Pakistan: Time to quit US proxy war in Afghanistan

My narrative may sound undiplomatic, but it is a true reflection of the feelings of Pakistanis. Those in power or seeking access to the corridors of power may still be willing to negotiate the terms to continue to tow the US foreign policy. However, the demonstrations held in various cities of Pakistan on Sunday were a clear demonstration of the feelings of the masses. The use of power to disperse the demonstrators, the use of tear gas shells and the insulting attitude towards religious clerics was enough to instigate the mob.

The worst was the helplessness of the government that was evident when it admitted that resorting to assault by police was uncalled for and those arrested were also released to avoid further agitation. It is a practice around the world that people submit a note of descent at the embassy/consulate which is received by them. Pakistanis were also following the same protocol/code of conduct and wanted to hand over their note to the US Consulate in Karachi.

The anti Pakistan statements of the US president and other functionaries (including foreign office and the army) are nothing but the release of growing frustration after facing defeat after defeat. Though, the US administration is still not ready to accept its defeat in Iraq and Syria, it is eager to shift the attention to some other parts of the world.

The effort by the US to initiate an arm- encounter between Saudi Arabia and Qatar failed and no one seems to be ready to accept its allegation against Iran. In the Korean Peninsula the US faces serious resistance from China and Russia. India already faces strangulated relationship with China and seems not ready to indulge in any other adventure.  This gives it (the US) the chance to talk about Afghanistan, where the war is going on among the tribes to get control over opium cultivation.

The US has already lost its war in Afghanistan and its sympathizers are confined to the presidential palace in Kabul. The classification of the good and the bad Taliban has also lost its meaning. It is apprehended that the ISIS members on the run from Iraq and Syria are landing in Afghanistan. To keep these blood-thirsty and ruthless beasts busy the US has the option to herd them into Pakistan or Iran. After the recent failed adventure of ISIS in Iran, Pakistan becomes the softest target, because of hundreds of kilometers highly porous Pak-Afghan border.

Under the prevailing circumstances, Pakistan Army has the prime responsibility of protecting its borders with ever hostile India and Afghanistan and stopping any attack on Iran from Pakistani soil. Many of the critics have already pointed out that some of the local channels, getting support from outside Pakistan, are busy in creating anti army sentiments, this policy in the past has led to the creation of Bangladesh. The masses expects that the army will not move its focus away from defending Pakistan to fighting any proxy war.

The Government of Pakistan will have to tell the US in clear words that it does not need the paltry payment for providing logistic support to the US troops. Pakistan will also have to mend its relationships with India and Iran. My humble advice to the Indian government is that it should abstain from opening fronts against Pakistan, because the war would force the foreign investors not to invest in war-ridden country.

Pakistan should review its relationship with the US

Lately I have read a few interesting but contradictory news about the US policy towards Pakistan. It is not only a mockery of diplomatic relationship, but also shows the complete disarray in the US administration. According to one of the news, the US Military Chief, General Joseph Dunford Said that no victory in Afghanistan was possible without Pakistan’s support. As against this, the US Defence Secretary, James Mattis said  that the recent decision to stop reimbursements to the Pakistani military was not a tougher new policy for Pakistan but did reflect ground realities. He went on to say that the President Trump’s administration was reviewing its policies for the entire South Asian region and not just Afghanistan.

This takes me back into the history as back as 2012 when the then US Secretary of Defence, Leon Panetta had said, “In order to really have a secure Afghanistan, ultimately Pakistan is going to have to take responsibility for taking on these terrorists and eliminating the safe havens”. He also said that the US presence in Afghanistan would continue  beyond 2014 if more of the safe havens were not dealt with more stridently than they’ve been to date.

Over the years I have been saying that the US troops will never be pulled out of Afghanistan. My point of view has been recently substantiated by General Dunford as he warned against placing the artificial timeline on operations in Afghanistan. He went to the extent of saying that additional forces for Afganistan security forces would make them more competitive.

This is not something new; over the years the US has been saying that restoring peace in Afghanistan depends on the commitment of Pakistan to fight the terrorist. Instead of stopping incursions from Afghanistan, Pakistan is often accused of providing safe sanctuaries to those who are fighting with the occupying forces.

May be the time has come to find explanations for some basic questions:

1)       Why Afghanistan was invaded by the USSR as well as the US?

2)       Why US wishes to keep its forces there?

3)       Why should Pakistan fight a proxy war of the US?

There is growing realization in Pakistan that if the USSR had attacked Afghanistan for a passage to warm waters, the US is not serious in bringing peace to Afghanistan but achieve other motives. There are suspicions that troops are being kept there for two reasons 1) to protect the opium growers and refining laboratories and 2) a built up troops for immediate attack in case US arrive at the conclusion that appropriate time has come to attack Iran.

It may not be wrong to say that soon after getting independence from the British Raj in 1947, Pakistan became subservient to the US foreign policy, dominated by ‘cold war’. Despite putting its existence at stake, it followed the US dictate of taking anti USSR and anti China stance. However, when the US wanted to make China friend, Pakistan secretly took Henry Kissinger, the then Secretary of Sate, to Beijing. Since the late seventies, Pakistan has been fighting US Proxy war in Afghanistan. Therefore the time has come for Pakistan to decide if it wishes to remain part of the US proxy war or protect its sovereignty.

America’s Embarrassment

I am an early bird and having entered 65th year, I usually get up around 5.00am, even on the weekends. Reading leading stories in the mainstream media, is a must for writing my blog, Geo Politics in South Asia and MENA. I also go through select articles, to which I am a subscriber because these are eyes opener. That is the reason I often term mainstream western media ‘dishonest’. 

This morning I read an interesting blog by Margaret Kimberley titled ‘America’s Embarrassment’.  I have picked up a few paragraphs from this and copy paste these.

• Donald Trump is a national embarrassment. Corporate media pundits have declared this statement to be true and millions of people are in agreement. As a candidate and as president Trump has certainly deviated from the norms of acceptable public behavior, but how much does that really matter?
• Many Americans love to brag that theirs is “the richest country in the world.” There are certainly big banks, rich individuals and trillions of dollars in the treasury but the masses of people rarely benefit from this wealth. This country routinely ranks near the bottom when compared to other “developed” nations in any measure of how it treats its people. It is now considered a “second tier” nation in terms of the well being of its citizens.
• It is certainly unusual to have such a decidedly boorish president. Trump literally pushes other presidents aside, engages in public feuds with celebrities and makes anyone an enemy who dares to oppose him or his policies. He makes up terms like “bigly” and “modern presidential” and excoriates the press when they criticize him. Condemning this kind of behavior is the lowest hanging fruit.
• Trump can be blamed for quite a lot during his first six months in office. His travel ban against citizens of seven nations is an unconstitutional exercise in Islamophobia and has been struck down by federal judges. Trump bans Libyans from traveling to the United States, but Obama destroyed that country and created an ongoing humanitarian disaster.
• The concluding remarks are most interesting, “The list of reasons to be embarrassed about America is very long and it existed before Trump was inaugurated. He has surely added to that ledger, but legitimate cause for concern shouldn’t be pushed aside in favor of phony outrage about optics. President Trump is an ill- mannered, impulsive, happily uninformed bigot. Most of his predecessors were better behaved and followed rules of public relations. But they filled the jails, ended the right to public assistance, killed millions of people abroad, kept wages low and used a variety of schemes to make the rich even richer. Despite his obvious shortcomings Donald Trump is not the worst among them. And that is the most embarrassing fact of all”.

I request the readers of this blog to read the details by clicking https://blackagendareport.com/trump_embarrassing_so_what

Syria planning another chemical attack, another hoax call by the US

A chemical weapon factory destroyed in Iraq

This morning I burst into laughter and one of my teammates asked me to share the joke with others. He was shocked to hear that it was not a joke, but a news headline, U.S. threatens Syria, says Assad is planning chemical weapons attack. This reminded all of us about another headline “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction". It was a hoax call used as a justification to attack Iraq. I would not like to take a lot of time of my readers, but share just three news to once again prove the game of embedded journalists and dishonest western media, mostly in the control of Zionists.

According to the first news, More than 80 people were killed in a suspected chemical attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in North-Western Syria on 4 April. Hundreds suffered symptoms consistent with reaction to a nerve agent after what the opposition and Western powers said was a Syrian government air strike on the area.  Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said the incident was fabricated, while his ally Russia said an air strike hit a rebel depot full of chemical munitions.

The second news say, It is long established that Iraq — with assistance from the U.S. and other Western countries — produced enormous quantities of chemical weapons during its eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s. After Iraq was expelled from Kuwait during the Gulf War in 1991, the United Nations Security Council sent inspectors to ensure that Iraq disclosed and destroyed its entire chemical (and biological and nuclear) weapons programs. Iraq repeatedly said that it had done so, while the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations claimed it was still hiding pre-1991 weaponry.

The third but most import news disclosed, Recently Donald Trump broke with the Republican convention and roiled the party base by boldly stating “You call it whatever you want. I want to tell you. They [the Bush administration] lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction [in Iraq]; there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.” He also stated “We spent $2 trillion, thousands of lives. Obviously, it was a mistake. George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East.”

Killers on rampage once again in Pakistan

Photo by Dawn

Friday 23rd June 2017 has witnessed the massive killing, as killers seemed on the rampage once gain in Pakistan. In the late evening in Karachi in two separate incidents the police personnel came under attack. In the first incident fire was opened at a police party around Iftari time and in another incident two policemen were shot and wounded, both targeting law enforcement officials.

The twin blasts in Parachinar took place around Iftari time. The nature of the explosions was not immediately clear. The explosions targeted people shopping in the area ahead of Eid. The city with a population of more than 50,000, has been under strict security arrangements for quite some time. On 31^st March this year, the city had suffered a similar tragedy when 23 people were killed in a car bomb blast near an Imam Bargah at midday. More than 70 others were wounded in the attack. Earlier in January this year, 25 people were killed and 87 were injured when a bomb went off during peak business hours at a crowded vegetable market in the city

At least 13 people ─ including seven policeman ─ lost their lives, while 19 others were injured in a blast in Quetta in the  morning. Lately, Balochistan has endured various blasts primarily targeting security personnel. Earlier this month, three security officials were injured after an improvised explosive device (IED) targeted their vehicle in Kalat. Days later, two navy sailors were martyred and at least three others were wounded when their vehicle was attacked in the Jiwani area of Gwadar district. In May, at least 10 workers were killed in Gwadar district when unidentified assailants opened fire at the construction site.

For the blast in Quetta, no one has claimed responsibility but it can be linked to the death sentence of an Indian naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, who was awarded death sentence by a military court. Jadhav was arrested from Iran-Pakistan border on the day Iranian President came to Pakistan. This incident can be linked to creating unrest in the province  to sabotage CPEC.

The blast in Parachinar can also be linked to resistance against CPEC as well as targeting Shias. For considerably long time certain groups have been trying to create Shia-Sunni conflict in Pakistan, but all their efforts have failed.