Musings of a modern guy

For some time now, the United States led international force in Afghanistan has been the target of a sustained insurrection by the Taleban, no doubt aided by the Al-Qaeda network (right now, it is hard to separate the 2; although the long term aims of the 2 are different). Now, the Taleban was supposedly a student’s movement, but in reality it was a push by the ISI intelligence agency of Pakistan (supported by Benazir Bhutto’s Government) to get back control of the affairs of Afghanistan, or atleast get influence on the Government over there. After the US led forces overthrew the Taleban in late 2001, it was expected that the ISI will stop supporting them. However, it has been alleged by Karzai’s Government in Afghanistan for some time now that the Taleban has been getting support from Pakistan, not only in the lawless regions of the border areas, but also direct Government support including from the intelligence agency. The same has been alleged by NATO commanders in the region.
And then there was this bomb blast outside the Indian embassy in Kabul. Now, because of the long-standing rivalry between India and Pakistan, Pakistan cannot stand to see the current level of Indian presence and influence in Afghanistan, a region that Pakistan has always regarded as its area of influence. After the bomb blast, Pakistan as usual denied any role. However, this time, the CIA has actually supported the stand of the Indians that the ISI did have a role to play and actually confronted the Government of Pakistan and its military with its finding:

A top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled secretly to Islamabad this month to confront Pakistan’s most senior officials with new information about ties between the country’s powerful spy service and militants operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas, according to American military and intelligence officials. The C.I.A. emissary presented evidence showing that members of the spy service had deepened their ties with some militant groups that were responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan, possibly including the suicide bombing this month of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the officials said.
The decision to confront Pakistan with what the officials described as a new C.I.A. assessment of the spy service’s activities seemed to be the bluntest American warning to Pakistan since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks about the ties between the spy service and Islamic militants. That ISI officers have maintained important ties to anti-American militants has been the subject of previous reports in The New York Times. But the C.I.A. and the Bush administration have generally sought to avoid criticism of Pakistan, which they regard as a crucial ally in the fight against terrorism.

For this news to become public could also mean that the Bush Administration is trying to apply public pressure on Pakistan; private pressure does not seem to have worked too much. And the US is now losing more soldiers in Afghanistan than in Iraq, greatly increasing the chance that the next battle-ground for public opinion in the US would be the war in Afghanistan, and how there’s been so little progress despite the US being in control of the country.
For Pakistan, this was a public relations whammy that the country could have done without. Along with the effect of being told that elements of their administration were supporting terrorism, there was the disturbing news that the civilian Government in Pakistan had failed to bring the ISI under their control. The civilian Government passed an order putting the ISI under the control of the elected Government, but within a few hours, had to retract the order. No doubt it had been told by the military to stay within its limits (putting Pakistan as one of the few countries where the chief intelligence agency is not under the control of the political class).

In a retraction, the US military in Iraq announced that 3 people shot in an incident in June (June 25th) were actually innocent, and it was an accidental shooting of the car by soldiers who stated that the occupants of the car in the high security zone of Baghdad Airport did not acknowledge calls for the car to stop, and hence were fired upon. The situation of firing on people who do not acknowledge your orders is a risky proposition, but what makes this situation troublesome is that the initial reports of this incident at that time blamed the 3 civilians in the car; the position was that they opened fire on the military which took the necessary defensive action and killed them:

In its statement on the June shooting, the U.S. Army said its soldiers had felt threatened when they saw a car speeding up a road toward them, and the driver did not heed warnings to stop. The military said its June statement describing the dead as criminals was incorrect. Initially, some soldiers thought that someone in the car was shooting and that Iraqi police had found a weapon in the vehicle, the military said. However, no weapon was found and the passengers turned out to be a man and two women who worked at the airport bank.
Some Iraqi officials have demanded that U.S. soldiers not on combat missions face Iraqi courts in cases of violence against Iraqis. And the June 25 shooting looks likely to bolster their case. Parliament member Haidar Abadi, from Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s Islamic Dawa Party, said, “This would increase the Iraqi insistence about the issue of American soldiers’ immunity.” Abadi said Iraqis were angry about the false accusations against the shooting victims.

This incident will give a fillip to the push by Iraqi lawmakers to try US soldiers involved in incidents like these. This is a demand that no US administration will ever agree to, and will continue to be a bone of contention. Overall, this incident does not reflect well on any of the parties involved; the only redeeming feature is that the US military is probably the only military that seems to investigate incidents impartially and release these findings even if they reflect adversely on itself.

For some time now, it seems that the United States is getting frustrated with the progress that Pakistan has been making towards getting rid of the hotbed of terrorism right on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The current situation is that the area is a resource center for terrorists - they get support over there, including medication when they are recovering from wounds suffered in Afghanistan. Of critical importance to NATO is the fact that these terrorists are free to cross the border, attack Afghan and NATO troops in Afghanistan (and slowly increase the area that is under their control), and then come back to the border area where they are not pursued. This freedom has been steadily pushing up the casualty rates in Afghanistan, and has the Government and foreign military commanders pulling their hair out.
Now, for a long time, the United States has not been forcefully pushing Pakistan to take more concrete action, instead letting the Government have a free hand to decide their own policies. However, in a clear sign that this policy does not seem to have has the desired interests, Congressional politicians from the United States have been assailing this policy, but the US administration has not been doing so. However, this seems likely to change as we move ahead:

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Pakistan needs to do more to prevent Taliban militants from launching attacks into Afghanistan from its territory. “We understand that it’s difficult, we understand that the northwest frontier area is difficult, but militants cannot be allowed to organize there and to plan there and to engage across the border,” Rice said. “So yes, more needs to be done.” The strong message to Islamabad comes just a few days before Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is scheduled to meet with U.S. President George W. Bush at the White House.
Pakistan has also strongly resisted suggestions that U.S. or other foreign troops should be allowed into the remote region to combat the militants. Gilani is seeking peace deals with militants through tribal elders in the northwestern regions of Pakistan.

It seems more apparent that the steadily increasing level of casualties in Afghanistan, especially among US servicemen has starting having an effect. The US Government is steadily increasing the pressure on the Pakistani Administration to take more action to reduce the support that the terrorists get in these tribal areas.

For the last several years, there has been an ongoing political discussion about whether the United States is following the correct policies with regard to getting rid of terrorism emanating from the region of Pakistan and Afghanistan, rated by many as the most likely place to generate the next big terrorist attack in the Western World. Part of that discussion is whether the United States has relied too much on Pakistan, and not pushed it hard enough to get rid of the entire support structure for terrorism in the tribal border regions. Implicit in this discussion is that Pakistan is not really doing all it can to get rid of terrorism in the region, to take on the vast support for the Taleban and terrorist elements in the wild ungoverned regions. Now, Pakistan has always claimed that this was a difficult task, that these regions have historically had a reputation for resisting any attempts to enforce a central governance; and that periodic pushes by the Army and border guards have only met fierce resistance and let to further embittering of the population in these regions, thus leading to a further support for the so-called resistance fighters.
At some point it is difficult to blame only Pakistan for this. The US has had a huge amount of analysis that claims that there is a lack of governance, civil reconstruction, and enough boots on the ground in Afghanistan. What was required that there be a push to strengthen the regional paramilitary forces, combined with an active and huge construction program in these regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is when the affected population see only a military push, and the same old bad conditions with no scope for improvement that they tend to move further towards the extremist position. And in Pakistan, the Bush Administration seems to have had a blinkered vision with taking the actions of President Musharraf at face value, not applying the pressure that might have made things much better. For example, there has never been much pressure to improve the condition and training of the regional paramilitary force that might be able to help turn the tide.
All this came to my mind when I read this news report:

The United States plans to shift about $230 million in aid to Pakistan from counterterrorism programs to upgrading the nation’s aging F-16 fighter jets. The new government is facing “a terrible financial crisis with food and fuel problems,” the official said, and the Pakistani government “would rather tell its public they are spending their money on food and fuel,” so it asked the United States to pay for the F-16 upgrades from the U.S. aid fund. Last year, Congress mandated that $300 million in aid to Pakistan go toward fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban, partly by beefing up law enforcement and developing tribal areas of the country that are hostile to the United States.
Skeptical lawmakers worry that the F-16 upgrades will divert funding from crucial counterterrorism programs and could be more about helping Pakistan competing with its rival, India, than fighting terror. Nita Lowey, chairwoman of a House subcommittee on foreign operations, said the request from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to reprogram the funding “raises serious concerns.” Lowey is asking for more information before signing off on the change. “Congress provided these funds specifically for counterterrorism and law enforcement activities,” Lowey said in a written statement.

This is about as short-sighted as can be. It is of critical importance that funds be spent on improving the lot of the tribal areas and improve the force that works over there. Instead, if these funds are used for improving F-16’s, machines that are hardly of much use in anti-terrorism except when a force needs the support in a head-on fight with the terrorist, not something that is typically seen in the border regions.

Now that he has sewn up the Democratic Presidential nomination, it is time for Obama to reduce the gap between himself and McCain over national security grasp and credentials. McCain is a former military man with a distinguished service record, and has served a 5 year prisoner of war imprisonment. He has been involved in his elected Senator terms with national security and armed matters, and boasts of an impeccable record. Obama does not have any such record, and is too young (one-term senator) to boast of any kind of credentials for national security (other than having consistently opposed the Iraq war in the past). A first such attempt was made by the Obama camp to question whether McCain really has a qualified military record, but that attempt got burned. So, now this is the next step, where Obama goes to Afghanistan to review the situation over there, to meet military officials and to get a feeling for the situation:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama met today in Kabul with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has been criticized by the Illinois senator for failing to reduce corruption in the nation’s government. The meeting at the presidential palace lasted more than one hour and was followed by a lunch, according to Karzai spokesman Siamac Herawi. The two discussed a range of issues, including “U.S.-Afghan cooperation to defeat terrorism, the root causes of terrorism, Afghanistan’s achievements in recent years and the way forward,” Herawi said.
The journey is Obama’s first to Afghanistan, where the U.S. led an invasion to topple the Taliban following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Since then, Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters have established themselves in rugged mountains along the Pakistani-Afghan border and have used that sanctuary as a base from which to attack U.S. and Afghan forces in Afghanistan. Obama, who stopped in Kuwait on the way to Afghanistan to see U.S. soldiers, is also scheduled to go to Baghdad, Amman, Israel and the West Bank, Berlin, Paris and London.

McCain had been egging on Obama to have a trip to the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, and this trip, if it goes to Iraq and to European capitals, will allow Obama to present himself as having a foreign policy. In that sense, this was an essential trip so that he proclaim that he has met commanders in the field, as well as started the process to mend relations with many partners of the US.

Zimbabwe is now a basket case economy. The economic mismanagement by the Government of President Robert Mugabe has driven Zimbabwe to such a state that inflation is now the highest in the world, reaching such levels that the impact on the citizens of the country must be incredible. Now, typically, the economic management of a country is something that the rulers of the country have to manage; but when you combine this with a Government that is now effectively illegal (having claimed an election by force) and which uses violence as a way of life in the country, then how is this different from other such regimes such as Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, and so on:

Zimbabwe’s troubled central bank introduced $100 billion banknotes Saturday in a desperate bid to ease the recurrent cash shortages plaguing the inflation-ravaged economy. As high as they are, though, the bills still aren’t enough to buy a loaf of bread. They can buy only four oranges. The new note is equal to just one U.S. dollar. Once-prosperous Zimbabwe has seen an unprecedented economic meltdown since it gained independence in 1980, with the official inflation rate now at 2.2 million percent.
In January, the government issued bills in denominations of $1 million, $5 million, and $10 million — and in May, it issued bills from $25 million and $50 million up to $25 billion and $50 billion. The new bills are actually bearer checks and have an expiration date of December 31. Zimbabwe has not had formal currency since the introduction of bearer checks as a temporary measure in 2003.

This is just another manifestation of the utter lack of governance in the country for the past many years, and the only approach that the Government takes is to blame either the business community, or to blame outside powers.