Among those who died fighting in Donetsk this week were Russian citizens -- at least eight, according to the city's mayor. With that revelation, Russia's involvement in the violence in eastern Ukraine is no longer in question.
The confirmed presence of foreign fighters exposes as untrue repeated claims by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that they are merely horrified bystanders to events in eastern Ukraine. Those claims were never plausible, given Russia's record in Crimea and thin popular support for the secessionist rebels in the east.
Lavrov recently challenged those who insisted Russia was backing the rebels to produce a single captured Russian agent. Of course, he can maintain that the Russian citizens killed in Donetsk were simply volunteers motivated by attacks on their ethnic kin in Ukraine. The eight, however, included Chechens, who by no stretch of the imagination are Russian nationalists.
There are certainly Chechen mercenaries available for hire, but they also answer to Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, who is fiercely loyal to Putin. Kadyrov has denied sending anyone to fight in Ukraine, but in an otherwise hard-to-explain twist, he personally negotiated the recent release of two Russian journalists held by pro-Ukraine forces. It is inconceivable that Kadyrov would send fighters to Ukraine without Moscow's approval or, more likely, instructions.
[DAWN] BANNERS, posters and graffiti containing defamatory, incendiary and provocative material are nothing new in cities across Pakistain. But when banners inscribed with defamatory material targeting a sitting judge of the honourable Supreme Court 'mysteriously' start popping up across Islamabad, supposedly the most secure and watched city in the country, there is reason for concern. In this regard, the state, specifically the security apparatus, needs to discover who is behind the recent display of banners targeting the integrity of Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja. The judge rightfully wondered during a hearing on Monday how the provocative material, linking him to the owner of the Jang group, could have come up in Islamabad without the capital administration or intelligence agencies getting wind of it. As he pointed out, the material was also placed in the 'red zone', which is supposed to be a high-security area. What makes matters even more puzzling is that they were reportedly put up by an entity called Farzand-e-Islam; interestingly, this organization has never been heard of before.
This is not the first time 'mysterious' material has been publicly displayed in Islamabad. A few weeks earlier, in the aftermath of the Geo-ISI tussle following the attack on Hamid Mir, banners started appearing in the federal capital bearing the picture of the serving ISI chief, as if he were running in a local election. These banners were signed off by an obscure traders' body. It is difficult to believe the Capital Development Authority and the intelligence agencies have no inkling of who placed the material targeting Justice Khawaja. The capital administration usually acts quickly to remove any unauthorised material. How these banners escaped its vigilant eyes needs to be explained. Such character liquidation on the streets of the capital is totally unacceptable. Both the CDA and the intelligence agencies need to make an effort to trace those responsible. If this trend is not nipped in the bud, the evil will spread, with the list of targets being expanded constantly.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/29/2014 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] IT is fighting season once again in North Wazoo, with air force jets and helicopter gunships pounding suspected hard boy sanctuaries and more soldiers dying in the battlefield. But do we have any clear strategy? These off-and-on military strikes have generated more confusion and exposed the prevailing disarray in our policy on fighting militancy.
The problem with being a military that has a country instead of the normal other way round is that there is no higher authority to handle the political side of things. And it's the political side that provides the reasons for exercising military skillz, like going to war against rebels, which is what the TTP -- when jihading inside Pakistan -- are doing.
It was the third military action against the gunnies in the volatile region this year. But like in the past the guns are silent again after a few days of fierce aerial bombings and artillery shelling killing a few dozen suspected faceless myrmidons and forcing residents to flee their homes for safer locations.
What next? No one seems to have any clear answer. The government maintains that it was just another retaliatory action by the military and there is no plan to conduct a full-fledged operation in the area.
The strikes, declared the interior minister, were a continuation of an earlier decision that "any act of violence or terrorism against civilian or military targets would meet a calibrated and measured response". His faith in reviving the dead dialogue process, however, remains undaunted. There is no decision to call off the dialogue process, nor has any such demand been made from either side, he said.
This nonchalant stance lends credence to the impression that the government may not be fully on board on the latest military strikes, even though the authorisation must have come from the prime minister.
One is still not sure whether it is deliberate ambiguity on the part of the civilian leadership or pressure from the military that forced the decision. This makes the situation much more complicated. It seems to be a conscious move by the Sharif government to distance itself from the army action, while continuing to harp on the talks mantra. This approach is highly dangerous and undermines the battle against violent militancy.
Nothing depicts the deepening civil-military tension more than their differences over the policy to deal with the Taliban insurgency. The division has further widened with the dragging on of talks with the TTP, with no sign of them going anywhere. A Rooters wire agency report quoted a senior government official as saying that the military decided to take the matter into its own hands after running out of patience with the talks.
It may or may not be true, but this situation of no fight and no peace has taken a huge toll on our security forces generating frustration in the ranks. Many soldiers have been killed in the hard boy attacks since the start of the peace negotiations with the TTP. More than 20 of them are reported to have fallen last week alone. But there has hardly been any acknowledgement by the government of the growing number of casualties.
The latest offensive was triggered by the killing of nine soldiers in North Waziristan in an IED attack. Massive aerial bombing and heavy artillery shelling have now become almost a pattern following each attack on the troops. The claims of heavy hard boy casualties aside, such bombardments have their downside too. Collateral damage becomes unavoidable, further alienating the rustics.
What is most dangerous is that the Dire Revenge" strikes are used as substitute for a well-defined counter-insurgency strategy. While this approach allows hard boy networks to regroup, it unsettles the lives of the rustics.
Thousands of families have reportedly fled to neighbouring districts in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... , some even taking refuge across the border in Afghanistan. There is certainly no contingency plan in place to help the displaced families. It is an extremely perilous situation as the civilian administration has abdicated responsibility.
It is not only North Waziristan, the eye of the storm. Attacks on the security forces have become more frequent in other tribal areas too. Several soldiers were killed in last week's hard boy raids in Bajaur and Mohmand agencies that were believed to have been cleared of the krazed killers.
In the absence of a comprehensive strategy, the situation is likely to worsen despite the deployment of troops in those areas. It is true that the ongoing factional fighting has weakened and fragmented the TTP, but the terrorist network still has the capacity to continue targeting the security forces. Sporadic Dire Revenge" aerial bombings are certainly not the way to deal with the grave security challenges faced by the nation.
It has been almost a year since the Sharif government returned to power with a promise to formulate a comprehensive and overarching national security strategy. But there's no sign yet of a policy taking concrete shape. There's still no national counterterrorism narrative to mobilise public opinion.
No military can fight without the strong backing of the politicianship and public support. In the absence of public political ownership, military actions lose their effectiveness. What is most demoralising for the troops is the lack of recognition of soldiers and officers killed fighting the krazed killers.
Last week, President B.O. travelled across the world to meet the US soldiers in Afghanistan. But our prime minister, who also happens to be the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, has not even visited the injured, let alone visited the frontline where our soldiers are fighting the enemy in a most difficult terrain.
It is about time the civilian leadership took the ownership of this war and showed some resolve and capacity to lead. But, unfortunately, there is no sign of that happening.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/29/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
Mentioning Obama is probably not the best example of supporting our troops. I.e. VA scandals, budget gutting and obtuse speeches about little substance.
From Daniel Pipes' Middle East Forum. A very prescient novel written a century ago by G.K. Chesterton about a scenario where the Ottoman Empire defeats England and brings Islam and sharia law to the island. Link at article title.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/29/2014 14:51 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Among those who died fighting in Donetsk this week were Russian citizens -- at least eight, according to the city's mayor. With that revelation, Russia's involvement in the violence in eastern Ukraine is no longer in question.
Wazoo
