KABUL: The US-led force in Afghanistan said Tuesday it had killed a militant leader who was linked to the kidnapping and killing of two American sailors late last month.

The sailors were kidnapped after leaving a military base in Logar province, south of the capital Kabul, in late July, and their bodies were found separately days later.

The Taliban later claimed responsibility for their deaths.

“An Afghan and coalition security force killed Bilal, a highly active Taliban facilitator responsible for improvised explosive device and indirect fire attacks against Afghan civilians and Afghan and coalition forces,” a statement from Nato’s International Security Assistance Force said.

“The facilitator had direct ties to the Taliban network involved in the recent kidnapping and murders of two US Navy sailors,” it said.

“It is currently unknown what role, if any, Bilal played in the kidnapping,” the statement added.

There are close to 150,000 international, mainly US troops based in Afghanistan, fighting an insurgency headed by the Taliban since the 2001 fall of the Islamic militants from power.

General David Petraeus, the US commander in Afghanistan, who famously exploited rifts within Iraq’s Sunni insurgency to turn around a losing US-led war there, says a new policy on reintegration and reconciliation with the Taliban was “fairly imminent.”

Pointing to his experience in Iraq, the General who replaced Stanley McChrystal, added that he thought “there is a prospect for reconciliation with some of the groups.

“You know, ultimately we had to face the question in Iraq of, ‘Will we sit down across the table with people who have our blood on their hands?’” And the answer was yes,” he said.

“It doesn’t mean that (Taliban leader) Mullah Omar is about to stroll down main street in Kabul anytime soon and raise his hand and swear an oath on the constitution of Afghanistan,” Petraeus said in an interview.

But, he told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” there is “every possibility, I think, that there can be low- and mid-level reintegration and indeed some fracturing of the senior leadership that could be really defined as reconciliation.

Petraeus took command of U.S. forces in Kabul following the sacking of his predecessor General Stanley McChrystal.

He now has less than a year to show results in Afghanistan where what he described as a “Pashtun insurgency” operating from sanctuaries in Pakistan has exposed the weakness of the government in Kabul and the NATO-led force backing it.

Petraeus drew attention to vulnerabilities in the insurgency, noting it was “not some kind of monolithic Taliban enemy” but rather a syndicate of insurgent groups that are not subservient to each other.

These include the Afghan Taliban in the south, the Haqqani network in the east, the Hezb-e-Islami led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Pakistani Taliban, and smaller numbers of Al-Qaeda and Uzbek fighters.

“What is interesting is that the Taliban leads from the rear, as we would say. The Taliban leads from Pakistan,” the general said. “And by the way, the rank and file is just catching on to this.”” We actually see discussions among them, chatter among them, conversation, wondering where their senior leaders are, and wondering why Mullah Omar hasn’t set foot back in Afghanistan or even been heard from now in months and months and months.””But the senior leaders don’t come in and share hardship and risk with their troopers on the ground, they send messages. They do it by cell phone, or what have you, and that is actually going to be a problem for them.”Citing the case of a pregnant woman who was flogged and then killed, Petraeus suggested the Taliban’s brutal treatment of civilians was also hurting it.

“What they have done is really quite egregious, particularly in the context of the religion and in the context of the normal codes of conduct.

”Petraeus acknowledged, however, the daunting obstacles facing the NATO-led mission — insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan, weak government in Kabul and an intimidated populace that will shift allegiances to survive.

Irshad Salim
New York

WATCH VIDEO INTERVIEW BELOW: Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan discusses the Afghan War, the floods in Pakistan, ISI and Kayani on Charlie Rose Show.

Holbrooke says Pakistan Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani is a powerful political factor in his country. Kayani was in Bangladesh during the 1971 war, Holbrooke added.

“He (Kayani) is an enormously powerful political factor in the country. And we have extensive discussions with him,” Holbrooke told the popular Charlie Rose Show in the Aug 12 interview.

“General Kayani, first of all, he’s a very powerful person and a very important factor in the equation,” he says. “He was head of the ISI. He also went to Fort Leavenworth Command and Control College and is proud to say he is a member of the Fort Leavenworth Hall of Fame (in Kansas). Among general officers I’ve known, he’s a remarkable strategic thinker. He’s very smart,” Holbrooke said in response to a question.

Holbrooke, as Obama Administration’s point man for Afghanistan and Pakistan and civilian counterpart of Gen Patreus of Centcom, also talked about the floods.

Holbrooke said the flood is an economic catastrophe, a political catastrophe and “it has huge implications for U.S.”

According to him there are five groups fighting US, Nato and the rest. Two are from Pakistan – the Pakistani Taliban and the LeT (Lashkar-e-Toiba). Holbrooke alludes to Haqqani group supporting the al Qaeda and harboring bin Laden.

WATCH HOLBROOKE INTERVIEW on Charlie Rose Show:

HERAT: The Taliban publicly flogged and then executed a pregnant
Afghan widow by emptying three shots into her head for alleged
adultery, police said on Monday.

Bibi Sanubar, 35, was kept in captivity for three days before she was
shot dead in a public trial on Sunday by a local Taliban commander in
the Qadis district of the rural western province Badghis.

The Taliban accused Sanubar of having an “illicit affair” that left
her pregnant. She was first punished with 200 lashes in public before
being shot, deputy provincial police chief Ghulam Mohammad Sayeedi
told AFP.

“She was shot in the head in public while she was still pregnant,” Sayeedi said.

The execution is a grim reminder of the Taliban’s harsh six-year rule
from 1996 to 2001 in Afghanistan. The radical extremists staged public
stonings or lashings of those found to have committed adultery or sex
outside marriage.

The then-Taliban government would also chop off the hands and feet of
those accused of theft and robbery.

Local Taliban commander Mohammad Yousuf carried out the execution,
Sayeedi said, before the woman’s body was dumped in an area under
government control.

The man who allegedly had an affair with Sanubar has not been punished.

Head of Badghis provincial council Mohammad Nasir Nazaari confirmed
the execution and said the Qadis district is entirely under Taliban
control.

The deputy head of the religious council for western Afghanistan,
Mohammad Kabaabiani, said the execution ran counter to Islamic
principles.

Head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in western
Afghanistan, Abdul Qadir Rahimi, condemned the killing.

“Any such trial is unacceptable and is a violation of human rights.
All trials must take place in an authorised court observing every
single measure of justice,” said Rahimi.

Since their ouster in 2001, the hardline Taliban militants have
executed many people they accused of spying for foreign forces,
including at least one woman who was shot dead in Kandahar.

The insurgents last year publicly executed a young couple accused of
eloping in Nimroz province with a firing squad in front of a mosque.
(AFP)

Pakistani Talk Show Front Line with Kamran Shahid discusses President Zardari’s offer of talks with the Taliban and its consequences. Did Zardari take all the stakeholders on board? Are the Taliban ready for talks? Guests: Siddiq al Farooq (PML-N), Syed Hamid Saeed Kazmi (PPP), Siraj-ul-Haq (Jamaat Islami), Sen. Haji Muhammad Adeel (ANP)

Lt. Gen (R) Asad Durrani

A soldier can do better than dying on the battlefield in pursuit of paradise — he can send his adversary to hell. That was, at least once, the unofficial American doctrine. Diplomats too occasionally despatch each other to hell; the British traditionally in a manner that makes the adversary look forward to the journey. The subtlety was lost on Pakistan.

Though often persuaded to go to hell, the country keeps turning back from the brink. The British prime minister decided that the time for diplomatic equivocation had passed and this enfant terrible had to be told, in no uncertain terms, that it was playing a “double game”. We were not amused, and can now be blamed for “double standards”. Earlier, we had applauded David Cameron when he fired the first shot from his double-barrel: blaming Israel for turning Gaza into a prison. It was more than a diplomatic gaffe. For him, it could be politically fatal. We should make amends and encourage the young prime minister to carry on catching the bulls by their horns.

It is not that I wish him more trouble with Israel or with his political opponents. I also acknowledge that we may at times be in serious trouble. If you must convey a piece of your real mind about your nemesis, it is better done with a preamble; like “how highly we admire him/her”. And just in case you had no idea about the status of a case in your charge, “it is under our active consideration” would save many a blush.

I still believe we would be better served with some straight talk, Pakistan more than others.

If we were to wish the Taliban in Afghanistan – our best bet to get the region rid of the US-led alliance – all the luck, anyone believing in stating things as they are would be highly impressed. If we added that since many of our troubles began with their arrival, we were now willing to facilitate their departure, some of them would jump at the offer. And just in case we did not have the courage to convey that a number of groups targeting us were sponsored by our so-called allies, we could always leak an odd document to Wikileaks. It would be nice if countries like China, Russia and Iran also expressed their discomfiture with Nato’s meddling with the New Great Game.

The Brits would be delighted. They would dump all the debris of the last decade on the senior partner, hang some of its poodles now under trial (like they used to execute generals and admirals who lost wars in faraway places), and make up with their old friends, the Afghan tribesmen. The Americans could benefit too. They will finally get a chance to get even with the “Big Money” that has run the country to bankruptcy, mortgaged its future to China, and created the most expensive war machine in the world that routinely loses to ragtag warriors in this postmodern warfare. And who knows, India may also concede that the real reason it was dragging its feet on reconciliation with Pakistan was that the price for peace exceeded the cost of the status quo.

On second thought, this conversion to the true faith does not seem like a good idea. It would deprive us of the fun in conducting international relations, of running with the hare and hunting with the hound and letting our emissaries run wild in the pursuit of refining diplomatic doublespeak.

In due course, Mr Cameron too will give up his new-found enthusiasm for calling a spade a spade, at the latest, when a former US defence secretary, William Cohen, reminds him of the lesson he learnt from an illustrious British diplomat, Lord Robertson: “Now that you have joined the circus, learn to ride on two horses.” When the prime minister was admonishing us for looking “both ways”, his Indian hosts should have recalled what their own “showman of the century” taught them about life: “It is a circus, in which one must move and look in all directions.” Double-crossers!

(The writer served as director-general of the ISI from 1990-92. His op-ed first appeared in the Express Tribune)

(The views of the authors and the commentors do not reflect those of PKonweb. PKonweb reserves the right to remove or edit comments that are posted)

Ahmed Rashid

Over the past 32 years, Afghans have fought a series of wars to keep their country together. For all the machinations of great powers and neighbouring states, no Afghan warlord or leader has ever succumbed to outside pressure for partition.

The war in Afghanistan just got more complicated with the release of secret military files by the Wikileaks website – a big embarrassment to the US, Nato and Pakistan. Yet despite their damaging content, the leaks should not distract from some powerful positive elements that have helped Afghanistan to survive in the past.

Afghanistan has been a nation state since 1761 – a good deal longer than four of its immediate neighbours (Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan). Even though Afghanistan has suffered severe internal wars and coups, falling victim to the entire gambit of 20th-century ideologies, the country and its people have shown remarkable resilience.

The latest attempt to suggest partition comes from an American, Robert Blackwill, a former official in the Bush administration and former US ambassador to India. Mr Blackwill wrote recently in the FT that as the US cannot win the current war in Afghanistan, it should consider a de facto partition of the country, handing over the Pashtun south to the Taliban and propping up the north and west where Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazaras live. Such a partition, he writes “is now the best that can realistically and responsibly be achieved’’.

Really ?

Not a single Afghan will ever support such a demand. In 1988-89, as the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, the KGB tried hard to convince the Uzbek warlord General Rashid Dostum to create a buffer state to protect Soviet central Asia from the Mujaheddeen. Gen Dostum described to me how he gruffly refused.

In the 1980s, and again in the 1990s, Iran tried to persuade its Shia and Hazara protégées to create a Shia corridor linking western and central Afghanistan with Iran. Afghan leaders turned Iran down. In the mid-1990s some of Tajikistan’s leaders tried, and failed, to persuade the Afghan Tajik leader Ahmed Shah Massoud to build a Greater Tajikistan.

In 1996, when the Taliban captured Kabul but initially failed to take the north, Pakistan’s Inter-services Intelligence (ISI) suggested that the Pashtun group create their own state in the south. The Taliban refused, despite their dependence on the ISI.

Twenty years ago, Gen Dostum told me that the first Afghan who suggests partition would have his throat slit. Before the attacks of September 11 2001, Taliban leaders told me the same thing. The same holds true today.

The first thing to note is that Afghanistan’s ethnic mix is extremely complex, with millions of Pashtuns living in the north amidst the Uzbeks and Tajiks. Likewise, the south has its fair share of non-Pashtuns. Partition could lead to worse horrors than witnessed at India’s division in 1947. Mr Blackwill blithely writes that “small islands of non-Pashtuns in the south and east would be an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence”.

Moreover, abandoning the south would betray those Pashtuns who have resisted the Taliban. Partition would relegate the Pashtuns to pariah status, ignored and forgotten except when the US finds it necessary – as Mr Blackwill suggests it sometimes will – to send in the drones.

Such a policy would seriously undermine Afghanistan by fuelling inter-ethnic war. It would endanger Pakistan, encouraging some of the 40m Pashtuns in Pakistan to link up with their 15m Afghan Pashtun brothers and forge an extremist ethnic state that gives refuge to terrorists.

The tragedy of the Bush administration was that for too long after September 11 all Pashtuns were treated as the enemy, and the south and east of Afghanistan became a free-fire zone for US forces. Only recently, under President Barack Obama, has there been a decisive attempt by the US and Nato to woo the Pashtuns and also to strengthen those Pashtun tribes, peoples and women who have been resisting the Taliban all this time.

In Pakistan, several thousand moderate Pashtuns have been gunned down by the Pakistani Taliban. They too need to be bolstered and supported as the Pakistan army is now, finally, belatedly trying to do.

Afghans and Pakistanis have seen the bloody results of 20th-century partitions – not only in India but also Korea, Vietnam, Germany, Yugoslavia, even Pakistan, with the separation of East Pakistan in 1971. To play around now with the borders of a region beset with extremism, terrorism and ethnic conflict would be to throw a match on a ready-made bonfire.

Yes, the situation in Afghanistan is critical, the war against the Taliban is being lost and western forces want to pull out soon. However, the only solution is dialogue between the genuine Taliban leadership, Kabul and Washington for a power-sharing deal at both the centre and in the provinces.

Mr Obama needs to move quickly. The region cannot wait for his December policy review or General David Petraeus’s attempts to inflict defeat on the Taliban before talking to them. The US and Nato must open talks with the Taliban now, forge a regional consensus among Afghanistan’s neighbours for such talks, provide Afghanistan with a long-term nation-building commitment, and slowly transfer power to the Afghan army and police. Talk of partition should be relegated to the dustbin of history.

(The above article first appeared in the Financial Times. The writer’s book, Taliban, has just been updated and reissued on the 10th anniversary of its publication)

(The views of the author and the commentors do not reflect those of PKonweb. PKonweb reserves the right to remove or edit comments that are posted.)

Arif Nizami

The timing of the release of thousands of classified US documents on the whistleblower website appropriately named “Wikileaks” is ominous for Pakistan. The documents detail connections between the Taliban and other militant groups and the ISI. They mostly relates to the past six years, when Pakistan’s present military leadership and its intelligence apparatus were at the helm of affairs.

Whatever the veracity of theses documents and notwithstanding the vehement denials by Pakistani officials, it is a lot of egg on Islamabad’s face. The US administration has assured Pakistan that it will be business as usual between the two governments despite the embarrassing leaks. But will it?

With the role of the Pakistani military in the war on terror being discussed in the public domain, the pressure being exerted on Islamabad to do more by its Western benefactors is bound to increase manifold. The ISI’s efforts to broker a deal between Karzai and the Haqqani network have also received a setback.

The leaks, which are no less significant than the Pentagon Papers that surfaced during the Vietnam War, could have far-reaching consequences for Pakistan, whose complicity with militants has never been in doubt in the eyes of the West. Perhaps emboldened by the leaks, British prime minister David Cameron, who is presently on a visit to India, had no qualms in coming hard on Islamabad on the issue of terrorism. His Indian hosts must be extremely pleased by the turn of events.

As reported in the New York Times, one of the newspapers which scooped the leaks, several US administration officials have privately expressed the hope that the Americans will be able to use the revelations. The officials referred to a “sometimes duplicitous Pakistani ally” to pressure Islamabad to cooperate more fully with the United States on counterterrorism. The newspaper quoted two other administration officials, raising the possibility of warning the Pakistanis that “congressional anger might threaten American aid.”

The US leaks surfaced in the immediate aftermath of Gen Kayani being given another term of three years as chief of the army staff. Had the government been tipped off about the embarrassing leaks beforehand by the US administration, and hence the surprise announcement by Prime Minister Gilani in a late-night three-minute address on television? Another theory on the hasty announcement is that the matter of Gen Kayani’s extension had become too intense a subject of debate in the media. Mostly negative articles started appearing in the print media about an extension being granted to the military chief, no matter how valid the reasons for the decision. Whatever the actual reason, however, neither the government nor the spokesmen of the military have bothered to explain it.

In countries where the principal of civilian control over the armed forces is sacrosanct, such appointments are a matter of routine and rarely raise an eyebrow. Even across the border, how many people even know the name of the Indian army chief? It is a sad commentary on our civilian leadership that in most comments in the Western media Gen Kayani is portrayed as “the most powerful man in Pakistan.”

In his reaction to the media on Gen Kayani’s extension, Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan, the leader of the lawyers’ movement and a PPP stalwart, has lamented that we never learn from history. It will be interesting to examine what actually is our history in this context.

So far as Gen Kayani’s extension is concerned, it is practically a first. Previously, such an extension was given to Gen Ayub Khan by President Iskander Mirza, who not an elected head of state. That came at a time when politicians were squabbling with each other and Ayub had already started conspiring for a military takeover. Ayub had no qualms in sending his benefactor home after a coup in October 1958.

It is interesting that, almost without exception, every general promoted out of turn bit the hand that fed him. Gen Yayha Khan, who superseded two generals, was designated commander-in-chief in March 1966. He deposed Field Marshal Ayub Khan three years later.

Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto promoted Gen Ziaul-Haq to army chief in 1976 despite Zia’s being junior-most among the corps commanders. He superseded seven corps commanders. Ziaul-Haq’s claim to fame was that he was the greatest sycophant in the army.

As corps commander of Multan, he invited Bhutto to be honoured as colonel-in-chief of the Armoured Corps. After the function, Ziaul Haq placed his hand on the Quran and said: “You are the saviour of Pakistan and we owe it to you to be totally loyal to you.” Ironically, the same “loyal general” deposed Bhutto a year after becoming army chief and then hanged him.

On the death of Asif Nawaz Janjua, Gen Abdul Waheed Kakar was promoted to army chief by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan in January 1993. Gen Kakar superseded four generals. On Kakar’s elevation, a Pakhtun like the president, an analyst commented that “the era of Pakhtuns had begun.” However, barely six months later the president was shocked when his protege asked for his resignation, along with that of Nawaz Sharif.

In 1998, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif promoted Gen Pervez Musharraf, the corps commander of Mangla, to chief of the army staff, over other senior officers. Gen Musharraf was one of the corps commanders who had sided with Nawaz Sharif during his tussle with President Leghari over Justice Sajjad Ali Shah.

Nawaz Sharif, who in his two stints as prime minister had not been able to get along with any of the army chiefs, wrongly calculated that Musharraf, being a Mohajir, had no constituency in the army and would therefore side with him. Musharraf, however, obliged by not only deposing Nawaz Sharif on Oct 12, 1999, but also handcuffing him, imprisoning him and having him tried on charges of hijacking, though he later spared his life by sending him into exile.

Jehangir Karamat, the general who had superseded none and had no political ambitions, had been sacked by Nawaz Sharif just a few months before he was due to retire. Nawaz, who vowed during his exile not to play footsie with the generals, has understandably refrained from commenting on the re-elevation of Gen Kayani.

Reportedly, he had advised President Zardari some months ago not to tinker with the promotion process as whoever is promoted to the top in the army is loyal to the institution, and in some cases to himself, rather than to the political leadership. Lt Gen Khalid Shameem Wyne should have been named as the next chief, but his being a Kashmiri, like the Sharifs, might have been a factor in Mr Zardari’s not having him elevated.

Gen Kayani was appointed vice chief of staff on Oct 8, 2007, by Gen Musharraf and took over as COAS on Nov 28. Kayani had been Musharraf’s trusted ISI chief for three years. As such, he was fully aware of, if not involved in, key decisions like the president’s asking for the resignation of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and the controversial raid on Lal Masjid, which cost many lives.

Musharraf naively assumed that as army chief Kayani would remain his trusted man, readily doing his bidding. To his disappointment, he was soon learnt that Kayani was his own man. As the new army chief Gen Kayani not only extricated the army from politics but is also credited with supporting the conduct of free and fair elections. Later he continued the hands-off policy by backing the civilian setup, only quietly playing a behind-the-scenes role for the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.

In many ways, Kayani is different from his predecessors. But despite all the valid reasons for the renewal of his term, the civilian government by default might have started the process of the advent of another “man on horseback.”

(The writer is a former newspaper editor. Email: arifn51@hotmail.com The article first appeared in The News. The views of the author and commentors do not necessarily reflect those of PKonweb. PKonweb reserves the right to remove or edit comments that are posted.)

Shireen M Mazari

It is ISI bashing time again and this comes easy for the Western and Indian media especially, but also for the media at home since the ISI has figured as a larger than life organisation since the US-led war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. And undoubtedly the ISI has at times been highly controversial in the activities it has undertaken especially domestically. Both during period of civilian democracy and military rule, the ISI has been used by those in power and even today the ruling party is not devoid of this temptation, unfortunately.

Of course, like all intelligence agencies with an external agenda, such as CIA and RAW, the ISI has its own external agenda. But it needs to also be understood that the ISI is not an independent entity and the decision-making hierarchy of the organisation comes on routine postings from the military, primarily the army. So its external activities reflect the policies of the government, but especially the military. Be that as it may, post-9/11, the ISI has had to pay for its past sins in seeing itself demonised by the US and India – even though the former is supposed to be an ally of this country. Every time the chips are down for the US in Afghanistan, somehow or the other the ISI is lambasted by “leaks” to the Western, especially the compliant US media. It would appear that the CIA’s failures, as well as the US and NATO military failures, are all a result solely of the ISI! Now if only the ISI was really so effective, efficient and powerful, India’s occupation of Kashmir would have ended and Afghanistan’s future would have been moulded according to its desires! Unfortunately, that is not the case and the ISI is as riddled with inefficiencies as any large bureaucratic organisation is, but undoubtedly, it has better ground intelligence in this region than the US and its CIA since the latter has a blunderbuss approach to human intelligence gathering and has no sensitivity to nuances of any kind.

Be that as it may, the latest round of ISI bashing rather obviously sponsored by the CIA to hide its own failures in Afghanistan, once again, has come with the WikiLeaks’ story. Apart from The Guardian newspaper which showed some healthy scepticism about the leaked information, for the biased US media like The New York Times this was a journalistic feast – enough to feed the deep-seated anti-Muslim and especially anti-Pakistan bias that now dominates the American media. But let us get some facts straightened first and one has to concede that WikiLeaks itself is credible anti-war site. But what the media has done in terms of factual distortions of even these unverifiable leaks is dangerous and cannot simply be ignored by Pakistan because we are once again the targets.

First of all, the leaked documents are based entirely on field reports filed by a variety of operatives in Afghanistan, allegedly primarily belonging to the Northern Alliance. Second, out of the 92,000 leaked documents, only 180 contain ISI references and of these only 30 mention the ISI in negative terms regarding Taliban-supporting activities. Third, of these 180 documents with references to the ISI, most of these reports have a disclaimer by the author at the end where the source was referred to simply as an “informant” and it was stated that this source was either not reliable or working only for monetary gains for either the Afghan intelligence, Indians or Afghan warlords! Or else the source was referred to simply by initials! Interestingly where the ISI is mentioned, it also states in the disclaimer that the information cannot be verified and therefore cannot be “used to make policies” (all this is on the website). So where does that leave the actual content of these leaked reports?

Officials in Pakistan are convinced that the CIA, when it found out about the leaks, sought to divert the expansive details of its own failures in Afghanistan by shifting the focus on to the ISI – a favourite bete noir of the Western media. According to WikiLeaks the source for the leaked documents sought to prevent the publication of some of them for fear of sensitive information! There is also a feeling in some quarters that the CIA has deliberately chosen to once again target the ISI because of the rising anti-war tide within the US. Most observers in the know now recognise that the US and NATO have lost the war militarily in Afghanistan and bad intelligence is certainly one of the causes. So what better way to escape blame than to put everything on the ISI. The timing of the “leaks” is not without purpose.

Be that as it may, the fact is that it is time for Pakistan to sever its links and cooperation with the US. How can we have information and intelligence sharing with a country that has systematically done and continues to do a hatchet job on our premier intelligence agency, as well as the Pakistan military in general? From our nuclear programme to the ISI, there is a continuous ongoing war being waged on us by the US. It may not be a military war but it has economic, political, diplomatic and psychological components. What is simply absurd is why the “PakMil” – a term Mullen has coined to show his intimacy with General Kayani and is used only by him when he meets the COAS apparently – is not seeing the ground realities? Instead of the ISPR issuing press releases now suddenly condemning the drone attacks in an attempt to fool the Pakistani nation, when they know only too well that these are being carried out with the support of the Pakistan civil and military leadership, the military should take a long hard look at what the US is doing to Pakistan on all fronts. If the Pakistani government, including the military, sees the drones as doing more harm than good, why do they remain complicit in this policy? Should they not send a clear message to the US by downing one of these drones?

The evidence is piling up showing US hostile intent and effectively the US itself is becoming less of a friend – if ever it was – and more of an enemy. Even if we feel that is too drastic a conclusion, it is certainly a hostile player from Pakistan’s perspective. So before we lose everything to the Indo-US nexus, let us alter our dynamics with the US and treat it as a hostile state. The US is in a quandary and we are its only way out. Let us use this tiny window of opportunity to assert our national interests and deal with the US on our terms while it remains in its Afghan quagmire. Let General Kayani see who the real foe is – in military terms at least and the rulers rid themselves of particularistic interests to see the real foe in politico-diplomatic terms before it is too late.

Pakistani Talk Show Islamabad Tonight with Nadeem Malik interviews Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on the 92,000 classified documents,
particularly with reference to Gen Hamid Gul and ISI and alleged ISI-Taliban nexus, US-Pakistan relations, Taliban, Afghanistan, etc. Guests: Julian Assange (Wikileaks Founder), Lt.Gen (R) Hamid Gul (Ex-DG ISI), Sen. Prof. Ibrahim Khan (Jamaat Islami), Haroon Ur Rasheed (Analyst), Sen. Muhammad Talha Mahmood Aryan (JUI-F)