This Really Gets My Goat

Are you guys high? Pakistan Army has no agenda, no ideology no principles, nothing what so ever except to make sure that no one in Pakistan questions their looting and plundering. Pakistan Army has as much to do with Islam and Jihaad as Meera has to do with English. These are opportunistic thugs who have never fought and won a WAR, they recruit innocent young, poor villagers and emotional youth, brainwash them and send them to fight the WAR that they don’t want to fight themselves. They use Islam as a Kleenex, when the nose is running, it’s your best friend once its filled with mucus it goes in the trash bin. Dr. Israr Ahmed rightly says that if Pakistan Army is oozing with love and immense heartache is being caused, for instance, by the atrocities of Indian Army in Kashmir, then they should go fight that WAR openly. But that would entail leaving their million dollar estates all over the country and actually putting their lives on the line, so rhetoric and proxy war rules the day. The only time Pakistan Army is at their professional best in its cavalry and bravery is when they are against the ruthless enemy number one the “defenseless citizens of Pakistan”, Boy then they let u know who the boss is. Teaming up with Hikmatyar, supporting Taliban, funding militias to go fight in Kashmir, all were done not out of the immense love that they have for Islam, but because it was convenient, they were getting paid for it and it also ensured there hold on Pakistan as long as there is some semblance of a conflict in the region. Pakistan Army has become this behemoth that only take steps that serves it’s own interest. If that means screwing up the 99% Pakistani population then to coin a phrase from ms. Medalaine Albright, It’s Collateral Damage.

#66
Well, feel free to call it cop out or anything else. I usually waste my time digging up stuff to support my contentions and to challenge yours and then you simply brush them off with disparaging remarks about me or whoever/whatever I quote. It is a waste of my time to try to wake up someone pretending to be asleep.


btw, the Pak Army having a jihadi agenda in today`s date doesnot make sense to you, then you need to read about Pak policy from 1989-2001 which will make even less sense. For example it makes no sense for a security establishement to foster conflict by supporting pathological cases like Hekmatyar and creating more Afghan refugees instead of settling the conflict among many factions and sending refugees back home. But that`s precisely what happened.

It made even less sense for the Pak Army to later fight an extended war(often along sectarian lines) on the same side as America`s no.1 declared enemy Bin Laden/Al Qaeda and to happily run jihadi training camps alongside his. But that`s precisely what happened. It all made sense to those steeped in ideology and Saudi funds.

It makes no sense for a nation to collectively call the US anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslims when the US is keeping that nation`s economy in good shape by pouring billions of dollars into it in debt rescheduling, aid, military aid and weapons.

It makes no sense for Hamid Gul types to be virulently anti-American when in fact they themselves admit that the US winked at Pak nuclear and missile development and proliferation throughout the 80s and when the US allowed Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to completely and utterly decide on how virtually every cent of billions of dollars worth of US-supplied aid and weapons were going to be distributed to Pakistan`s Afghan clients.

Inspite of the nuclear- related sanctions in 1989, the US kept up funding/arms to Pak for mujahiddeen until 1992 and the CIA did its very best to get Pak client Hekmatyar his military victory over other mujahiddeen and Najibullah till then. But in 1992 after a blink of an eye the US went from ally no. 1 and sucker no.1 to enemy no.1 for Pakistan. That makes no sense either.

So yes, if Pak policy today makes no sense that shouldn`t be a surprise. The security establishment is caught between the US and the Taliban, and neither side is going to give way without extreme violence. This could have been anticipated on 9/11 itself, so Pak Army strategy to allow fleeing Taliban fighters to remain safe in sanctuaries and fighting fit to fight in 2006-2007 didn`t make any sense either. What a surprise.

It was basically not a U turn that Musharraf took on 9/11 it was more of a W turn. To do so makes sense to a lot of people who are as I said before are steeped in ideology. To pretend you don`t know of any such people in Pakistan simply doesn`t work. Musharraf himself using the Hudaibiya treaty as justification, described his U turn as a temporary expedient in his post 9/11 speech.

#59 by HP

India has no army and has a few posts (consulate) manned by a few perhaps intelligence agency personal and cannot intimidate the Pak army which by your own thesis enjoys a much larger following in Afghanistan.

I cannot believe just two consulates at Herat and Kandahar were enough to trigger an uproar in Pakistan with every Paki (including the COAS of the Paki Army himself, Gen. Pervez Musharraf) and his mother-in-law accusing India of fomenting unrest in Baluchistan through these two consulates and now HP pops in and says they`re just not enough to cause any trouble to the Paki Army!

Let us not forget to praise the POTUS for a great speech...

Islamabad Bob is strangely silent on NATO`s mistaken attack on the paki soldiers...mistaken attack using precision guided weapons...hehe..

Sorry, Sadna said, i merely offered a translation in Chowk-esque

#65 by masadi

Hey masadi, Those were not my comments. Please post correction.....

#63 by sadna

That sounds like a cop out…I am always surprised when people making a comment run for references or basically to others to argue for them. If you cannot support what you wrote w/o references, then obviously you did not know what you were talking about….

#61 by PewResearch
I am not in the habit of discussing something with a person who is not even posting on this site. How can I argue with Peter Tomsen who cannot respond to my arguments? Basically, Peter was CIA facilitator despite high sounding resume for couple of years. Does that qualify him to discuss issues that he barely had any knowledge about?

Before I take up his comments about the Durand line, let me post other parts of his interview that you ignored to post

Question: And the ISI recognized at some point the value of fundamentalism, of conservative Islam, political Islam? Or was it that the people that were in the ISI were, in fact, extremists?
At that time, and even today, the top Pakistani military leaders for the most part are not extremists. In fact, they`re very westernized, and they send their kids to the best Western-oriented schools in Pakistan, and then they send them abroad.
The 10 corps commanders in Pakistan along with Gen. [President Pervez] Musharraf, that is the core of power in Pakistan even today. It`s not the extremist network; it`s not the politicians. It`s the Pakistani military. ….


Do you even understand what he said?

Now read his comments about the Durand line that you posted and read that stupid Steve Coll
“ANSWER(Coll): The basic idea of Pakistani strategy was to renew the approach to managing the frontier that dated back to the British period,”

What were you thinking when you did that cut and paste job. Obviously you don’t even have enough savvy to understand what is being said.

Pakistan was never challenged by Afghanistan physically over the Durand line and there was never any threat to Pakistani borders from Afghanistan only an idiot would assume that a non existing threat would compel Pakistan to renew a non existent and unneeded approach.

It is always a good idea to read the article, instead of relying on Google to do a keyword search and post it as if Google is a foreign policy guru.

HP writes <<< I can dig up references in support of everything I said but given what usually happens when I do, I will not do so. >>>

In other words it is no use casting pearls before people with a swine mentality like tahmed...

#53 Pew writes << Pakistan Army is the world`s only army whose official motto calls for jihad. They are only doing their duty and following orders.... >>>

As if the content of offical slogans meant anything. To illiterates it is all that matters, see the surface and genralize to absurdity. It`s BS just like the official US nonsense about democracy (while promoting elite rule inside and outside the US borders)

HP #59
I can dig up references in support of everything I said but given what usually happens when I do, I will not do so. What I will say is that I think you are living in an alternate reality and time will make milk milk and water water.

Re: # 59 HP
Also, read this interview by Christine Fair of the US Institute for Peace:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/taliban/pakistan/fair.html

QUES:Do they (Pakistan) want to (dump militant groups)?
ANSWER: I don`t think they want to. If you look at Pakistan`s strategic compulsions, it has no other set of options but to support militancy in Afghanistan and in India. …Nor can Pakistan resign itself to the fact that Afghanistan can be a neighbor. Instead, Pakistan wants Afghanistan to be a client state. So until Pakistan can resign itself to its geographic realities, it`s going to continue to face incentives to engage in this, I guess what you can call proxy misadventures. …

Re: # 59 HP
Read the following set of interviews:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/taliban/interviews/

Read Peter Tomsen`s interview. He served as President George H.W. Bush`s special envoy and ambassador to the Afghan resistance from 1989 to 1992:

Quotes:

QUES: ``Why did they (Pakistan) bet on extremists to take over Afghanistan? ``
ANSWER (Tomsen): There were two reasons. One was … the ISI and the Pakistanis wanted to emphasize the Islamist Afghan side over the nationalist Afghan side, secular tribal leaders in Afghanistan that had come out of the ruling establishment that was running the country for the previous 300 years, … because the nationalist side, the secular side, had always stressed the need to recapture Afghanistan as it existed in the last part of the 18th century and part of the 19th century, which included the Pashtun areas of Pakistan.

QUES: ``And they [thought] instead they could make a deal with the Taliban: Respect the Durand Line and the borders that the British had put down and cause less trouble?``
ANSWER(Tomsen): Well, it`s probably more religious here. The umma is the Muslim faithful, and they don`t recognize political boundaries. If you`re an extremist especially, that Durand Line means nothing. What matters is the unity of Muslims.

That fit into the second main reason why the Pakistani general staff supported the Islamists: to create … strategic depth to face India.

And this interview of Steve Coll of The New Yorker, at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/taliban/interviews/coll.html

QUES:Is it a fair characterization to say that the Taliban were an asset of the ISI?

ANSWER(Coll): They were an asset of the ISI. I think it`s impossible to understand the Taliban`s military triumph in Afghanistan, culminating in their takeover of Kabul in 1996, without understanding that they were a proxy force, a client of the Pakistan army, and benefited from all of the materiel support that the Pakistan army could provide them, given its own constrained resources.

QUES: So they`re negotiating; they`re offering money to Taliban commanders. What do they hope to get for this, and what happened?

ANSWER(Coll): The basic idea of Pakistani strategy was to renew the approach to managing the frontier that dated back to the British period, which was essentially to operate through cooption, bribery and the construction of infrastructure, to find political intermediaries in villages and towns on the frontier who would be willing to work with the Pakistan army in order to reap the benefits of the Pakistan army`s patronage. That`s the way the frontier has been managed, to the extent it`s been managed, for a long time.

QUES:How important is Pakistan to the Taliban?

ANSWER(Coll): The Taliban are utterly dependent upon Pakistan. They`re dependent upon its territory; they`re dependent upon its infrastructure; and they`re dependent upon the links to the outside world, however pressured, that they enjoy through Pakistani territory.

hello again Islamabad Bob...

your opinion on NATO mistakenly bombing a paki post and bombing a bunch of pakis in Waziristan last week?

#51 by sadna

Lets take all your four arguments one by one and see where they stand.

1.“One reason is mentioned in every western and Pakistani writer who talks of official Pak support for Taliban resurgence- that the Pakistani ruling class - including Army and religious parties do not expect the US and NATO to remain in Afghanistan for much longer, so the Pak Army wants to make sure it is in a position install a regime of its own choice in Kabul when the West leaves.”

The issue that I raised was what in your opinion, are the logical reasons for official Pak Army support of Taliban in the current situation. You are saying because some Pakistani writers say so does not make a compelling argument.

There are only two beneficiaries of the US “war on terra” Israel and Pakistan. Why do you think the Pak army would give up all that money and the US support for its control of Pakistan? You never really addressed the issue. You also claim that the pak army and the religious parties do not expect US to remain in Afghanistan for long. Why would they have these expectations? All indications show the US is not showing any signs of leaving Afghanistan. The insurgency in Iraq is much larger in scope; still they can not force the US army to leave. How could Taliban possibly do that? You see if you attribute some expectation to the pak army, you also need to show why the army has those expectations. Religious parties were never and they still are not part of the ruling class in Pakistan. To be a ruling class they need to show permanent interests in state’s resources. The religious parties have never shown that interests so they could only be an accomplice of the army they don’t become the ruling class by merely supporting the army.

The question “when would the west leave”: It could be 20 years, 30 years or even 50 years. There is no way that the Pak army or even the mullahs can sustain themselves long enough to even pursue a long term policy. Historically, the pak army has always looked for immediate gratifications and there is nothing that suggests that they are capable of long term planning. Even the US which certainly has long term foreign policies goals and interest in many areas of the world, would not plan for the next 30 and 50 years. The expectation thing has to make sense politically and logically too

2.“The second reason is India`s presence in Afghanistan –“

India had exactly the same presence during the Shah Zahir shah era, how much that intimidated Pakistan? In fact, Indian presence in Afghanistan is used as a ruse by Pakistan. India has no ground game in Afghanistan. India has no army and has a few posts (consulate) manned by a few perhaps intelligence agency personal and cannot intimidate the Pak army which by your own thesis enjoys a much larger following in Afghanistan. Though this is off topic but I hope you realize that the Indian army presence in Kashmir did not intimidate Pakistan enough and by India’s own admission, pro-Pak element freely entered Kashmir.

3.“The third reason is part political-part ideological - enough factions or erstwhile factions in the Pak Army, religious parties like JUI and groups in the tribal areas fought alongside or supported the Taliban regime,”

There is not much depth in this also. As I asked earlier: do the religious groups in Pakistan form a permanent interest in the state resources? As long as they don’t, they pretty much have no control over the policy.

I had mentioned that the Pak Army is an interest based group and I hope you can distinguish between an ideological group and an interest based group. Again there is no history that suggests that the pak army is ideologically motivated. If they were, they would have not turned around quickly after 9/11. The ideological group Taliban or its Pakistani supporter mullahs did not and stayed with their ideology. The pak support during the first afghan war was due to the US and Saudi support. How much interest the US has in Islamic ideology? In fact, you are well aware that without the US, there was going to be no Jihad in Afghanistan.

4.“The fourth reason is economic - in the absence of a regular economy and infrastructure to support legitimate crops, Afgan farmers are growing opium. The Pak-Afghan drug economy is lucrative enough for middlemen and drug smugglers to support paying Taliban militias more than Afghan soldiers are paid.”

Pakistan and the Pak army via different routes get about $5 billion every year after 9/11. The Afghan opium’s street value in the US dollar never gets to even a billion dollars a year. At the source, the value cannot be more than a couple of hundred million dollars. What makes sense; stay with >$5 billion or under 200 million?

It is a good booty on individual level and perhaps good enough to run the afghan government but maintaining the Pak army requires not only serious money but also ability to procure modern arms year in and year out, do you think the Pak army would not understand this simple arithmetic?

By supporting the Taliban, Pakistan becomes an enemy of the US and NATO so what would the Army gain by taking a risk that can possibly jeopardize all the goodies over $5 billion a year and military supplies which help the Pak army maintain its control over Pakistan.

Sadna, your arguments lack logic. Try again maybe you will come up with some thing better.

PS. This post is already too long I will respond to your other post later….

poor goat.