Juan Cole is one of my favorite writers on Islam and the Western world. On his blog today, he provides an alternative look at the recently issued National Intelligence Estimate on Pakistan that paints us as a country “on the edge, with no money, no energy and no government.” It expresses a fear that an unstable Pakistan will become the center for al-Qaeda operations.

I leave it to Juan to explain (emphasis is my addition):

The situation in Pakistan for ordinary people is indeed tough. Fuel and wheat prices have skyrocketed.

But all along, a third of the population has had to live on less than a dollar a day and the NIE wasn’t so worried about them a few years ago.

But I’m suspicious that all the talk about instability and ‘no government’ is really a way of saying that US intelligence agencies liked having a military dictatorship there much better than they like having an elected parliamentary regime.

Actually, the Pakistani bureaucracy does a fairly good job for a third world country, and the employees of the bureaucracy at the non-political level don’t change with the change of governments. I don’t know what they mean by ‘no government.’ The elected government headed by the Pakistan People’s Party has a majority and is not in danger of falling. The new president, Asaf Ali Zardari, is widely thought to be corrupt, but then the impeachment charges prepared against ousted military dictator Pervez Musharraf alleged the same thing of him, so it is hard to see how things have gotten worse in that regard.

The campaign of bombings and attacks by the Tehrik-i Taliban guerrillas of the Pushtun tribal agencies are worrisome, but life goes on in big cities such as Lahore, which are distant from the tribal areas, despite occasional attacks there.

Moreover, the Pushtuns of the North-West Frontier Province voted in a secular party in the last elections, and even a lot of people in the tribal areas oppose the neo-Taliban.

American reports about Pakistan are schizophrenic, because they say the Pakistani army is not fighting the Taliban. But the Pakistani military has chased 300,000 from their homes in Bajaur, one of 7 tribal agencies, and has engaged in firefights with dissident Muslim groups there. I mean, what do the authors of the NIE want?

The Pakistani military admittedly does not attack the Pushtun tribes it is paying to make trouble in southern Afghanistan, but then their activity is abroad and directed from Islamabad. The Mohmands and other tribes in Bajaur have been fighting the Pakistani military, which has hit them hard in retaliation.

The idea that the 3.5 million Pushtuns of the tribal areas could take over a country of 165 million with one of the most professional armies in Asia is just silly.

The most worrisome thing that has happened in the past year from my point of view was the 3-day orgy of destruction engaged in by Sindhis after Benazir Bhutto was assassinated last December, suggesting that Sindhi subnationalism was extremely strong. But the PPP is a party rooted in Sindh, though it has supporters in the other provinces, and its ascendancy should assuage Sindhi feelings. Sindhis make up about 25% of the Pakistani population.

If Pakistan can whether the ethnic tensions in the rest of the country, surviving the terrorist attacks emanating from the tribal areas will be easy.

People who know Pakistan well are more afraid of the right wing elements in the Pakistani military (whom the CIA has long funded and coddled) than they are about an elected civilian government being weak or corrupt.

Related posts:

1. Pakistan Leaders Must Act Decisively after Deadly Marriott bombing - LA Times ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- More than any other terrorist attack in...
2. Battle of Bajaur: A Critical Test for Pakistan’s Daunted Military - NY Times PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A full-scale battle in a remote corner...
3. Akbar Bugti - Update Yesterday, the Government of Pakistan provided additional information about the...

I saw this online today about a protest by some Pakistani-Americans in Chicago and am posting for your consumption. I noticed that Teeth Maestro had commented on this article on the original site, but I was shocked at some of the hatred that people show towards Pakistan.

A group of Pakistani-Americans and anti-war activists delivered a letter today to the Chicago office of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, calling on him to cool political rhetoric about bombing targets in Pakistan.

“We are particularly concerned with your public pronouncements earlier this week in support of violating the borders of our ally, the country of Pakistan…,” the letter says. “You must understand the sweeping dismay that your avowed support for U.S. military incursions into Pakistan … has elicited among untold numbers of Pakistani-Americans and peace activists across the country.”

Ifti Nasim, the host of a Pakistani radio show in Chicago called Sargam, said the U.S. was “making a mistake” by “attacking Pakistan and making Pakistan your enemy.”

He and other protesters criticized U.S. military incursions into Pakistan’s tribal areas in the northwest part of the country to attack Taliban and Al Qaeda targets. They also decried the Bush administration’s use of unmanned military drone aircraft, which has resulted in civilian deaths.

Said Umar Khan said his hometown of Mardan outside Peshawar in Pakistan’s troubled North-West Frontier Province has seen a wave of displaced people escaping fighting in the tribal areas. A recent explosion rocked his sister’s home, damaging windows and walls, he said.

Negotiations with Taliban leaders–not Pakistani or U.S. military actions–will end the violence, Khan said.

The tough rhetoric against Pakistan in the presidential campaign has left many Pakistani-Americans wondering which candidate to support.

“McCain and Obama are the same,” said Raja M. Yaqub, chairman of the Coalition of Pakistani Organizations in Chicago. “Muslims and Pakistani Americans are confused over who they should vote for.”

On Thursday, Obama campaign officials restated his comments from the debate earlier this week. They added that Obama understands Pakistan is an “important ally” and is also calling for a partnership with the South Asian nation through increased U.S. aid for health, education and security.

When you read the comments, there is a vicious strain of “kill of the Pakistanis” in the thread. Many wanted to bomb Pakistan until we “hand over bin Laden,” like we have him under military protection. Another said that “if you don’t want us to cross your borders, don’t be a haven for terrorists,” interesting coming from a country that hid behind the Pakistan Army and the Mujahideen against the Soviet Army. The resounding call for US-based Pakistanis (legal and illegal) to go back to their home country was my favorite.

When the first Gulf War happened, I was living in the US and one of these illiterate, unplanned pregnancies walked up to me and told me the same. My answer, “I’m Pakistani, not Iraqi, you dumb shit.”

My answer to you today, “I’m a Pakistani, not a Terrorist, you stupid shit.”

Here’s what I don’t understand… on one hand that don’t know why there is so much anti-American sentiment in Pakistan and on the other hand, they hate us so much that they want to bomb our country until they prove that they were wrong about bin Laden being in Pakistan. 

But let’s be honest, the US military is already negotiating its exit strategy from Afghanistan by re-installing the Taliban as part of the government. And even then negotiating through the Saudis. 

So tell me this, since its the Taliban, and not Pakistan, that has given Osama bin Laden a home and protection for so many years, does anyone in the US think that once you broker a power sharing deal with them, they will hand him over? Are you really that stupid?

Otherwise, what would be the reason to broker a peace deal with the people that had a hand in the planning and attack on 9/11 without getting bin Laden or any other high value al-Qaeda target?

Karzai may be a US puppet, I guarantee the Taliban is not.

Source: Chicago Breaking News

Related posts:

1. The Long Road to Chaos in Pakistan Hours after a truck bomber slew 53 people last weekend...
2. Bush Had No Plan to Catch Osama bin Laden This month's Economist announces the Terrorism Index for 2008, in...
3. Say It Ain’t So Nic Robertson - Part I This is the first part of a review of Nic...

The US Presidential campaign gets funnier and funnier each day. While the economy is spiraling out of control, the Republican camp is spending their time expounding supposed terrorist associations (and that is a massive stretch) of Barack Obama. While character assassination is nothing new to the “Neo Con” Republican party, the Mc Cain - Palin ticket should be very careful about pointing fingers of terrorist association at anyone, looking at their backgrounds. Keith Olbermann explains….

Last Wednesday, Sheriff’s deputies arrived at the home of a woman in Akron, Ohio named Addie Polk, in order to evict her. After 38 years in that house, Ms. Polk had fallen behind on paying the mortgage. It was so bad that the company that held that mortgage, Fannie Mae, had foreclosed.

In fact, it was far worse than anybody knew. Addie Polk couldn’t bear it any more. So, rather than be evicted, she shot herself in the chest.

Evidently she will survive. And, after Congressman Dennis Kucinich brought her plight to the floor of the House, Fannie Mae, the mortgage giant you and I and all the rest of us pretty much own now, agreed it would forgive Addie Polk’s debt and, when she gets out of the hospital, let her go back and live in her home again.

That this is already a gothic horror story, you’ll agree. But I left out one detail. Addie Polk is 90 years old.

In the self-pronounced area of expertise of the Governor of Alaska-energy-the real experts of both parties are at a loss to figure out any way, even’drill, baby, drill’, that might lower gas prices before 2018. We are at war in two countries and a lame duck President with no reason to check his own imbalance still has dreams of one more.

And a 90-year-old woman, trapped in the middle of a financial meltdown, shoots herself and she’s still in better shape than the economy. Yet, the Governor of Alaska wants to talk about somebody Barack Obama doesn’t know very well, and what this somebody Barack Obama doesn’t know very well, did, during the year Obama was eight and the Governor of Alaska was in pre-Kindergarten.

And she wants to talk about Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And she doesn’t object to being introduced with a reference to Barack Obama’s middle name. Well, this is my suggestion. In much the same way we, America, in the corporate persona of Fannie Mae, have forgiven poor Addie Polk of Akron, Ohio.

We, America, also need to forgive poor Sarah Palin of Wasilla, Alaska. They are both in situations that are beyond their ability to cope. They are both stuck in a crucible caused by forces they cannot comprehend. They are both unable to understand what they are doing.

After stumbling through a clumsier version of it at Englewood, Colorado, the Governor of Alaska said Saturday at Carson, California:

“Our opponent is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country.”

She later defended the remark by adding this was an “association that has been known but hasn’t been talked about.”

Governor, Conservative groups have thus far spent ten million dollars this year trying to make something, anything, out of the brief interaction on a charity board between Sen. Obama, and a rehabilitated former domestic radical from the ’60s  and not even Conservatives have been stupid enough to buy the snake oil, that this was either a close relationship or a nefarious one.

But of course, you know better, Governor. You’re smarter than the rest of us. A reporter asks you a horrible gotcha question like’which newspapers do you read’ and it takes you four days to come up with an answer, and somehow it’s the reporter’s fault.

The reporter asks you to name one Supreme Court ruling with which you disagree other than Roe vs. Wade and even though you’d commented on just such a case from Alaska no less not three months ago your eyes turn into a big neon sign reading “Vacancy” and you insist it’s because that evil media asked the wrong question.

So you’re the genius Governor, and it’s your supporters and the undecided voters who are the dopes who are now going to believe the same mickey-mouse crap that Sen. Clinton couldn’t get to stick, and Sean Hannity couldn’t get to stick, just because it’s you adding that word “terrorist” and that phrase “palling around” and dropping the “g” in pal-ling.

And of course, Governor, those same dopes, and we media morons, we are not smart enough to ask about that pesky Alaskan Independence Party, and why you recorded a speech for its convention last March, and why your husband remained a registered member of it until 2002, even though it was founded by a man named Joe Vogler who wanted Alaska to secede from the United States. The way the South seceded, precipitating the Civil War.

The same Joe Vogler who once said:

“The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government, and I won’t be buried under their damn flag.”

And who also said:

“I’m an Alaskan, not an American. I’ve got no use for America or her damned institutions.”

Shoot, Governor, them’s strong words, hah? Did he wink as he said ‘em? You betcha! So, where does Joe Vogler rank on the scales of “terrorists who would target their own country?” Your opponent’s guy Ayers wound up on a volunteer anti-poverty committee in Chicago.

But your guy Vogler wound up founding a group that wanted to rip one of the stars off the American flag! Well, ok, Governor, Vogler’s more your husband’s guy. So it’s your husband who’s been “palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”

But I’m assuming you’ve been “palling around” with your husband. But, gee willikers, Governor, you know what’s best. You’re not one of these Washington insiders who would notice that though that’s a straight line connecting you, your husband, and this Alaskan secessionist, you’re*standing under a banner with the campaign slogan “Country First” and if somebody out there puts two and two together they might just ask, “which Country dja mean? The Country of Alaska?”

“The heels are on,” you said with another smile. “The gloves are off.”

Well, if you’re telling William Kristol you want to talk about Jeremiah Wright fer sure! So, Governor you don’t mind addressing whether this Pastor Muthee is a terrorist? Do you? We’ve told you before about Pastor Thomas Muthee.

He’s the preacher who visited the Wasilla Assembly of God church a couple of times while the Governor was there, ironically enough, just about as many times as Bill Ayres has met Barack Obama and, see, there was this one time where Pastor Muthee actually laid hands on the Governor.

And I’m sure that sounds like just some crazy anecdote, except there’s videotape. And of course the Governor talked about this moment, the laying on of hands, just last summer.

It was in October, 2005, as the video indicates, when Muthee put his hands on Sarah Palin’s back and said, “make a way for Sarah, even in the political arena. Make a way, my God. Bring finances her way, even if for the campaign in the name of Jesus.

“Every form of witchcraft, it will be rebuked in the name of Jesus. Father, make her way now.”

And the Governor said that “bold” approach of Pastor Muthee was one of the reasons she became Governor and she gives him just oodles of credit for puttin’ her on the path.

The problem for the governor is that in 1999 The Christian Science Monitor reported that Pastor Muthee had gotten his start a decade earlier in Kenya, in the Nairobi suburb of Kiambu.

Kimabu was crime-ridden. So this character Muthee showed up, and announced it was the fault of this woman in town who he had decided was a witch. And Muthee gave the witch a choice: either be saved, or get out of town.

And the woman initially chose none of the above, but this became less than a viable option when Muthee got 200 of the townspeople together and they decided, heck, you know, Muthee’s right, she probably is a witch, and the next thing you know the police are raiding her house and reportedly shooting her snake because if she was a witch, the snake had to be a demon, and then the woman left town and everybody said crime went down and most of the bars closed and this is not only how Pastor Muthee got started but he’s proud of it and he tells the story in his testimonial videotapes and people in that church in Wasilla where he laid hands on the Governor knew all about it.

And they think it was just a Joe-Six-Pack, Hockey Mom kinda thing to do, to let a guy who branded some woman in Kenya a witch, demand that God make some different woman the Governor of Alaska!
Governor, what would you call someone who arrives in a suburb, blames a resident for the local crime, organizes a mob to threaten the woman, convinces the authorities to go and raid her home, and then chases her out of the suburb?

C’mon Governor, just give us one answer that has something to do with the question you were just asked. That’s right you’d call him a terrorist. And since it was in his own country, that would make himmmm? Yes, very good, a domestic terrorist.

So, you, Governor, you’ve been “palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” Say it ain’t so, Gov! Say it ain’t so! Of course it is.

The Governor of Alaska ignores Addie Polk and the American tragedy that is a 90-year old woman shooting herself out of shame and panic and who knows what else. Over the mortgage!

Instead the Governor of Alaska wants to start calling people terrorists and insisting of Sen. Obama that quote “this is not a man who sees America like you and I see America” and whose rhetoric like that, and the “pallin’ around with terrorists” line were rightly described by the Associated Press yesterday as a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing kind of way of slipping racism into the equation, because it’s a nifty trick to remind the white folk that (psst) Obama is black.

But overriding this sleaziness and dog-gone it, the Governor of Alaska has got to be the sleaziest politician working the stage at the moment, there is the sheer blessed stupidity of letting herself become the bomb-thrower when her own life is full of domestic terrorists.

Governor? Bill Ayres? Your hubby was in this secessionist hate group for which you recorded a video.
Governor? Jeremiah Wright? That pastor you credit with helping you become Governor, is either a con man or a psycho who believes he can tell which woman in the village is the witch, and which woman is the governor.

And Governor, there’s also “The U.S. Council On World Freedom” You should ask Sen. McCain about that outfit and why he had to scat away from it 22 years ago.

Or, ask him why yesterday his own brother Joe referred to Northern Virginia as quote “communist country”. Or you could ask him about Pastors John Hagee and Rod Parsley. Or about why Sen. McCain said about introducing Jeremiah Wright into this campaign, “there’s no place for that kind of campaigning, the American people don’t want it, period.”

Or don’t ask. You know best. You’re the one selling the patent medicine. Those of us out here, we’re just the suckers pulling out our greenbacks. Go on talking about this man Ayers and trying to link Obama to that word “terrorist.”

But be prepared for others to ask you about your pastor and terrorism. And for still others to ask you about the First Dude and terrorism. But not me, Governor.

I forgive you. You are about as guilty here as poor Ms. Addie Polk in Akron. And I hope that after what you’ve done to yourself, you recover as well as she seems to be doing, and that you too get to go back and live in your own home again.

Because if you think the terrorism con, and the racism sting are going to do anything but bury you and Sen, McCain, you need to pick up one of those how-many-ever newspapers you reed and check the headlines to find out what people are really worried about right now.

Otherwise, when you said “the heels are on, the gloves are off,” you got as close to telling the truth as you’ve ever gotten, and without really knowing it.

Because, for you and Sen. McCain, Governor, it’s not the gloves that just came off.

Obviously-it’s the wheels.

Related posts:

1. Rewind the “Attack Pakistan” Comment - Palin Watch CBS Videos Online Katie Couric had another exclusive...
2. I’m A Pakistani, Not a Terrorist I saw this online today about a protest by...
3. Pakistan’s president Zardari gushes over Sarah Palin I hope to God that this is not true. The...

This month’s Economist announces the Terrorism Index for 2008, in which Pakistan is mentioned a few times. According to the report results, Pakistan is considered one the top nations to potential engage in the nuclear trade with terrorists, tied with North Korea, and the hands down winner on where the next al Qaeda stronghold will be.

Interesting when looking at it in the light of the Asia Times Online headline, Bush had no plan to catch Osama. Gareth Porter, an investigative journalists specializing in US national security policy, provides a very deep and disturbing look into the decision making process of the Bush administration and the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

According to the Asia Times Online story:

Top administration officials instead gave priority to planning for war with Iraq, leaving the United States with not nearly enough troops or strategic airlift capacity to close the large number of possible exit routes through the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area where Bin Laden escaped in late 2001.

Because it had not been directed to plan for that contingency, the US military was also forced to turn down an offer from then Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf in late November 2001 to send 60,000 troops to intercept the al-Qaeda leaders. As Northern Alliance troops marched on Kabul with little resistance in November 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency had intelligence that Bin Laden was headed for a cave complex in the Tora Bora Mountains close to the Pakistani border.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told a National Security Council meeting that Franks “wants the [Pakistanis] to close the transit points between Afghanistan and Pakistan to seal what’s going in and out”, according to the National Security Council meeting transcript in Bob Woodward’s book Bush at War.

Bush responded that they would need to “press Musharraf to do that”.

Then after realizing that the US military wasn’t up to the task of stopping bin Laden from getting into Pakistan, General Franks ended up in Islamabad:

A deputy to Franks, Lieutenant General Mike DeLong, later claimed that Musharraf had refused Franks’s request for regular Pakistani troops to be repositioned from the north to the border near the Tora Bora area. DeLong wrote in his 2004 book “Inside Centcom” that Musharraf had said he “couldn’t do that”, because it would spark a “civil war” with a hostile tribal population.

By the way, that civil war has started in Pakistan’s tribal areas and is spreading to our cities, did we say thank you for that?

But US ambassador Wendy Chamberlin, who accompanied Franks to the meeting with Musharraf, provided an account of the meeting to this writer that contradicts DeLong’s claim.

Chamberlin, now president of the Middle East Institute in Washington, recalled that the Pakistani president told Franks that CENTCOM had vastly underestimated what was required to block bin Laden’s exit from Afghanistan. Musharraf said, “Look you are missing the point: there are 150 valleys through which al-Qaeda are going to stream into Pakistan,” according to Chamberlin.

Although Musharraf admitted that the Pakistani government had never exercised control over the border area, the former diplomat recalled, he said this was “a good time to begin”. The Pakistani president offered to redeploy 60,000 troops to the area from the border with India but said his army would need airlift assistance from the United States.

But the Pakistani redeployment never happened, according to Lamm, because it wasn’t logistically feasible. Lamm recalled that it would have required an entire aviation brigade, including hundreds of helicopters, and hundreds of support troops to deliver that many combat troops to the border region - far more than was available.

So, now wait, I’m confused… you’re telling me that the US military doesn’t have the resources to assist the Pakistan Army in shifting forces from the India border to the Afghanistan border, and it’s our fault that America is losing the War on Terror? Pakistan is the most dangerous place in the world, not Iraq, I recall an international publication putting it.

When you are not serious about your accomplishing your mission, then can you really say “Mission Accomplished?”

Franks did get 1,200 marines inserted into the area, but they would not be enough to patrol the 1,500 kilometer border. The American military also realized, at this point, that local tribal leaders wouldn’t be willing to assist them either because bin Laden had given them “millions of dollars.”

The article damns the Bush administration:

Had the Bush administration’s priority been to capture or kill the al-Qaeda leadership, it would have deployed the necessary ground troops and airlift resources in the theater over a period of months before the offensive in Afghanistan began.

“You could have moved American troops along the Pakistani border before you went into Afghanistan,” said Lamm. But that would have meant waiting until spring 2002 to take the offensive against the Taliban, according to Lamm.

The views of Bush’s key advisers, however, ruled out any such plan from the start. During the summer of 2001 Rumsfeld refused to develop contingency plans for military action against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, despite a National Security Presidential Directive that called for such planning, according to the 9-11 Commission report.

Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz resisted such planning for Afghanistan because they were hoping that the White House would move quickly on military intervention in Iraq. According to the 9-11 Commission, at four deputies’ meetings on Iraq between May 31 and July 26, 2001, Wolfowitz pushed his idea to have US troops seize all the oil fields in southern Iraq.

Even after September 11, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney continued to resist any military engagement in Afghanistan, because they were hoping for war against Iraq instead.

….Lost in the eagerness to wrap up the Taliban and get on with the Iraq War was any possibility of preventing Bin Laden’s escape to Pakistan.

So let’s get this clear, the US military abandoned Afghanistan to chase Iraq’s petro-dollars. In the process, the Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were able to escape into Pakistan, because “we weren’t doing enough” over and over again.

Now, as the US presidential election nears, we are learning that it’s not Pakistan’s fault that the War on Terror has failed. It’s America, George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld.

Guess this wasn’t the October Surprise that McCain was looking for…

Related posts:

1. I’m A Pakistani, Not a Terrorist I saw this online today about a protest by...
2. Are Pakistan and the US on the Brink of War? As the United States steps up border raids into Pakistan,...
3. Pakistan Leaders Must Act Decisively after Deadly Marriott bombing - LA Times ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- More than any other terrorist attack in...

This is a long article, but very much worth the read if you want to see the US Military admit that they made a strategic mistake with their cross-border attacks into Pakistan.

U.S. special operations forces have paused ground operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas, but military and civilian government officials differ over why the cross-border raids have been halted.

The issue of U.S. raids into the tribal areas was thrust into the international spotlight by a Sept. 3 raid in Angor Adda, in the South Waziristan tribal agency, by Navy SEALs working for a Joint Special Operations Command task force. (JSOC is the secretive military organization that oversees the military’s special mission units such as the Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta and the Navy’s Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DevGru, also known as SEAL Team 6.)

“We have shown a willingness starting this year to pursue those kinds of missions,” said a Pentagon official. However, he said, after temporarily granting JSOC greater latitude to conduct cross-border missions, U.S. leaders had decided to again restrain the command, at least as far as raids using ground troops are concerned, to allow Pakistani forces to press home their attacks on militants in the tribal areas.

“We are now working with the Pakistanis to make sure that those type of ground-type insertions do not happen, at least for a period of time to give them an opportunity to do what they claim they are desiring to do,” the Pentagon official said, adding that this did not apply to air strikes launched from unmanned aerial vehicles at targets inside the tribal areas.

Although JSOC is the organization tasked, along with the Central Intelligence Agency, with finding and killing or capturing al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Sept. 3 raid was not aimed at “a huge type of target,” the Pentagon official said. “There were just consistent problems in that area that had come to a point where there was significant evidence that there was complicity on the part of the [Pakistani military’s] Frontier Corps and others in allowing repetitive raids and activities to go on. And there was a firm desire to, one, send a message, and two, also establish any intelligence audit that could be established that would be useful to respond to a frequent question that we get from the other side of the border, which is, ‘Well, show us and tell us where the problem is, then we’ll deal with it.’”

But a U.S. government official closely involved with policy in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region said the military had underestimated the Pakistani response and was reconsidering its options.

The official’s comments were echoed by a field grade special operations officer with Afghanistan experience. The Sept. 3 raid “was an opportunity to see how the new Pakistani government reacted,” the officer said. “If they didn’t do anything, they were just kind of fairly passive, like [former Pakistani President Pervez] Musharraf was … then we felt like, okay, we can slowly up the ante, we can do maybe some more of these ops. But the backlash that happened, and especially the backlash in the diplomatic channels, was pretty severe.”

The raid represented “a strategic miscalculation,” the U.S. government official said. “We did not fully appreciate the vehemence of the Pakistani response,” which included the Pakistan government’s implication that it was willing to cut the coalition’s supply lines through Pakistan. “I don’t think we really believed it was going to go to that level,” the government official said.

The military’s comments about the Sept. 3 raid sending a message represented a smokescreen, said the government official, who added that the mission “was meant to be the beginning of a campaign.” “We miscalculated, and now we’re trying to figure out how to walk the dog back. One way to do that is to say, ‘Oh well, we wanted to send a message; we’ve now sent that message, and so we’re going to not send it as much in the future, yet we’re still sort of leaving it on the table, because as we all know, we never admit to a mistake.’

“Once the Pakistanis started talking about closing down our supply routes, and actually demonstrated they could do it, once they started talking about shooting American helicopters, we obviously had to take seriously that maybe this [approach] was not going to be good enough,” the government official said. “We can’t sustain ourselves in Afghanistan without the Pakistani supply routes. At the end of the day, we had to not let our tactics get in the way of our strategy. … As much as it may be good to get some of these bad guys, we can’t do it at the expense of being able to sustain ourselves in Afghanistan, obviously.

“Senior uniformed people recognize that,” as do senior officials in the State Department and the intelligence agencies, the U.S. government official said. In the latter categories, the official said, “People are looking at this in terms of its propensity for destabilizing the situation in Pakistan and unifying all these disparate anti-this and anti-that elements into one anti-American element in Pakistan.”

“The raid got a lot more attention than they expected,” a Washington source in government said. “They do have to walk it back and go about it a different way, because obviously that didn’t work. … We can’t afford these backlashes every time a raid occurs.” However, the Washington source added, “I don’t think there’s been another strategic decision to back off.” Instead, JSOC would “go about it a different way.”

U.S. Central Command spokesman Rear Adm. Greg Smith declined to comment for this story.

Under questioning on Capitol Hill on Sept. 23, Defense Secretary Robert Gates did not deny that U.S. forces had made cross-border strikes.

“We will do what is necessary to protect our troops,” he said, acknowledging the Pentagon had been granted “authorities” for such action.
Into tribal areas

The Sept. 3 raid was not the first time JSOC forces have launched into the tribal areas. In the past, small JSOC elements have operated with the Pakistani Special Services Group in the tribal areas, and the special operations officer with Afghanistan experience said he was aware of “two or three” cross-border operations similar to the Angor Adda raid. “They have happened, but it was by no means a common occurrence,” he said.

However, said the government official closely involved with Afghanistan/Pakistan policy, JSOC “has been pushing hard for several years” to step up their raids into the tribal areas, said the U.S. government official closely involved with policy in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. JSOC’s argument has been “Give us greater latitude, we’ve got to hit where their sanctuaries are,” the official said.

“In the wake of the increased Taliban attacks we’ve seen over the last several months and the sense of frustration that we haven’t been more successful, their point of view has finally gained traction,” the government official said.

Two government sources identified the Taliban’s July 13 attack on a U.S. outpost in the Korengal valley as a turning point in the debate.

“Clearly we saw what happened in the Korengal valley as a watershed moment,” said the government official closely involved with policy in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Together with the Taliban’s July 7 bombing of the Indian embassy and their Jan. 14 attack on the Serena hotel (both in Kabul city) and the June 13 escape of an estimated 900 inmates, including perhaps 400 Taliban from a Kandahar jail, the Korengal fight gave the impression that things were spinning out of control.

“Suddenly you have an American outpost — not Canadian or British or Dutch — that is almost overrun,” the official said.
Busier op tempo, more targets

The Sept. 3 raid into Pakistan is part of a heightened operational tempo for JSOC forces based in Afghanistan, several sources said. JSOC’s target list has expanded from the original “big three” of bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and Taliban leader Mullah Omar to a broader list that includes figures in the Taliban-allied network of Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami group (sometimes referred to as HiG by the U.S. military).

The U.S. government official involved with policy in the area described JSOC’s targets as fitting into two categories: the “big guys” with whom the U.S. has “unfinished business” and “those people that threaten us operationally and tactically on the ground right now.”

Several sources said the Sept. 3 raid appeared to have been aimed at the Haqqani network, along with some of its Uzbek allies.

“Because of the nature of those types of operations, there generally has to be — and in this case there was — an involvement of a foreign fighter element,” the Pentagon official said. “And the traditional ones in that area are the Uzbeks and the Chechens. Their interpenetration with Talibs in that area is the mixture that is most at play.”

JSOC is “targeting a range of actors, but one of the big ones is Haqqani,” said a civilian expert on Afghanistan, adding that targeting the Haqqani network represented “payback” for its alleged involvement in the Indian embassy bombing, the hotel attack in Kabul and an assassination attempt against Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The U.S. government official closely involved with policy in the region agreed that U.S. forces were targeting Haqqani as “payback,” but also because the network — now mostly controlled by Haqqani’s son, Sirajuddin — “is seen as … the low-hanging fruit,” because its bases in Waziristan are more easily accessible than the mountainous terrain of the Bajaur tribal agency where Hekmatyar’s fighters operate.

“None of the JSOC activity has been going on in the areas around the sanctuary for Mullah Omar’s Taliban,” which is located in and around the Pakistani city of Quetta, the civilian expert on Afghanistan said. “It’s all happening in the tribal areas… The target has not been the Omar Taliban.”

The government official closely involved with policy in the region agreed that the change in the rules of engagement that allowed JSOC to operate more freely across the border applied only to the tribal areas, and not to “Pakistan proper.”

As a result, he said “The cross-border activity, by virtue of where these target sets are located, favors actions against HiG and against the Haqqani network, and not against the Quetta Shura [of Mullah Omar].”

A senior military official said that the JSOC task force was using a similar approach along the border to that which served JSOC so well in Iraq: a combination of technical and human intelligence driving multiple missions per night, with each target quickly exploited for intelligence that then prompts further missions.

But the Taliban are not standing still, according to the government official involved with policy in the region. “Both sides have taken the gloves off and are going at it hard,” the official said.

The increased pace of operations has come with a significant cost: Three DevGru SEALs have died in Afghanistan in recent weeks: Petty Officer 1st Class Joshua Harris, who drowned while crossing a river Aug. 30, and Senior Chief Petty Officer John Wayne Marcum and Chief Petty Officer (select) Jason Richard Freiwald, who both died Sept. 12 of injuries suffered in combat Sept. 11.

The two DevGru casualties who died Sept. 12 were killed “on the Afghan side of the border in one of those small, minor ambush-type things,” the Pentagon official said.

When JSOC forces cross the border into Pakistan, they do so only after receiving clearances from the highest levels of the U.S. government, sources said. However, exactly who has the authority to approve JSOC’s missions into Pakistan is shrouded in secrecy.

Asked at what level JSOC’s cross-border missions must be authorized, the Pentagon official said he knew the answer, but added, “I can’t talk to you about that, given the level of classification.” However, he said, the authority rested far above the JSOC task force commander in Afghanistan.

“It’s long been that way,” the Pentagon official said. “That’s not done in a cavalier [way] or without a very high level of authority. … Neither the aerial-type missions nor the ground-type missions, short of hot pursuit, which has some very finite restrictions on it, can take place without there being a high level of authority.”

The Washington source in government said the issue’s sensitivity was related to diplomacy. “There’s a very linear chain of command … but it can make things diplomatically stressful if these things are made public,” the source said.

“Even a missile strike requires the highest level of authority,” a special operations officer with Afghanistan experience said.

Asked who would have to sign off on a mission into Pakistan, he replied: “The president, no doubt in my mind. The president.”

Courtesy: Army Times

Related posts:

1. “Pakistan on the Brink” - NIE Juan Cole is one of my favorite writers on Islam...
2. The Long Road to Chaos in Pakistan Hours after a truck bomber slew 53 people last weekend...
3. Afghan Paper - US Inaction Against Pakistan Emboldens Insurgents Text of article in Dari entitled "Pakistan acts, America does...

Watch CBS Videos Online

Katie Couric had another exclusive interview tonight–one with both John McCain and his running Sarah Palin. And in the video above, Couric asks Palin about her remarks–made while getting a cheesesteak in Philadelphia, to a Temple University graduate student–saying the U.S. should cross the Afghanistan border to Pakistan (”If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should”).

Couric: Is that something you shouldn’t say out loud, Sen. McCain?John McCain: Of course not. But, look, I understand this day and age of “gotcha” journalism. Is that a pizza place? In a conversation with someone who you didn’t hear … the question very well, you don’t know the context of the conversation, grab a phrase. Gov. Palin and I agree that you don’t announce that you’re going to attack another country …

Couric [to Palin]: Are you sorry you said it?

McCain: … and the fact …

Couric: Governor?

McCain: Wait a minute. Before you say, “is she sorry she said it,” this was a “gotcha” sound bite that, look …

Couric: It wasn’t a “gotcha.” She was talking to a voter.

McCain: No, she was in a conversation with a group of people and talking back and forth. And … I’ll let Gov. Palin speak for herself.

Palin: Well, it … in fact, you’re absolutely right on. In the context, this was a voter, a constituent, hollering out a question from across an area asking, “What are you gonna do about Pakistan? You better have an answer to Pakistan.” I said we’re gonna do what we have to do to protect the United States of America.

Of course, McCain had criticized rival Barack Obama during Friday’s debate for that (McCain is pro-negotiation, whereas Obama is more hawkish, especially if al Qaeda were “in our sights and Pakistan is unwilling or unable to act”). So the Republican candidate used his Sunday appearance with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos to retract Palin’s statement.

And since she did such a great job with Palin’s interviews last week, we hope Tina Fey gets to recite Palin’s response about being a VP candidate, “Well, not only am I ready but willing and able to serve as Vice President with Sen. McCain if Americans so bless us and privilege us with the opportunity of serving them, ready with my executive experience as a city mayor and manager, as a governor, as a commissioner, a regulator of oil and gas.”

Politico’s Jonathan Martin says there’s a “still-undisclosed clip” from Couric’s interviews where Palin is asked about Supreme Court decisions and was “apparently unable to discuss any major court cases” besides Roe vs. Wade–she was just silent.

Courtesy: Gothamist

Related posts:

1. World Safer Place Because of Bush - Asif Zardari This morning's Daily Times carried a stunning headline for Pakistanis....
2. How Sarah Palin Rallied Pakistan’s Feminists - Time Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari would have expected that his...
3. Is Pakistan’s New President Up to the Job? Henry Chu has recently done a series of articles on...

Hours after a truck bomber slew 53 people last weekend at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, the country’s interior minister laid responsibility for the attack on Taliban militants holed up in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA, the remote, wild region that straddles the border with Afghanistan.

“All roads lead to FATA,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik said.

If the past is any guide, Mr. Malik’s statement is almost certainly correct.

But what Mr. Malik did not say was that those same roads, if he chose to follow them, would very likely loop back to Islamabad itself.

The chaos that is engulfing Pakistan appears to represent an especially frightening case of strategic blowback, one that has now begun to seriously undermine the American effort in Afghanistan. Tensions over Washington’s demands that the militants be brought under control have been rising, and last week an exchange of fire erupted between American and Pakistani troops along the Afghan border. So it seems a good moment to take a look back at how the chaos has developed.

It was more than a decade ago that Pakistan’s leaders began nurturing the Taliban and their brethren to help advance the country’s regional interests. Now they are finding that their home-schooled militants have grown too strong to control. No longer content to just cross into Afghanistan to kill American soldiers, the militants have begun to challenge the government itself. “The Pakistanis are truly concerned about their whole country unraveling,” said a Western military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the matter is sensitive.

That is a horrifying prospect, especially for Pakistan’s fledgling civilian government, its first since 1999. The country has a substantial arsenal of nuclear weapons. The tribal areas, which harbor thousands of Taliban militants, are also believed to contain Al Qaeda’s senior leaders, including Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri.

It’s all the greater a paradox, then, that the Taliban militias now threatening the stability of Pakistan owe their survival — and much of their present strength — to a succession of Pakistani governments that continues to the present day.

The origins of the present predicament date to 1994, when Pakistan, unnerved by the bloody civil war that had engulfed Afghanistan following the Soviet Union’s departure five years earlier, turned to a group of fierce but moralistic Afghan tribesman who had won a string of victories. They called themselves “the students” — in Arabic and Pashto, the Taliban. Sensing an opportunity, the Pakistani government, led then by Benazir Bhutto, threw its support behind them. Aided by Pakistani money, supplies and military advisers, the Taliban swept across Afghanistan, entering the capital in 1996.

It was the same group of men — under the Taliban, women were stripped of nearly all their rights — whom the Americans overthrew when they invaded Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001.

Which brings us to the current crisis. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, then-President Pervez Musharraf publicly promised to break with the Taliban. For that, Pakistan was rewarded with nearly $10 billion in American aid. But over the years, something else happened: whatever President Musharraf said in public, the military and intelligence services over which he presided demonstrated every intention of strengthening the Taliban, who fled en masse to the borderlands after their expulsion from Kabul in November 2001.

Over the years, the evidence has been too obvious to ignore. In 2002, for instance, Mr. Musharraf ordered the arrest of some 2,000 suspected militants — many of whom had trained in Pakistani-sponsored camps. Weeks later, without fanfare, he released nearly all of them.

Likewise, after 9/11, President Musharraf promised to rein in the estimated 25,000 private Islamic schools — many of them incubators of Islamic militants — but never took the slightest steps to do so.

The most glaring example came last July, when operatives of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence, or I.S.I., were said to have helped fighters under Serajuddin Haqqani, a Taliban commander, bomb the Indian Embassy in Kabul. An Indian defense attaché was among 54 people killed, and American officials said there was overwhelming evidence pointing to I.S.I. involvement. “It was sort of this ‘aha’ moment,” an American official said.

The single most persuasive explanation for Pakistan’s continued involvement with the Taliban is the country’s obsession with India. Pakistan and India have fought three major wars since they broke with the British Empire in 1947, and the rivalry lives on. India has allied itself closely with the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai. In 2006, for instance, a senior I.S.I. official told a New York Times reporter that he regarded Mr. Haqqani as an I.S.I. intelligence asset. Mr. Haqqani, an Afghan Pashtun, is one of the Taliban’s most senior commanders battling the Americans. His father, Jalalhuddin, is a longtime associate of Osama bin Laden. The Haqqanis are thought to be overseeing operations from the border territories.

But while the Pakistanis have been primarily interested in using the Taliban to exert their influence inside Afghanistan, the Taliban have expanded their ambitions to include Pakistan itself. A turning point came in the summer of 2007, when Pakistani troops stormed the Red Mosque, where Islamic militants had gathered in the capital. The gun battle killed nearly 100 people. Taliban militants launched a wave of suicide bombings around the country, and Baitullah Mehsud formed Tariq-i-Taliban Pakistan, an umbrella organization of several Taliban groups, and declared war on the Pakistani government. Since then, Taliban militias have expanded their reach beyond the FATA areas to include much of the neighboring Northwest Frontier Province.

Which brings us, finally, to the Americans. Concerned about the growth of the Taliban inside Pakistan — and about the growing losses of American soldiers in Afghanistan — American officials have pressed Pakistani leaders to crush the militants in their bases inside the tribal areas. The Pakistanis have launched a series of offensives, and all of them have ended with the militants stronger than ever. It may be that the Pakistan Army is too inept to destroy the Taliban, but there is abundant evidence suggesting that at least some elements of the army do not want to do that.

“I would not rule out the possibility that explicit deals were made by the military,” the American military official said.

With the arrival of Pakistan’s new civilian government last February, the situation seems more intractable than ever. The government, now led by Yousaf Raja Gilani, is still hugely dependent on America. The Bush administration, in turn, has continued to press Mr. Gilani for military operations against the militants in the tribal areas.

And there’s the rub. Each time Mr. Gilani has sent troops into those areas, he has succeeded only in sparking the outcries of his fellow Pakistanis, who are growing increasingly bitter toward what they see as the Bush administration’s overbearing ways. The attack on the Marriott, for instance, came on the heels of a recent Pakistani offensive in the Bajaur tribal agency. While there is no direct evidence that the attack on the Marriott was launched in retaliation for that offensive, many Pakistanis certainly saw it that way.

Meanwhile, as the Taliban has grown stronger, the Bush Administration has stepped up its own military operations inside Pakistan, taking the extraordinary step this month of landing helicopter-borne soldiers in a village in South Waziristan to strike a suspected militant hideout. The military strike set off tremors of anti-American anger; Pakistani officials, buffeted by domestic criticism, have promised to use force against any future American incursions.

What does the future hold? Some American analysts worry that the fledgling civilian government in Pakistan won’t be able to survive the cross-currents of American pressure and the anti-American anger it stimulates. For their part, American officials have been silent on whether they will attempt more cross-border raids, but privately they say the situation in the tribal areas is contributing to the deterioration of the situation in Afghanistan. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this month that while he was sure that victory in Afghanistan was possible, ”I’m not convinced we’re winning it” there now.

One thing seems a good bet: that the fires and deaths that consumed the Marriot Hotel last weekend will not be the last.

Dexter Filkins, who has covered the Afghanistan and Iraq wars for The New York Times, is the author of “The Forever War” (Knopf).

Courtesy: New York Times

Related posts:

1. Re-Orienting Pakistan - Dr. Hasan-Askari Rizvi The generation entering professional life towards the mid and late...
2. Afghan Paper - US Inaction Against Pakistan Emboldens Insurgents Text of article in Dari entitled "Pakistan acts, America does...
3. “Pakistan on the Brink” - NIE Juan Cole is one of my favorite writers on Islam...

This morning’s Daily Times carried a stunning headline for Pakistanis. Asif Ali Zardari, to clarify “the President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan” stated that ”Obviously, the world is a safer place,” he said. “It could have been worse,” in an interview with the Washington Post on Saturday. Can I ask which world Zardari is talking about?

If we look at it from Pakistan’s point of view, we are under attack both from internal and external forces. Our borders are regularly being violated by US military forces and our citizens are being targeted in terrorist attacks on our own soil. The international media has made Pakistan the reason for the US failure in Afghanistan because apparently the Soviet conflict never happened and the US never left Afghanistan in a lerch after using it to defeat the Soviet Union. Yet, Zardari feels that Bush has made the world a safer place.. interesting… did you hear the dollars transferring to offshore accounts there??

More interestingly, in the same interview, Zardari refuted the fact that Pakistani forces fired on the US military on their latest incursion into Pakistan. While Admiral Michael Mullen was confirming to the media that:

“There was a cross-border fire incident yesterday,” Mullen said, corroborating reports from U.S and NATO military officials. He urged both sides not to “overreact to the hair-trigger tension we are all feeling. Now, more than ever, is a time for teamwork, for calm.”

Another interesting thought….

Zardari also contributes the Marriott bombing to the “rise of the axis of evil”:

At the same time, Zardari warned that “the axis of evil is growing.” He cited last Saturday’s massive bombing at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, which killed more than 50 people, and pressed the Bush administration to step up intelligence cooperation with Pakistan to help confront Islamist militants.

Zardari also announced a new initiative for Afghani farmers:

Zardari discussed a plan to persuade Afghan farmers to plant corn instead of opium to take advantage of rising prices sparked by the burgeoning U.S. ethanol industry. “We can try to grow corn in Afghanistan and give them the same returns they’re getting from opium,” he said.

Sadly, he has nothing to offer the people of Pakistan to feed their starving, nor any solutions to controlling the massive smuggling of wheat to Afghanistan and the Central Asia states.

Later, in the interview:

Zardari reaffirmed Pakistan’s position that it should take the lead in battling terrorism. “This side of the border is my problem,” Zardari said, adding that if U.S. forces need “permission of sorts” to cross the border, “we can have an understanding on that, but they haven’t asked for it.”

“If we need help, we call for them. If they need help, they call for us,” he added. If the United States has security concerns in Pakistan, “let us know. We’ll do it for them.”

Zardari said he welcomed U.S. support in bolstering his country’s ability to patrol Pakistan’s porous border with Afghanistan. He also appealed for help confronting an insurgency that has grown increasingly bold in recent months.

“They keep coming up with new ways of war,” he said referring to the Marriott Hotel attack. “Obviously, the problem has not gone away, so the medicine needs to be enhanced.”

I found an interesting post on a blog about the Iraq War which sheds some more light on the “safety” that George W. Bush has given the people of Iraq.

One more thing… not to forget the historic meeting between President Zardari and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Zardari is quoted in another Washington Post article saying:

Pakistan’s new president, Asif Ali Zardari, said that he thought Palin was “very nice” and that she was “quite knowledgeable” about the threat of terror posed by Islamist extremists along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. “She is obviously a hunting lady,” he said, suggesting it was a useful qualification for understanding Pakistan’s complex security challenges.

Zardari said that he was impressed by Palin’s strategy for developing oil reserves in Alaska and that she had done a good job ensuring that revenues flowed to local communities. He said he was considering a similar approach to exploiting natural resources in Pakistan.

“I’ve been promoting the Alaska model to some extent in Pakistan,” Zardari said. At that stage, a senior aide interrupted the Pakistani leader. “The president also spoke to Joseph Biden,” he said. Zardari said that Biden has been instrumental in steering hundred of millions of U.S. dollars to Pakistan to shore up democracy. “He has been a great friend of democracy from the first day,” Zardari added.

Sarah Palin “quite knowledgeable” on the threat of terror posed by Islamist extremists along the Pakistan border with Afghanistan… should we take that to mean that Zardari also has no clue about what is going on the border with Afghanistan? The US media has made it very clear to their voters that Palin has no idea about Pakistan, the War on Terror or Extremism, no foreign policy experience seems to be the regular chorus from the media. Yet, somehow Pakistan’s President Zardari thinks she’s “quite knowledgeable” on Pakistan… guess that comes from his months of foreign policy experience.

Actually, let’s hear it from Sarah Palin herself:

Palin’s apparent disagreement with McCain’s position on Pakistan came as the Alaska governor was picking up a couple of cheesesteaks at Tony Luke’s in South Philadelphia. She was approached by a man wearing a Temple University t-shirt, who later identified himself as Michael Rovito. 

“How about the Pakistan situation?” Rovito asked. “What’s your thoughts about that.” 

“In Pakistan?” Palin responded. 

“What’s going on over there, like Waziristian?” 

“It’s working with Zardari to make sure that we’re all working together to stop the guys from coming in over the border,” Palin said. “And we’ll go from there.” 

“Waziristan is blowing up,” Rovito replied. 

“Yeah, it is,” Palin said. “And the economy there is blowing up, too.” 

“So we do cross-border, like from Afghanistan to Pakistan, you think?” Rovito asked. 

“If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should,” Palin said.

God help us.

Related posts:

1. Islamabad Bombing Shakes Pakistan - Eric Margolis The one ton truck bomb that ripped apart Islamabad's Marriot...
2. Is Pakistan’s New President Up to the Job? Henry Chu has recently done a series of articles on...
3. “Pakistan on the Brink” - NIE Juan Cole is one of my favorite writers on Islam...

Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari would have expected that his interactions with American leaders in New York this week could bring trouble at home. After all, relations between the two countries are as tense as they’ve ever been, erupting into an exchange of fire between U.S. and Pakistani forces along the Afghan border on Thursday. But the meeting that appears to have gotten the Pakistani leader into more trouble than any other was a brief encounter with Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin.

Zardari met Palin on Wednesday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, where Zardari was making his debut on the world stage and Palin was meeting with visiting heads of state in the hope of improving her much-derided foreign policy credentials. The resulting exchange turned Palin into a household name in Pakistan, but saw Zardari pilloried at home as a source of national embarrassment and accused of sexism and impropriety.

In footage now being endlessly replayed on local cable channels and on YouTube, Palin is seen rising to introduce herself as Zardari enters, dressed in one of his signature flashy tailored suits. As custom demands, the two grip each other’s hands and shake them animatedly before the cameras. But it is the remarks that follow that got Zardari into hot water back home.

Meetings between Pakistani and American leaders are traditionally staid and predictable, although some Pakistanis are fond of recalling an apocryphal 1963 exchange between John F. Kennedy and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto — father of slain prime minister Benazir, to whom Zardari was married. Impressed by the then Foreign Minister, who would become prime minister before being deposed by a U.S.-backed military dictator in 1977 and later executed, Kennedy is alleged to have said: “If you were an American you would be in my cabinet.” Bhutto is alleged to have answered, “Be careful Mr President, if I were an American, you would be in my cabinet.”

What Zardari said after shaking Palin’s hand will likely prove a great deal less memorable. “You are more gorgeous than you are on [television],” he told Palin after she declared she was honored to meet him. “Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you,” Zardari added, flashing his trademark teeth-baring smile.

At this point, the two were urged to shake hands again, presumably for the benefit of the cameras. “I’m supposed to pose again,” Palin said quietly. Pointing toward the aide that prompted them, Zardari said, “If he’s insisting, I might hug.”

Pakistani newspapers ran prominent accounts of the “embarassing” incident, while news anchors smirked after airing the footage. On Geo TV, a popular Urdu language network, Zardari’s remarks were delicately termed “a light and open exchange of remarks” before the short clip ran with blow-by-blow commentary. A subsequent version was run with an Urdu ballad playing in the background.

Being Pakistan, attention was inevitably turned to how the event was covered in neighboring India. Times Now television introduced the clip with the words “Pakistani President Asif Zardari seems to be a big fan of Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, but his first meeting with her has critics saying that he was completely a bit out of line.” Straplines across the top of the screen blare: “Pak President Out of Line with Palin”, “Zardari Shocks with Sexist Remark” and “Zardari Ignores Diplomatic Propriety”.

The criticism was echoed by leading Pakistani feminists. “I feel it’s absolutely shameful and a disgrace,” says Tahira Abdullah, a prominent women’s rights activist. “It is against diplomatic protocol. And he is supposed to be mourning the loss of his illustrious and so-called beloved wife. Instead he’s flirting with her in public. He should apologize to her and to Pakistanis.”

“President Zardari’s charm offensive on Ms. Palin was, well, offensive,” wrote political analyst Mosharraf Zaidi in an op-ed for The News. “What excuse does the husband of a global feminist icon have for his faux pas?” he asked, in a reference to the late Benazir Bhutto’s status as the Muslim world’s first prime minister.

While many reactions have been hostile, some Pakistanis have laughed off the exchange as nothing more than a source of inconsequential merriment. But the country’s religious conservatives are unlikely to be so forgiving. A previous inappropriate encounter between a leading Pakistani male politician and an American female politician was seized on by political opponents in parliament after Condoleezza Rice biographer Marcus Mabry described in pitiless detail an abortive charm offensive by former prime minister Shaukat Aziz on the U.S. Secretary of State, after Aziz had allegedly told diplomats that “he could conquer any woman in two minutes”.

Mabry’s account of the Rice-Aziz encounter spawned a minor media storm in Pakistan, and like it, the furor over the Zardari-Palin meeting will soon be forgotten. With an economy in freefall and militancy on the rise, Pakistanis may have little time to concern themselves for too long over how their president comports himself.

Courtesy: TIME Magazine

Related posts:

1. Is Pakistan’s New President Up to the Job? Henry Chu has recently done a series of articles on...
2. Pakistan’s president Zardari gushes over Sarah Palin I hope to God that this is not true. The...
3. Choosing Your Friends: Pakistan, The US and China While Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari is in the United...

While Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari is in the United States discussing U.S. military strikes across Pakistan’s border, Army Chief General Ashfaq Kayani is on a far less publicized trip to China to talk about defense cooperation. The timing may be coincidental, but the potential implications of the United States and China playing competing roles in Pakistan are huge.

Pakistan has always seen China as a much more reliable friend, while support from Washington has waxed and waned in line with U.S. interests (Islamabad has never quite forgiven the United States for using it to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and then dropping it when the Russians were driven out in 1989.)

And nowadays the difference in the approaches of Pakistan’s two giant allies is even more striking.  While the United States and Pakistan argue about U.S. cross-border strikes, China has quietly reaffirmed its commitment to keeping Pakistan stable.

In a condolence message sent after this weekend’s Marriott Hotel bombing, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said, “As a good neighbour and all-time friend of Pakistan, China will always support the unremitting efforts made by the government and people of Pakistan to safeguard the country’s stability.”

Of course there is no reason to jump to the conclusion the United States and China will become outright rivals over Pakistan — both have a stake in Pakistan’s stability, and in the past both have managed to maintain close ties with Islamabad without tripping over each other. But the current scenario certainly increases the chances of friction.

Add to that the fact that the strategic picture in South Asia has changed dramatically under the Bush administration. The United States has rewritten its relationship with India — which was still seen as in the Soviet camp back in the days of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan –turning it into a crucial ally in Asia and potential bulwark against Chinese influence. It sealed that transformation by reaching a deal with India effectively recognising it as a nuclear power, ignoring any misgivings in China (India’s nuclear weapons programme was developed as much, if not more, as a defence against China as against Pakistan.)

So it will be interesting to see what Kayani brings back from China and Zardari from the United States in the way of promises of support.  Will the United States and China be able to work together to pull Pakistan out of its current crisis? Or are they drifting into a situation where they end up opposing each other?

Courtesy: Reuters

Related posts:

1. World Safer Place Because of Bush - Asif Zardari This morning's Daily Times carried a stunning headline for Pakistanis....
2. Pakistan Not Doing Enough? - Part II It seems very funny that coming off the multitudes of...
3. How Sarah Palin Rallied Pakistan’s Feminists - Time Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari would have expected that his...