Showing posts with label Pakistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pakistan. Show all posts

Monday, April 06, 2009

Af-Pak, where Barack will need all his baracka


When Mr Obama won office, The Onion, a satirical magazine, greeted his victory with the headline “Black man given nation’s worst job”. Watching Mr Obama’s progress around Europe this week, this seemed a reasonable summary of the situation. The new American president faces an economic disaster at home, a stalemated war in Afghanistan, unpredictable adversaries in places such as North Korea, and largely unhelpful allies in Europe. This week Mr Obama cemented the impression that he is an unusually gifted and intelligent politician. But that does not mean he will succeed. It could just be that he is the right man at the wrong time. Gideon Rachman - Financial Times
David Seaton's News Links
There seems to be a sidereal distance between official statements about American objectives in Afghanistan and Pakistan and any reality based assessment on the possibility of achieving those objectives.

What is now called "Af-Pak"is in danger of becoming the mother of all tar babies, if it isn't already.

From the point of view of clear thinking, calling Iraq the "bad" war and Afghanistan the "good" war is on the order of "do you still beat your wife?" What could be said is that Iraq is Switzerland compared to Af-Pak and that even after being criminally mauled by the USA, before too many years have past Iraq will go back to being one of the most modern and prosperous countries in the Middle East. Af-Pak is the disaster that was waiting to happen... that happened.

At the heart of it all is America's refusal to give true value to history and culture... those of others and perhaps even of its own. As if history were like the film, "Groundhog Day", where every day was a totally fresh chance till you finally got it right. As those other Utopians the Soviets learned, Allah appears to have created Afghanistan specifically to humiliate those who have been eager to "take up the white man's burden".

A few days ago the veteran journalist H.D.S. Greenway wrote one of the most pithy illustrations of the mission's essential hopelessness entitled "Westernizing Afghanistan". Here are some excerpts:
Nearly 30 years ago I was taken to a refugee camp on Pakistan's Northwest frontier called "Kerala." It was named after an Afghan village whence most of the refugees had come.(...) An informer had told the Kabul government that the village was hiding insurgents, and when the government forces with their Russian advisers came many of the men of the village were lined up and shot. It was April 1979. Most of the villagers fled across the border to Pakistan. The Kerala incident interested me because of what the refugees said about their grievances against their government. What they objected to most was the government trying to force reforms on them - reforms such as secular institutions that the villagers saw as a threat to religion, and the education of girls. I thought to myself, how ironic. The Communists are trying to modernize the country much as we might do, but the people resist sudden change. I wrote in my notes: "The lesson seems to be, whether you are a Communist or the Shah of Iran, you force reforms and modernization down the throats of traditional and deeply religious peasants only at your peril." (...) Three decades have passed since then, and today it is the United States, not the Soviet Union, that is bogged down fighting Afghans who have a different vision of how society should be organized.(...) in a society so steeped in a contrary tradition, is it up to us to tell Afghans what customs they can or can't keep? Is the goal of westernizing Afghanistan sustainable? Is it realistic? Is it worth dying for?
The situation in Pakistan seems even nastier and more adhesive and, through American meddling, now is inseparable from the historically intractable swamp of Afghanistan.

Here is how the New York Times lays it out:
President Obama’s strategy of offering Pakistan a partnership to defeat the insurgency here calls for a virtual remaking of this nation’s institutions and even of the national psyche, an ambitious agenda that Pakistan’s politicians and people appear unprepared to take up. Officially, Pakistan’s government welcomed Mr. Obama’s strategy, with its hefty infusions of American money, hailing it as a “positive change.” But as the Obama administration tries to bring Pakistanis to its side, large parts of the public, the political class and the military have brushed off the plan, rebuffing the idea that the threat from Al Qaeda and the Taliban, which Washington calls a common enemy, is so urgent.(...) Some analysts here and in Washington are already putting forward apocalyptic timetables for the country. “We are running out of time to help Pakistan change its present course toward increasing economic and political instability, and even ultimate failure,” said a recent report by a task force of the Atlantic Council that was led by former Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. The report, released in February, gave the Pakistani government 6 to 12 months before things went from bad to dangerous. A specialist in guerrilla warfare, David Kilcullen, who advised Gen. David H. Petraeus when General Petraeus was the American commander in Iraq, offered a more dire assessment. Pakistan could be facing internal collapse within six months, he said.
Immanuel Wallerstein wrote this about "Obama's war" a few days ago:
In short, the "clear and focused goal" that Obama proposes - "to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future" - will probably be further than ever from accomplishment. The question is what can Obama do then? He can "stay the course" (shades of Rumsfeld in Iraq), constantly escalate the troop commitment, while changing the local political leadership (shades of Kennedy/Johnson and Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam), or he can turn tail and pull out (as the United States finally did in Vietnam). He is not going to be cheered for any of these choices. I have the impression that Obama thinks that his speech left him some wiggle room. I think he will find out rather how few choices he will have that are palatable. I think therefore he made a big, probably irreparable, mistake.
What to do?

This is what I think.

I think the USA would actually do better with the Taliban themselves than with Karzai or any other leader that the USA could pull out of a hat. Let them run the country or at least the Pashtun part of it. In their fanatical narrow mindedness they seem not to steal as much as the "good" Afghans.

How could this possibly work?

First there should be clear, limited and hopefully achievable objectives with
believable carrots and believable sticks.

What could they be.

To begin with, convince the Taliban with sweet reasonableness not to allow foreign extremists to plan terror attacks against western targets from Afghan soil in exchange for not having their clans indiscriminately wiped out at leisure from the air. They have direct experience of this and they surely would like it to stop. This can be done without western soldiers on the ground. That would be the stick. I don't think any other would be needed.

What about the carrots?

Offer to build the gas pipelines across Afghanistan which are of major interest to NATO and the EU, pay the Taliban protection money for their cooperation and encourage them to wet their beaks in all the construction projects. Once completed the pipe lines will give the country a steady, legitimate income.

Create an international consortium with EU, Japan and China and including the IMF, the WHO and the WTO to purchase the entire annual opium crop of Afghanistan for worldwide, legal medical use. Create another consortium of the neighboring countries to supervise this legal trade. Let them wet their beaks in all the associated projects, so that they discourage smuggling of illegal opium across their frontiers. This will also give the Afghanistan a steady, legitimate income and cut off funding for mischief.

Prosperity might just make them all a bit less bloody minded.

Now for Pakistan.

The first thing to remember is that the Pakistan army, which basically runs the country still considers - and will always consider - India, not Afghanistan the major threat. Therefore if Pakistan's cooperation is desired don't let Afghanistan be a pawn in the struggle between India and Pakistan. Any India-weighted shift in America's foreign policy dooms any Af-Pak strategy to failure.

Settle the Kashmir question. Pressure India to allow the inhabitants of Kashmir to decide their future in a UN supervised referendum. Support the results.

America's efforts should not be directed toward the internal social questions of Pakistan, but should be directed toward bringing peaceful relations between the India and Pakistan

The US should not make any speculative alliances against any of the countries in the region and should not attempt to play India against Pakistan or China or any of them against Iran.

The object should be to defuse the entire area. Getting involved in local religious, geopolitical and social disputes is constantly re-lighting the fuse.

And of course, in order to make any progress at all in dealing with extremist Islam anywhere in the world, it is essential that the United States be more evenhanded in dealing with Israel and the Palestinians so that Muslims anywhere in the world who might be well disposed to the USA are not made to feel like damn fools or quislings. The United States should not allow Israel to drag it off a geopolitical cliff... if it hasn't been permanently dragged off it already.

Of course, any real prospect of peace with the Muslim world will set off all of AIPAC's alarm bells, with all that entails.

Do I think any of this will ever happen?

Perhaps but probably only when it is too late. DS

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Mumbai changes the playing field

David Seaton's News Links
As we wait to finally discover who actually organized this bloodbath in Mumbai, I would like to point out something obvious: the Indian economic "miracle" has been more than tempting fate to have created such a growing number of exuberant and ostentatious nouveau riche in a country where hundreds of millions of people are as scandalously poor Islamist, Maoist or things as yet undreamed of are bound to grow in the gigantic, bubbling petri dish. globalization has created in India.

So if all we had to go on was potential rage and resentment themselves, we would be looking for a needle in a haystack. It would probably be more profitable to look at the wide effects of this attack as a way of narrowing down the list of possible culprits.


Although it does massive harm to India, I don't think this attack was really about India as much as it was designed to throw a monkey wrench in the American strategy of pressuring Pakistan.

The United States wants the Pakistanis to use their army to control the Pashtun areas of their country, the areas which harbor the taliban who attack NATO forces in Afghanistan.


If the Pakistani army does this it will mean a civil war, which might lead to the breakup of Pakistan: that is a result that only a drunken neocon could contemplate sanguinely.

Despite this danger to Pakistan's unity, president Bush has been pushing the Zardari government very hard and, if his statements during the campaign are to be taken seriously, president Barack Obama will press them even harder.

What this attack on Mumbai certainly does is to change the subject from America’s problems in Afghanistan to the possibility of an armed confrontation between nuclear India and nuclear Pakistan. This prospect should focus Washington’s mind wonderfully. Both incoming and outgoing presidents will have to everything they can to defuse tension between the countries.

I think by now it is clear that the objective of the attacks is too make it impossible for Pakistan, with India threatening, to collaborate with the USA on its northwest frontier. Certainly the Pakistani army will have no resources to spare for chasing the taliban when a conflict with Indian is in the offing. The pressure on Zardari now from the military will be much too great.

Today some are blaming Al Qaeda for the attacks in Bombay and others are pointing fingers at Pakistan's army intelligence, the notorius ISI. The relation between the ISI and Al Qaeda, or even where one leaves off and the other begins is not really clear. This “joined twin” effect is said to be blowback from the CIA and Saudi collaboration during the USSR’s futile attempts to modernize Afghanistan.

It is my impression that what we call Al Qaeda today is more a general consensus and willingness to collaborate among a very wide number of Islamic activists all over the world than the finite hierarchy that it was in 2001.

Many if not all the diverse jihadist groups now see their local struggles in the context of a wide international one and this multiplies their effectiveness as this leads to a wide consensus on their priorities.

Priority number one is to degrade American influence in the Muslim world and they seem to be having some success. You could say that bin Laden began a "worldwide conversation about killing people and blowing things up" among millions of angry young men. This instrument for building and implementing consensus is his greatest achievement.


The attack in Mumbai has changed the playing field and its scale. From worrying about guerrillas crossing from Waziristan to attack Americans in Afghanistan, we can worry now about the serious possibility of an atomic war in South Asia. DS

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

What exactly are meant by "experience" and "judgment"?


Pakistan's military has ordered its forces to open fire if U.S. troops launch another air or ground raid across the Afghan border, an army spokesman said Tuesday. The orders, which come in response to a highly unusual Sept. 3 ground attack by U.S. commandos, are certain to heighten tensions between Washington and a key ally against terrorism. Although the ground attack was rare, there have been repeated reports of U.S. drone aircraft striking militant targets, most recently on Sept. 12.(...) army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas told The Associated Press that after U.S. helicopters ferried troops into a militant stronghold in the South Waziristan tribal region, the military told field commanders to prevent any similar raids. "The orders are clear," Abbas said in an interview. "In case it happens again in this form, that there is a very significant detection, which is very definite, no ambiguity, across the border, on ground or in the air: open fire."(...) In a rare public statement last week, Kayani said Pakistan's sovereignty would be defended "at all cost." Abbas said Pakistani officials had to consider public opinion, which is skeptical of American goals in the region and harbors sympathy for rebels fighting in the name of Islam. "Please look at the public reaction to this kind of adventure or incursion," Abbas said. "The army is also an extension of the public and you can only satisfy the public when you match your words with your actions." - Associated Press
"Pakistan is an extremely dangerous and unstable country. We need to tread carefully. We need to get the Pakistanis to see this as their war. And that's going to require some major new initiatives on the American side. Commando raids and Predator strikes are not a long term solution to this problem." - Bruce O. Riedel, Brookings Institution

"Without adequate political leadership, eradicating sympathy for the Taliban may prove more difficult than eradicating their hideouts in frontier Pakistan. But as long as NATO and the United States continue unilateral strikes in Pakistan that kill civilians, the real battle - for hearts and minds - will be lost." - Mustafa Qadri, Asia Times

The United States has just invaded Cambodia. The name of Cambodia this time is Pakistan, but otherwise it’s the same story as in Indochina in 1970. An American army, deeply frustrated by its inability to defeat an anti-American insurgent movement despite years of struggle, decides that the key to victory lies in a neighboring country.(...)The eventual outcome of the American intervention in Cambodia in 1970 was Communist overthrow of the American-sponsored military government in that country, followed by genocide. The future consequences in (nuclear-armed) Pakistan await. There is every reason to think they may include civil protest and disorder in the country, political crisis, a major rise in the strength of Pakistan’s own Islamic fundamentalist movement, and conceivably, a small war between the United States and the Pakistan Army, which is the central institution in the country, has a mind of its own, and is not a negligible military force. - William Pfaff

The Democratic candidate had raised hackles in Pakistan by suggesting he would authorize U.S military incursion into Pakistan if there was information about Osama bin Laden's presence there and Islamabad did not act on the information. Administration officials and foreign policy mavens, including
Obama's current running mate Joseph Biden and John McCain, had criticized such a public utterance, preferring the policy to be unsaid. In the past week, the Bush administration has begun doing precisely what Obama recommended -- covert attacks inside Pakistan aimed at eliminating terrorists. But according to Pakistan, they are resulting only in civilian deaths. - The Times of India (emphasis mine)
David Seaton's News Links
What exactly are meant by the words "experience" and "judgment"?

These words have been thrown around a lot during this campaign

The Obama camp has insisted that Obama's "judgment" trumps McCain's "experience". This gives the impression that in some way these two qualities are in conflict. In the case of the quotes above, it is obvious that the border of Pakistan is the most dangerous place in the world. American soldiers are for the first time in history attacking targets in the territory of a country armed with nuclear weapons. This in itself calls into question the judgment of anyone ordering or even suggesting such an attack.

However, at times, very dangerous things have to be undertaken. There are two basic risks when this occurs: the first is that things go very wrong and the other is that people talk about it when they do.

In the case, of attacking in Pakistan it is also very negative that people talk about a cross border attack even if it were "successful". Successful meaning, in this case, the public humiliation of the military establishment of an unstable, nuclear armed country whose cooperation is essential.

If it is questionable that such attacks are useful, what is beyond any question is that publicly advocating these actions and introducing them into the echo chamber of a presidential campaign is the height of irresponsibility and poor judgment.

It is not difficult to surmise that Bush, a wickedly foolish man, one whose judgment is poor beyond doubt, has taken these extremely dangerous actions in response to Obama's prodding.

So even before becoming president, Barack Obama has made a critical foreign policy error, one which may have unbelievably terrible knock on effects...

Even if he
isn't finally elected, he still may have left an indelible mark on American foreign policy, one that may mean the death of many thousands of human beings and the destabilization of south Asia and beyond.

The only reason that Obama could possibly give to excuse such irresponsibility and lack of judgment is... inexperience. DS

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Afghanistan/Pakistan: the new "Vietnam"?

Pashtun tribesman - photo by Thomas Cole

David Seaton's News Links
As a blogger and as a columnist, I'd love to always be original or be a huge expert on a specific subject, but I am what is known as a "generalist", a jack of all themes and a master of none.

If I pride myself on anything, it is on my taste in experts and guides. I have learned who to ask, what to ask, and who
to trust and when to trust them and when not and to all of this and all of them, I owe my living.

I happily stand on the shoulders of giants and every now and then, they put me in range of a slam dunk.

Two of my all time favorite experts, William Pfaff and Juan Cole, have both written about Barack Obama's strategy for the war in Afghanistan. A strategy which might be defined as "out of the frying pan (Iraq) and into the fire (Afghanistan). Briefly, to take troops from Iraq and take them to Afghanistan to "fight Al Qaeda".

Pfaff and Cole both coincide in their advice: Bad idea, don't do it.

Please read the quotes below with great care.

Age before beauty, first at bat, William Pfaff:
Barack Obama has announced his intention to commit himself to another disaster in the making. As president, he would dispatch reinforcements “to fight Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan.” During the campaign has repeatedly attacked George Bush for going to war against the wrong enemy, Iraq, in the guise of fighting Al Qaeda. Now he will reinforce the fight against the Taliban, once again in the guise of fighting Al Qaeda. The Taliban are not Al Qaeda, any more than the Iraqis were. There is a civil war going on in Afghanistan. There may soon be a civil war in northern Pakistan. The Taliban are involved in both, and the United States has every interest in staying out of both.(...) At one point in their tangled history they afforded hospitality to their fellow-traditionalist Muslim, the Saudi Arabian Osama ben-Ladin. That was their big mistake. The Bush administration made the bigger mistake of becoming entangled with them, for which the United States will eventually be sorry. Barack Obama should think again about what he proposes to do.
Now for Juan Cole:
If the Afghanistan gambit is sincere, I don't think it is good geostrategy. Afghanistan is far more unwinnable even than Iraq. If playing it up is politics, then it is dangerous politics. Presidents can become captive of their own record and end up having to commit to things because they made strong representations about them to the public.(...) We who admire him don't want Afghanistan to become an albatross around the neck of a President Obama. I am old enough to remember one of the things that nearly killed the Democratic Party as a presidential party in the US, which was the way Lyndon Johnson let himself gradually get roped into ramping up the US troop presence in Vietnam from a small force to 500,000, and then still not win. Afghan tribes are fractious. They feud. Their territory is vast and rugged, and they know it like the back of their hands. Afghans are Jeffersonians in the sense that they want a light touch from the central government, and heavy handedness drives them into rebellion. Stand up Karzai's army and air force and give him some billions to bribe the tribal chiefs, and let him apply carrot and stick himself. We need to get out of there. "Al-Qaeda" was always Bin Laden's hype. He wanted to get us on the ground there so that the Mujahideen could bleed us the way they did the Soviets. It is a trap.
Both Cole and Pfaff coincide that Osama bin Laden is not really the issue. I myself believe that Tora Bora was the unique chance to get him and the US blew it. After that the USA has "taken the bait" and fallen into Bin Laden's trap and should extract itself forthwith.

In the middle of the above extract Juan makes, for me, the most important point:
We who admire him don't want Afghanistan to become an albatross around the neck of a President Obama. I am old enough to remember one of the things that nearly killed the Democratic Party as a presidential party in the US, which was the way Lyndon Johnson let himself gradually get roped into ramping up the US troop presence in Vietnam from a small force to 500,000, and then still not win.
Why is this so important?

Two important premises that I argue from after reading Pfaff and Cole:
  • If Barack Obama is sworn in a President of the United States, his first objective, as it is the objective of every young man who has ever been elected president, will be to get reelected president. 2012 will loom before him like a chimera and will color his every thought, his every word and his every action.
  • Democrats with no military experience are obsessed with not being viewed as wimps (Republicans like Bush and Cheney are too, but the Republicans don't attack them). President Obama, not the world's most mannish boy to begin with, will want to prove beyond a doubt to everyone here and abroad that he has big, big, big, cojones.
That need to prove his masculinity was what broke Lyndon Baines Johnson, perhaps the only potentially great president after Roosevelt and cost a million dead Vietnamese and 50,000 dead Americans.

Lyndon Baines Johnson was one of the smartest, big hearted, can do, practical and experienced men to ever sit in the White House. Barack Obama is not worthy to tie LBJ's sandal, or at least nothing in his brief public life would give him any right to presume so. Therefore I think Obama would be much more vulnerable than Johnson to prove he had the "right stuff". That is the formula for disaster, because, don't kid yourself, to "win the war" would finally lead, escalation by escalation into an invasion and dismemberment of Pakistan and that is the abyss, the bottomless pit of America's self destruction if ever there was one.

Quite reasonably you could point out that McCain is also in favor of "winning".

Sure he is. The only thing he has going for him is that people may doubt his health, sanity and temper, but nobody, but nobody, anywhere, is ever going to doubt John McCain's cojones. Which means that if it becomes obvious to military experts that America has to pull out of Afghanistan or suffer the same fate there as the Soviets did, McCain will be able do it without anybody (especially the "Republican attack machine") calling him a wimp or doubting for one moment his patriotism. He has that credit, which would be vital in this situation.

As to Iraq: finally the US will have to content itself with the "legacy" of having removed Saddam Hussein and created a freely elected government in Baghdad. Drawing the line under that would allow Americans to still think that they are somehow "special" and save another few trillion dollars and God knows how many lives.

As Pfaff says,
Barack Obama calls the Iraq prime minister’s demand for an American troop withdrawal schedule “an enormous opportunity.” He is right, and it must be accepted. This is what the majority of the American public voted for, but didn’t get, from the midterm American election of 2006.

Instead the Bush government gave Americans the surge. The surge has resulted in Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s demand for a phased American withdrawal from Iraq. Bush expected the surge to produce victory, whatever that might mean, and the right to dictate the terms on which the United States would stay in Iraq, not leave.

Those terms were made known earlier this year: total American exemption from Iraqi law (meaning extra-territorial legal status), veto over Iraqi government decisions, control over Iraqi military and police operations, authority to arrest and imprison Iraqi citizens and foreigners, immunity for American contractors from Iraqi law, and control of Iraq’s airspace.

The surge did the opposite. It created the conditions for Maliki’s demand that the U.S. and its allies leave. General David Petraeus built cement walls in cities to separate Sunnis from Shi’ites. This meant reciprocal ethnic cleansing in sensitive areas, to suppress conflict.

Petraeus paid Sunni tribal groups to fight foreigners – the self-named “al Qaeda in Mesopotamia” – and to keep order in their areas. He encouraged the Maliki government to impose its authority on the radical militia controlled by the young Shi’ite leader, Moqtada al-Sadr.

This created the conditions in which rival power groups, as in Basra, provisionally settled the power issues at stake between them, which would have (and possibly will again) produce conflict when the occupation ends.

The surge segregated groups, imposed truces, and made provisional arrangements to buy peace between factions. It thus created conditions in which the Iraqis want the occupation to end.

Some in Washington don’t want this because the Pentagon has built bases throughout Iraq it certainly does not want to give up, and the State Department has built in the Green Zone the world’s biggest American embassy, complete with tennis courts, swimming pools, leaking roofs and flooding toilets, and a fast-food shopping mall complete with blast shelters, just for Americans, and is anxious to move in and run Iraq. Is all this to be sacrificed to an unwelcome Iraqi sovereignty?

No one knows; but it begins to look that way, as according to the latest reports, American and Iraqi officials have now abandoned negotiations, leaving it to a new American president to take up the matter.

Barack Obama, if elected, would do well to immediately accept the Maliki demand, and leave no U.S. forces behind that could pull Americans back into Iraq. Give the Iraq government what it wants, and leave the disaster of the past six years totally on the account of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney
Who knows, if the US did that, maybe someday,
when today's dead have turned to dust, the Iraqis might even feel grateful.

But to use that retreat to up the ante in Afghanistan, thus ignoring the experience of both the British and the Russians there, would be the height of folly and lead to disasters that would turn the Vietnam horror into a dry footnote in the theses of future Chinese historians. DS

Monday, December 31, 2007

Pakistan, 2008: the beckoning abyss

David Seaton's News Links
In common speech, "nightmarish" often means to clearly see what is tragic and dreaded coming and not be able to do anything stop it or to even soften its effects. In nightmares the dreamer sees the unnameable approach, rustling and twittering in the dark of bedroom night and tries to escape, dragging impossibly leaden feet. The relentless pull of gravity toward the object of dread is the stuff of nightmares.

As we enter the inauspicious year of 2008 the situation in Pakistan could be fairly called "nightmarish". We are being daily drawn deeper into a cauldron of molten misery and an abattoir of hemorrhaging violence: a civil war in a country where there are atom bombs and where the men who broke the skyline of New York live and work.

Benazir Bhutto's death, in itself, is not in any way the end of the world. Corrupt and intriguing, she was no Joan of Arc... or the real solution to anything. What is significant about her assassination is the will to chaos that it manifests and the casual ease with which it was carried out. That will to chaos and its clockwork precision of execution is certainly not going to stop at eliminating one politician. In the butchering of Benazir Bhutto we begin to see the tragic and futile waste of lives, political capital and military power of invading and occupying Iraq. Now when they might be needed desperately, that capital, those lives, that power and the will to use them may no longer be at hand.

Because at some point a decision is going to have to be taken... Pakistan with its atomic bombs, home away from home for Osama bin Laden, cannot be allowed to turn into a "failed state"... I use the passive tense "cannot be allowed", but somebody is finally going to have to bell the cat and that cannot be done in the passive tense. If the situation continues to deteriorate, and who imagines it won't, "surgical strikes" and "special forces" are not going to be enough, it would require a multinational force of hundreds of thousands of men to take, occupy and literally smother anarchy and rebuild a collapsed state of many millions of citizens. This would surely require a return to universal military service in both the USA and NATO in order to pull off. At this point I feel I am writing political fiction. After Iraq an effort of such magnitude is unthinkable.

As I write these words, I can feel how even the language necessary to describe the action which may finally be inevitable, may have become impossible to use through the neocon-speak travesty of Iraq. All the sophistries and bad faith used to needlessly invade Iraq and to unjustifiably try to start a war with Iran have emptied the credibility from American speech so that every statement coming from Washington rings with the sinister cynicism of "arbeit macht frei". If someday 9-11 becomes little more than a curious footnote to much greater tragedies, the men and women who gutted the language and credibility of power will be responsible for every drop of blood shed. DS

Al-Qaeda aims at Pakistan's heart - Asia Times
Abstract: Following the killing of Bhutto - considered by her al-Qaeda killers to be an "American asset" - al-Qaeda can be expected to launch more suicide attackers on those considered a part of the United States plan to establish a broad coalition government comprising secular and liberal elements that would change the political and social dynamics of the country and the region. At stake is the very soul of the country and how it should be governed. On the one side are US-backed President Pervez Musharraf and political parties such as Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (now headed by her 19-year-old son Bilawal) and Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League. Against them are al-Qaeda ideologues such as Egyptian scholar Sheikh Essa, who are determined to stamp their vision on the country and its neighbor, Afghanistan. Prior to 2003, the entire al-Qaeda camp in the North Waziristan and South Waziristan tribal areas of Pakistan was convinced that its battle should be fought in Afghanistan against the foreign troops there, and not in Pakistan against its Muslim army. That stance was changed by Sheikh Essa, who had taken up residence in the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan, where his sermons raised armies of takfiris (those who consider all non-practicing Muslims to be infidels). He was convinced that unless Pakistan became the Taliban's (and al-Qaeda's) strategic depth, the war in Afghanistan could not be won. In a matter of a few years, his ideology has taken hold and all perceived American allies in Pakistan have become prime targets. Local adherents of the takfiri ideology, like Sadiq Noor and Abdul Khaliq, have grown strong and spread the word in North Waziristan. Former members of jihadi outfits such as Jaish-i-Mohammed, Laskhar-i-Toiba and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi have gathered in North Waziristan and declared Sheikh Essa their ideologue. This is the beginning of the new world of takfiriat, reborn in North Waziristan many decades after having first emerged in Egypt in the late 1960s. On the advice of Sheikh Essa, militants have tried several times to assassinate Musharraf, launched attacks on the Pakistani military, and then declared Bhutto a target. This nest of takfiris and their intrigues was on the radar of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the day after Bhutto's killing Sheikh Essa was targeted by CIA Predator drones in his home in North Waziristan. According to Asia Times Online contacts, he survived, but was seriously wounded. Sheikh Essa had only recently recovered from a stroke which had left him bedridden. READ IT ALL

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Blown away... a tribute



David Seaton's News Links
There are very few beautiful people in politics... Sarkozy and Bush are about par for the course... Benazir Bhutto was movie star beautiful... till the day she died.

People I have known, who knew her personally, have told me that she irradiated energy and intelligence... Beautiful, intelligent and energetic people are in short supply.

And she was bullfighter brave, as tough as a boot, as mean as a snake and, by most reliable reports, as crooked as a dog's hind leg. Oh well, like Joe E. Brown once said to Tony Curtis, "nobody's perfect".

She was a "dead woman walking" from the day she went back home. As far as I can see she was sent back to Pakistan and a sure death by Condoleezza Rice and George W. Bush, simply in order to try to save something of their post White House speaking careers.

Certainly as intelligent, energetic, brave and mean as she was she had no chance of ever bringing Pakistan under control. Maybe even the Pakistani Army is losing it. Tragedy is when you know something terrible is going to happen and can do nothing to stop it. Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan are tragic, perhaps America is too.

When the United States imported Wahhabi Islam into South Asia from Saudi Arabia, they sealed the fate of that region... and perhaps the fate of some American city
someday, God forbid. DS

Conspiracy theories abound over Benazir Bhutto slaying - Haaretz
Abstract: The most astounding aspect of Thursday's events is the negligence displayed by Bhutto's security detail. According to reports, the assassin managed to approach Bhutto and position himself within a short distance of her, before proceeding to shoot her and detonate the explosives with which he was strapped. Not only did the assassin want to cause maximum casualties, but he also hoped that authorities would later be unable to identify him and thus ascertain which organization he was working for. What makes the security failure all the more startling is the fact that it comes just weeks after the first assassination attempt following Bhutto's return to Pakistan from a lengthy political exile. In the attempt, suicide bombers killed 150 people, although Bhutto escaped unharmed. Under these circumstances, it was chiefly incumbent on her security guards to do all in their power to prevent direct access to her, even during the course of an election campaign in which a candidate seeks to come into contact with the public. One can make the claim - and some already have - that foreign agents of countries in conflict with Pakistan (re: India) orchestrated the assassination so as to create chaos and to create an image of a country that is unstable and unreliable. READ IT ALL

Thursday, November 15, 2007

The bad and beautiful Benazir Bhutto

David Seaton's News Links
Benazir Bhutto may very well be the most beautiful politician to have ever lived (not a very beautiful bunch, I'll admit) However, make no mistake, she is a very nasty piece of work.

She is totally corrupt by all reliable accounts and to consider her some sort of democratic alternative to military rule is naive if not purely cynical. As in most of the Muslim world today a truly democratic process would probably produce an outcome unacceptable to the "west", that is to say, to the USA and what the Maoists used to call our "running dogs". (What a useful term "running dogs", much better than "poodle", why did it ever disappear, I wonder?)

The fact is that under intense American pressure there are no "viable alternatives" for Pakistan. Things are bad enough in that misbegotten (in the most literal sense of being defective from birth, thanks to the British) land, without American meddling. DS

Aunt Benazir's false promises - Los Angeles Times
Abstract: Perhaps the most bizarre part of this circus has been the hijacking of the democratic cause by my aunt, the twice-disgraced former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto. While she was hashing out a deal to share power with Gen. Pervez Musharraf last month, she repeatedly insisted that without her, democracy in Pakistan would be a lost cause. Now that the situation has changed, she's saying that she wants Musharraf to step down and that she'd like to make a deal with his opponents -- but still, she says, she's the savior of democracy. The reality, however, is that there is no one better placed to benefit from emergency rule than she is. Along with the leaders of prominent Islamic parties, she has been spared the violent retributions of emergency law.(...) It was particularly unappealing of Ms. Bhutto to ask Musharraf to bypass the courts and drop the many corruption cases that still face her in Pakistan. He agreed, creating the odiously titled National Reconciliation Ordinance in order to do so. Her collaboration with him was so unsubtle that people on the streets are now calling her party, the Pakistan People's Party, the Pervez People's Party. Now she might like to distance herself, but it's too late. Why did Ms. Bhutto and her party cronies demand that her corruption cases be dropped, but not demand that the cases of activists jailed during the brutal regime of dictator Zia ul-Haq (from 1977 to 1988) not be quashed? What about the sanctity of the law? When her brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto -- my father -- returned to Pakistan in 1993, he faced 99 cases against him that had been brought by Zia's military government. The cases all carried the death penalty. Yet even though his sister was serving as prime minister, he did not ask her to drop the cases. He returned, was arrested at the airport and spent the remaining years of his life clearing his name, legally and with confidence, in the courts of Pakistan. Ms. Bhutto's repeated promises to end fundamentalism and terrorism in Pakistan strain credulity because, after all, the Taliban government that ran Afghanistan was recognized by Pakistan under her last government -- making Pakistan one of only three governments in the world to do so. And I am suspicious of her talk of ensuring peace. My father was a member of Parliament and a vocal critic of his sister's politics. He was killed outside our home in 1996 in a carefully planned police assassination while she was prime minister. There were 70 to 100 policemen at the scene, all the streetlights had been shut off and the roads were cordoned off. Six men were killed with my father. They were shot at point-blank range, suffered multiple bullet wounds and were left to bleed on the streets. My father was Benazir's younger brother. To this day, her role in his assassination has never been adequately answered, although the tribunal convened after his death under the leadership of three respected judges concluded that it could not have taken place without approval from a "much higher" political authority. READ IT ALL

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Decadence, like charity, begins at home


David Seaton's News Links
To be decadent is to do things a certain way because they have always been done that way, to endlessly repeat oneself until becoming a parody of oneself.

To be decadent is to turn what was once fresh and charming into a tic, into a mannerism, so that what once was seductive becomes grotesquely repellent.

Fatigue disguised as youthful energy, boredom disguised as fascination... Capped teeth exposed in an achingly wide smile under cold, watchful eyes that see nothing but surfaces.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said that there are no second acts in American lives... The question today is will there be a second act in America's life? DS

William Pfaff: What's Happened to Pakistan?

Abstract: American pressure on Musharraf has alienated a part of his army, spurred the rise of Islamic radicalism, inspired an enormous rise in anti-Americanism, and now, in manipulating the return of Benazir Bhutto as agent of American-desired political liberalization, Washington has precipitated Musharraf’s coup. Washington also wants Musharraf to be a democrat. The return to constitutional government and the empowerment of civil society now are blocked, even though elections are promised for February. It could end in the wreckage of still another Islamic nation – following Iraq, Afghanistan, the Palestine Authority and Somalia. In this case, it concerns a state possessing nuclear weapons. All are victims of history, their own. But to the extent that American intervention is involved, they also are victims of a colossal American ignorance of other people’s history, and indifference to the consequences of manipulating other societies.(...) It is easy to destroy. What follows is another matter. READ IT ALL

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Born under a bad sign

Born under a bad sign.
Ive been down since I began to crawl.
If it wasnt for bad luck,
I wouldnt have no luck.
If it wasnt for real bad luck,
I wouldnt have no luck at all.
Booker T. Jones and William Bell
David Seaton's News Links
In the same week that oil pushed toward a hundred dollars a barrel, the financial News agency Bloomberg reported that, “The dollar fell to a record low against the euro on speculation financial-company losses from U.S. subprime-mortgage defaults will grow.” New York University economics professor, the always clairvoyant Nouriel Roubini, added, “the ongoing credit crunch will get much worse in the year ahead and its fallout spread from the US to Europe and throughout Asia and the globe. (...) The first crisis of financial globalization and securitization is thus only at its beginning stage.” At precisely this moment Pakistan took another step toward the abyss.

The veteran analyst Arnaud de Borchgrave wrote, “One of the world’s eight nuclear powers, Pakistan is now a failing state out of control where Taliban, al-Qaida and their supporters have secured their privileged sanctuaries in the tribal areas on the Afghan border; reoccupied the Red Mosque in the center of Islamabad; launched suicide bombers in widely scattered parts of this Muslim country of 160 million. More than any other country in the world, Pakistan is the breeding ground of Islamic terrorism.” The New York Times editorialized, “The United States is increasingly left with bad options. Cutting off aid would only make it harder to enlist Pakistan’s military in the anti-extremist fight and renew doubts about America’s reliability as an ally.” The Guardian’s editorial stated it even more baldly, “Gen Musharraf has called Washington and London's bluff, knowing they have no option but to back him. The general has exposed the impotence of the US and Britain to control a key ally with nuclear weapons.” The Pakistani army is the true center of power: all that holds a geographically and ethnically divided Pakistan together and the generals are not about to give up that role. If Musharraf falls, another general will be there to take his place... perhaps one who attends more to his prayers.

A sailor would touch wood and call this the approach of the perfect storm, an astrologer looking at the ephemeris would speak of an inauspicious aligning of the planets, a master of Diamat could speak of contradiction, of quantity becoming quality and a Hindu might simply smile and speak of the "Dance of Shiva". The fact is that the bad news is beginning to accumulate in a most alarming way: catastrophe: war, terrorism, inflation and now the possible collapse of major banks. Any one of these things would itself be a painful blow, taken together they begin to define our time. DS

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Musharraf... another spin bites the dust

David Seaton's News Links
I wrote about Pakistan recently. The drift of what I wrote is that Pakistan, not Iran, is where danger's real elite meet to eat.

Iran has a stable, if unattractive, "faith-based" leadership. Pakistan is little more than an army by all reliable accounts and they have the atomic bomb... and Osama lives there... Certainly it would be easier for Osama to lay his hands on a bomb in a Sunni country, which actually has several and where he lives than in a faraway Shiite country which doesn't have any. However since Pakistan doesn't pose any threat to Israel, they are a "partner in the war on terrorism".

Like everything else he touches Pakistan looks about to explode in Bush's face too. DS

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Pakistan not Iran at the end of Ramadan

Pakistan's government is losing its war against emboldened insurgent forces, giving al-Qaeda and the Taliban more territory in which to operate and allowing the groups to plot increasingly ambitious attacks, according to Pakistani and Western security officials.
Griff Witte, Washington Post
David Seaton's News Links
Pakistan, not Iran, is the "most dangerous" country in the world. Iran may someday have the atomic bomb, but Pakistan already has it. Al Qaida resides in Pakistan, not Iran. If Al Qaida ever get its hands on an an atomic bomb it will be in Pakistan not Iran. The Shiite Iranians are not going to give it to a Sunni terrorist. Pakistan is where the mother of disasters is just around the corner, waiting to happen. The terror attacks on the USA, Spain, Britain and the ones foiled in Germany were inspired by Al Qaida, not Iran.

Al Qaida is also now the official brand of Algerian Salafism. Algeria, with Pakistan is the largest source of potential terrorists with EU passports. Morocco is not far behind. With the children of Pakistani immigrants in Britain and the children of Algerian immigrants in France and the children of Moroccan immigrants in Holland being radicalized, the European Union is in a sense "surrounded". Certainly Americans shouldn't feel smug, the passport holders of Britain, France and Holland can travel to the USA without visas. And as the recently aborted German attack shows some young, "native*" Europeans (*definition: white folks, who don't get constantly pulled over to have their car's papers looked at ) are also feeling the pull of Osama's smoke.
The phenomenon of extremist converts should worry us for it shows that Islam can be decoupled from its native religious and cultural background. Al Qaedism is becoming a universal, radical ideology of protest. Young Westerners in search for the most brutal anti-Western position find Osama bin Laden's ideas seductive because they are ethically hermetic.(...) (bin Laden) has very consciously begun fishing for supporters who share the backward concept of Islamism for non-religious reasons. The secular religions of climate rescue and globalization criticism meet bin Laden's doctrine of divine salvation. Disillusioned of the world, unite! "Wherever the believer happens to be, he is part of a virtual society, with which he shares the same set of norms," writes the French Islam expert Olivier Roy about the attraction of Islamism. "Only two radical protest movements in the West still claim to be internationalist: the anti-globalization movement and radical Islamists.... Al Qaeda has clearly occupied an existing space of anti-imperialism and protest.... Al-Qaeda is a successor to the ultra-left and third-world movements." Die Zeit - Wall Street Journal
The holy month of Ramadan finishes this Friday and it looks like when the Al Qaida and the Taliban have had their fill of food and drink, all hell is set to break loose in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Al-Qaeda has been in the process of a decisive ideological and strategic debate over the past few years. At times it developed fault lines that brought forward extremists in the organization, whom the Sunni and Shi'ite orthodoxy of the Muslim world calls takfiris.(...) The aim of the takfiris now is to extend the current insurgency against the establishment in the North Waziristan and South Waziristan tribal areas of Pakistan into a large-scale offensive to bring down the central government or force the government to support their cause. The US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Pakistan's post-September 11, 2001, about-turn into the camp of the United States led to a marriage of convenience among the flag-bearers of Ibn Taymiyyah's ideology, zealots of al-Qaeda and experts in Giap's guerrilla strategy - former officers of the Pakistani armed forces who were upset with Pakistan's policy reversal, which included abandoning the Taliban. These groups joined forces to take control of the state through a popular revolt or by using violent means, or force on the state apparatus to support the battle against the Western coalition in Afghanistan. The alliance has had some success, notably in the Waziristans, where in effect a rigid Islamic state prevails beyond the control of the central authorities in Islamabad. Indeed, the highest level of casualties in the history of the Pakistan Army has forced Pakistani leaders to speak of stopping operations in the Waziristans, saying it is a wrong war. Asia Times - Sep 26, 2007

(P)lans for a mass uprising on the back of renewed insurgency activity are far from shelved, and could be implemented with vigor at the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan next week, with tens of thousands of freshly trained men pouring into Afghanistan. The key lies in Pakistan's tribal areas, from where the Taliban draw recruits, have training camps and run their logistics. The Pakistani Taliban and Islamabad signed peace agreements in February 2005 and September 2006, under the terms of which the Pakistani Army cut back its troop levels in the tribal areas in return for militants stopping their attacks on the Pakistani Army and forces in Afghanistan. In July the Taliban abandoned the treaties following the storming of the radical Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad by government troops. The mosque was an outspoken supporter of the Taliban movement and many militants used it as a sanctuary. Since then, the Pakistani military has re-engaged militants in the tribal areas, severely choking their supply arteries. In the past 10 days, however, militants have launched at least nine carefully planned operations against security positions in both North Waziristan and South Waziristan, and in towns in North-West Frontier Province(...). As a result, all security operations against the Taliban and their al-Qaeda colleagues in the tribal areas have stopped, and by all accounts the army is running scared. It is estimated that Pakistan has 100,000 troops and 1,000 military posts along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. From the military's perspective, the situation is exacerbated by a political hiatus in Islamabad. President General Pervez Musharraf stands for re-election in Saturday's presidential polls, after which he is expected to step down as military head and prepare over the next few months for a civilian consensus government, most likely with former premier Benazir Bhutto. No new plans to tackle the problems in the tribal areas can be expected until this situation is settled. The Taliban and their supporters now have the breathing space to replenish stocks and prepare for their new push into Afghanistan. It is envisaged that at least 20,000 fully trained fresh men from at least 16 entry points along the Durand Line that separates Pakistan and Afghanistan will be sent into Afghanistan.(...) From the daring attacks on Frontier Constabulary forts in Bannu in NWFP, where fresh hostages were taken, to suicide attacks on military and paramilitary convoys in the Swat Valley, the militants' intelligence network is doing its job. In all cases, the targets have been accurately pinpointed, and the operations carried out according to plan. The attacks have swiftly reached into the Swat Valley and send a clear message to the commanders in their barracks in Peshawar to pull back their troops or face the music. Indeed, the latest offensive against the army has sent shockwaves through military headquarters in Rawalpindi, and it is even feared that they could spread to big cities such as Karachi, Lahore and the capital Islamabad. Asia Times - Oct 5, 2007
The situation in Pakistan is utterly fluid, while Iran is under a stable, if unattractive, leadership. Obviously if we blovate about Iran and ignore the peril of Pakistan we are being manipulated.
Hearing that bombing was now a 50/50 possibility before President Bush leaves the White House, Riaz Mohammad Khan, the Pakistani foreign secretary, covered his face with both hands in mock horror. It was too horrendous a prospect to contemplate. Pakistan enjoys close relations with Iran, and its status as a major non-NATO ally would then evaporate in nationwide recriminations. Pervez Musharraf would join history’s oubliette. Yet there is a growing realization that for Israel, a nuclear Iran is an existential crisis. Arnaud de Borchgrave - UPI
The article below from the New York Sun about "Cyber-Qaida" turning on a dime when they found their security compromised comes from Pakistan not Iran. We are looking at a well oiled organization swinging into action. Iran, even Iraq and certainly Israel are mere sideshows compared to what is happening in Pakistan. DS

Qaeda Goes Dark After a U.S. Slip - New York Sun
Abstract: Al Qaeda's Internet communications system has suddenly gone dark to American intelligence after the leak of Osama bin Laden's September 11 speech inadvertently disclosed the fact that we had penetrated the enemy's system. The intelligence blunder started with what appeared at the time as an American intelligence victory, namely that the federal government had intercepted, a full four days before it was to be aired, a video of Osama bin Laden's first appearance in three years in a video address marking the sixth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. On the morning of September 7, the Web site of ABC News posted excerpts from the speech. But the disclosure from ABC and later other news organizations tipped off Qaeda's internal security division that the organization's Internet communications system, known among American intelligence analysts as Obelisk, was compromised. This network of Web sites serves not only as the distribution system for the videos produced by Al Qaeda's production company, As-Sahab, but also as the equivalent of a corporate intranet, dealing with such mundane matters as expense reporting and clerical memos to mid- and lower-level Qaeda operatives throughout the world.(...) One intelligence officer who requested anonymity said in an interview last week that the intelligence community watched in real time the shutdown of the Obelisk system. America's Obelisk watchers even saw the order to shut down the system delivered from Qaeda's internal security to a team of technical workers in Malaysia. That was the last internal message America's intelligence community saw. "We saw the whole thing shut down because of this leak," the official said. "We lost an important keyhole into the enemy."(...) The founder of a Web site known as clandestineradio.com, Nick Grace, tracked the shutdown of Qaeda's Obelisk system in real time. "It was both unprecedented and chilling from the perspective of a Web techie. The discipline and coordination to take the entire system down involving multiple Web servers, hundreds of user names and passwords, is an astounding feat, especially that it was done within minutes," Mr. Grace said yesterday. READ IT ALL

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Out of the fryingpanstan and into Waziristan

People you don't want to fuck with
David Seaton's News Links
You could argue that now things are much worse with Al Qaida safe in Pakistan than they were with Al Qaida safe in Taliban Afghanistan. The Taliban didn't have the atomic bomb and NATO could have bombed and raided Al Qaida camps in Afghanistan on a piecemeal, case by case basis for years and thus have interrupted and contained Al Qaida... Now Al Qaida cannot be touched without violating Pakistan's sovereignty, which is something that might stimulate Islamist generals (there are said to quite a few) to conspire (if they aren't conspiring already). DS

Pakistan backs off Al Qaeda pursuit - Los Angeles Times
Abstract: Political turmoil and a spate of brazen attacks by Taliban fighters are forcing Pakistan's president to scale back his government's pursuit of Al Qaeda, according to U.S. intelligence officials who fear that the terrorist network will be able to accelerate its efforts to rebuild and plot new attacks. The development threatens a pillar of U.S. counter-terrorism strategy, which has depended on Pakistan to play a lead role in keeping Al Qaeda under pressure to reduce its ability to coordinate strikes. President Pervez Musharraf, facing a potentially fateful election next month and confronting calls to yield power after years of autocratic rule, appears too vulnerable to pursue aggressive counter-terrorism operations at the behest of the United States, the intelligence officials said. At the same time, the Pakistani military has suffered a series of embarrassing setbacks at the hands of militants in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda figures are believed to be hiding. U.S. intelligence officials said the conditions that have allowed Al Qaeda to regain strength are likely to persist, enabling it to continue training foreign fighters and plot new attacks.(...) "In the next few days, we're probably going to see a withdrawal of forces that the Pakistanis put there," the intelligence official said, adding that the move could solidify a "safe haven, where the [Al Qaeda] leadership is secure, operational planners can do their business, and foreigners can come in and be trained and redeploy to the West." Meanwhile, Bin Laden declared war on Musharraf in a new audiotape released last week, a message that experts said was timed to take advantage of the political turmoil.(...) The unfolding situation has put Washington in the conflicted position of either pressing for democratic reforms in a nation where doing so is likely to undermine efforts to apprehend Bin Laden, or pushing to shut down terrorist camps linked to a series of plots against Western targets. Polls in Pakistan suggest that Bin Laden is more popular than many of the Muslim nation's politicians, and analysts say it is extremely difficult for the beleaguered Musharraf to remain aligned with the U.S. "From a domestic politics perspective, sustained Pakistani action against Al Qaeda in [the tribal areas] would be suicidal," said Seth Jones, an expert on terrorism and Pakistan at Rand Corp. "It would only increase hatred against his regime at the precise moment when he is politically weakest."(...) Authorities in Germany who disrupted an alleged bombing plot this month said at least five of the suspects had traveled to the tribal regions of Waziristan to receive training in the use of chemical explosives and detonators. The suspected German cell was rolled up in part because U.S. intelligence had intercepted suspicious communications between Pakistan and the German city of Stuttgart. READ IT ALL

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Osama bin Laden, poste restante, Pakistan

Man with a plan
David Seaton's News Links
Pakistan is one of world’s eight nuclear powers and as Arnaud de Borchgrave reported for the United Press agency, “Pakistan is in the throes of a national upheaval that dwarfs both Iraq and Afghanistan as threats to regional peace and stability.” Fact: Osama bin Laden, the world’s most famous terrorist lives and works in Pakistan. The former CIA agent in charge of the bin Laden file, Michael Scheuer, now of the Jamestown foundation, wrote of bin Laden’s last video, “bin Laden achieved a major purpose of his speech before he said a word: he clearly showed Muslims and Americans that he was still alive, that he was healthy and not at death's door, that he spoke from secure surroundings unthreatened by the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, and that he, al-Qaeda and their allies were ready to continue the war.”

One of the difficulties in trying to get a focus on Al Qaeda is concentrating attention exclusively on their identity as terrorists and not giving enough to their existence as a movement with clear objectives which are being patiently and methodically pursued. A subversive movement with a social base, even a small one, can resist decades of the most intense pressure, both military and political. Al Qaeda has a growing social base in a world-wide community of 1.3 billion people. As de Borchgrave writes, polls show that, “almost half of Pakistan approves of Bin Laden and al-Qaida while Bush and Musharraf are in the single digits.” The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies was quoted in the Guardian, "Al Qaida’s ideology appears to have taken root to such a degree that it will require decades to eradicate."

Michael Scheuer writes of bin Laden’s aims, “It is imperative, from bin Laden's perspective, that Muslims worldwide see U.S. disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan as Allah-granted victories for Islam and faithful Muslims. This perspective of "God's victory" will further erode defeatism in the Muslim world and galvanize far more support for the jihad.” As in Pakistan, in many Muslim countries Osama bin Laden is more popular than the local chief of state. Terrorism, pales in significance to the mobilization of masses for which terrorist activity is merely an advertising campaign. Once a movement is constituted it can be used for many things and like a fat lady in a little boat, when an activated mass moves in any direction, the "boat" tips. It is the movement of that mass, more than the terrorist actions committed to arouse them, that will give the west its most serious problems in the future. DS

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Rough notes on the empire death watch

David Seaton's News Links
As I said in the previous post I am loafing a bit this week with no deadlines to meet. However, being a firm believer in the old boxer's adage, "train hard, fight easy", I am engaged, little beaver fashion, in my reading so that hopefully by next week I'll have something useful to say about the horrible mess in the Middle East for my Spanish readers.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd share with you some partially digested material I've been looking at today.

On the eve of more possible conflict, the first thing to do would be to look to the state of forces to be employed. In military affairs, wise men say that amateurs speak of strategy but professionals talk about logistics. If that were the gauge, here is a clipping from the Washington Times, from an extremely professional article by Retired Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales, former commander of the US Army War College that is anything but encouraging.
If you haven't heard the news, I'm afraid your Army is broken, a victim of too many missions for too few soldiers for too long. Today we have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan all of our fighting brigades, both active and reserve. Every brigade save one in Korea has spent time in combat. Twenty have two tours there, nine have three and two have four. Some of these brigades' one-year deployments were extended by several months. To demonstrate the gravity of the problem, let's do the math. After the surge the nation will need to keep 33 brigades, each consisting of about 3,000 soldiers, in the field. Past experience tells us that three brigades are needed to keep one continuously in the fight (one recovering and one training up to support each deployed brigade). The Army could in theory maintain itself in combat indefinitely using such a scheme. From a human perspective, a three-for-one schedule would allow each soldier two years back for every year in combat. That is tough but sustainable. So, that means we need a total of 99 brigades to support 33 in the fight. Sorry to say, we only have about half that number available to the Army and Marine Corps.(...) Today, anecdotal evidence of collapse is all around. Past history makes some of us sensitive to anecdotes and distrustful of Pentagon statistics. The Army's collapse after Vietnam was presaged by a desertion of mid-grade officers (captains) and non-commissioned officers. Many were killed or wounded. Most left because they and their families were tired and didn't want to serve in units unprepared for war. If we lose our sergeants and captains, the Army breaks again. It's just that simple. That's why these soldiers are still the canaries in the readiness coal-mine. And, again, if you look closely, you will see that these canaries are fleeing their cages in frightening numbers. The lesson from this sad story is simple: When you fight a long war with a long-service professional Army, the force you begin with will not get any larger or better over the duration of the conflict. For that reason, today's conditions are pretty much irreversible. There's not much that money, goodwill or professed support for the troops can do. Another strange consequence is that the current political catfight over withdrawal dates is made moot by the above facts. We're running out of soldiers faster than we're running out of warfighting missions. The troops will be coming home soon. There simply are too few to sustain the surge for very much longer. READ IT ALL
After looking at the state of the forces, the next thing would be to look at the state of the alliances. America's diplomatic efforts led by Doctor Rice have been pointed toward creating an anti-Iran front among "moderate" Arab governments. Tony Karon of Time Magazine commented on the results in TomDispatch.
In reality, the Bush administration seems increasingly at odds with the consensus among the Arab moderates it claims to be leading. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, in particular, appears to have sent a signal of this in cancelling -- with little explanation -– a special state dinner that was to be hosted by President Bush on April 17th. Then, at Wednesday's Arab League Summit in Riyadh, the King followed up by demanding an end to the crippling financial siege of the Palestinian Authority imposed by the U.S. and denouncing the American military presence in Iraq as an "illegitimate foreign occupation." This is strong stuff from the Saudis. READ IT ALL
Strong stuff indeed, especially when you consider that the United States has been the sole guarantor of the the Saudi royal family survival since 1945... Some might consider the phrase, "illegitimate foreign occupation" coming from the King of Saudi Arabia as truly the "writing on the wall"... "You're dead son. get yourself buried".

As to European opinion, there is this snippet from Der Spiegel.
Forty-eight percent of Germans think the United States is more dangerous than Iran, a new survey shows, with only 31 percent believing the opposite.(...)(in) a Forsa opinion poll commissioned by Stern magazine. Young Germans in particular -- 57 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds, to be precise -- said they considered the United States more dangerous than the religious regime in Iran. READ IT ALL
In view of this state of European public opinion, I am not at all sure that the United States could have free use of its European bases in Germany, Italy or Spain or even the fly over use of their airspace in case of an American air attack on Iran.

Meanwhile, what is the word from America's most important ally, Israel? Here is an interesting clipping from Debka.
In his briefing to the Israeli cabinet Sunday, April 1, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, AMAN chief, reported that Iran, Syria, Hizballah and Hamas expect the United States to attack Iran in the summer and they are preparing to retaliate by going to war with Israel. In Yadlin’s view, a proliferation of players and the many imponderables could ignite a conflict, which none of the parties wants – as happened in the Six Day War of 1967.(...) His comments came one day after Iran’s chief of staff, Gen. Hassan Fayrouz Abadi, urged the Arabs to hurry up and join Iran in a defense treaty because, he claimed, Israel threatened a war offensive in summer, two months hence. According to the Iranian general, Israel was bent on a “suicide assault” against a number of Arab states to save the Americans from having to pull their troops out of Iraq (sic).(...) Iran, Syria, Hizballah and Hamas may be presumed to be acting on some piece of intelligence that point to a forthcoming US attack some time between April and early September 2007. Therefore, the Middle East faces at least five months of incendiary military instability during which everyone will be braced for the axe to fall.(...) A coordinated Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah-Hamas attack would lay Israel open to four war fronts and the common weapon to them all: missiles - anti-tank, short-range surface, medium range ballistic and surface-to-air.(...) Hamas threatens to launch the third Palestinian uprising (intifada) against Israel within three months unless the international blockade is lifted and funds are released to the Palestinian Authority. The cabinet was informed that the IDF would start operating behind Gazan lines against the massive Palestinian military build-up. READ IT ALL
What about South Asia and the rest of the Muslim world?

There is a wonderful saying in Spanish, "eramos pocos y parió la abuela", which translates literally, "there were only a few of us and grandmother had a baby". It usually translates weakly into English as, "that was the last straw", which gives none of the surreal nuances of intense exasperation in the Spanish original. As to the reactions to a US/Israeli attack on Iran in Pakistan and its possible effect on the war in Afghanistan, you would do well to read this United Press International article by Arnaud de Borchgrave, said to have unsurpassed access to western intelligence services.
The U.S. intelligence community recently acquired a Pakistani insider's look at what makes Musharraf tick these days. As much as he wanted U.S. victory in Iraq, he has long since concluded the United States has lost the hand to Iran. To recoup America's loss before he leaves the White House in January 2009, Musharraf believes Bush will strike Iran's nuclear facilities from air and sea. And this, in turn, will unite Sunnis and Shiites in Pakistan against all things American -- and provoke a gigantic upheaval throughout the Middle East. With the whole world turning against Israel and the United States, he could not afford to continue his policy of "constructive ambiguity" toward the Bush administration.(...) What ISI reports to him from the European capitals that sent troops to Afghanistan under the NATO flag, and from numerous ISI operatives in 34 Afghan provinces on the other side of the Hindu Kush mountain range, is that NATO is losing ground to a resurgent and rejuvenated Taliban. ISI's conclusion: the NATO consensus on Afghanistan will not long survive a U.S. defeat in Iraq and/or U.S. hostilities against Iran.(...) Creeping Talibanization is now a reality across the length and breadth of one of the world's eight nuclear-weapons powers. Two of Pakistan's four provinces are already under anti-U.S., pro-Taliban governments. Musharraf has convinced himself that unless he could obtain another five years in power -- he took over in a military coup in 1999 -- Pakistan's nuclear arsenal would be at risk of falling under the control of Islamist extremists. READ IT ALL
Truly, eramos pocos y parió la abuela. DS