[DAWN] AFTER the recent flurry of meetings between Pak and Afghan leaders and between the army and government, as well as the military's insistence that the North Wazoo operation will be against all hard boys, there's hope, finally, that the change in rhetoric on militancy will be matched with changes in state policy on tackling the scourge. On this point, the military leadership and the PML-N government have been unusually categorical: there will be no favourites or good Taliban/bad Taliban distinction in clearing out North Waziristan. Taking the military and the government at their word, the expectation still should not be that the military will rain down missiles and artillery on gunnies of every stripe. Instead, it is hoped the state is ready to sever ties with these elements and that no hard boy group, foreign or local, is allowed to maintain sanctuaries in the tribal agency.
Yet, is that truly the case? Will ties to the Haqqanis really be cut? What about Gul Bahadur and his long-term on-again, off-again relationship with the Pak military? Has it been finally and irrevocably ended or will expediency and a relationship of mutual convenience be allowed to revive ties again? Especially on the Haqqani front, the choice the military makes will have regional and international repercussions, given how the group is regarded by the Afghan and American governments. Surely, neither an Afghan government nor an American administration would demand that Pakistain militarily take on the Haqqanis given their proven ability to launch the most sophisticated and devastating of attacks. But what of the growing suspicion that perhaps the security establishment here is still shielding the Haqqanis and may have offered them safe passage out of the imminent battle zone or even helped physically relocate some of the Haqqani leadership in other parts of Fata? It is indeed encouraging that Pak foreign and security policy architects have at long last started to speak in specific terms of distancing the state from all hard boy groups. But the welcome clarity of language must be matched with clarity on the ground.
Similarly, the more purposeful and positive language between Pak and Afghan officials when it comes to ending cross-border militancy and sanctuaries on either side of the border is a welcome sign. So far, there had been little action taken by the Americans or Kabul against elements of the outlawed TTP operating from bordering Afghan provinces. The tensions over cross-border violence in the Kunar region in particular have soared in recent weeks and need to be urgently tamped down. For that to happen it will have to be largely a bilateral process and one in which patience, cooperation and good faith are preferred over the path of accusations and recriminations. It is possible. Both sides will find out soon enough if it is real or not.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/28/2014 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] AFTER you spray a stagnant pool, you get rid of the mosquitoes for a while, but unless the standing water is drained, the pests soon return to plague you again.
And so it is with the turbans the army is going after in North Wazoo currently. While we are told on a daily basis of our successes in the battle, it remains unclear what will happen after the bully boyz have been cleared from the area.
I have little doubt that our soldiers will evict or eliminate the Death Eater groups infesting our tribal areas, but holding territory is a whole different ballgame. This requires an administrative structure that will permit the hundreds of thousands of IDPs to return to their homes.
The problem here is that the tribal areas are largely autonomous, with little or no state machinery in place. And to ensure that the bully boyz do not return, a permanent security apparatus will have to take over from the army, especially as the authority of local tribal leaders has been severely degraded.
The list of what needs to be done is long.
Then there is the question of national cohesion to support the military in this existential war. In no other country I have heard of do politicians try to destabilise a government when soldiers are laying down their lives in a battle for survival. So for Qadri to bring his circus to Pakistain at this juncture is hardly the act of a patriot.
The last thing we need now is the distraction of political turmoil. True, the Punjab police gave Qadri and his followers an excuse for causing an uproar, but his Pakistain Awami Tehrik is clearly using the Model Town incident, tragic as it was, to raise the stakes and the temperature.
Another issue relates to the role snuffies have come to assume in the army's arsenal: for years, our generals and spooks have come to view them as a proxy force that allows them to pursue military and political ends while giving them the luxury of deniability.
He replied that it made military sense for a few thousand guerrillas to tie down several Indian divisions in Kashmire that would otherwise have been facing our troops on the Indo-Pak border.
Can our establishment be weaned away from this dependence? Already, there are credible rumours that Death Eater groups like the Haqqani Network were warned of the ongoing operation, and moved to another base near the Afghan border. Given the imminent exit of NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis.... and Isaf forces from Afghanistan, it is hard to believe that our army would eliminate what it views as its assets.
But taking the optimistic and charitable view that the area will indeed be purged of the krazed killer jihadists that have controlled it for so many years with the Pak state's connivance, what comes next? After all, militancy did not appear spontaneously out of the blue.
From Zia's promotion of the Sipah-e-Sahaba against the Shia in the early 1980ss to the promotion of Islamist jihadists to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, there has been a growing legitimisation and acceptance of Islamist militancy. Once the Soviets left, our military switched to supporting the Kashmiri uprising in the late 1980s, sending bully boyz across the Line of Control.
Soon thereafter, I recall asking a general about the use of these Death Eaters. He replied that it made military sense for a few thousand guerrillas to tie down several Indian divisions in Kashmire that would otherwise have been facing our troops on the Indo-Pak border.
Over the years, krazed killer views have come to be accepted and internalised in our classrooms, our TV chat shows, our defence forces, our judiciary and our administration. Indeed, our entire national discourse has been steadily moving towards the religious right.
In a recent column in the foreign pages of this newspaper, I cited an apt metaphor used by Michael Gove, the British education secretary, to describe his country's fight against Islamist terrorism. In a book written after the London attacks in 2005, he said it wasn't enough to fight off the crocodiles: the swamp had to be drained as well.
So how do we drain our swamp of the krazed killer poison that has been accumulating for years? Who will stop the Saudi and Gulf financing of our thousands of madressahs, and bring the curricula of these seminaries in line with modern needs? Who will force the private TV channels to tone down their hysterical broadcasts and their subliminal support of extremism?
The list of what needs to be done is long and formidable. In our schools, madressahs and military cadet colleges, intolerance and suspicion of everybody who does not follow the majority belief have become pervasive. Changing this mindset seems a Herculean task beyond the abilities or desires of our ruling class.
On the contrary, these values are now central to the ethos of most of our mainstream political parties and our military. It is this that provides a fertile breeding ground for extremism and militancy.
Looking ahead to the post-operation scenario, we may not have much to celebrate. While I support the army in its fight, its victory may well be a Pyrrhic one in which there are no victors.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/28/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
It is in China's interest to keep the swamp drained. Chinese investment may be part of the answer. In fact. Chinese promises may have been the impetus for the North Wazoo action.
[DAWN] IS it that the gunnies have brilliant strategists orchestrating their every move against the state of Pakistain or have they struck rich purely by chance?
Whatever the case, they have been left free to pursue their toxic agenda for so long that each time they strike it is to telling effect. In their attempt to pull Pakistain into the medieval age it would be a natural first step to isolate the country and separate it from the rest of the world.
It is in this context that their campaign against polio ...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set... vaccination needs to be seen. No different should be the case of the recent attack on Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... airport and the firing on a PIA aircraft as it came in to land at Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. airport.
The spurt in polio cases that followed the murderous attacks on polio workers by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain was followed by the World Health Organisation advisory requiring polio vaccination certificates for all travelling abroad from here after living or being here for more than four weeks.
If security is not tightened around all airports, the next incident could trigger a sterner response from foreign airlines.
Now with the start of the operation against the gunnies in North Wazoo and the consequent civilian displacement, there are renewed fears that the virus might forcefully raise its head in areas far and wide as the internally displaced are travelling to places as far away as Karachi in search of succour.
Admittedly, the government says that those being registered, for example, in Sindh are being vaccinated against polio but given how porous the interprovincial borders are, it would not be an exaggeration to say some carriers will still get through. Hence the need for enhanced vigilance.
The continued discovery of polio cases and the traces of virus from all over the country were being dealt with and the authorities were trying hard to keep the threat in check, also keeping the possibly devastating international repercussions in mind, when the Karachi airport attack happened.
It is in the nature of news that attacks on civil aviation targets are very dramatic and arouse huge interest: in this day and age so many people fly that a connection between an attack on an airport or an aircraft and most of the media users is immediately established.
And why wouldn't there be a connection? Most of us use airports and planes. Any threat to either appears to be a test of our own vulnerability. Before you draw misleading conclusions, this isn't an attempt to play psychologist as I have no such pretensions.
What is being attempted here is an explanation of why the media attaches significance to such attacks and threats and also why audiences are held captive by the episode while it lasts. Only a conclusion, a resolution would shift the focus of media users.
We all know over the years a number of Western and other foreign airlines have scratched off Pakistain from their schedules. Our link with the outside world is now mostly kept intact by our limping national flag carrier and Gulf-based airlines.
Even if the presence of a Gulf-based carrier's aircraft on the tarmac with a heavy passenger load was coincidental as the Karachi airport attackers launched their assault, with one passenger live-tweeting to the world the unfolding nightmare, it couldn't have provided an iota of comfort to passengers and airlines planning flights to Pakistain.
Therefore, it was no surprise after this week's firing (which claimed one life) on a PIA plane on its final approach to land in Peshawar, that the Gulf-based airline with the most frequent flights to multiple destinations in Pakistain suspended its flights to the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... capital
Posted by: Fred ||
06/28/2014 00:00 ||
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[Ynet] Analysis: The security agency is hoping that Palestinians seeking better conditions for themselves will give up the two men, while Netanyahu is keen to show that perpetrators were indeed Hamas.
Member of the press covering the abduction of 16-year-olds Gil-Ad Shaer and Naftali Frenkel and 19-year-old Eyal Yifrach had already come across the name of Marwan Kawasmeh on a Friday two weeks ago. We knew that two men were involved in the abduction, but were told they were both members of the Kawasmeh family. Some of the information about the two men had already been published, but had become lost in the mass of speculation and interpretation.
The censor was quick to block the information about the two kidnappers, since the Shin Bet was hoping to reach others involved in the abduction and use them to get more information that would lead to the boys. After all, the main purpose is to find the three teens and only afterwards find and punish the kidnappers. In the meantime, those connected to Abu-Eisha and Kawasmeh were jugged ... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not... and those who weren't had escaped.
Meanwhile, ...back at the precinct house, Don Calamari's lawyer was getting even redder in the face... the Shin Bet's assumption that the Hamas network in Hebron was responsible for the kidnapping has been confirmed. But so far the Shin Bet hasn't been successful in tracking down the abductors, who are probably still in hiding and looking for a way to escape the area when things calm down and the Israeli military operation is over.
At the current stage of the operation, when Shin Bet is still without a strong lead that could take them to the kidnappers, it is using police techniques by publishing their names and photos of their faces in the hope that someone on the Paleostinian side will step up and give them away.
Unlike the Wild West, where a reward would be offered for desperados's heads, the Shin Bet isn't offering one, but on the Paleostinian street it is well known that information on the whereabouts of the kidnappers would be generously rewarded. Paleostinians with a family member detained in Israel and want better conditions for him and for themselves may be tempted to come forward and provide the Shin Bet with information. This is the main reasoning behind the move.
Publishing the names and photos of the kidnappers also serves Israel's public diplomacy, mainly for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, because it proves it was Hamas who is responsible for the abduction of the three boys, and not some random act by otherwise innocent Paleostinians who acted on impulse.
This is exactly what Netanyahu needed to turn public opinion in Europe and the US against the reconciliation between the Paleostinian Authority and Hamas, which hasn't changed its terrorist ways.
An additional motive for releasing the identity of the abductors is to prove that the Shin Bet is making progress and not groping in the dark. But, as often happens, the breakthrough hasn't been achieved yet and therefore the Shin Bet is constantly shifting its methods and continues to work tirelessly.
Japan's former defense minister and national security adviser is quite optimistic about the Philippine peace deal with the MILF but his remarks about standing up to China may be more noteworthy.
The Moros have been infected with the same jihadist/fanaticism virus that has torn the ME apart...I wonder how long before Indonesia falls in to civil war also?
BTW, any news on the Buddhists jihad against Muslims in Burma?
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
06/28/2014 12:03 Comments ||
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#4
While Pershing was there at the time, it was General Smith that gave that order...
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
06/28/2014 13:31 Comments ||
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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
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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.
Wazoo
[DAWN] IS it that the 
Wazoo
