More than 3,070 NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis....
and ISAF deaths have been reported in Afghanistan since 2001 - 223 in 2012 alone - and there are no signs that the violence against western troops will end soon.
The attacks on Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel and the US Embassy, the liquidation of former Afghanistan's Caped President Burhanuddin Rabbani
... the gentlemanly murdered legitimate president of Afghanistan...
last year while he served as a peace envoy to the Taliban, and more recently, murder of a Non-Governmental Organization worker in the capital, show that the assaults are getting bolder.
"The issue is, how will Afghanistan be managed post withdrawal? Where will the money come from? And will the Taliban take over again?" asks Muhammad Ibrahim, an Afghan Defence Ministry official. "We in Afghanistan - and let me be very clear, all of us from the Pashtuns to Tajiks, to Uzbeks to the Hazaras - perceive Pakistain as the main problem."
President Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai
... 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 Pashtun face 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...
had praised the slain Rabbani's peace efforts but said that they were "one sided" because the Taliban's only response "was just to kill people." Karzai alleged that these "enemies of peace" - the Taliban and other hard boyz - were "under the influence of foreign intelligence services", by which he meant Pakistain's ISI.
| "Let's agree that any endgame in Afghanistan must include Pakistain, the Quetta Shura and even the Haqqanis as part of the solution, instead of leaving them as lingering problems," says Carl Adams. "The Americans need to realize that a draw in Afghanistan is a win for this trio" |
"US strategists are trying to stabilize Afghanistan enough to prevent it from becoming a favourable environment for terrorism," said Micheal Semple, an EU representative in Afghanistan who initiated talks with the Taliban. "They calculate that Pakistain would benefit from this and could help achieve it. They consider Pakistain a challenge because they find themselves struggling to get the Pak establishment to deliver on the cooperation they hoped for. And they find Pakistain a puzzle as it is in the first place threatened by the consequences of that non-cooperation - as we have seen in Dir over the past week."
"Rabbani's liquidation was the biggest set-back to peace so far," says a top Afghan Intelligence official. "Who doesn't want peace is very clear. We see the Pakistain connection in this." Most government and intelligence officials in NATO, ISAF and the Afghan government echoed Karzai in blaming Pakistain indirectly for Rabbani's liquidation. But the way Rabbani was killed was quite similar to the murder of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the charismatic leader of Northern Alliance. He was killed by two Al Qaeda jacket wallahs pretending to be journalists just before the September 11, 2001 attacks, an liquidation launched to please Mullah Omar
... a minor Pashtun commander in the war against the Soviets who made good as leader of the Taliban. As ruler of Afghanistan, he took the title Leader of the Faithful . The imposition of Pashtunkhwa on the nation institutionalized ignorance and brutality already notable for its own fair share of ignorance and brutality...
, but which might have been set into motion without his consent. A section of the Haqqani Network under the influence of Pakistain's ISI denied killing Rabbani.
Negotiations with Taliban:
Recently, the Karzai government has decided to sit down with its enemies, the Taliban and the Hezb-e-Islami, in Japan. Qari Din Mohammad Hanif, the former Taliban planning minister who had a seal of approval from Mullah Umer, sat down with Afghan official Masoon Stanikzai, a senior member of High Peace Council, to talk. "The Taliban insisted on complete withdrawal of foreign troops from the country after 2014, and called the Karzai government a puppet saying they would not negotiate with them," one official said.
The Taliban, in a statement, also distanced themselves from Pakistain which according to analyst Carl Adams, a former director at CIA who has worked in Afghanistan and Pakistain, "shows how Pakistain's game is ending and how isolated Pakistain stands today in it's own game". He says: "The GHQ lost the plot when the US and NATO started negotiating with the Taliban directly and when OBL was killed."
Quetta Shura, Pakistain and NATO Supplies:
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir, Mullah Abdul Rauf, Mullah Muhammad Hassan, Mullah Ahmad Jan Akhundzada, and Mullah Muhammad Younis - the elite Quetta Shura members - were all caught in Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It may be the largest city in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
and other urban areas of Pakistain in a series of joint raids in 2010.
Mullah Mir Muhammad was caught from Faisalabad on January 26, 2010 in a joint raid by Pak and American intelligence officials when Americans intercepted a messenger and immediately asked Paks to take action. Also in Pak custody is Mullah Abdul Salam, caught in January 2010, and Maulvi Abdul Kabir, caught from Nowshehra on 20th February 2010 in similar raids by Pak and American teams.
"The problem is Pakistain," says former Afghan intelligence chief Amarullah Saleh. "The shelters are in Pakistain, and the war in Afghanistan is facilitated and run from Pakistain. What other clarifications do they want?"
In Pakistain, extensive diplomatic efforts have been made by US and British diplomats including NATO officials to convince the government to re-open NATO supply lines. Stephen Tyne, a NATO logistical expert, says, "It costs NATO an extra $10,000 per 20-foot container with an additional $1.3 billion bill apart from bribing CAR nations with over $500 million to supply NATO, thanks to Paks blocking the routes."
About 90 percent of non-military supplies to Afghanistan went through Bloody Karachi. Today, close to 75 percent of the cargo is shipped through the northern network.
While ties between Pakistain and NATO have been worsening since the embargo began, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen showed his annoyance in Brussels when he said it was not business as usual with Pakistain. That created panic in the Pak camp where meetings were called at the highest level. A top US military official who spoke on condition of anonymity said, "General Allan had been told repeatedly by the Pak COAS that they are waiting for the right time. We expect the route to open any time soon with a candid apology on the Salala incident too."
"Everybody is hopeful we can get something back on track with Pakistain," US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John F. I was in Vietnam, you know Kerry
Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, the Senate's current foreign policy expert , filling the vacated wingtips of Joe Biden...
(D-Mass) said in an interview with The News Agency that Dare Not be Named. "Paks make money off that route...That may interest them at some point... but on the other hand, we can't be prisoners of one relationship with something as vital to our national security interests."
Pak Brigadier (r) Rahid Wali Janjua explains the Pak perspective: "Strategic Depth is a redundant theory first perceived by General (r) Aslam Baig. Pakistain has come a long way after that. Pakistain now wants a democratic government in Afghanistan which is legitimate with proportional ethnic representation in it."
'America is not retreating':
"Let's agree that any endgame in Afghanistan must include Pakistain, the Quetta Shura and even the Haqqanis as part of the solution, instead of leaving them as lingering problems," says Carl Adams. "The Americans need to realize that a draw in Afghanistan is a win for this trio. Any future guarantors of Afghanistan as a state - powers such as Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face...
, China, Russia, and NATO - must understand that the solution must include them or there really is no long-term solution."
"Transitioning security and governance to the Afghans does not mean America's departure, and I want Pakistain to hear that loud and clear," said Kerry, who has made several trips to Pakistain. "And I want Afghans and the neighbours to hear that loud and clear. America is not retreating from its interests. We're really trying to be more effective about the way in which we're going to support them."
"The time has come for some give and take on Afghanistan," says Adams. "Once those concessions are made, we must have international guarantees of a workable peace. Without all that coming together, there will only be another decade of war, with or without the Americans there."
Asked about the endgame in Afghanistan, he said: "The US and NATO will not go back, for now." 
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