $88 million annually in lost taxes. He said the excise department does what it can, but the factories are “out of reach.”
“It’s hard for us to curb the sale and production of counterfeit cigarettes as we neither have the manpower and other resources to do that,” Mohammed said. “Nor do we have any reach to the tribal belt where this business is flourishing.”
Illicit cigarette production in the strife-torn tribal belt, a semiautonomous region of Pashtun tribes bordering Afghanistan, accounts for an estimated 22 percent of all consumption in Pakistan, a country with cigarette taxes among the highest in the world — accounting for 87 percent of the cost per pack. Mohammad Khosa, who heads the anti-counterfeiting efforts for British American Tobacco in the region, estimated that the region’s factories pump out some 15 billion cigarettes a year, a large portion of which end up smuggled to neighboring Afghanistan.
“Smuggling has long existed because of physical proximity to land routes going into Central Asia and beyond,” said Sumit Ganguly, professor and Pakistan expert at Indiana University. “On top of that, there are very poor people. The two dovetail very neatly.”
Trade routes between Afghanistan and Pakistan developed over thousands of years with no governmental controls. It wasn’t until the British drew a 1600-mile border between the two countries, in 1893, that a culture of illicit trade flourished. Today, Pashtuns pay little attention to the poorly marked borders that separate the rugged terrain between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Following the October 2001, U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, smuggling contraband goods across to Pakistan provided the Taliban with a major source of financing. In his final story published in The Wall Street Journal before his January 2002 abduction, Daniel Pearl reported on how the group “taxed” goods being smuggled across the border. The militants skimmed between $35 million and $75 million off exports of Marlboro cigarettes, Sony TVs, and Gillette shaving cream, Pearl wrote.
Today, no figure is more deeply mired in the region’s contraband trade than Haji Ayub Afridi, a tribal leader of the region-ruling Afridi clan, which has long controlled trade routes into Afghanistan and whose name is synonymous with trade and transport throughout Pakistan.
Who’s Who of militants
Afridi’s sweeping luxury estate near the Afghan border is enclosed by 20-foot high walls topped with concertina wire, guarded by a private army and protected by an anti-aircraft battery. Authorities point to a pair of lucrative, yet nameless, cigarette factories that Afridi owns, known locally as “One More Cigarette,” and to a number of cigarette-filled warehouses he is said to own near Peshawar — the region’s largest city, 25 miles east of his home. Because most of his business is in the names of associates, the full extent of Afridi’s assets is unknown, but officials believe he operates as many as six factories.
Afridi churns out copies of an array of Western brands — Marlboros, Camels, Benson & Hedges, and 555s, among them, officials say. The Marlboros and Camels are smuggled into Afghanistan and the central Asian countries of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Benson & Hedges is favored for shipment to South Africa, while counterfeit 555s are moved through the Khunjarab pass into China. Afridi also produces low-quality local brands One-Touch and Datchi, which are popular in Afghanistan.
Tobacco counterfeiter Afridi lives in a heavily guarded compound near the Afghan border.
Afridi pays protection money to a Who’s Who of the region’s militant leaders, according to Pakistani intelligence. In exchange for operating his factories in the Khyber Agency, sources say, Afridi pays $36,000 a month — the average combined annual income of 47 Pakistanis — to Mangal Bagh, leader of the area’s ruling pro-Taliban militia.
A former bus token taker and fellow member of the Afridi clan, warlord Bagh commands thousands of heavily-armed Islamist militants through his group Lashkar-i-Islam (Army of Islam). In addition to collecting taxes from the likes of Afridi, the pro-Taliban group specializes in kidnapping for ransom. Early in his smuggling racket, Afridi refused to cut Bagh a percentage of his proceeds, instead paying protection taxes to a rival Taliban group, officials say. The two groups clashed in 2008, leaving 19 dead. Following the battle, Afridi agreed to pay Bagh.
Bagh may be the most moderate militant leader on Afridi’s payoff list. Afridi also pays a pair of rival Taliban factions in the neighboring tribal region of Waziristan, along the Afghan border to the south, who are actively fighting U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. One of the men, Mullah Nazir, opposes fighting against Pakistan security forces. But his rival, Baitullah Mehsud — leader of Pakistan’s Taliban movement — has advocated attacks against the Pakistani government and is blamed by Islamabad for ordering the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Mehsud’s troops also provide a safe haven for al-Qaeda forces fighting in Afghanistan, and his militancy has made him a prime target for the Americans. But that has not deterred the Taliban leader; he recently joined forces with Nazir and a third warlord who, together, now control much of the region. The rival groups agreed to “fight the U.S. together, because we are concerned over the surge in American troops in Afghanistan,” Nazir told local tribal chiefs, according to the Daily Times, an English-language newspaper in the region.
Afridi isn’t the only counterfeit cigarette producer in the tribal belt. Smugglers also transport cigarettes from illegal factories in neighboring provinces of Kohat and Bannu into Afghanistan through the border town of Miramshah. The area is in the grip of an al-Qaeda militia of ethnic Uzbeks loyal to Mehsud. Pakistani intelligence sources say cigarette smugglers pay the militant groups up to 20 percent commission for each convoy. American and Japanese model trucks leave the sprawling, high-walls cigarette factories almost daily, while bigger convoys of five to seven trucks leave twice a week, local residents say.
On the lam
Afridi is no stranger to the black market. During the 1960s he drove truckloads of smuggled gold through the Khyber Pass. His partner was a slightly older gold smuggler named Iqbal Baig. The two prominent tribal members would remain close business partners as they expanded into currency, hashish, and heroin smuggling.
The Torkham Crossing, a heavily traveled trade route between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
In the 1980s, Afridi is credited with orchestrating the heroin trade between eastern Afghanistan, through the Khyber Pass, to the Afridi clan in Pakistan. Pakistani and Belgian authorities first sought his arrest in 1983, after tying the smuggler to 17 tons of hashish in a southwest Pakistan warehouse and another 6.5 tons in Antwerp, Belgium. But when 50 Pakistani police sought to arrest Afridi in 1990, they were met by an armed militia and quickly retreated, according to U.S. court records.
Despite his record as a narcotics trafficker, the CIA had its own uses for Afridi. In the 1980s, he was one of many Pashtun tribal leaders tapped by the agency to help finance and arm the Mujahidin struggle against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, according to The New Dimension of International Terrorism by former Harvard University fellow and U.S. Army Colonel Stefan M. Aubrey. After the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan, Afridi turned his attention homeward. He was elected to Parliament in 1990 — reportedly after paying up to $600 per vote to represent the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
Through it all, Afridi never stopped dealing drugs, according to U.S. court records. He ordered subordinates to truck hashish to Karachi in Bedford trucks and old tanker trucks. Meanwhile, he and his partners made millions smuggling tons of heroin and hashish across the globe — through India to London, Paris, and Amsterdam, packed amid frozen fish into the Netherlands, through Singapore and Hong Kong, and across the Atlantic to the United States and Canada.
Afridi, through his longstanding contacts in the drug world, became the key supplier to the biggest narcotics ring in Pakistan, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The DEA branded Afridi’s syndicate “the single most prolific heroin and hashish drug trafficking organization in Pakistan.” The amounts were indeed impressive: 57 tons of hashish into the Netherlands in a single shipment; 30 tons of hashish to California; and massive amounts of heroin around the world.
At the center of the operation was the notorious Iqbal Baig–a respected, well-known businessman whose assets included cinemas, textile factories, commercial property, and a pizzeria. And at Baig’s side was Tarik Butt, his brother-in-law. Butt took over a battery manufacturing plant in 1986 after its owner — smuggling heroin into Vienna on Butt’s behalf — died from a drug-filled balloon exploding in his stomach. The factory became “a social club of misfits, thugs, murderers and dope dealers,” said a New Delhi-based agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration.
By the 1990s, however, Afridi’s criminal past was catching up with him. With authorities threatening prosecution, he went into hiding and was soon splitting his time between Pakistani tribal areas, Afghanistan, and the United Arab Emirates.
It was a trio of hash shipments — 58 tons in all — that finally led to Afridi’s undoing.
Children line up with lunch buckets at a refugee camp near Swabi, Pakistan, during spring 2009 fighting in the Swat valley.
Hidden amid fish, tires and sacks of rice, the drugs were sent to Long Island, New York, and Newport News, Virginia, and led to the arrest of one Stewart Newton, Afridi’s U.S. connection. Arrested in 1988, Newton was sentenced to 47 years in prison, but served only eight after agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors in the case against the Pakistani smugglers. Also indicted were Butt and Baig, whom Pakistan extradited to the United States in 1995.
Afridi stayed out of reach, hiding in the tribal zone. But fearful of arrest by Pakistani officials and concerned his now-arrested co-conspirators would turn against him, he negotiated with the DEA for a year before finally turning himself in.
Now-retired DEA agent Gregory D. Lee recalls fielding odd questions from Afridi’s go-between during that time.
“He would ask crazy questions like, ‘how many times a day will I be beaten by the Marshals?’ and ‘will I be able to stay at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan,” Lee said during a recent phone interview. If he wasn’t permitted to serve out his sentence at the four-star hotel, Afridi wanted to know if he could employ a personal cook at the prison. “He had no idea what to expect.”
In 1997, Afridi pleaded guilty to smuggling hashish and was sentenced to five years in prison and a $100,000 fine. But the Pakistani godfather served only two years in U.S. jail, paid just $425, and in 1999 he was deported to Pakistan, where officials promptly arrested him for an earlier smuggling case.
Although sentenced in Pakistan to seven years in prison, Afridi was released without explanation shortly after 9/11. Soon after his release, he traveled to Afghanistan to unite anti-Taliban warlords, according to senior Pakistani intelligence and anti-narcotics officials. His attempts failed, they say, and the aging Afridi returned home.
It is back home, in the Khyber Agency, where Ayub Afridi has refocused his attentions. Gone are the hashish and heroin shipments, officials say. The old smuggler has found an easier racket to ply, with few penalties and easy profits — the untaxed cigarette trade. Reached by telephone, in English and Urdu, an elderly man at Afridi’s home denied he was Afridi and declined to comment further.
Nor will others talk openly about Afridi in his native land. Journalists do not write about the man, and even law enforcement officials speak about him in hushed tones. But the poor of the Khyber Agency are not so reticent. Despite his years in Afghanistan, in jails and throughout his smuggling exploits, Afridi didn’t forget the poor who surrounded him, farmer Tumman Khan told a visiting reporter. Even when Afridi was locked away in an American prison cell, the poor and widowed continued to receive monthly checks on his behalf.
“Haji Sahib is an angel for poor people like us,” Khan said. “We don’t know much about his business, whether legal or illegal. What we know is that he has helped us when no one was there to do that.”
Posted by admin in "Jihadi" Outfits of Terrorism, Afghan -Taliban-India Axis, Foreign Policy, Hypocrites in Islam, India, Jahiliya "Jihadis"Illiterate Fanatics, MUSLIMS, OUTRAGE AGAINST MUSLIM GENOCIDE, Pakistan Fights Terrorism, Pakistan's Fights Terrorism, SHIA +SUNNI = MUSLIMS=ISLAM=PEACE on February 23rd, 2013
Saudi & Iranian should take their battles elsewhere, Pakistan is not up for sale as a battleground for the destruction of Shia-Sunni Unity. The blood of 1,200 Pakistanis Shias of Hazarawal ethnicity is on the hands of Saudi sponsored proxies, the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi. They are a creation of Saudi money
Background Reading
Iran soon rattled its own sabers. Iranian parliamentarian Ruhollah Hosseinian urged the Islamic Republic to put its military forces on high alert, reported the website for Press TV, the state-run English-language news agency. “I believe that the Iranian government should not be reluctant to prepare the country’s military forces at a time that Saudi Arabia has dispatched its troops to Bahrain,” he was quoted as saying.
The intensified wrangling across the Persian—or, as the Saudis insist, the Arabian—Gulf has strained relations between the U.S. and important Arab allies, helped to push oil prices into triple digits and tempered U.S. support for some of the popular democracy movements in the Arab world. Indeed, the first casualty of the Gulf showdown has been two of the liveliest democracy movements in countries right on the fault line, Bahrain and the turbulent frontier state of Yemen.
Saudi Arabia’s flag
Source: Military Balance
But many worry that the toll could wind up much worse if tensions continue to ratchet upward. They see a heightened possibility of actual military conflict in the Gulf, where one-fifth of the world’s oil supplies traverse the shipping lanes between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Growing hostility between the two countries could make it more difficult for the U.S. to exit smoothly from Iraq this year, as planned. And, perhaps most dire, it could exacerbate what many fear is a looming nuclear arms race in the region.
Iran has long pursued a nuclear program that it insists is solely for the peaceful purpose of generating power, but which the U.S. and Saudi Arabia believe is really aimed at producing a nuclear weapon. At a recent security conference, Prince Turki al Faisal, a former head of the Saudi intelligence service and ambassador to the U.K. and the U.S., pointedly suggested that if Iran were to develop a weapon, Saudi Arabia might well feel pressure to develop one of its own.
The Saudis currently rely on the U.S. nuclear umbrella and on antimissile defense systems deployed throughout the Persian Gulf region. The defense systems are intended to intercept Iranian ballistic missiles that could be used to deliver nuclear warheads. Yet even Saudis who virulently hate Iran have a hard time believing that the Islamic Republic would launch a nuclear attack against the birthplace of their prophet and their religion. The Iranian leadership says it has renounced the use of nuclear weapons.
How a string of hopeful popular protests has brought about a showdown of regional superpowers is a tale as convoluted as the alliances and history of the region. It shows how easily the old Middle East, marked by sectarian divides and ingrained rivalries, can re-emerge and stop change in its tracks.
There has long been bad blood between the Saudis and Iran. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni Muslim kingdom of ethnic Arabs, Iran a Shiite Islamic republic populated by ethnic Persians. Shiites first broke with Sunnis over the line of succession after the death of the Prophet Mohammed in the year 632; Sunnis have regarded them as a heretical sect ever since. Arabs and Persians, along with many others, have vied for the land and resources of the Middle East for almost as long.
These days, geopolitics also plays a role. The two sides have assembled loosely allied camps. Iran holds in its sway Syria and the militant Arab groups Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories; in the Saudi sphere are the Sunni Muslim-led Gulf monarchies, Egypt, Morocco and the other main Palestinian faction, Fatah. The Saudi camp is pro-Western and leans toward tolerating the state of Israel. The Iranian grouping thrives on its reputation in the region as a scrappy “resistance” camp, defiantly opposed to the West and Israel.
For decades, the two sides have carried out a complicated game of moves and countermoves. With few exceptions, both prefer to work through proxy politicians and covertly funded militias, as they famously did during the long Lebanese civil war in the late 1970s and 1980s, when Iran helped to hatch Hezbollah among the Shiites while the Saudis backed Sunni militias.
But the maneuvering extends far beyond the well-worn battleground of Lebanon. Two years ago, the Saudis discovered Iranian efforts to spread Shiite doctrine in Morocco and to use some mosques in the country as a base for similar efforts in sub-Saharan Africa. After Saudi emissaries delivered this information to King Mohammed VI, Morocco angrily severed diplomatic relations with Iran, according to Saudi officials and cables obtained by the organization WikiLeaks.
As far away as Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, the Saudis have watched warily as Iranian clerics have expanded their activities—and they have responded with large-scale religious programs of their own there.
Reuters
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (above, in 2008) has recently compared the region’s protests to Iran’s 1979 revolution.
In Riyadh, Saudi officials watched with alarm. They became furious when the Obama administration betrayed, to Saudi thinking, a longtime ally in Mr. Mubarak and urged him to step down in the face of the street demonstrations.
The Egyptian leader represented a key bulwark in what Riyadh perceives as a great Sunni wall standing against an expansionist Iran. One part of that barrier had already crumbled in 2003 when the U.S. invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam Hussein. Losing Mr. Mubarak means that the Saudis now see themselves as the last Sunni giant left in the region.
The Saudis were further agitated when the protests crept closer to their own borders. In Yemen, on their southern flank, young protesters were suddenly rallying thousands, and then tens of thousands, of their fellow citizens to demand the ouster of the regime, led by President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his family for 43 years.
Meanwhile, across a narrow expanse of water on Saudi Arabia’s northeast border, protesters in Bahrain rallied in the hundreds of thousands around a central roundabout in Manama. Most Bahraini demonstrators were Shiites with a long list of grievances over widespread economic and political discrimination. But some Sunnis also participated, demanding more say in a government dominated by the Al-Khalifa family since the 18th century.
Protesters deny that their goals had anything to do with gaining sectarian advantage. Independent observers, including the U.S. government, saw no sign that the protests were anything but homegrown movements arising from local problems. During a visit to Bahrain, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates urged the government to adopt genuine political and social reform.
But to the Saudis, the rising disorder on their borders fit a pattern of Iranian meddling. A year earlier, they were convinced that Iran was stoking a rebellion in Yemen’s north among a Shiite-dominated rebel group known as the Houthis. Few outside observers saw extensive ties between Iran and the Houthis. But the Saudis nonetheless viewed the nationwide Yemeni protests in that context.
Reuters
Saudi Arabian troops cross the causeway leading to Bahrain on March 14, above. The ruling family in Bahrain had appealed for assistance in dealing with protests.
In Bahrain, where many Shiites openly nurture cultural and religious ties to Iran, the Saudis saw the case as even more open-and-shut. To their ears, these suspicions were confirmed when many Bahraini protesters moved beyond demands for greater political and economic participation and began demanding a constitutional monarchy or even the outright ouster of the Al-Khalifa family. Many protesters saw these as reasonable responses to years of empty promises to give the majority Shiites a real share of power—and to the vicious government crackdown that had killed seven demonstrators to that point.
But to the Saudis, not to mention Bahrain’s ruling family, even the occasional appearance of posters of Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah amid crowds of Shiite protesters pumping their fists and chanting demands for regime change was too much. They saw how Iran’s influence has grown in Shiite-majority Iraq, along their northern border, and they were not prepared to let that happen again.
As for the U.S., the Saudis saw calls for reform as another in a string of disappointments and outright betrayals. Back in 2002, the U.S. had declined to get behind an offer from King Abdullah (then Crown Prince) to rally widespread Arab recognition for Israel in exchange for Israel’s acceptance of borders that existed before the 1967 Six Day War—a potentially historic deal, as far as the Saudis were concerned. And earlier this year, President Obama declined a personal appeal from the king to withhold the U.S. veto at the United Nations from a resolution condemning continued Israeli settlement building in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
The Saudis believe that solving the issue of Palestinian statehood will deny Iran a key pillar in its regional expansionist strategy—and thus bring a win for the forces of Sunni moderation that Riyadh wants to lead.
Iran, too, was starting to see a compelling case for action as one Western-backed regime after another appeared to be on the ropes. It ramped up its rhetoric and began using state media and the regional Arab-language satellite channels it supports to depict the pro-democracy uprisings as latter-day manifestations of its own revolution in 1979. “Today the events in the North of Africa, Egypt, Tunisia and certain other countries have another sense for the Iranian nation.… This is the same as ‘Islamic Awakening,’ which is the result of the victory of the big revolution of the Iranian nation,” said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran also broadcast speeches by Hezbollah’s leader into Bahrain, cheering the protesters on. Bahraini officials say that Iran went further, providing money and even some weapons to some of the more extreme opposition members. Protest leaders vehemently deny any operational or political links to Iran, and foreign diplomats in Bahrain say that they have seen little evidence of it.
March 14 was the critical turning point. At the invitation of Bahrain, Saudi armed vehicles and tanks poured across the causeway that separates the two countries. They came representing a special contingent under the aegis of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a league of Sunni-led Gulf states, but the Saudis were the major driver. The Saudis publicly announced that 1,000 troops had entered Bahrain, but privately they concede that the actual number is considerably higher.
If both Iran and Saudi Arabia see themselves responding to external threats and opportunities, some analysts, diplomats and democracy advocates see a more complicated picture. They say that the ramping up of regional tensions has another source: fear of democracy itself.
Long before protests ousted rulers in the Arab world, Iran battled massive street protests of its own for more than two years. It managed to control them, and their calls for more representative government or outright regime change, with massive, often deadly, force. Yet even as the government spun the Arab protests as Iranian inspired, Iran’s Green Revolution opposition movement managed to use them to boost their own fortunes, staging several of their best-attended rallies in more than a year.
Saudi Arabia has kept a wary eye on its own population of Shiites, who live in the oil-rich Eastern Province directly across the water from Bahrain. Despite a small but energetic activist community, Saudi Arabia has largely avoided protests during the Arab Spring, something that the leadership credits to the popularity and conciliatory efforts of King Abdullah. But there were a smattering of small protests and a few clashes with security services in the Eastern Province.
The regional troubles have come at a tricky moment domestically for Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah, thought to be 86 years old, was hospitalized in New York, receiving treatment for a back injury, when the Arab protests began. The Crown Prince, Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, is only slightly younger and is already thought to be too infirm to become king. Third in line, Prince Nayaf bin Abdul Aziz, is around 76 years old.
Viewing any move toward more democracy at home—at least on anyone’s terms but their own—as a threat to their regimes, the regional superpowers have changed the discussion, observers say. The same goes, they say, for the Bahraini government. “The problem is a political one, but sectarianism is a winning card for them,” says Jasim Husain, a senior member of the Wefaq Shiite opposition party in Bahrain.
Since March 14, the regional cold war has escalated. Kuwait expelled several Iranian diplomats after it discovered and dismantled, it says, an Iranian spy cell that was casing critical infrastructure and U.S. military installations. Iran and Saudi Arabia are, uncharacteristically and to some observers alarmingly, tossing direct threats at each other across the Gulf. The Saudis, who recently negotiated a $60 billion arms deal with the U.S. (the largest in American history), say that later this year they will increase the size of their armed forces and National Guard.
And recently the U.S. has joined in warning Iran after a trip to the region by Defense Secretary Gates to patch up strained relations with Arab monarchies, especially Saudi Arabia. Minutes after meeting with King Abdullah, Mr. Gates told reporters that he had seen “evidence” of Iranian interference in Bahrain. That was followed by reports from U.S. officials that Iranian leaders were exploring ways to support Bahraini and Yemeni opposition parties, based on communications intercepted by U.S. spy agencies.
Saudi officials say that despite the current friction in the U.S.-Saudi relationship, they won’t break out of the traditional security arrangement with Washington, which is based on the understanding that the kingdom works to stabilize global oil prices while the White House protects the ruling family’s dynasty. Washington has pulled back from blanket support for democracy efforts in the region. That has bruised America’s credibility on democracy and reform, but it has helped to shore up the relationship with Riyadh.
A look at the Sunni-Shiite divide in the Middle East and some of the key flashpoints in the cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran
The deployment into Bahrain was also the beginning of what Saudi officials describe as their efforts to directly parry Iran. While Saudi troops guard critical oil and security facilities in their neighbor’s land, the Bahraini government has launched a sweeping and often brutal crackdown on demonstrators.
It forced out the editor of the country’s only independent newspaper. More than 400 demonstrators have been arrested without charges, many in violent night raids on Shiite villages. Four have died in custody, according to human-rights groups. Three members of the national soccer team, all Shiites, have also been arrested. As many as 1,000 demonstrators who missed work during the protests have been fired from state companies.
In Shiite villages such as Saar, where a 14-year-old boy was killed by police and a 56-year-old man disappeared overnight and showed up dead the next morning, protests have continued sporadically. But in the financial district and areas where Sunni Muslims predominate, the demonstrations have ended.
In Yemen, the Saudis, also working under a Gulf Cooperation Council umbrella, have taken control of the political negotiations to transfer power out of the hands of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, according to two Saudi officials.
“We stayed out of the process for a while, but now we have to intervene,” said one official. “It’s that, or watch our southern flank disintegrate into chaos.”
Corrections & Amplifications
King Mohammed VI is the ruler of Morocco. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the ruler was Hassan II.
—Nada Raad and Farnaz Fassihi contributed to this article.
We have Zero Tolerance for Sectarian Terrorism. Let there be no doubt. These Jihadis are turning on than that fed them during the Soviet Afghan War. Taliban are no different than any other Dogs of War, at the pay of any Master, who sponsors them.
Iran and Saudi Arabia have stabbed Pakistan on the back. They have taken undue advantage of our love and friendship and used our soil to fight their proxy battles. These two nations, whom Pakistanis have served to educate and taught them basic health care skills, have returned our favours by making our nation their killing field. They have brainwashed our people through their own tarnished brand of faith and used them through financial incentives, to fight their sectarian wars.
These Jihadis need to be arrested en masse in all cities of Pakistan and Deprogrammed by Islamic Scholars from all Fiqh of Islam. Without a massive deprogramming process, they will continue to create turmoil in Pakistan. Their heinous behavior involves attacking most weak and vulnerable. These cowards have chosen the defenceless, innocent, and peaceful Hazawal Pakistanis, who cannot fight back.
Quetta is not a playground for the Un-Islamic “Jihadi” Fanatics, funded by Saudis and Iran. Pakistani blood is not cheap it is precious. All Pakistanis need to close ranks and fight the Takfiri Jihadis. They do not represent Islam and its Core Values. Islam does NOT teach killing innocent men, women, and children, whether Muslims or Non-Muslim, or Atheists. Islam is a Deen, which protects the sanctity of human life and protects minorities.
The communist kafirs of the Evil Soviet Empire have been defeated. US forces is exiting Afghanistan in 2014. Takfiris should be offered a choice either get educated in a state registered Darul Uloom or be mainstreamed in an Islamic University. But, they should never be left by alone to practice their heinous ideology. Pakistan is not a battlefield for hire, for Iran versus Saudi Arabs Un-Islamic Sectarian Wars.
Reference
Posted by admin in Afghanistan-Pakistan's Shield, Foreign Policy, THE BATTLE FOR PAKISTAN SERIES on February 21st, 2013
WHAT MILITARY LESSONS HAVE WE LEARNT FROM THE SOVIET AND US DEBACLES
IN AFGHANISTAN?
Afghanistan: the Smell of Defeat
by MIKE WHITNEY
“These two visions, one of tyranny and murder, the other of liberty
and life, clashed in Afghanistan. And thanks to brave US and coalition
forces and to Afghan patriots, the nightmare of the Taliban is over
and that nation is coming to life again.”
– George W. Bush, The War College Address, 2004
Not so fast, George.
The United States hasn’t liberated Afghanistan. It hasn’t rebuilt
Afghanistan. It hasn’t removed the warlords from power, curtailed
opium production, established strong democratic institutions, or
improved life for ordinary working people. The US hasn’t achieved any
of its strategic objectives. The Taliban are stronger than ever, the
central government is a corrupt farce, and, after 11 years of war, the
country is in a shambles.
This is what defeat looks like. The US military has been defeated by a
poorly-armed militia which has demonstrated a superior grasp of modern
warfare and asymmetric engagement. The Taliban has shown that they are
more adaptable, more motivated, and smarter. That’s why they
prevailed. That’s why they beat the world’s most celebrated army.
Americans don’t like to hear that kind of talk. They’re very proud of
their military and are willing to pay upwards of $1 trillion per year
to keep it outfitted in the most advanced weaponry on earth. But
weapons don’t win wars, neither does propaganda. If they did, the US
would have won long ago, but they don’t. What wins wars is tactics,
operations, and strategy, and that’s where the emphasis must be if one
expects to succeed.. Here’s an excerpt from an article by William S.
Lind explaining why the US mission in Afghanistan failed:
“A general rule of warfare is that a higher level trumps a lower, and
technique is the lowest level of all. Our SEALs, Rangers, Delta, SF,
and all the rest are vastly superior to the Taliban or al-Qaeda at
techniques. But those opponents have sometimes shown themselves able
at tactics, operations, and strategy. We can only defeat them by
making ourselves superior at those higher levels of war. There,
regrettably, Special Operations Forces have nothing to offer. They are
just another lead bullet in an obsolete Second Generation arsenal.”
(“What’s so special about Special Ops?”, William S. Lind, The American
Conservative)
The US military’s high-tech gadgetry and pilotless drones merely
disguise the fact that America is still fighting the last war and
hasn’t adapted to the new reality. Here’s more from Lind expanding on
the same theory:
“The greatest intellectual challenge in Fourth Generation war—war
against opponents that are not states—is how to fight it at the
operational level. NATO in Afghanistan, like the Soviets three decades
ago, has been unable to solve that riddle. But the Taliban appears to
have done so….
The Soviet army focused its best talent on operational art. But in
Afghanistan, it failed, just as we have failed. Like the Soviets, we
can take and hold any piece of Afghan ground. And doing so brings us,
like the Soviets, not one step closer to strategic victory. The
Taliban, by contrast, have found an elegant way to connect strategy
and tactics in decentralized modern warfare.
What passes for NATO’s strategy is to train sufficient Afghan forces
to hold off the Taliban once we pull out. The Taliban’s response has
been to have men in Afghan uniform— many of whom actually are Afghan
government soldiers or police—turn their guns on their NATO advisers.
That is a fatal blow against our strategy because it makes the
training mission impossible. Behold operational art in Fourth
Generation war……
The Taliban know this technique is operational, not just tactical.
They can be expected to put all their effort into it. What counter do
we have? Just order our troops to pretend it is not happening—to keep
trusting their Afghan counterparts. That order, if enforced, will put
our soldiers in such an untenable position that morale will collapse.”
(“Unfriendly Fire”, William S. Lind, The American Conservative)
Lind does not underestimate the Taliban or dismiss them as “ignorant
goat herders”. In fact, he appears to admire the way they have
mastered 4-G warfare and routed an enemy that has vastly superior
technology, communications and firepower. It helps to prove his basic
thesis that tactics, operations, and strategy are what matter most.
For more than a decade, the Taliban have been carrying out an
impressive guerrilla war frustrating attempts by the US to establish
security, hold ground or expand the power of the central (Karzai)
government. In the last year, however, the militia’s efforts have paid
off as so-called “green on blue” shootings–where coalition troops have
been killed by Afghan soldiers or policemen–have dashed US plans to
maintain a client regime in Kabul when US combat operations end and
American troops withdraw. The Taliban found the weak-link in the
Pentagon’s strategy and has used it to full advantage. “As American
Security Project Central and South Asia specialist Joshua Foust puts
it, ‘The training mission is the foundation of the current strategy.
Without that mission, the strategy collapses. The war is adrift, and
it’s hard to see how anyone can avoid a complete disaster at this
point.’” (“The Day we lost Afghanistan”, The National Interest)
TIME TO CUT AND RUN?
The persistent green on blue attacks have convinced US and NATO
leaders that the war cannot be won which is why President Barack Obama
has decided to throw in the towel. Here’s a clip from a speech Obama
gave in May at a NATO confab in Chicago:
“I don’t think that there is ever going to be an optimal point where
we say, this is all done, this is perfect, this is just the way we
wanted it and now we can wrap up all our equipment and go home…Our
coalition is committed to this plan to bring our war in Afghanistan to
a responsible end.”
The political class is calling it quits. They’ve decided to cut their
losses and leave. Here’s how the New York Times summed it up:
“After more than a decade of having American blood spilled in
Afghanistan…it is time for United States forces to leave Afghanistan
….. It should not take more than a year. The United States will not
achieve even President Obama’s narrowing goals, and prolonging the war
will only do more harm….
Administration officials say they will not consider a secure
“logistical withdrawal,” but they offer no hope of achieving broad
governance and security goals. And the only final mission we know of,
to provide security for a 2014 Afghan election, seems dubious at best
…
…the idea of fully realizing broader democratic and security aims
simply grows more elusive….More fighting will not consolidate the
modest gains made by this war, and there seems little chance of
guaranteeing that the Taliban do not “come back in..
Post-American Afghanistan is likely to be more presentable than North
Korea, less presentable than Iraq and perhaps about the same as
Vietnam. But it fits the same pattern of damaging stalemate. We need
to exit as soon as we safely can.
America’s global interests suffer when it is mired in unwinnable wars
in distant regions.” (“Time to Pack Up”, New York Times)
Notice how the Times fails to mention the War on Terror, al Qaida, or
Bin Laden, all of which were used to garner support for the war. What
matters now is “America’s global interests”. That’s quite a reversal,
isn’t it?
What happened to the steely resolve to fight the good fight for as
long as it takes; to liberate Afghan women, to spread democracy to
far-flung Central Asia, and to crush the fanatical Taliban once and
for all? Was it all just empty posturing aimed at ginning up the war
machine and swaying public opinion?
And look how easy it is for the Times to do a 180 when just months ago
they were trying to persuade readers that we should hang-in-there to
protect Afghan women. Take a look at this August 2012 editorial titled
“The Women of Afghanistan”:
“Afghanistan can be a hard and cruel land, especially for women and
girls. Many fear they will be even more vulnerable to harsh tribal
customs and the men who impose them after American troops withdraw by
the end of 2014.
Womens’ rights have made modest but encouraging gains over the past
decade. But these could disappear without a strong commitment to
preserve and advance them from Afghan leaders, Washington and other
international partners….
…all Afghans should be invested in empowering women. As Mrs. Clinton
has argued, there is plenty of evidence to show that no country can
grow and prosper in today’s world if women are marginalized and
oppressed.” (“The Women of Afghanistan”, New York Times)
Ahh, but lending a hand to “marginalized and oppressed” women doesn’t
really hold a candle to “America’s global interests”, now does it? As
one might expect, the Times most heartfelt feelings are shaped by
political expediency. In any event, the Times tacit admission proves
that the war was never really about liberating women or spreading
democracy or even killing bin Laden. It was about “America’s global
interests”, particularly, pipeline corridors, mineral extraction and
the Great Game, controlling real estate in thriving Eurasia, the
economic center of the next century. That’s why the US invaded
Afghanistan, the rest is propaganda.
There’s one other glaring omission in the Times article that’s worth
noting. The editors tiptoe around the one word that most accurately
summarises the situation: Defeat. The United States is not leaving
Afghanistan voluntarily. It was defeated. The US military was defeated
in the same way that the IDF was defeated by Hezbollah in the summer
of 2006, by underestimating the tenacity, the skill, the ferocity, the
adaptability, and the intelligence of their adversary. That’s why
Israel lost the war in Lebanon. And that’s why the US lost the war in
Afghanistan.
There’s a reason why the media won’t use the term defeat however
applicable it may be. It’s because your average “Joe” understands
defeat, the shame of defeat, the sting of defeat, the anger of defeat.
Defeat is a repudiation of leadership, proof that we are ruled by
fools and scoundrels. Defeat is also a powerful deterrent, the idea
festers in people’s minds and turns them against foreign
interventions, police actions and war. That’s why the Times won’t
utter the word, because defeat is the antidote for aggression, and the
Times doesn’t want that. None of the media do.
But the truth is, the United States was defeated in Afghanistan. If we
can grasp that fact, then maybe can stop the next war before it gets
started.
Posted by admin in Foreign Policy, Pakistan-US Relations on February 18th, 2013
My previous experience in Pakistan included looking down on Peshawar from the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan and receiving some rocket fire from the eastern side of the border while in Asadabad.
Despite this, I was aware that the media’s portrayal of Pakistan was not entirely accurate and I was looking forward to my stay at the Command and Staff College in Quetta. However, I never could have imagined how great an experience it would be.
The remainder of my career in the US Army will be spent working in South Asia. As part of my introduction to this career path, I had the opportunity to travel throughout Pakistan for a year, during my stay at the Command and Staff College. The purpose of the travel was to learn as much as I could about Pakistan, and South Asia, from political, economic, security, and cultural perspectives.
I discovered many things about this great country; primarily that the Pakistan represented in the global mass media is not an accurate reflection of the real Pakistan. I consider myself very lucky to have been able to experience the hospitality, beauty, and intrigue of this proud nation.
My travels and experience included most major cities, from Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, and Islamabad, to the hills of Murree and Abbottabad, historical sites in Taxila and Ziarat, and the breathtaking beauty of Gilgit-Baltistan. I drove on the impressive and modern Motorway and on roads that have never been paved. I shopped in Anarkali Bazaar in Lahore and Park Towers in Karachi. I stayed at some of the finest hotels and spent a few nights in places that were not so nice. I met and dined with politicians, artists, shopkeepers, students, bishops, and others from almost every walk of life.
Courtesy: DAWN
Every person, no matter where they are from, will look for and find comfort in things that are familiar. This familiarity helps to ease feelings of isolation and ‘homesickness’.
As a white, Christian, Westerner you may wonder how I could find any comfort and familiarity in Pakistan, yet it was easy. I found many aspects of the culture and values in Pakistan to be quite familiar to me, and how I was raised. The mountainous, wooded areas near Murree and Abbottabad reminded me of my home states of Pennsylvania and Virginia.
The activities that I was able to engage in, such as playing sports in the Quetta Cantonment, fishing in Rawal Lake, having dinner at a nice restaurant in Karachi, or watching children play at a park in Lahore, are the same things that I would do at home in Virginia.
Despite these similarities, the most important aspect of familiarity was the military life. The fraternity of soldiers throughout the world is a close bond, and no matter what country, religion, race or creed they are from, soldiers will always have common stories, experiences, and struggles that they can share. All soldiers have experienced the cold, hunger, fear, loneliness, boredom, pride 
I was duly impressed with the professionalism and expertise of the army. The advanced curriculum, modern capabilities, and forward thinking at institutions like the Infantry School and training centres demonstrate where the roots of success for the field formations lie. There is no doubt that the Pakistan Army is among the finest of contemporary militaries in the world.
I recognise that this experience can never be replicated. Although I missed my family every day, it was certainly the best year of my army career and one of the most fun, educational, and interesting experiences of my life. I was truly blessed with the friends I made at the Staff College, the Quetta community, and other places in Pakistan. God willing, we will meet again and I look forward to spending more time in this wonderful country of Pakistan.
The writer is a major in the US Army. The opinions expressed herein are his, and are not necessarily representative of the US Government, Department of Defense, or the US Army.
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