Amid reports
that would-be Times Square bomber Faisal
Shahzad may have traveled to Pakistan's North Waziristan, the U.S. and
Pakistani governments are still working out details on a new agreement that would
expand intelligence and military operations in that very region.
The basic tenets of the agreement, according to
diplomatic sources, were hashed out during the inaugural session of the U.S.-Pakistani strategic dialogue
in March. Neither side has completely signed off and our sources caution that
implementation is another matter, but the provisional agreement shows the
growing cooperation between the two countries in the military and intelligence
spheres as well as growing coordination on the way forward in neighboring
Afghanistan.
The Times Square bombing attempt comes at a very bad
time for U.S.-Pakistan relations, said Shuja
Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at The Atlantic Council.
"The U.S. and Pakistan have been doing very well at
increasing their cooperation and joint efforts in combating terrorism in that
area recently," he said, referring to North Waziristan. "This is the kind of
incident that can kind of derail some of those efforts and I hope it doesn't."
Nearly two years after the unhappy exit of Pervez
Musharraf, the former Army chief and president, U.S.-Pakistani relationship is
still very much a military- and intelligence-based interaction, with the key
figures on the U.S. side being Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, National Security Advisor Jim Jones, and CIA Director Leon
Panetta. On the Pakistani side, all roads go through Musharraf's successor
as Army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez
Kayani,who was given red-carpet treatment when he came to
Washington for the March talks.
Kayani is increasingly
seen as both an interlocutor for U.S. officials as well as a constructive link
between the Pakistani military structure and the civilian government led by
President Asif Ali Zardari, who has been steadily losing power
to Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani. Meanwhile, the day-to-day
relationship is still managed in Washington by Amb. Husain Haqqani, who
despite being a Zardari ally, doesn't seem to be going anywhere any time soon.
And the relationship is
getting very close attention from senior Obama administration officials, with a
flurry of high-level visits there in recent weeks. On the sidelines of the
strategic dialogue, there was a private session that involved Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and
Mullen. From the Pakistani side, only Kayani, Foreign Minister
Shah Mehmood Qureshi, and Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar
attended.
That's
where the new agreement on military and intelligence cooperation was discussed.
Here is a readout that Sourabh Gupta, a senior
researcher with Samuels International Associates (SIA), published in the Nelson Report, a daily Washington insider's
newsletter published by SIA's Chris
Nelson. Our sources say this readout is "almost exactly right."
Key Pakistani political demands: Non-negotiable requirement for friendly successor regime in
Kabul; significant downgrading of Indian presence and influence in Afghanistan,
including New Delhi's training of Afghan military; preference for extended-term
American presence in Afghanistan/strategic neighborhood, notwithstanding
drawdown of forces next year.
Secondary set of political-military
demands: faster delivery of upgraded weapons package; expedited payment for
outstanding dues related to AfPak support operations and assistance with civil
infrastructure rebuilding in frontier territories; U.S. to lay-off from
Islamabad's nuclear program (given latter's need to ramp-up fissile material
production in absence of bestowal of India-equivalent civil nuclear deal); U.S.
to intensify diplomatic effort to facilitate productive Islamabad-New Delhi dialogue
on 'core' issues - Kashmir and water (upper riparian/lower riparian) issues.
Key U.S. demands: Islamabad to re-direct primary counter-insurgency
energies against key Islamist groups based/operating out of North Waziristan
(Al Qaeda, Afghan Taliban Haqqani network, local talibanized tribal warlords);
unfettered drone strikes in N. Waziristan/other tribal territories to continue;
expanded CIA intel. operations/listening posts in Pakistani cities - Islamabad
to subsequently allow access to Taliban leaders arrested by way of real-time
communication intercepts; Islamabad to rein-in larger infrastructure of
jihad that it has casually tolerated, even supported.
Gupta goes on to say that Islamabad is also arguing
for a seat at the table for any discussions about a successor regime in Kabul
and that if the current U.S. ground offensive in Afghanistan doesn't produce
results, the momentum will shift back to the Pakistani Army and intelligence
services, which could upset the balance of the current U.S.-Pakistan
negotiations.
Taliban, al Qaeda, and other militant groups have demonstrated that they are working to expand their reach across the globe by working in coordination with one another. In doing so, they have managed to amplify the impact of what are actually small groups of dedicated terrorists. To defeat this menace, we must support and coordinate with other pro-democracy movements and governments – especially those on the front lines of the war on terror.
Pakistan's democratic government has been and continues to be a key ally in the war on terrorism. This attack was surely intended, at least in part, to disrupt that alliance. We must not allow that to happen.
America again defeated in New York … a portent of the future
By mike | Published: May 2, 2010
Almost before the car bomb in Times Square was defused, the city’s mayor, its police commissioner, and sundry politicians were heaping praise on the New York Police Department (NYPD) for “stopping” the attack. This spin will quickly take hold and become accepted as truth. It is not.
Saturday night’s events in Times Square are another defeat for the United States. While all our thanks must go to the NYPD officers who defused the car bomb, the idea that the police stopped the attack is a lie. The credit for that goes to a T-shirt salesman who reported smoke coming from the car bomb and to the would-be attackers amateur bomb-making. The hard truth is the NYPD was completely and utterly defeated. The Department did not know the attack was coming and would not have stopped it if not for the smoke and the T-shirt seller.
This will sound like a harsh attack on the NYPD, but it is not intended as such. The NYPD and all U.S. police departments — large and small – have been set up to fail and take the fall. If we learn in coming days that the attack was planned by Islamist militants, we also will learn these men were motivated by a belief that U.S. foreign policy in the Muslim world is meant to undermine or destroy Islam. That is, the thankfully failed attack was caused by factors entirely beyond the control or influence of the NYPD; all it can do — all any U.S. police department can do — is prepare for more of the same. And that preparation for the future should be aimed as much at post-attack clean-up as for pre-attack interdiction. There are simply too many would-be attackers out there for the police to track and stop.
Sadly, the negative impact of U.S. foreign policy in the Muslim world is creating Islamist enemies for America at home and abroad far faster than they can be identified, let alone destroyed. Before this day is through, you can bet on two things: (1) the politicians will be on TV telling Americans that if the car bomb is the work of Islamists, it demonstrates they hate our freedoms and liberties; and (2) Washington will receive expressions of sympathy and offers of forensic help from Israel. Both will be aimed at inoculating Americans from anyone who suggests the truth: that the would-be attackers — if Islamists — are motivated by the U.S. government’s relentless interventionism in the Muslim world, not by the lifestyle and political philosophy of Americans. In short, the politicians will try to make sure Americans stay ignorant of intervention’s cost, and unaware that intervention is bringing war to their cities and streets.
The Islamist enemy we face would permit virtually none of the things we prize — elections, liberties or freedoms (as defined in the West), gender equality, etc. — in a country it governed. But very few Muslims are willing to kill themselves to stop us from enjoying those things. There are many, however, willing to die to end U.S. intervention in the Islamic world. For the last decade, for example, the U.S. and UK governments have not stopped a single Islamist attack in which the attackers were motivated by the West’s neo-pagan lifestyle. The documents and testimony acquired by authorities after an attack occurs or is prevented invariably point to motivation fueled by three things: (1) the U.S.-UK military presence in the Muslim world, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan; (2) the half-century of U.S.-UK support of or protection for Arab police states in such places as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Algeria; and (3) unqualified U.S., UK, and Western support for Israel. One might note, parenthetically, that these three motivators are among the causes listed by Osama bin Laden for the war he declared on America in August 1996, nearly 14 years ago.
Americans will not hear this explanation for our Islamist foes’ motivation on TV this Sunday or any Sunday; indeed, they will hear it described as an isolationist, anti-Semitic, and anti-U.S. view. That description will be a media-supported political tool intended to prevent Americans from asking questions politicians are rightfully terrified of answering. As a result, the NYPD and the country’s other police departments will keep working themselves to death trying to protect Americans, and all the while U.S. political leaders in both parties will press ahead with the interventionist policies that will insure all police departments fail. At day’s end, Washington’s interventionism is creating numbers of Islamist militants bent on waging jihad that will in time overwhelm the police departments’ manpower and capabilities.
Even though US mollycoddles Pakistan at the expense of Afghanistan, it was is and always has been Pakistan that is the real ‘terror center’ of the world.
Again and again, all terrorists lead to Pakistan. US decided to absolve Pakistan (Army, Intelligence and government) for its culpability in 9/11 attacks once Musharraf was forced to join US fight against terrorism under the threat of dire consequences by Richard Armitage in 2001.
Afterall Pakistani government planned, facilitated and carried out 9/11 attacks to avenge US refusal to deliver F-16 jet fighters after Pakistan had already paid for them in 1990s.
But it did not mean that Pakistan severed all ties with the terrorists that Pakistan itself had created, nurtured, supported and sheltered.
On the contrary, Pakistani government and army continued its duplicitous game of ‘running with the hares while hunting with the hounds’. And Uncle Sam willingly tolerated such duplicitous Pakistani game while throwing away billions of hard-earned US taxpayers’ dollars in that terror center of the world.
So US has nobody to blame but itself for this recurring nightmare since Pakistan has unlimited supply of terrorists available in spite of arresting quite a few terrorists to please and milk US.
No amount of US aid is going to eliminate the terror threat that Pakistan poses to US and the world.
"Afterall Pakistani government planned, facilitated and carried out 9/11 attacks"
Where did you think of this rubbish ?
Please provide some concrete evidence or SHUT UP. Keep your concocted nonsense theories to yourself.
One cannot escape the irrefutable trail of evidence that leads to Pakistan for the origin of the many terror attacks in the world today. The civilian government may not be directly involved but is co-opted by the real powers - the military and the ISI. Pakistan draws a distinction between terrorism against itself and Afghanistan, which it will fight aggressively, under US pressure since it allows US to extricate itself from the mess in Afghanistan. If not complicit, Pakistan is certainly tolerant of acts of terrorism against India as evidenced by their lack of concrete action against terrorist groups such as LeT (Lashkar-e-Taiyaba) and JeM (Jaish-e-Mohammad). The leaders of these groups roam freely in Pakistan. So if the US and Pakistan protect their so-called interests, why not India?
India, by all accounts, is playing a very constructive role in shoring up the civil institutions and infrastructure that can lead to the development of a free, vibrant democratic society in Afghanistan. In fact, if I am not mistaken, there was an article in this very magazine, lauding India's role and asking the world to replicate India's reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.
The evidence also is irrefutable that the Taliban was born in Pakistan and was supported explicitly to create a pliant government in Afghanistan to secure its western borders, and enable it to focus on its eastern border with India. Pakistan pursued and promoted a policy of bleeding India by a thousand wounds through acts of terrorism.
So, why should India not pursue an active engagement policy in Afghanistan to ensure that Afghanistan does not become a puppet of Pakistan? It is clear that the US wants to get out of Afghanistan as quickly as they can, and they will strike any deal at the expense of India, so India should be extremely wary and redouble its efforts to protect its interests.
To my freind Ramir -
the 9/11 comment from Suresh is unfortunate and can not be supported, but surely you must agree there is plenty of evidence showing a nexus between certain elements in the ISI and the Islamic extremist groups based in Pakistan who actively promote acts of terrorism against India. Why is the Pakistani government powerless to do anything against them? The government knows where the training camps are - why not shut them down? The government knows where Hafeez Saeed and the leaders of JeM are, why not arrest them? They operate freely under the guise of charitable entities, which are allowed to thrive. Why? If not complicity then certainly tolerance with a wink and a nod.
Josh Rogin reports on national security and foreign policy from the Pentagon to Foggy Bottom, the White House to Embassy Row, for The Cable.
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