Brian Cloughly writes good articles


http://www.counterpunch.com/cloughley08132008.html

Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Press
Credit and Credibility
By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY

So attacks in Afghanistan must be the work of Pakistan’s dastardly Directorate of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), yet again, because the New York Times told us the other day that “American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.” The New York Times went on to claim that “The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region. The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.”

There are plenty of clichés (“powerful spy service” and “actively undermining” are splendid examples), but not a shred of hard evidence in this important story. There is not one bit of material that can be verified or even checked for accuracy. No names are named. There are declarations by anonymous “American officials” concerning supposed electronic intercepts of which no details are provided. But the New York Times and other US newspapers chose to blare to the world the unsupported conclusion that Pakistan is guilty of treason against itself.

It might be thought that the New York Times would have learned a lesson after being manipulated by the infamously incompetent and gullible reporter Judith Miller who made such a fool of the paper at the time of the US invasion of Iraq. She swallowed nonsense purveyed to her by un-named “government officials” and other anonymous and indeed malevolent sources, but the newspaper’s editors just followed along and published the rubbish. Garbage in; Garbage out. As one of her colleagues said of her in the context of a combined story : “She has turned in a draft of a story of a collective enterprise that is little more than dictation from government sources over several days, filled with unproven assertions and factual inaccuracies.”

To believe the sort of drivel that comes from “officials” of any nationality who refuse to be identified takes particular energy and dedication. But even those who are required to speak on the record are liars when it suits official purposes and policies. Take the VOA report in early July that “The Pentagon says no civilians were killed in an air strike Sunday in a remote area of eastern Afghanistan, which local officials say killed 27 people who were walking to a wedding . . . US military officials in Kabul say they believe the air strike hit its intended target, a group of militants. Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman confirmed that view. “I can only tell you I talked to Afghanistan this morning, and they are very clear with that particular strike that they believe they struck the intended target and that there were not innocent civilians involved in that particular strike".”

The claim, the flat statement, that there were no civilian casualties was first made by unidentified “US military officials,” then by a spokesman who had “talked to Afghanistan.” To whom did he talk? To any Afghans? To anyone in the Afghan government? To an Afghan who had lost a wife or husband or children in the blitzed village of Deh Bala where so many civilians were killed? Of course not : he spoke with “Afghanistan” as represented by a bunch of unnamed US officials in Kabul. He then retailed the same rubbish, that “there were not [sic] innocent civilians involved,” which was a lie, because the province governor stated with hard evidence – like bodies of children – that there had indeed been many civilian deaths.

Then the President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, left his fortress in Kabul and flew to the stricken village to speak with the tribes, saying he had “come to share your grief.” Now : is it likely that Karzai, beholden to Bush as he is, would have taken the trouble to do that if the US claim of no civilian deaths had been even remotely believable?

One has to give Karzai recognition for venturing into the region where the US bombing took place, because there is no doubt that by doing so his life was in extreme danger (possibly from a US airstrike like the one for which he went to offer condolences). We must give credit where it’s due. But there is no credit, or credibility for that matter, due to the liars who try, with increasing success, to mislead the media and thereby the outside world, about the slaughter of civilians through incompetence. And when they kill so many scores of civilians by reason of technical or human ineptitude and then lie about the crimes, how can we believe mysterious unidentified “officials” who allege without evidence that Pakistan’s intelligence agency was responsible for the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul?

Stories change ; usually when the lie has become too obvious for all the “officials” and other sources to continue spreading it. As happened with the killing of a bank manager and two of his staff by American troops on Baghdad’s Airport Road on 25 June, for example. It was stated officially that “The attack left bullet holes in two of the convoy vehicles, and a weapon was found in the car;” but these were lies. Deliberate, unvarnished, straightforward, downright lies. Iraqi outrage was such that there had to be an investigation, and eventually a US spokesman had to say that the official description of the incident was poppycock from beginning to end. (Nobody was punished for telling lies or slaughtering civilians, of course : that would be too much to expect.)

There are dozens of stories like this. Most of the killings of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan are ignored because US military media releases are published unquestioningly by the world’s newspapers. The words of US “officials” go straight into print without question and are presented as incontrovertible fact.

The evidence that US “officials” have lied to the depth of their bootstraps is, however, irrefutable. So why believe the unsupported word of nameless US officials that Pakistan plotted the Kabul bombing?

As a result of worldwide parade of a media report based on unverifiable declarations by anonymous “US government officials” there has been a dramatic dive, a terrible crash in relations between Pakistan and India. At the exact time when, for the first time in almost five years, there were exchanges of fire between soldiers of India and Pakistan along the Line of Control in Kashmir, the sadly disputed territory between the two countries, there suddenly appeared a US-sourced report that gravely endangers ongoing but fragile India-Pakistan confidence-building discussions.

Why?

The tale from unidentified US “officials” that Pakistan was involved in an attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul was published in a period when the governments of India and Pakistan are extremely vulnerable to religious and nationalist pressures. In Delhi the shaky coalition is apprehensive about elections next year and trying to be all things to all people; it is under enormous strain. In Islamabad there is a barely-functioning coalition of mutual distrust, and the country is desperately in need of external support that could promote domestic calm. Domestic and bilateral stability in the region, one would think, should be encouraged by foreign powers.

Yet “American intelligence agencies” and “United States government officials” tell newspaper reporters that Pakistan was involved in attacking the Indian embassy in Kabul, thus immeasurably increasing tension between Islamabad and Delhi (and Islamabad and Kabul, of course) and almost destroying their faltering but sincere approaches to rapprochement.

The extremely serious implications of such statements to reporters of a large US newspaper, and consequent international results, must have been understood by whoever made them. So why did they make them? What was the purpose? It certainly wasn’t to encourage dialogue between two neighbours who distrust each other.

We will never know the motive, of course, because there is no means of finding out; just as there is no means of verifying the story. So once again some unaccountable US officials have sown even more distrust and created much more resentment in a region in which there is singular lack of trust and a marked inclination to believe the worst of neighbours. Whoever had the bright idea of spreading this malevolent tale must now have the satisfaction that it had the result of stirring up hatred and suspicion. Give credit where it’s due. But credibility is quite another matter.

Brian Cloughley lives in France. His website is www.briancloughley.com

http://www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/ar...ticleid=2374374

About author Michael Scheuer :
Biography
Michael Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004. He served as the Chief of the bin Laden Unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is the once anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror; his most recent book is Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq. Dr. Scheuer is a Senior Fellow with The Jamestown Foundation.




India’s Strategic Challenge in Pakistan’s Afghan Hinterland
By Michael Scheuer


Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (AFP)
A defining characteristic of U.S. and Western foreign policy during the Cold War and its aftermath before 9/11 was its failure to integrate counter-terrorism into strategic perceptions, policies, and goals. Terrorism was hived into a compartment of its own where it was not seen as a necessary part of a nation’s grand strategy and was attacked with a half-hearted combination of law enforcement, war-like actions, and turning a blind eye. Some argue this has changed since the pre-9/11, Cold War era, but there is room for doubt. Good evidence that Western leaders and bureaucracies are still locked in this Cold War approach lies in Afghanistan, where the operating assumption of the United States and NATO seems to be that all countries share the same strategic interest in ensuring Afghanistan becomes a secular, democratic and pro-Western state. This assumption - based on the error that two nations can have identical interests - has led the West to allow any and all nations to play a role in Afghanistan of their own choosing, a policy that will ultimately help undo Western interests there. The best example of the destructiveness of the “we’re all in this together” policy is the role India is being allowed to play in Afghanistan; indeed, when Islamists again rule in Kabul, they should send New Delhi a hearty thank you note.

When a suicide car-bomb was detonated near India’s Kabul embassy on July 7 – killing four Indian officials and more than 40 other people – the world was aghast (CNN-IBN, July 20). International sentiment was horrified further when “U.S. intelligence sources” said that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) supported the attack (Times of India, August 4). This reaction was predictable, but the more reasonable reaction would have been to ask: “Why did such an attack take so long to happen?” To ask that question would have been to recognize that the United States and NATO have allowed their Kabul surrogate, President Hamid Karzai, and the Indian government to use the supposedly selfless project of Afghan reconstruction as a tool with which to destroy one of the historic tenets of Pakistan’s national security policy.

How so? Well, since it inception more than 60 years ago, Pakistan’s government and military have, with reason, regarded India as a moral threat to the country’s survival. India defeated Pakistan in several wars - seizing East Pakistan, today’s Bangladesh, in 1971 - and acquired nuclear weapons long before Pakistan. Islamabad’s national security strategy, therefore, has been and is India-centric. It focuses on three core requirements: 1) an ability to place most of its military on the Indo-Pakistani border; 2) the acquisition of a nuclear deterrent (accomplished in 1998); and 3) the maintenance of a quiet western border with Afghanistan to give Pakistan a kind of strategic depth so it would not face a two-front war. These requirements were met until September 11, 2001; the next day, only the nuclear deterrent remained.

Immediately after 9/11, President Musharraf allied Pakistan with the United States and helped it and NATO remove the Taliban regime from power, thereby wrecking one-third of Pakistan’s national security strategy by dethroning a pro-Pakistan, Islamist, and Pashtun-dominated Afghan government and unsettling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Musharraf then sent military forces into the country’s tribal regions, where they were defeated by the Taliban and Pakistani Pashtuns. Finally, the Pakistani military’s prolonged operations in the tribal regions have so angered the never very pro-Islamabad Pashtun tribes that warfare between them and the army continues, a situation that has given birth to a Pakistani Taliban. This unrest has revived the Pashtuns’ long-dormant interest in seceding from Pakistan and creating a nation – called Pashtunistan - comprised of tribal lands straddling the border. Such an event would leave Pakistan as a narrow strip of territory that could not be defended against India.

Needless to say, none of these developments pleased Musharraf’s fellow general officers, but at least there has been a payback for Pakistan - $10 billion dollars in U.S. aid and the chance for Islamabad to buy a new generation of F-16s. Until recently it seemed certain that the United States and NATO would not stay in Afghanistan forever and that Pakistan’s western border could be quieted after they left.

The Indian government, however, recognized a key strategic, anti-Pakistan opportunity when it saw one and is trying – with President Karzai eagerly assisting - to permanently deprive Pakistan of a quiet western border. Since the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, India has been in the forefront of the Afghan reconstruction effort. India has now pledged about $1.2 billion in aid and is the fifth biggest donor after the United States, the UK, Japan, and Germany (khabrein.info, August 3). New Delhi also has deployed between 3,000 and 4,000 Indian nationals to Afghanistan to assist in road-building and other infrastructure projects (Indian Express [Mumbai], July 29).


In addition, Kabul has given New Delhi permission to establish an historically unprecedented Indian diplomatic presence in Afghanistan, with an embassy in Kabul, and consulates in Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad, Kandahar, and Herat (Power and Interest News, March 23, 2007). Finally, New Delhi has created programs to inculcate pro-Indian views among Afghans, such as the provision of full scholarships for Afghan bureaucrats to train in India’s technical institutions and for Afghan students to attend Indian universities (Times of India, August 4).

Indian leaders and Karzai – who was schooled in India – have taken the high road, using rhetoric about India’s “no-strings-attached” activities in Afghanistan, identifying them as efforts to “fight terrorism” and bring a “pluralistic and democratic society” to Afghanistan (Indian Express, August 5). Indian commentators, however, have felt no need to disguise India’s strategic gambit as altruistic. Most gloat over India’s Afghan successes and some argue that because Pakistan supports the Taliban and al-Qaeda, India must field a far greater military presence in Afghanistan:


"Several hundred miles from New Delhi and Islamabad, India-Pakistan hostility is spilling over into another country – Afghanistan. Here the two countries are engaged in an unacknowledged bid for supremacy [in] their bilateral relationship with Afghanistan. For the moment, India seems to be winning this new version of the great game effortlessly" (The Hindu, November 9, 2003).


"Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency is a global curse. The massive and callous July 7 blast outside the Indian embassy in Kabul … has exposed Pakistan’s hollowness and duplicity for orchestrating the nefarious act. … The Government of India was well aware about ISI’s deceitful maneuverings some months ago. No less a person than Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai had cautioned India about what was going to befall and mar Indian interests in Afghanistan. His assessment has proved correct. Pakistan has exhibited its classic example of hate-India relationship with gusto, and this time in a foreign country" (Asian Tribune, July 26).

Given the word “paranoid” seems to have been created for how New Delhi and Islamabad perceive each other’s intentions, the response of President Musharraf and the Pakistan government toward India’s actions in Afghanistan is not surprising – they view them as a mortal threat to Pakistan’s national security. “India’s motivation in Afghanistan is very clear,” Musharraf has said, “[it is] nothing further than upsetting Pakistan. Why should they [India] have consulates in Jalalabad and Khandahar? What is their interest? There is no interest other than disturbing Pakistan, doing something about Pakistan” (Asian Tribune, July 26). Musharraf also has claimed that Islamabad is “1,000 percent certain” that India’s diplomatic posts in Afghanistan are really bases for Indian intelligence to collect data about Pakistan and to provide paramilitary support for dissidents in Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province. He also has said that the United States, India, and Afghanistan are trying to weaken Pakistan and its armed forces by conspiring to destroy ISI (Daily Times [Lahore], August 5; The News, August 4).

Adding substance to the fears of Musharraf and Pakistan’s general officer corps is the reality of Washington’s growing military and nuclear cooperation with India and its support for New Delhi’s regional assertiveness. The U.S. government has urged India “to assume greater responsibility as [a] stakeholder in the international system, commensurate with its growing economic, military, and soft power” (Asia Times, August 9). India has built a military airbase at Ayni in northwestern Tajikistan, a site within striking distance of Pakistan (Asianews.it, September 13, 2006).

Much of Pakistan’s media has agreed with Musharraf – paranoia about India often unites Pakistan’s very politically partisan newspapers – describing a “trilateral consensus between Kabul, Delhi, and Washington on Islamabad alone being the primary and near-exclusive troublemaker in Afghanistan” (The News, August 6). The Indian presence in Afghanistan, according to the anti-Musharraf Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, has resulted in “[Kabul] replacing Kashmir as the main area of antagonism [and] as the main area of [Indo-Pak] antagonism” (Asia Times, August 9). At the same time, a stridently Islamist newspaper has railed against “India’s malicious intentions against Pakistan … [and] its efforts [that] aim to sabotage Pakistan-Afghanistan relations” (Ausaf [Islamabad], July 31).

If Pakistan’s ISI was involved in the 7 July bombing in Kabul, it probably will not be its last participation in anti-Indian attacks in Afghanistan. The West often forgets that intelligence services – without exception – are responsible only to their own governments and for protecting their country’s national interests. Clearly, Islamabad’s military and civilian leadership have decided that India’s expanding and U.S.-sanctioned presence in Afghanistan is a serious threat to Pakistan’s survival. “The Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies,” wrote a commentator summarizing the Pakistani view, “are engaged in undermining Pakistan’s security from two fronts. They are busy using the Baluch card and the [Pashtun] militant card,” both of which feed what is for Pakistan an intolerable secessionist fervor in the country’s western border provinces. That commentator also claimed – probably correctly -- that Pakistan now believes it has no choice but to “play as clean as the world around it” (The News, August 6).

India’s strengthening presence in Afghanistan puts the Pakistani government and military – at least in a de facto manner – on the same side as the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and Pakistan’s Islamist Pashtun organizations. The latter well remember India’s long history of supporting Soviet barbarism in Afghanistan; the Afghan communist regime of Muhammad Najibullah; and the Northern Alliance’s war with the Pashtun Taliban. In fact, the Pakistani Taliban already has said that “India is an eternal enemy of the Ummah [Islamic community] and would be confronted after defeating the allied forces stationed in Afghanistan” (The News, August 5). While a decision to increase aid to Arab and Pashtun mujahideen will anger Washington and NATO, Islamabad will do so because it believes a pro-Indian government in Kabul, and the likelihood it would permit a permanent Indian presence in Afghanistan, poses an existential threat to Pakistan’s survival. Thus, the West’s lingering Cold War confidence that all nations can have the same interests in promoting peace and prosperity has crumpled in Afghanistan. It has, moreover, created a new venue for a possible confrontation between South Asia’s two paranoid nuclear powers.

Thats a good article...

Do not forget that we won the covert war of the centruy when we beat the soviets in afghanistan...

This was done with full US backing... Charlie Wilson's war to dekhi ho gi aap logon nay...

It is my frank opinion that we are currently looking at a similar war being directed at us...

The semantics are the same... India and Afghanistan are being used the same way we were used against the soviets...

The first step in tackling this issue would be to acknowledge that this is what is infact happening...

Looks like India is already being caught with pants down to the ankles in kashmir and Assam and mayor of Kabul even today struggles to control outskirts of Kabul.

That leaves us .... Its the need of the hour that the presidency be left untouched, and Nawaz must not keep the nation hostage to his ego. But may be thats asking too much from Ameer Ul Momenin Ganja

i hate karzai n da afghan government from my heart but you have to remember that you cannot blame normal afghanis for this, some of them among them are against pakistan but the real afghan public in afghanistan u see in afghan cafes, they aren't anti-pakistan