If the events of the past week are any indication, our policymakers have to be delusional to harbour any hope of a meaningful dialogue with India on Kashmir or on the incrementally desperate water dispute. As if the cold shoulder given to Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir by his Indian counterpart, Nirupama Rao, was not enough, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's recently concluded visit to Saudi Arabia was the mea culpa.
It has become abundantly clear that we might consider Kashmir to be the core issue to be discussed with New Delhi, the Indian leadership considers "Pakistan-based Islamic terrorists" its core concern. The resumption of composite dialogue has been predicated with "Islamabad's response over combating terrorism."
Washington's pressure on New Delhi to resume a meaningful dialogue with Islamabad, stalled since the Mumbai attack in November 2008, has been cleverly deflected by the Indian prime minister's recent sojourn to Riyadh, the first by an Indian leader since 1982. Manmohan Singh sweet-talked his way in his meeting with King Abdullah. While addressing Saudi Arabia's quasi-parliament, the Shura Council, he made the right noises about ties with Pakistan, with the caveat that Islamabad acted decisively against terrorism.
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Posted by: john frum ||
03/06/2010 07:41 ||
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urged the Pakistani leaders to forge unity amongst themselves to thwart the menace of terrorism
"endeavor to persevere"
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/06/2010 8:10 Comments ||
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Foreign policy commentators in New Delhi and the Generals and strategic establishment in Rawalpindi-Islamabad are working on the same assumption: That the American withdrawal from Afghanistan is inevitable, inescapable and imminent. The Pakistani Generals have been quick on the draw. They have begun the scramble for a post-withdrawal Kabul even before the Americans have actually begun their retreat.
In the short term, the Pakistani Afghan strategy has three components. First, drive the Indians out of Afghan- istan. Second, weaken President Hamid Karzai. Third, play factional politics within the Afghan Taliban so that the Haqqani militia, considered closest to the Inter-Services Intelligence, emerges victorious.
February's attacks on Indian targets in Kabul were a pointer in this direction. They were believed to have been executed by the Haqqani faction to further the ISI mission of scaring away Indian economic assistance and capacity-building efforts.
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Posted by: john frum ||
03/06/2010 07:24 ||
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'I absolutely know that in anybody's eyes I was a traitor," says Mosab Hassan Yousef. "To my family, to my nation, to my God. I crossed all the red lines in my society. I didn't leave one that I didn't cross."
Now 32, Mosab is the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a founder and leader of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Throughout the last decade, from the second Intifada to the current stalemate, he worked alongside his father in the West Bank. During that time the younger Mr. Yousef also secretly embraced Christianity. And as he reveals in his book "Son of Hamas," out this week, he became one of the top spies for Israel's internal security arm, the Shin Bet.
The news of this double conversion has sent ripples through the Middle East. One of Mr. Yousef's handlers at the Shin Bet confirmed his account to the Israeli daily Haaretz. Hamas--already reeling from the assassination of a senior military chief in Dubai in January--calls his claims Zionist propaganda. From the Israeli prison he has occupied since 2005, Sheikh Yousef on Monday issued a statement that he and his family "have completely disowned the man who was our oldest son and who is called Mosab."
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He won't survive in this world. He knows that you don't get out of this messed up world alive. The worst thing that can happen is not to know life in the next one. God bless Hassan.
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Lengthy, but easy to read - and fun. The conclusion: The lingering question is whether the collapse of the climate campaign is also a sign of a broader collapse in public enthusiasm for environmentalism in general. Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, two of the more thoughtful and independent-minded figures in the environmental movement, have been warning their green friends that the public has reached the point of apocalypse fatigue. Theyve been met with denunciations from the climate campaign enforcers for their heresy. The climate campaign has no idea that it is on the cusp of becoming as ludicrous and forlorn as the World -Esperanto Association.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/06/2010 15:33 Comments ||
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The 'climate campaign' has been the worst environmental disaster of my lifetime. Nothing else comes close to the sheer scale of of it.
H/t Instapundit
Somehow the tables have turned. For all the smears of big money funding the "deniers", the numbers reveal that the sceptics are actually the true grassroots campaigners, while Greenpeace defends Wall St. How times have changed.
Sceptics are fighting a billion dollar industry aligned with a trillion dollar trading scheme. Big Oil's supposed evil influence has been vastly outdone by Big Government, and even those taxpayer billions are trumped by Big-Banking.
The United States apparently has reached the point where it must either accept that Iran will develop nuclear weapons at some point if it wishes, or take military action to prevent this. There is a third strategy, however: Washington can seek to redefine the Iranian question.
Or Israel can decide not to wait any longer for America to do nothing, and handle it themselves, as they have done before.
As we have no idea what leaders on either side are thinking, exploring this represents an exercise in geopolitical theory. Let's begin with the two apparent stark choices.
The diplomatic approach consists of creating a broad coalition prepared to impose what have been called crippling sanctions on Iran. Effective sanctions must be so painful that they compel the target to change its behavior. In Tehran's case, this could only consist of blocking Iran's imports of gasoline. Iran imports 35 percent of the gasoline it consumes. It is not clear that a gasoline embargo would be crippling, but it is the only embargo that might work. All other forms of sanctions against Iran would be mere gestures designed to give the impression that something is being done.
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And fifth, attacks must do more than simply set back Iran's program a few months or even years: If the risk of a nuclear Iran is great enough to justify the risks of war, the outcome must be decisive.
Nonsense. Just setting back Iran's program changes their calculations of future risk considerably. Saddam Hussein never even tried to rebuild Osirak, for a recent example. And Israel, having done it once, will find it easier to do a second time, just as they went back into Lebanon twice, and may yet go back into Gaza... especially given the mindset of the current Prime Minister and popular support of Mossad.
Al-Sharq Al-Awsat editor Tariq Alhomayed wrote: "Whilst U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that her country has asked the Syrians to distance themselves from Iran, the Syrian president [welcomed] his Iranian counterpart to Damascus, celebrating the occasion of Mawlid [the birth of the Prophet Mohammed]. [The two presidents] signed an agreement to cancel [the need for] travel visas between the two countries. Was this [a case of] Syria challenging the U.S. -- or just public embarrassment [for the U.S.] in response to Secretary Clinton embarrassing Damascus, especially as Assad's comments about Clinton were clearly sarcastic...
"But if Damascus is the one that determines how things go, and believes that its interest lies in consolidating its ties with Tehran, then why is Syria openly asking the Americans to intervene in negotiations with Israel[?]... If Damascus agrees with Ahmadinejad... that the 'Zionist entity is on its way to disappearing,' and 'will be confronted by all nations in the region, especially Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq,' then why is Syria cooperating with the Americans on security issues and with acknowledgement from Washington, as the number of foreign [jihad] fighters heading to Iraq [via its borders] has decreased?...
"...If the Syrians want to normalize relations with the U.S. and want the U.S. to mediate between Syria and Israel, then how can they fight on Ahmadinejad's side and agree with him on eliminating Israel?... If the idea of Syria negotiating with Israel is accepted by Iran, then why does Tehran denounce others as traitors?...
"...[W]ho is deceiving whom? There is something not right about the Damascus-Tehran relationship today. The loud voice suggests that one side is nervous whilst the other is portraying something contrary to what is on the inside. Let us wait and see!"
Posted by: Fred ||
03/06/2010 00:00 ||
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Al-Quds Al-Arabi editor 'Abd Al-Bari 'Atwan wrote: "The [February 25] tripartite meeting in Damascus of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, his Iranian guest Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Hizbullah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, was a 'war council,' [at which the three] outlined future courses of action and assigned tasks and roles in case of an Israeli attack on one of the sides, or on all three at once...
"Also [noteworthy was] the expanded meeting between Ahmadinejad and the commanders of the Palestinian [resistance] factions... The timing [of this meeting], the manner in which it was held, and the press conference that followed it indicate that a strategic alliance is coalescing and a new front is forming, to serve as a spearhead against the U.S.-Israel alliance and the Arab governments that will join it, openly or covertly, should war break out. The Iranian president assessed that this war will break out... within a few months...
"We are witnessing a new language, an unprecedented [level of] confidence, and a readiness [to endorse] reactions the likes of which we have never seen -- especially on the part of the Arab regimes -- since [the adoption of] the peace option... embodied by the Arab peace initiative, which was carefully concocted in the American kitchen by expert chefs...
"It seems that the Syrian leadership has determined its position: It has decided to shut the door on America's cheap and pathetic attempts to court it, and [has resolved instead] to strengthen its strategic alliance with Iran. This was its clear response to the advice of U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, who demanded that Syria distance itself from Iran, the regional troublemaker...
"It seems that the imminence of conflict [in the region] has prompted [Syria] to abandon the course of quiet diplomacy and half-open doors to [rapprochement with] the West, and to begin preparing for the possibility of 'the mother of all wars."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/06/2010 00:00 ||
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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.
The United States apparently has reached the point where it must either accept that Iran will develop nuclear weapons at some point if it wishes, or take military action to prevent this. There is a third strategy, however: Washington can seek to redefine the Iranian question.
