Pakistan displays defiance in Washington: Pakistani Newspaper

WASHINGTON, Apr 11: Pakistan’s new found defiance against the United States was on full display in Washington on Thursday evening when Ambassador Husain Haqqani urged Americans not to attach ‘intrusive’ conditions to the aid they offer.

‘Once again there’s talk of fixing Afghanistan and Pakistan. Please do not fix us,’ said the ambassador in a joint appearance with his Afghan counterpart at a Washington think-tank, the Atlantic Council.

‘The world is not a problem for America to fix. The world is a place for the Americans to understand.’

He also defended the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI), an institution seen by civilian quarters in Islamabad as too intrusive and too politicized.

‘It is important that the institutions that are to be partners in this (anti-terrorism) effort do not start feeling under attack, whether it is ISI or the Pakistani military,’ he said.

‘Mistakes have been committed on all sides. But this lack of trust will be addressed by talking to us, not by beating down on us.’

Mr Haqqani said that the Pakistanis these days were very concerned about an ‘unbridled indictment’ of their security services, giving no credit to Pakistan for the efforts that have been made.

‘We lost a lot of people along the border with Afghanistan. We have become a major victim of terrorism. More Pakistanis have died as a result of terrorist incidents in the last two years than in any other country.’

Diplomatic observers noted that Pakistan’s new defiant posture is not an instant flare up of sentiments on the part of the Pakistani leaders.

The change of mood followed a collective decision of the government and the security establishment to adopt a tough posture.

No blank cheques
When President Barack Obama announced his new strategy for Pakistan and Afghanistan late last month, telling Islamabad not to expect blank cheques from Washington, Ambassador Haqqani welcomed it as a step in the right direction.

He said Washington had consulted closely with Islamabad on formulating the policy and it was not formed in the clouds.

But on Thursday, he appeared offended with President Obama’s reprimand that the US will no more write blank cheques. ‘We will not accept a blank cheque, nor would we write any,’ said the Pakistani envoy.

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Pakistani Media Needs to be Tamed

Pakistani media needs to be much more mature when it comes to displaying images to a nationwide audience which carries no real substance whatsoever. The showing of a grainy video clip supposedly showing Taliban carrying out a sentence on a woman in Swat serves nobody, especially in Pakistan. The incessant ranting of the media needs to be censured. It seemed to me the clip came straight out of Hollywood studios designed to brainwash the Pakistani nation after the speech of the American President Barrack Obama, where he wants to put Pakistan in the same category as Afghanistan and wants Pakistan to descend into chaos so that the US has an excuse to further infiltrate into Pakistani territory. I would discuss first the religious aspect of the punishment meted out to the woman and then what the US wants to accomplish from mass viewership of such clips.

Religiously speaking, punishments have been carried out publicly in countries and territories which adhere to the Shariah law and such a sight is not so uncommon in those countries. Countries such as Saudi Arabia regularly carry out public decapitations and flogging of criminals after the due process of law has been given its course. The public display of these is designed to serve as an example for all to observe and acts as a deterrent to such crimes. One of my acquaintances, who lives in Saudi Arabia once narrated a detailed account of one such floggings when he was visiting a small town in the country. There he saw a man being whipped for a crime he had committed according to the Shariah law. Many local town people were present to witness the event. Usually, the judge who announces the verdict is not present in the ceremony. But this time he was present himself when the punishment was being given so that the whip floggers do not show any leniency/mercy in meting out the sentence and it serves as a real example for all to see. Testament to the heinous crime he had committed. Two floggers on each side whipped the person one after another while the judge chanted “flog him more”, till the guy lay unconscious. At that time, the judge ordered the floggers to stop.

The force and the brutality of a whip lash is such that even one whip is enough to take virtually the life out of a person. Now, the way the woman was shown being beaten was actually a mockup and it clearly seemed it was purposely designed for the media. Had she been beaten or given out the real punishment it would have been impossible for her to even stand on her own or even be conscious after even a three or four flogs. The timing of the video although perfect for the US administration, just after the new US policy, is suspicious because it has been portrayed that such an event happened months ago and reports that the video is fake. Even if the video is somehow proved to be real, then the issue comes out to be which crime is more heinous, the shoddy flogging of woman by Taliban a few months ago which might have hurt the woman slightly or the death of women and children by the US drones which incidentally happened on the same day that the Pakistani media was busy ranting about the woman being flogged. Nobody cared that women and children were brutally and silently killed by the US drones in Pakistani territory but the media was very busy doing propaganda against Taliban and portraying a bad image of Islam, precisely what the US wants.

Pakistani media should better spend its time on more important issues of national importance like the violations of Indus Water Treaty by India which has made one of Pakistan’s largest rivers by volume of water the Chenab virtually dry. Furthermore, India is constructing even more dams in its territory on Pakistani rivers downstream. It should also cover the plight of the poor families every day whose loved ones die at the missile firings of the US drones. Innocent women and children should not be called collateral damage and each death should be discussed and thoroughly investigated.

United States is to blame for pushing all the militants fighting the US occupation in Afghanistan into Pakistan. US should realize it cannot occupy Afghani territory without the will of the Afghani people by installing corrupt puppet regimes like that of the Karzai government. The US occupation is designed to push the militant Afghanis into Pakistani tribal areas thereby destabilizing Pakistan and destroying the only Islamic nuclear nation from within and Pakistani media is playing at the hands of these neo-cons and neo-crusaders. The sooner, the US government figures out that they cannot kill or subjugate thirty million Afghans and rule them against their will, the sooner this mess would be solved. The Afghanis have a right to live however they feel to live their lives without the need of a foreign power to dictate their affairs. Time is now for a dialog with the Taliban and a deal with these people which brings an end to the violence that has been perpetrated in the name of terrorism. Al-Qaeda and suicide bombing is a US creation which has no place in Islam. In fact, suicide is the worst crime in Islam and the punishment for that is to burn in hell for ever. Osama bin laden used to work for CIA at one time, that is for sure, what we do not know is whether he is still working for the CIA. It is about time, the US had a clear exit strategy and leave Afghanistan permanently and solve problems through a dialog with the Afghani people rather through the use of force. If all the Afghanis who have come to Pakistan after the US occupation leave Pakistan, Pakistan would be a much secure place and Pakistani people would be relieved of the spate of bombings that have devastated this great country of late. Also, US should not be allowed to operate in Pakistani areas without impunity. Any civilian death at the hands of the US drones should be investigated and the US commanders should be tried under international law for killing innocent people. Pakistani blood should not be shed so cheaply and profusely in this criminal war of terror.

Unless the Pakistani people are serious about the true perils that face the Pakistani people like this idiotic war on terror and the fallout from it, the ramifications of the Indus water treaty violations by India which can force many people in Pakistan to die of hunger and the everyday issues of clean and renewable sources of energy like solar, wind and hydro-power, we cannot be a nation worthy to be respected in the comity of nations.

Pentagon plans blimp to spy from new heights: LAT

The giant dirigible would use radar to closely and constantly monitor activity on the ground from 65,000 feet.

By Julian E. Barnes
March 13, 2009

Reporting from Washington -- The Pentagon said Thursday that it intends to spend $400 million to develop a giant dirigible that will float 65,000 feet above the Earth for 10 years, providing unblinking and intricate radar surveillance of the vehicles, planes and even people below.

"It is absolutely revolutionary," Werner J.A. Dahm, chief scientist for the Air Force, said of the proposed unmanned airship -- describing it as a cross between a satellite and a spy plane.

The 450-foot-long craft would give the U.S. military a better understanding of an adversary's movements, habits and tactics, officials said. And the ability to constantly monitor small movements in a wide area -- the Afghanistan- Pakistan border, for example -- would dramatically improve military intelligence.

"It is constant surveillance, uninterrupted," Dahm said. "When you only have a short-time view -- whether it is a few hours or a few days -- that is not enough to put the picture together."

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Pentagon plans blimp to spy from new heights: LAT

Time to quit Afghanistan: Edmonton Sun

PM acknowledges a war can't be won, so what are Canadian troops still doing there?

By ERIC MARGOLIS

It's taken far too long for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to finally admit the war in Afghanistan cannot be won. Better late than never. Kudos to Harper for facing facts and telling Canadians the truth.

If the war can't be won, why risk lives of Canadian troops for nothing? Why stay in harm's way a day longer when the writing is on the wall in Afghanistan? President Barack Obama, who is sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, ought to be asking himself the same questions.

We must think hard about waging an increasingly bloody war against lightly-armed mountain tribesmen who face the 24/7 lethal fury of the U.S. air force's heavy bombers, strike aircraft, helicopter and AC-130 Spectre gunships, killer drones and heavy artillery. Do we really want a test of wills against men who have the courage to endure cluster bombs with thousands of sharp fragments, white phosphorus that burns through flesh to the bone, fuel/air explosives that burst the lungs and tear apart bodies? Will Canada's use of Soviet helicopters and Israeli drones win Afghan hearts and minds?

Our propaganda brands these Pashtun tribesmen as "Taliban terrorists." They call themselves warriors fighting occupation by the western powers and their local Communist, Tajik and Uzbek allies.

Al-Qaida's few hundred members long ago vanished.

Fatuous claims we occupy Afghanistan to protect women are belied by the continued plight of Afghan females under western rule. A British report just concluded 100,000 Indian women are burned alive each year for their dowries. Will we now send troops to India?

Only the first step

Admitting the U.S. and NATO cannot bludgeon the Afghan resistance into submission is only the first step. If the war can't be won, then Canadian soldiers should remain in their bases, stop aggressive patrolling and cease attacks on Taliban supporters and civilians. Other NATO members are doing so.

The next step is to understand that wars are waged for political objectives, not simply to kill your enemies.

The U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan have no coherent political objectives. The U.S.-installed Karzai regime in Kabul has no political legitimacy and commands no respect or loyalty. It is engulfed by corruption and massive drug dealing. The Obama administration is casting about for a new puppet, but so far can't find one who could do any better.....

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Time to quit Afghanistan: Edmonton Sun

Our skewed world view won't let us see the real Pakistan: Guardian

The west can no longer afford to impose its values and notions of democracy on countries that neither want nor need them

Jason Burke

First for the good news: Pakistan is not about to explode. The Islamic militants are not going to take power tomorrow; the nuclear weapons are not about to be trafficked to al-Qaida; the army is not about to send the Afghan Taliban to invade India; a civil war is unlikely.

The bad news is that Pakistan poses us questions that are much more profound than those we would face if this nation of 170m, the world's second biggest Muslim state, were simply a failed state. If Pakistan collapsed, we would be faced by a serious security challenge. But the resilience of Pakistan and the nation's continuing collective refusal to do what the west would like it to together pose questions with implications far beyond simple security concerns. They are about our ability to influence events in far-off places, our capacity to analyse and understand the behaviour and perceived interests of other nations and cultures, about our ability to deal with difference, about how we see the world.

Pakistan has very grave problems. In the last two years, I have reported on bloody ethnic and political riots, on violent demonstrations, from the front line of a vicious war against radical Islamic insurgents. I spent a day with Benazir Bhutto a week before she was assassinated and covered the series of murderous attacks committed at home and abroad by militant groups based in Pakistan with shadowy connections to its security services. There is an economic crisis and social problems - illiteracy, domestic violence, drug addiction - of grotesque proportions. Osama bin Laden is probably on Pakistani soil.

For many developing nations, all this would signal the state's total disintegration. This partly explains why Pakistan's collapse is so often predicted. The nation's meltdown was forecast when its eastern half seceded to become Bangladesh in 1971, during the violence that preceded General Zia ul-Haq's coup in 1977, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, when Zia was killed in 1988, during the horrific sectarian violence of the early Nineties, through sundry ethnic insurgencies, after 9/11, after the 2007 death of Bhutto and now after yet another political crisis. These predictions have been consistently proved wrong. The most recent will be too. Yesterday, tempers were already calming.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Our skewed world view won't let us see the real Pakistan: Guardian

Nato is deeper in its Afghan mire than Russia ever was: Guardian

Two decades after the Soviet withdrawal, ever more resources are being poured into a war with scant chance of success
Jonathan Steele

Twenty years ago tomorrow the last Soviet units left Afghanistan after a nine-year intervention that took 15,000 soldiers' lives. As they crossed the river Oxus I was in the air above them, the only foreign journalist to fly to Kabul that day.

Russian friends in Moscow, where I was this newspaper's correspondent, doubted my sanity, convinced a bloodbath was bound to follow the Soviet exodus. I disagreed. The secular regime under Mohammed Najibullah that the Kremlin left behind had a firmer base than many outsiders realised, thanks in part to support from Kabulis who feared chaos and blood-letting if the mujahideen won the civil war.

Two decades later the ironies of America's war in Afghanistan are telling. When Richard Holbrooke, the new US envoy to the region, visited the country this week he may not have been aware of the Soviet anniversary. But the US-led intervention is already almost as long. At this stage of their war the Russians were preparing to leave. Now the US and Nato want to get further in, and if Barack Obama's plans for 30,000 extra US troops are met, along with efforts to get more from Nato, coalition forces will almost equal the 115,000 troops the Russians had at their peak.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Nato is deeper in its Afghan mire than Russia ever was: Guardian

Pakistan Declares Death Penalty for 'Cyber Terror': Wired.com

By Noah Shachtman

American officials can have some pretty over-the-top reactions to hackers and so-called cyber terrorists. Once, I saw a briefing comparing our own Kevin Poulsen to Osama bin Laden and Pablo Escobar -- seriously. But the U.S. has nothing on Pakistan, when it comes to cyber terror paranoia. Yesterday, Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari signed a law making cyber terror a crime "punishable with death."

Executions will only be allowed if the hack attack "causes [the] death of any person," the Prevention of Electronic Crimes law states.

But the definition of what is considered "cyber terror" is alarmingly broad in the law, proposed last year and signed Thursday by the Pakistani president. Not only does it apply to "any person, group or organization who, with terroristic intent utilizes, accesses or causes to be accessed a computer or computer network or electronic system or electronic device or by any available means, and thereby knowingly engages in or attempts to engage in a terroristic act."

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Pakistan Declares Death Penalty for 'Cyber Terror': Wired.com

Pakistan Isn’t Cambodia: Denver Post

Posted by reasonmclucus

I’ve seen occasional recent references comparing Pakistan to Cambodia during the Vietnam War. If the Bush administration, or Barack Obama, thinks the two are comparable it is making the biggest miscalculation since the U.S. made the mistake of getting too close to China in the Korean War. Obama wants to expand the current Bush attacks on border areas to include an attack on Osama bin Laden where ever he might be in Pakistan.

U.N. forces had routed the North Korea Army and appeared to on the verge of winning when China became concerned that the Americans might decide to go ahead and conquer China as well because China had been supplying the North Koreans. China responded by sending in its army. President Harry Truman decided that it was best not to antagonize the Chinese any more than necessary and prohibited bombing supply bases in China.

Enemies using sanctuaries isn’t a new situation for the U.S. Andrew Jackson faced such a situation along the border of what was then Spanish owned Florida during the administration of President James Monroe. Jackson took care of the problem by in effect declaring war on Spain with nothing more than an ambiguous letter from President Monroe. Jackson invaded Florida without any authorization from Congress and captured the Spanish governor at a poorly defended fort at Pensacola. Spain after a protest decided Florida wasn’t worth the trouble and ceded it to the U.S.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Pakistan Isn’t Cambodia: Denver Post

US to shift aid to Pakistan fighter jet upgrade: ABC

By Washington correspondent Kim Landers

The United States has confirmed it is shifting hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Pakistan from counter-terrorism programs to upgrading the country's F-16 fighter jets.

The Bush Administration says the F-16s are used in counter-terrorism operations and it is rejecting criticism that Pakistan wants the planes to be upgraded as part of its military rivalry with neighbouring India.

State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos says the upgrade will enhance the US-made fighter jets' ability to strike insurgents accurately.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: US to shift aid to Pakistan fighter jet upgrade: ABC

Pakistan: Another Failed U.S. Policy: NewAmerica.net

A few hours ago I hosted the release of the Terror Free Tomorrow/New America Foundation public attitude survey of Pakistan. The whole event can be viewed here. The report is here.

The poll goes into depth in many areas, with some striking results: more than 50% of Pakistanis support negotiations with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The United States is more feared as a threat to individual security than India. China is loved with an 82% favorable rating. Nawaz Sharif has an 86% approval rating. Musharraf is down to 23%.

Ken Ballen, president of Terror Free Tomorrow, summed up the findings well. View his comments here. Ken said the poll really strikes at the heart of three myths: that anti-American feelings do not matter; that we cannot change attitudes toward the U.S. anyway; and that they hate us for our freedoms. According to this polling, anti-americanism is driving political preferences, there are clear things the U.S. can do to improve our standing, and its the policies we pursue, not our passport, that piss people off.

When I add it up, I take it in a different direction. I believe you get a resounding repudiation of U.S. strategy towards Pakistan. That strategy has been to treat Pakistan as a central front on the war on terror. It's not hard to see why this has failed: the top issues for Pakistanis are restoring and independent judiciary, a free press, fair elections, and improving the Pakistani economy. But the U.S. has done little, if anything to support the lawyers rebellion calling for the reinstatement of the ousted judges, has poured billions of aid into not the economy but the military, and has stuck by Musharraf until the elections, while still not changing our policy. Worse, from Pakistani eyes, the U.S. is launching hellfire missile strikes and killing Pakistani civilians and military. Violence is at its highest leves in decades.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Pakistan: Another Failed U.S. Policy: NewAmerica.net

Nato's lost cause: Guardian

The west's 'good war' in Afghanistan has turned bad. A local solution, rather than a neocolonial one, is what's needed

In the latest clashes on the Pakistan-Afghan border, Nato troops have killed 11 Pakistani soldiers and injured many more, creating a serious crisis in the country and angering the Pakistan military high command, already split on the question.

US failure in Afghanistan is now evident and Nato desperation only too visible. Spreading the war to Pakistan would be a disaster for all sides. The Bush-Cheney era is drawing to a close, but it is unlikely that their replacements, despite the debacle in Iraq, will settle the American giant back to a digestive sleep.

The temporary cleavage that opened up between some EU states and Washington on Iraq was resolved after the occupation. They could all unite in Afghanistan and fight the good fight. This view has been strongly supported by every US presidential candidate in the run up to the 2008 elections, with Senator Barack Obama pressuring the White House to violate Pakistani sovereignty whenever necessary. He must be pleased.

That the "good war" has now turned bad is no longer disputed by a number of serious analysts in the US, even though there is no agreed prescription for dealing with the problems. Not least of which for some is the future of Nato, stranded far away from the Atlantic in a mountainous country, the majority of whose people, after offering a small window of opportunity to the occupiers, realised it was a mistake and became increasingly hostile.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Nato's lost cause: Guardian