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| India-Pakistan | |
| Govt envoys contact Bhutto, Zardari | |
| 2003-06-04 | |
| LAHORE: In a bid to woo PPPP, [Pak People's Party Parliamentarians] the government has sent its military and political emissaries to Benazir Bhutto in Dubai and her spouse Asif Zardari in Islamabad, highly informed sources told Daily Times. They said two senior ISI officers had had dinners with Mr Zardari during the last 10 days and remained with him for hours. âThey offered almost everything to him, except the return of his wife, in return for the PPPPâs support to the government. Mr Zardari refused these offers,â sources said. âLater, the ISI officers contacted Ms Bhutto in Dubai and sought time for a meeting but she refused to meet. âThey called on Mr Zardari again and asked him to persuade her for a meeting with the governmentâs military emissaries,â sources said. Mr Asif did so and a high-ranked officer left for Dubai on Monday to meet Ms Bhutto. âThe PPPP chairperson and the officer held talks on Tuesday,â sources said. The government is also using the political channel to win the PPPPâs support on certain issues and has asked some politicians, who worked with the PPP, to talk to Ms Bhutto, Asif Zardari and PPPP President Makhdoom Amin Fahim. In the first phase, former Punjab chief minister Mian Manzoor Wattoo met Mr Zardari at the Accountability Courts in Rawalpindi on Tuesday. âIt seemed like a chance meeting, but actually it was a planned one,â sources said. They quoted Mr Wattoo as telling Mr Zardari, âI have advised the government to compromise with the PPPP as it is the largest party and the real political force in the country.â Sources said the government would send political leaders to Dubai and PIMS for talks. Mr Wattoo was not available for his comments.
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| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #3 Interesting perspective 11A5s (how about a name I can quote!). Bin Laden was obviously NOT a strategic thinker. He had no knowledge of history beyond a very narrow understanding of early Arab history and he clearly believed his own propaganda that America was weak-kneed and would react in any significant way. And why not? Based on Clinton's actions, that was a reasonable idea...so long as you didn't know anything about the United States. Another obviously shortcoming that is now evident in hindsight: Bin Laden had no one around him who knew the slightest thing about military strategy. Hell, he didn't even have anyone around him who understood small unit tactics. And why would they? His most "experienced" military guy, Mohammed Atef, was a formed Egyptian cop who spent two years in the Army...and he was killed early on in Afghanistan. And that was his best military mind. The Taliban were even worse, and dumber. Obviously, in early October 2001, Binnie thought he was up against the Russians again. But it wasn't 1983 any more. Unlike then, it was his OPPONENT who had a lot of public support, thanks to the way the Taliban treated Afghan minorities and terrorized everyone else. That made serious guerrilla warfare impossible. The warlords weren't on his side, because obviously, they could see who was going to survive and who wasn't. And, this time he didn't have a superpower providing key armaments. Outside help? Hah! This guy is an Arab and plainly didn't even understand that Arabs were NEVER going to come to his aid. Besides a few lunkhead Pakistanis, there was no way he was getting any help from the outside...and their help was useless. Bin Laden really only had two choices in October 2001. Get the hell out of Afghanistan, send his guys underground, and try to reconstitute somewhere like NW Pakistan or Somalia. But what does he do? He sets up his guys up in fixed defensive positions against the greatest military in history. Just brilliant. The only "victory" his side had was our failure to totally annihilate them at Tora Bora. Judging by how well Al Queda is doing these days, bombing their OWN countries, I'd say that even that "success" was pretty marginal. In the end, Osama Bin Laden has proved himself to be a first class, and dead, fuck up. |
| Posted by: R. McLeod 2003-06-05 01:17:53 |
| #2 Perv's main problem is one that has been shared by the rest of the Pak Army for the last few decades, they are opposed on an ideological basis to the PPP's Liberal beliefs, but since every politician is willing to sell out their beliefs there, the real problem is that Benazir Bhutto doesn't think to highly of the army after they executed her father, assassinated her two brothers, and imprisoned her husband, as well as kicked her out of the Prime Ministership on two seperate occassions, even though she was democratically elected. |
| Posted by: Paul Moloney 2003-06-04 20:12:59 |
| #1 I never understood OBL's strategy. If I were him after 9/11, I would have ignored the Northern Alliance, gone for broke to get the Pak nukes and simultaneously disrupted the oil supply out of the Gulf. While things are as uncertain as ever in Pakland, everyone else in the game has adapted. India, Israel, the US and the UK probably all have contingency plans in case the Mullahs succeed. I wouldn't be surprised if the Russians have the Pak nuclear storage facilities targeted, too. (It's funny in a sick, Strangelovian way to contemplate three or four countries' warheads hitting the Pak nuke storage bunkers in short order.) So did OBL fail out of cultural/religious bias? Did he really believe that the US would crumble after knocking down a couple of skyscrapers? Or was he just plain dumb? I never saw any evidence that anything was in place in Saudi or Pakistan to initiate any major operations after 9/11 so I'll toss out the option that some brilliant last minute CIA covert op shut down those possibilities. |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2003-06-04 15:29:59 |