[DAWN] THE fall of Kunduz may have been near inevitable, but the effect has nevertheless been dramatic. First, there is the symbolism: the fall of a northern city, far removed from the sanctuaries Pakistain is accused of providing and even further from the Afghan Taliban strongholds in the south of the country; its occurrence on the eve of the unity government's first year in charge; a significant Taliban victory as the annual fighting season approaches its end; a bustling provincial capital falling back into the hands of the Taliban some 14 years after they were swept from power by a US-led coalition. Then, there are the grim realities of the war itself. This fighting season has been unprecedented in terms of losses suffered by the Afghan National Security Forces and gains made by the Afghan Taliban. Kunduz was under Taliban assault last September and again this April, and each time the same pattern revealed itself: poor coordination among the Afghan army, police and local police and an abject lack of leadership. While the Taliban assault does seem sophisticated and well-coordinated, a great deal of the problem appears to have resulted from the failure of the ANSF.
There is even speculation that Kunduz was allowed to fall because rushing in forces from neighbouring provinces could have worsened the security situation in other regions. That theory will be tested now that the Afghan government has declared retaking Kunduz a priority. It will not be easy, however. With Taliban forces now inside the city and mixing with the local population, fighting will likely cause civilian causalities and damage to the city's infrastructure. Victory, if the Afghan state does succeed in retaking Kunduz, may well be a Pyrrhic one. The problems for the Ashraf Ghani ...former chancellor of Kabul University, now president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money. .. -led government though go far beyond Kunduz. A year on, the unity government appears to be going nowhere. If anything, it appears to have been a strategic error by the US to force Mr Ghani and his rival for the presidency, Abdullah Abdullah ... the former foreign minister of the Northern Alliance government, advisor to Masood, and candidate for president against Karzai. Dr. Abdullah was born in Kabul and is half Tadjik and half Pashtun... , into an arrangement that neither really wanted. The Afghan government was never a service-oriented, people-centric entity under 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... , but that was precisely what Mr Ghani had vowed to change. Instead, he has been bogged down in the endless politics of maintaining an unnatural coalition.
Worrying too are the prospects for the resumption of talks between the Afghan Taliban and the Afghan government. Even as Mullah Mansour's negotiating position appears to have hardened, the Afghan government seems unsure about engaging the Taliban in talks at all. Perhaps, following the collapse of the second round of the Murree talks, elements inside the Afghan state had hoped that the Taliban would splinter so that they would be easier to deal with on the battlefield. But that has not come to pass -- leaving the Afghan government seemingly at a loss about how to proceed.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/30/2015 00:00 ||
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[11125 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
So will we see Taliban & ISIS go at each other in Pashtunate?
[Hurriyet Daily News] You must have heard about the latest disaster in Mecca, Islam's holiest city, on Sept. 24. More than 700 pilgrims died in a stampede on the way to the ritual of "stoning the devil." And this was only a repetition of similar disasters that happened again in Mecca, and again during the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage that millions of Moslems come from all around the world to do.
Besides the painful human tragedy, there are many theological implications of this disaster. One wonders, for example, whether we Moslems would defy the devil better by throwing less stones at him, and also by causing fewer deaths among ourselves. In other words, perhaps we should think better about the meaning of Islam's centuries-old rituals, rather than trampling on each other to observe them literally and blindly.
Another key aspect of the disaster is the way it was interpreted by 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 the Soddy national face... 's top religious leader, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh. Two days after the incident, the 74-year-old holy man visited Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, who is both the interior minister and head of the Saudi Hajj committee. "You are not responsible for what happened," the sheikh said to the prince. He added:
"As for the things that humans cannot control, you are not blamed for them. Fate and destiny are inevitable."
When I read this, I said, "Wow." For this was a perfect example of the deep trouble in the Moslem world that I have been writing about: Fatalism used as an excuse for ridding humans of responsibility -- especially humans in power. For when you declare something as "God's will," it becomes impossible to ask further questions. All you are left with is the duty to accept and obey; and not just God, but also the ruler.
In fact, this political benefit was the very reason fatalism was initially established in Islam, decades after the Qur'an and the Prophet, by the Umayyad dynasty. Most Umayyad sultans, who also claimed to be "caliphs," were corrupt despots who faced both political and religious opposition. In return, they promoted "Jabriyyah," the fatalist school that argued every human action is predetermined by God. The political implication was that the Umayyad rule was predetermined by God as well -- and questioning it would be tantamount to blasphemy!
Meanwhile, ...back at the the conspirators' cleverly concealed hideout Montefiore's foot was still stuck and the hound had completely soaked his uniform with slobber... the Umayyads also made sure to suppress the dangerous idea of free will. Scholars who defended this view, arguing that humans who have the freedom to make decisions are thus responsible for their actions, were persecuted. One of them, Ghaylan al-Dimashqi, who proclaimed that rulers cannot regard their power as "a gift from God," was executed.
It is possible to see the echoes of that Umayyad-serving-fatalism in the Saudi sheikh's blessing of the Saudi crown prince. Some ideas persist, as the purposes that they serve.
However, corruption finds a dozen alibis for its evil deeds... it is good to see that this is not the only line of thought among the Saudi ruling elite today. In fact, the crown prince himself was not sufficed with the "fate and destiny" argument and ordered an investigation.
Moreover, King Salman ...either the largest species of Pacific salmon or the current Sheikh of the Burnin' Sands, Cutodian of the Two Holy Mosquesand Lord of Most of the Arabians.... also stepped in, ordered a "revision" of the pilgrimage organization and dismissed three bigwigs: the minister of the Hajj, the mayor of Mecca, and the city's police chief.
These are positive steps. Apparently in Saudi Arabia, as elsewhere, there is both an archaic notion of religion that serves nothing but nurturing blind obedience, but also a more rational, responsible approach that also has its grounds in the very core texts of Islam. The latter is the only way forward.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/30/2015 00:00 ||
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[11126 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Saudi Arabia
#1
"As for the things that humans cannot control, you are not blamed for them. Fate and destiny are inevitable."
Unless it's being done to you. Then it's the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' to whence take arms against and by doing so, end them.
#2
"Jabriyyah,", or al-Jabariyah, the fatalist school.founded by Jahm Ibn Sufwan which holds that man acts as he does by "God's eternal and immutable decree."
[Hurriyet Daily News] The bottom line of the Syria talks between the U.S. President Barack Obama They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them... and Russian President Vladimir Putin ...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead... is that they agree that Syria today under Bashir al-Assad is no longer sustainable, but they disagree on the future of al-Assad himself.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
09/30/2015 00:00 ||
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[11129 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
#1
Only as long as he Assad proves successful in fighting-n-destroying the Hard Boyz.
#4
What does Putin get out of cozying up to Assad? Influence, intelligence a warm water port in the Mediterranean and some commerce. He is jockeying to get the prestige in the M.E. that Obean has so easily given up.
#6
OK, Assad is a bad guy. What is your alternative? More war and chaos, right? Refugees streaming into Europe? US, Russian, Chinese, Turkish and Iranian troops all united to defeat ISIS and install a democratic government in Damascus? WWIII?
How about if we all back off and let the Arabs figure it out for themselves?
[PJMedia] Brett Stephens in his article, "An Unteachable President [1]" in the Wall Street Journal, makes a serious attempt to construct a rational theory to explain why the president doubles down when he's losing -- and why the public can't get him to change.
...Why does he keep doing that? Stephens thinks it's because Obama is the kind of man who believes the Cold War was won by "peaceful protest", convinced that "a strategy of retreat and accommodation, a bias against intervention, a preference for minimal responses" is enlightened foreign policy, and most of all believes he is unalterably correct -- "on the right side of history" -- therefore could never be wrong.
Based on these assumptions naturally the president never learns for how can one improve upon perfection?
...Stephens fails to take his reasoning to the logical conclusion. The president is unteachable because the political system itself is incapable of learning. The paralysis of Barack Obama but a reflection of the political stroke which has frozen Washington. The Capital itself is in a dream. In that deadly reverie truth is indistinguishable from fiction [10]. Everything in that topsy-turvy world is a storyline. Behavior that is rewarded is reinforced.
#3
Or just plain closed minded wrapped around the Leftest indoctrination that Western Civ and America are evil simply because they've been more successful in history than others. It's like a flat worm trying to comprehend a three dimensional world. It's what happens when you destroy real history and substitute the 'narrative'.
#6
My sense is that any serious work of the presidency at this point is totally the province of ValJar and the disciples. Champ enjoys those acts that allow him to bloviate, act impressive and brilliantly insightful, or play with fawning partners (golf).
One wonders just how much choom in various forms is a part of his week.
#7
Do they make choom chewing gum? I mean, are we being too charitable by assuming that the gum we see him chewing is nicorette? I googled it and this was the best I could find...
#8
the more worrying conclusion is that we cannot intervene because the country is broke, the iraq and afghan wars cost too much money and the US is forced not to interfere.
there does come a point where looking after the roads hospitals and schools of ones own taxpayers is more important than foreign affairs
having said that - look at isis.
and look at the complete failure of government to declare Islamist theocratic fascism the enemy, to ban sharia and to tell the muslim *community* that YES they are going to be targeted until the war is over and that NO this is not unfair.
#9
The front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination was urged to seek help by her husband Bill Clinton – and he told her: ‘Let’s ask Steven [Spielberg] for help,’ according to the book, which is called Unlikeable. She is downright unlikeable. IMO there is little anyone can do to make her more so.
Whenever the Donks get in power, we all get a little more trapped in their nightmare.
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.
[DAWN] THE fall of Kunduz may have been near inevitable, but the effect has nevertheless been dramatic. First, there is the symbolism: the fall of a northern city, far removed from the sanctuaries Pakistain is accused of providing and even further from the Afghan Taliban strongholds in the south of the country; its occurrence on the eve of the unity government's first year in charge; a significant Taliban victory as the annual fighting season approaches its end; a 
[Hurriyet Daily News] You must have heard about the latest disaster in Mecca, Islam's holiest city, on Sept. 24. More than 700 pilgrims died in a stampede on the way to the ritual of "stoning the devil." And this was only a repetition of similar disasters that happened again in Mecca, and again during the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage that millions of 
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...
