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| India-Pakistan | |||
| All talk of US leaving Afghanistan is premature | |||
| 2011-10-16 | |||
| The Indo-Afghanistan strategic partnership is also an important back-up for the region because of uncertainties on account of the run-up to the US presidential elections in November 2012. During the campaign Barack B.O.Obama faces the impossible task of explaining American policy on Afghanistan. After 1,500 lives lost and $500 billion spent, what will the President's men put out in the public domain as achievements of the Untied States in Af-Pak? Obviously a theme projecting some sort of success has to be gradually given shape. Towards this end a meeting in Oslo, Norway, has prepared for the important Foreign Ministers Summit on Afghanistan to be held in Istanbul under Turkish auspices in early November. The script from Istanbul will help shape the agenda for the important conference in Bonn in December.
Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... 's initiative. At the NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... summit in Lisbon in November 2010, Karzai asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel ...current chancellor of Germany. She was educated in East Germany when is was still run by commies, but in 1989 got involved with the growing democracy movement when the Berlin Wall fell. Merkel is sometimes referred to by Germans as Mom... to host a follow up conference ten year after the 2001 Bonn conference. Merkel has given a signal for a conference of a 1,000 delegates from 90 countries. The contact group for this conference, consisting of Special Representatives for Afghanistan from 50 countries, met in March in Jeddah, Soddy Arabia. In other words, the energetic Saudi-Turkish duo on Afghanistan is exactly the one playing an aggressive role in the Arab theatre. By design or accident,
Prime Minister Tayyip Erodgan has the endorsement of the Saudis to co-ordinate moves with the Moslem Brüderbund to pressure Assad, either to vacate or to accommodate the "brothers" in a new Syrian dispensation. At the other end of the Mohammedan world, Saudis are also hand-in-glove with Islamabad in regional and GCC enterprises. For example, the Kingdom of Bahrain leans on Saudi military support which, in turn, uses its influence in Pakistain to hire mercenary soldiers for several GCC countries particularly Bahrain. Turki al Faisal, former Saudi Ambassador to Washington and Intelligence Minister, has in a recent article in the New York Times ...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... , said if the US does not support the Paleostinian bid for statehood, the "special relationship" between Soddy Arabia and the US will be seen to be toxic by the vast majority of Arabs and Mohammedans. In that case, Saudis may part company with the US in pursuance of their own policy in Afghanistan too. What is the implication of this threat? It is a pithy statement considering that the Saudis in large measure financed and accorded logistical support to the "Mujahideen", a project which later morphed into Al Qaeda and Taliban. Not just the Haqqani network, but the entire bully boy project in the Af-Pak region is not exempt from Saudi influence. The Saudis will work hard for damage control in the current Pak-US spat too.
The numbers of US troops departing are quite as unpredictable as the shifting deadlines for the date of their departure. First, Americans were to leave by 2011. Then the Obama team changed the deadline to 2012 when the "American departure from Afghanistan" could be laced into a script being prepared for the Presidential campaign. Meanwhile at the UN sponsored Kabul conference in July, 2010, Hamid Karzai declared himself President until 2014. Is it anybody's case that Karzai will have captured the hearts and minds of the Afghan people by 2014? What happens to him after that date? Also will an Afghan army capable of guaranteeing the nation's security be in place when the US troops clamber onto departing aircraft? Everyone knows the US will never vacate bases in Bagram, Jalalabad, Kandahar, Shindand, Mazar-e-Sharif and so on. Some sort of a script will be written in May 2012 when President B.O. has invited NATO allies and sundry others for an Afghan summit in Chicago, barely six months before his bid for a second term. How the Afghan script will change after the US elections will depend on whether Obama wins or loses. Until then all talk of US troop departure is premature. | |||
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #1 Everyone knows the US will never vacate bases in Bagram, Jalalabad, Kandahar, Shindand, Mazar-e-Sharif and so on. "Never" is a very, very long time. Especially when B1 rockets are falling around one's neck. Airfields seldom defend themselves. Ground troops are needed. Airfields in Iraq are being turned over to the host nation as we speak. |
| Posted by: Sofa-Soldier 2011-10-16 03:53 |