India, Pakistan break the ice, but chill remains

Good chemistry but poor trust mark the dialogue

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M K Bhadrakumar

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Amid much grandstanding, the India-Pakistan “dialogue” got off to a start in New Delhi on Thursday – albeit a somewhat bumpy one. No immediate breakthrough in frosty ties was expected, nor was one achieved. The United States, which is brokering the structured talks at the Foreign Ministry-level, should heave a sigh of relief that the ball is rolling after a 14-month hiatus.

The approach of the Indian and Pakistani sides presents a study in contrast, although both saw the other as desperately keen for talks to resume. India always held dialogue as a trump card to force Pakistan to respond to its demands to curb the activities of terrorist groups. On its part, Islamabad presumed that India “panicked” at the prospect of regional isolation on its part after placing itself brilliantly to seek leverage with the US from its “strategic assets” – the Taliban – in the endgame in Afghanistan.

Neither assumption is valid. Delhi ought to realize that despite its stubborn refusal to talk, Islamabad parried its demand to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure with links to the Pakistani security establishment that bleeds India. Indeed, indications are that Pakistan envisages the continued use of terrorism as a state policy vis-a-vis India.

Equally, Islamabad is naive to think Delhi will roll over and accept a Taliban regime in Kabul. Indeed, India has several big advantages insofar as its economy is robustly coasting toward a 9% growth rate and it isn’t a basket case needing a constant infusion of American aid, apart from enjoying the political stability that comes with civilian supremacy in government.

The Indians used the talks on Thursday to push terrorism to center stage. The Indian brief seems to have been as hard as nails, with Delhi handing over three dossiers listing Pakistan-based terrorists, while its projection in the run-up was as smooth as silk, with Delhi presenting itself as reasonable and open to exchanges on a range of bilateral issues.

The Pakistani side apparently did not expect Delhi to name a senior serving Pakistani military official as a terrorist. Given the political realities in Pakistan with the military calling the shots, Delhi’s allegation almost instinctively forced the suave Pakistani Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir, who led the visiting delegation and who is well regarded in Delhi, to launch an uncharacteristic 90-minute televised diatribe against India at a press conference in the Pakistani chancery.

How the Indian allegation regarding the Pakistani military officer pans out remains to be seen since it constitutes a virtual finger-pointing of the army chief in Rawalpindi, General Pervez Kiani, as the mastermind behind terrorism in the sub-continent.

We may expect storms in the days ahead, and how big the American umbrella is to ferry home the Indians and the Pakistanis in the event of a sudden downpour becomes an element in the Barack Obama administration’s checklist, alongside the attendant woes of the war in Afghanistan.

The audacity of Obama’s hope is simply stunning - pick up the Pakistani military to be a key ally of both the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the fulfillment of strategy on Afghanistan and Central Asia, while stringing Delhi along as a “strategic partner” in encounters with a rising China and resurgent Russia.

Obama faces an acute dilemma. Time is short and he desperately needs the Pakistani military to bring the Taliban in from the cold to the negotiating table, without which the bleeding of the US’s Afghan wound won’t stop. The Pakistani military senses Obama’s need and it knows it is immensely experienced in serving Washington’s interests in the Hindu Kush – but for a price.

The Pakistani wish-list is demanding. The military expects to be built up by Washington to a near parity in conventional strength with its Indian adversary. It also deserves a nuclear deal similar to the one the George W Bush administration granted India. It cannot and will not accept any thinking in Washington that attributes the role of a regional superpower to India; and it expects a US mediatory role to pressure India to settle the Kashmir dispute.

In essence, Pakistan seeks a strategic relationship with the US that duly recognizes its own legitimate claim as a regional power that goes beyond the imperatives of the Afghan war or NATO’s enlargement in Central Asia.

Delhi – and indeed other regional powers – will be keenly watching how far Obama bends to accommodate Pakistan. Meanwhile, a series of consultations with other key players with stakes in Obama’s regional policies is beginning. Indian Foreign Minister S M Krishna is scheduled to visit Beijing; Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is due to visit Delhi in March; and a round of ministerial consultation with Iran may come up in May.

However, Delhi may see no real need to seek an entente cordiale with third parties in order to catch Obama’s eye. India’s ties with the US are steadily deepening and unlike in the case with Pakistan, strategic partnership with the US goes down extremely well with the Indian elites and public opinion. It cannot be lost on Washington that India is indeed one of the few “natural allies” left on the planet for the US and unlike the case with Pakistan, Delhi promises a durable relationship of intrinsic worth.

Why should the US, therefore, kill the goose that lays the golden egg? Delhi expects Washington not to tread on India’s core interests and concerns and estimates that a relationship of mutual trust and global partnership isn’t too much to ask.

While the US has seldom been so influential in the sub-continent, a striking parallel can be drawn with the early 1960s after the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict. Chinese “communist expansionism” was the core US agenda and Washington counted on keeping both India and Pakistan as allies – and perhaps made its most direct intervention to settle the Kashmir dispute so that its geostrategy could work.

However, as Howard Schaffer, an experienced former US ambassador, wrote in a recent book, at a certain point the John F Kennedy administration saw the danger of annoying India by pressuring it on Kashmir lest Delhi drift toward Beijing for a normalization of relations.

But historical analogies apart, the nascent India-Pakistan dialogue process that started in Delhi on Thursday will likely continue. It seems reasonable to estimate that despite hardliners in both countries, Delhi and Islamabad will realize the usefulness of an incremental dialogue process.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is an ardent advocate of a transformation of the adversarial India-Pakistan relationship on lines similar to the historic French-German concord of the 1950s. But there is also some disarray insofar as the Indian security establishment doesn’t seem to share his vision and often gives into silly pastimes of laying booby traps along the path of India-Pakistan normalization.

The prime ministers of India and Pakistan are bound to come across one another on April 28-29 at a summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in the Bhutanese capital of Thimpu.

Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao revealed that Bashir invited her to visit Islamabad for the next round of talks. Will they schedule a session in late March or early April?

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M K Bhadrakumar has been a former career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service.

Source : text – Originally published in Asia Times, cross posted at GeoploticaNWO Title Image: AFP / DAWN.COM

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Israel`s Region-wide Underground War

Palestinians carry a picture of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, one of the founders of Hamas’ military wing, as others carry his coffin, left, during his funeral procession at the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, near Damascus. File photo: AP.

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Seumas Milne

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Imagine for a moment what the reaction would be if Iranian intelligence was almost universally believed to have assassinated a leader of one of the organisations fighting the Tehran government in a western-friendly state.  Then consider how Britain, let alone the US, might respond if the killers had carried out the operation using forged or stolen passports of citizens of four European states, including Britain, with dual Iranian nationality.

You can be sure it would have triggered a major international storm, stentorian declarations about the threat of state-sponsored terrorism, and perhaps a debate at the UN Security Council, with demands for harsher sanctions against an increasingly dangerous Islamic republic.

Substitute Israel for Iran, and the first part of that scenario is exactly what happened in Dubai last month. A senior Hamas official, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, was murdered in his hotel room in what was widely assumed from the start to be an operation by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad.  Less than a month later, strong suspicion has turned to as good as certainty with the revelation that the hit team had used the passport identities of six Britons with dual nationality and currently living in Israel.

But instead of setting off a diplomatic backlash, the British government sat on its hands for almost a week after it was reportedly first passed details of the passport abuse.  And while the Foreign Office finally summoned the Israeli ambassador to “share information”, rather than protest, Gordon Brown could yesterday only promise a “full investigation”.

In parallel with this languid official response, most of the British media has treated the assassination more as a ripping spy yarn than a bloody scandal which has put British citizens at greater risk by association with Mossad death squads.  It was an “audacious hit”, the Daily Mail enthused, straight out of a “Frederick Forsyth page-turner”, while theTimes revelled in an attack that resembled nothing so much as a “well-plotted murder mystery”.

Running throughout all this is a breathless awe at Mossad’s reputation for ruthless brilliance in seeking out and destroying Israel’s enemies.  In reality, the Dubai operation was badly bungled, as the Israeli press has already started to acknowledge.  Despite having the relatively easy target of an unarmed man in a luxury hotel in a non-hostile Gulf state, Mossad managed to get its agents repeatedly caught on CCTV and effectively exposed Israel’s responsibility through the ham fisted passport scam.

Dubai follows a long history of Mossad bungles, from its accidental 1970s killing of a Moroccan waiter in Norway, mistaken for a Palestinian Black September leader, through its failed assassination attempt against the Hamas leader Khalid Mish’al in Jordan in 1997, when agents had to take refuge in Israel’s embassy and the US forced Israel to produce the antidote for the nerve toxin used in the attack.

In that case, the would-be assassins were carrying the Canadian passports of Israeli citizens, apparently with their knowledge.  But while Mossad has used British documents in other attacks, it has naturally steered clear of faking the passports of its US sponsor.  So at the same time as Israel is demanding the British government change the law without delay to prevent the arrest of visiting Israeli leaders on war crimes charges, what is Britain planning to do over the abuse of its citizens’ identity to carry out state-directed murder?

Very little, it seems.  Part of the explanation has to be that Britain and the US have of course been carrying out their own assassination campaigns, in violation of the laws of war, in Iraq and Afghanistan.  In his new book on secret SAS operations in occupied Iraq, Mark Urban estimates that 350 to 400 were killed in covert British attacks.  The Joint Special Operations Command run by General Stanley McChrystal, now US commander in Afghanistan, was responsible for perhaps 3,000 deaths.  In Pakistan, US drone assassination attacks are now routinely carried out against Taliban and al-Qaida targets, real or imagined.

And since launching its war on terror, the US has also adopted Israel’s practice, stretching back decades, of carrying out killings far from the theatre of war.  First, Israel’s attacks were targeted against PLO leaders; more recently against the Islamists.  But since the fiasco of the Mish’al plot, its assassinations have mostly been confined to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where Israel made a determined attempt over the past decade to decapitate Hamas of its entire leadership.

Now that focus has again widened. Under the direction of Mossad director Meir Dagan, Israel is running a region-wide underground war against the leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas — which have both maintained an effective ceasefire for more than a year — and their Syrian and Iranian backers.  Since the killing of veteran Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus in 2008, Israeli-hallmarked assassinations have multiplied in Lebanon, Syria and Iran.

But coldblooded killing isn’t only a morally repugnant crime. The lesson of colonial history is that decapitation campaigns against national resistance movements don’t work.  In the short term they can disrupt and demoralise, but if the movement is socially rooted, other leaders or even organisations will take their place.  That was Israel’s experience when it killed the Hezbollah leader Abbas al-Musawi and his family in the early 1990s, only for him to be succeeded by the more effective and charismatic Hassan Nasrallah.

Such campaigns also tend to spread the war. Unlike the historic PLO factions, Hamas has always confined its armed attacks to Israel and the Palestinian territories.  Writing in the Guardian in 2007, Mish’al confirmed the “principle that the resistance should only be fought in Palestine“. But in the aftermath of the Dubai assassination, Hamas leaders have started to hint strongly that policy could now change, and that they could respond to Israel’s attacks in “the international arena”.

If so, it would give an added dimension to the assessment by Ben Caspit in the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv yesterday that the Dubai killing had been a “tactical operational success, but a strategic failure”.  So far the response of British ministers to Mossad’s provocation has been craven.  Unless that changes fast, they can only increase the risk of being drawn further into a conflict ready to erupt again at any time.

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–Seumas Milne [MrZine Monthly Magazine] is a Guardian columnist and associate editor. He is also the author of The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners. This article was first published by the Guardian on 18 February 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes. http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/

Source: Mathaba

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Marjah: ‘This is not Fallujah’

Operation Moshtarak, the largest operation in Afghanistan since the Taliban were overthrown, will be worth the human costs that will be suffered, says British General Sir Richard Dannatt.

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A NEW GENTLER WAR??

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Eric Walberg

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So says McChrystal, as the US surge goes full steam ahead in Marjah — a new “gentler” war.

Apart for Abu Ghraib, Fallujah is perhaps the Iraq war’s defining moment. The hatred and resentment of the occupied people found a catalyst in the four Blackwater mercenaries, who were killed and strung up, and no doubt deserved their fate, certainly as symbols of a cynical, illegal invasion. The US soldiers — who are just as mercenary, being a professional army invading a country sans provocation — came and “destroyed the village to save it.”The “success” of the blitzkrieg war in Iraq has been difficult to duplicate in Afghanistan, “the heart of darkness”, one British commander quipped to his troops as they went into battle, despite dropping far more bombs — many of them radioactive.

The unflagging resistance of the Afghans, their refusal to submit to the occupiers, is that because they realise the invaders are not there for their purported altruistic motives. The thousands of civilians and resistance fighters who have been killed by airstrikes — none of them guilty of anything more egregious than defending their homeland — is more than ample proof, as is the craven propping up of a US-imposed government, and the proliferation of US bases in the country. The unapologetically un-Islamic ways of the invaders, their lack of even the remotest understanding of the people they are occupying, is a constant insult to a proud and ancient people.

The new exit plan, so it goes, involves “clearing” all regions of Taliban — US Marines call it “mowing the grass”, acknowledging that as soon as they murder one group of resisters and leave, more pop up. The “new” strategy is to bring in ready-made Afghan administrators and police to create a prosperous, peaceful society once the “enemy” have been destroyed, “winning the hearts and minds” of the locals. “We’ve got a government in a box, ready to roll in,” said chief honcho General Stanley McChrystal.

But wait a moment. Is it possible the invaders are the enemy? And who are these newly discovered Afghan officials? Are (famously corrupt) Afghan government officials and police nominally loyal to NATO forces, trucked in by the invaders, going to be welcome in remote villages as ready-made trusted representatives of the people? And wasn’t this precisely the failed policy the US followed in Vietnam ? This old “new” policy was what convinced United States President Barack Obama to go along grudgingly with the Pentagon’s demands to radically increase NATO force — though on the condition that the whole operation be complete by next year. He clearly was given no choice in the matter, and his “ultimatum” was dismissed by US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates moments after Obama made it.

Not surprisingly, NATO forces have met strong resistance in Marjah as their onslaught enters its second week, from both the incredible, ragtag resistance and from locals, who doubt that the postwar reality will correspond remotely to the picture the invaders are painting. Tribal elders in Helmand this week called for an end to the “Moshtarak” offensive, citing Western troops’ disregard for civilian lives. Realising their “shock and awe” bombing kills civilians and turns locals against them, the invaders have reluctantly cut back, now authorising them only under “very limited and prescribed conditions.” Even so, over 50 civilians are among the dead so far — 27 in an airstrike in Uruzgan Province — and “friendly fire” killed seven Afghan police. Six occupiers were killed in one day alone, bringing NATO losses to 18 at the time of writing.

The latest propaganda ploy is to accuse the Taliban of using locals as “human shields” and of holing up near civilians. But surely it is the NATO forces that are using locals as human shields, invading their homes in search of the “enemy”, forcing them to betray their children and friends, often under torture in Afghan-run prisons. Even those Afghans who collaborate with the occupiers, taking their dollars, guns and uniforms, are in effect human shields for the troops. And when they realise their lives are on the line, they flee their paymasters. How else to explain the 25 police officers who left their posts last week and “defected” to the Taliban in Chak?

But Marjah is really just a microcosm for what the US is doing at this very moment around the globe — waging a veritable war on the world, in Iraq, Pakistan, expanding into Yemen, Somalia, Iran, supplementing bombs and soldiers with militarised sea lanes, forward military and missile bases on every continent, encircling “enemies” Russia and China.

The process is merely accelerating as the US loses its traditional edge in the world economy, outpaced by China . It is the logical next step for a deeply illogical economic system. It can’t be repeated too often: the US is frantically trying to consolidate its sole superpower status militarily before it loses the economic war.

Marjah also represents the US project of replacing the UN with NATO as the world’s peacekeeper. The coalition of almost 60 nations is pursuing an illegal war launched by the US, with the UN — the only legitimate forum for world peacekeeping — now in tow solely as window dressing. Though not quite. Deputy special representative of the secretary general Robert Watkins said the UN will not be involved in NATO’s reconstruction plans for Marjah “because we would not want to have the humanitarian activities we deliver to be linked with military activity.”

Today’s Russia, unhappy with the Yelstin-era acquiescence to a subservient role in the US empire, is the only country standing up to the US empire. The new military doctrine announced by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev earlier this month is unwavering in its condemnation of US plans. The fact that NATO is attempting to “globalise its functions in contravention of international law” is threat Number One, followed by NATO’s encirclement of Russia and US forward missile bases, now rapidly being deployed around the world — and Russia. International terrorism is ninth out of 11 threats listed. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin reiterated this on Tuesday, saying Russia will give priority to nuclear deterrence, space and air defense in its military reforms.

The Russians argue that the OSCE should have been the vehicle for European security after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but instead, the US chose to expand NATO. This meant not uniting Europe, but merely moving the dividing line east, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last week at the Munich Conference on Security. Lavrov pointed to the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and the tragedy in the Caucasus in August 2008 as evidence that the OSCE had failed to rise to the challenge of maintaining peace in Europe. The OSCE Permanent Council knew about the Georgian leaders’ preparations for a military attack but took no measures. The Russia-NATO Council also failed when members blocked Russia’s request to convene an urgent meeting when the military actions were at their height.

Last month’s London conference on Afghanistan was presented in the West as a benign effort to provide economic development and humanitarian aid. It was not a UN conference, but “the international community coming together to fully align military and civilian resources behind an Afghan-led political strategy”, graced by the UN secretary general’s presence. It was preceded by two days of meetings between top military commanders of almost a third of the world’s nations at NATO headquarters in Brussels, and followed by two days of meetings by NATO and allied defense chiefs last week in Istanbul, the latter attended by Israeli Chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.

The brazen involvement of Israel in a war against Islamic Afghanistan, where Israeli drones have killed and continue to kill civilians and resisters, suggests what this war really represents. The invaders should note that their nickname “Moshtarak” (collective) derives from the same Arabic root as shirk (idolatry). Though Pentagon planners don’t register such subtleties, the locals surely do.

Marjah is indeed Fallujah. Like Fallujah, it will become a symbol, the defining moment in the war against the Afghan people. US Marines may “mow the grass”, eradicate the “weeds”, and plant their sterile seeds of Western-style democracy and economic prosperity as much as they like. However, “the Taliban is the future, the Americans are the past in Afghanistan,” as former head of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Hamid Gul recently told Al-Jazeera. This is clear to any sensible observer.

Gul angrily notes that it is Afghanistan’s neighbours, in particular, Pakistan, that will be left holding the bag when the inevitable arrives. “The OIC and the Muslim countries will have to come in and play their part. Then Afghanistan can redeem itself.” The sooner the US accepts the inevitable, the fewer will be the needless deaths of both Americans, Europeans and Afghans.

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Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly

Source: text- Originally published in Information Clearing House, cross posted at Op-Ed News Title Image: Telegraph.co.uk

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Tear gas in Kashmir

women shout slogans during the funeral procession of teenager Zahid Farooqon the outskirts of Srinagar, Saturday, Feb. 6, 2010. Fresh protests erupted fueled by the death of the second teenager on Friday, as thousands of soldiers in riot gear patrolled the streets in the capital of Kashmir valley for three straight days to quell protests.

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“ENJOY” THE BEAUTY WHILE ON DUTY

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JEFFREY STERN

TO CONTROL THE MOBS, CONTROLLERS MUST REMAIN SANE

When you fire a tear gas shell, you’re supposed to aim below the chest. That’s basically agreed upon, it’s written somewhere: an understanding extracted from a code of conduct housed in an operating manual stuck in someone’s desk drawer. “The policemen are trained to fire the tear gas shells in a parabolic way and not directly,” the Inspector General of Kashmir’s police force told a local paper, describing in a decidedly sterile manner the intended trajectory of a little steel projectile whose intended target is, after all, civilians.

It’s also understood that often, this does not happen. Tear gas shells rocket off walls and ricochet and dance and skip across the concrete, so “non-lethal” intentions don’t necessarily beget non-lethal results. You don’t know where the thing is going to end up really, and sometimes — in the case of especially zealous protesters — where it ends up is hurtling back through the air at you. So you fire them where you want the gas to go and hope you don’t learn later that it hit a soft part of someone’s body, producing the precise inverse of the effect you intended. “Minimum force” weapons can prove plenty forceful, and “crowd control” measures sometimes wind up rousing bigger and angrier crowds.

NON LETHAL INTENTIONS- BUT LETHAL RESULTS

The wayward tear gas canister is perhaps an apt metaphor for India’s problem in its Himalayan northwest, where it administers to a province of people who don’t want it there, and where it is trying to control the population with enough force that Indian authority is respected; not so much that it’s resented.And it’s a wayward tear gas canister that catalyzed violence last fortnight in Kashmir, after an incident that began when a 14-year-old boy headed out to play cricket with his friends on January 31.

By way of explanation, if not necessarily apology, for the events that followed, the director general of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) later said that “stone pelting” is “a new form of gunless terrorism.” He lamented bodily injuries of unspecified severity suffered by his men, and cited “close to 400 vehicles damaged in the last one-and-a-half year.”

He might have gone on to complain about name-calling and rude language. Indeed, for all its tactical prowess, the CRPF falters when it comes to PR. Its concept of a public information campaign is a series of signs at security checkpoints across Kashmir that read enjoy the beauty, we are on duty, an almost satirically blithe appeal coming from hardened counterinsurgency men with big weapons and grim faces.

ENJOY THE BEAUTY WHILE ON DUTY

And yet, one can’t fault them for trying to make their name smell a little better in a place where they’ve come to stand for everything the people hate. To many Kashmiris, the very presence of the paramilitary CRPF constitutes an insidious kind of insult. Not just because the paramilitaries are viewed as a Hindu force in the majority Muslim Kashmir, but because they’re perceived to be hard men trained to fight militants, and having them keep the peace on city streets feels a little like calling in Navy SEALS to mediate bar fights.

That New Delhi sends paramilitaries to do crowd control in Kashmir suggests to Kashmiris that India regards the people there as indistinct from al Qaeda, Lashkar-e Tayyaba, or other Pakistan-based militants. In other words, despite New Delhi reducing the paramilitary presence in Kashmir year by year, Kashmiris feel their being there at all is an indication that India thinks of all Kashmiris — Indian citizens — as terrorists.

So was the situation in Kashmir during last Sunday of January sitting at a high simmer, when an assistant sub-inspector with the Jammu and Kashmir police force fired a teargas canister in an apparently un-parabolic manner, hitting a teenage boy named Wamiq Farooq in the head and killing him.

A number of things happened next. Protests erupted in towns and villages all over the valley, people taking to the streets as reports emerged of another boy taking a plastic pellet in the forehead and losing his sight, one getting a canister in the belly and losing his spleen, still others struck through with pellets but preferring to forgo treatment for fear of police waiting at hospitals, ready to arrest those carrying proof of participation in protests on (or in) their bodies. Each story instigated new and more intense protests, as local journalists reported that the government arrested close to 100 peopleby its own count and many more by everyone else’s, and injuries suffered by citizens, police, and paramilitaries numbered in the hundreds.

As news of the violence made its way west, Pakistanis already planning to demonstrate for “Solidarity Day,” an annual day of protest against Indian control in Kashmir took to the streets to support their (mostly) Muslim brothers on the Indian side of the Line of Control, forming human chains in Islamabad and Muzaffarabad, holding rallies in Lahore and Peshawar.

BLOOD FOR BLOOD,  CRY THE KASHMIRIS NOW

Last Friday amidst growing protests, a member of one of the paramilitary forces operating in the valley shot and killed a 17-year-old named Zahid Farooq (no relation to Wamiq), sending the situation over the edge. Cries of “blood for blood” and “we want freedom” sounded out at his funeral a day later, and Srinagar fell under an even tighter grip of government forces. The government restricted the assembly of more than four people, and shut down roads.

I reached a journalist friend on the phone, out of breath and frantic, who told me “everything is closed. We are not being allowed to go to places, I tried my best to go to one of the places where they imposed the curfew and are now protesting.” As he spoke, he became so exercised that that he began pushing keys on the dial pad accidentally. “Downtown area Srinagar,” he said, “I can’t get there, nobody is being allowed, the protesters are only getting there through back alleys.” Before hanging up, he told me, “It is totally different this time. The youth are very angry; I see rage in their eyes, more so than ever before.”

Here is what’s strange about the latest boiling-over in Kashmir: the youth in the streets aren’t responding to orders, they’re giving them. The main Muslim party in Kashmir, the All Parties Hurriyat conference, initially declared a one-day strike, but a group of twenty or so young men assembled a conference of their own and announced they wouldn’t listen to Hurriyat leaders; they wanted a longer strike, four days instead of one. The people struck for four. And after more violence, they struck some more.

KASHMIR’S NEW, YOUNG GENERATION IS BORN ON THE BATTLEFIELD

As influence in Kashmir has percolated from state officials down to religious leaders, and finally, to young men, New Delhi will have a harder and harder time finding people to negotiate with. A government minister can’t hold two-party talks with teenagers, but increasingly it’s the disenfranchised youth who have the pulse of the people, and the inclination to act decisively.

Frustrated young men are taking the torch from older separatist leaders who’ve become more ruminative in their twilight. “After twenty years of violence, the new generation which is now on the street was born on a battlefield,” says Inpreet Kaur, another Kashmiri-born journalist. “They are born under the shadow of a gun. For them, these agitations are part of life. The protests are part of life.

Violence is a point or normalcy for this generation.” So youth make up the new power bloc, a phenomenon that in both origin and implication is not unlike the Taliban (“the students”) storming forth from the madrassas in Pakistan in the nineties, or al Shabaab (“the lads”) lording over war-torn Somalia.

India does not appear to be addressing disenfranchised youth in Kashmir very well. India has been remarkably proactive in advocating negotiations with Pakistan, and deserves credit for any progress the two countries make. The Byzantium of backroom negotiations that characterize Indian geopolitics is dizzying, and because most negotiations related to Kashmir are necessarily secret, it’s impossible to fairly evaluate New Delhi’s efforts to mitigate the Kashmir crisis.

Two weeks ago, however, India appointed a new national security advisor with a more flexible stance towards Pakistan than his predecessor, and for this weekend, India publicly proposed foreign-secretary-level negotiations with its archrival. If Pakistan responds favorably to these steps, India’s higher-road statecraft could lead to tangible progress. But it will do little to defuse Kashmir, because even if Pakistan and India were, hypothetically, to agree on Kashmir, Kashmiris likely wouldn’t.

KASHMIRIS FEEL THEY ARE THE ASIAN PALESTINE FIGHTING A KASHMIRI INTIFADA

While India is closer to bilateral talks, “trilateral” talks — negotiations which actually include Kashmir — could never be publicly entertained. Negotiations with Kashmir would suggest that Kashmir is an autonomous region, that it’s not is one of India’s central contentions. Kashmir does not belong to Pakistan, Kashmir belongs to India, so goes the logic, and that Kashmir might belong to itself is not an option India has political room to consider.

They’ve tried to, even recently. New Delhi held “quiet diplomacy” talks with Kashmir’s Hurriyat conference last fall, but when The Hindu reported the story, the project was scuttled, and Kashmiris were left to doing what they’ve been doing as long as they can remember: watching Pakistan and India volley back and forth over their heads, feeling sometimes ignored, sometimes like puppets between two disputants, children manipulated by two feuding parents.

It is fitting, then, that the region’s fate depends on its children. Some of the young Kashmiris have taken to calling themselves the Asian Palestine, and they believe they’re fighting the Kashmiri intifada.

 

The antidote is better development, hospitals, opportunities for work and normalized political engagement. But as it stands, “the only relief the young people are getting is through religion,” the Kashmiri journalist Kaur says. “On the ground you don’t see job opportunities.

So what is happening is that you’re starting to hear of local young people getting involved in militancy against the government.” The trend is shifting from Pakistani terrorists hopping (or being shoved) across the Line of Control into India to wreak havoc, more now to Indian citizens training to confront India. Official estimates place the number of Kashmiris who’ve gone into Pakistan for training at 800, but the figure could be significantly more.

 

Riding the metro in New Delhi as he spoke to me, speaking low and covering the receiver so as not to be overheard, Kaur explained the significance of a recent report that eight teenage boys were arrested on their way to Pakistan, allegedly intending to receive militant training. “According to the police,” he said, “all these boys were from South Kashmir, they were young new recruits. What is the true story? We don’t know.” But when young people get caught or go missing in Kashmir, everyone assumes the worst.

OPENING OF SHOPS AND CLEAR ROADS IN KASHMIR DON’’T MEAN THE PROBLEM IS DYING OFF

On Tuesday, shops reopened and the government cleared roads they had blocked, returning Kashmir to a tentative kind of normalcy. “But that doesn’t mean Kashmir will die off,” Kaur says. “The situation is best suited for pan-Islamic militants, and they’re growing into a mass movement. They need a political solution. This disease is slowly growing.”

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Jeffrey Stern is the international engagement manager at the National Constitution Center and a journalist who spent much of the last two years traveling across South Asia.

Source: text: afpakforeignpolicy.comTitle Image

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Sikh Killings By Militants Confirm Deep RAW-TTP Links

A large number of Sikh families have migrated from Orakzai after having been threatened by Hakimullah Mehsud led militants. —AP/File Photo

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SIKH KILLINGS BY MILLITANTS CONFIRM DEEP RAW-TTP LINKS

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by Afrasiab Khan & Pramjeet Kaur

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First a news item that appeared in the daily Dawn datelined 22 Feb. 21010.

LANDI KOTAL: Militants have beheaded a kidnapped Sikh in Tirah valley of Khyber Agency after his relatives failed to pay ransom, according to his family.

The vanishing beauty of Kahoon Valley

Tanvir Kausar Mughal

Long ago, in 1965, when I was 10 years old, I was travelling with my father in the beautiful mountains of the Salt Ranges. We were traversing the 14 kilometres from Khewra to Wahulla on foot. On a whim, my father took an alternate route to meet relatives in Choa Saidan Shah, a beautiful town surrounded by hills. I was happy because the detour meant we would spend a few extra hours in the lush, green pastures.

Choa Saida Shah was a dream land, and a stream flowing through the heart of this hilly paradise was its most idyllic feature. The stream’s water level was four to five feet below the ground. Some ancient people had erected a wall of white and red stones to preserve the stream’s natural beauty and purity for future generations to enjoy the fresh waters. After crossing the town, the stream would run westwards through the beautiful landscapes of the famous Salt Ranges, ultimately mingling with the Jhelum River.

It was time for prayers when my father and I arrived at Choa Saida Shah, so my father performed ablutions along the bank of the stream, under the cool shadow of eucalyptus trees. He offered his prayers there, too, while I quenched my thirst and bathed in the cool fresh water. Even 45 years later, I can feel the coolness of that water in my soul.

Forty-five years on from that day, I found myself standing on the banks of the same stream, now pressing a handkerchief to my nose to stop from inhaling the most noxious odours I have ever encountered. With a severe tug of grief and agony, I realised that I had lost my paradise forever.

With a broken heart, I began to stroll along the stream, and with every step, the smell worsened, soon becoming unbearable. Then, at a distance, I saw more than 50 white and light brown swans swimming in the black, dirty sewerage water that now coursed where a clean stream had been. They clearly had no other option.

Continuing my walk, I observed that the mountains encircling the valley had been set on fire, eliminating wildlife, beautiful birds, and plants.

It also became apparent that, on rainy days, when the stream’s water level rises, floating garbage, torn clothes, and multicoloured shopping bags get caught on the lower branches of the trees standing on both banks. Moreover, foam pieces used by shopkeepers for packing had accumulated on tiny islands within the stream, making the landscape seem even uglier.

Turning away from the stream, I realised the source of this environmental degradation. One bank of the stream is fully populated by wooden cabins and shops. The shopkeepers who work and reside here litter the stream day and night with garbage, rotten meat, vegetable waste – even animal carcasses can be seen floating downstream. The municipality employees themselves do not desist from using the stream as a huge garbage bank.

I have always thought that purity of mind, which is essential for clear reasoning, artistic inspiration, and wisdom, has to stem from a pure environment. For this reason, in the reflection of the black and murky water of this polluted stream, I expect to see the dark future of those inhabiting Choa Saida Shah.

Since my childhood, I have played along this stream, swum in it through the hot summers, and drunk its clean, sweet water. If I were to tell my children about those days, they would not believe me. Today, Choa Saida Shah is no longer a dream land; it is a filthy town with a sewerage canal flowing through it. Sadly, this misfortune is not limited to the Kahoon Valley of Punjab’s Chakwal district – all the ponds, streams, springs, and rivers of this country face similar man-made calamities.

The responsibility for the extent of environmental damage does not lie on the leadership alone. Our intellectuals do not research, study, or publish anything on the environment. Our artists ignore this aspect of the nation’s plight. Even our religious preachers, who stress bodily cleanliness, have never spoken a word about the sacred responsibility to keep the environment clean as well. They never mention the paradise we have here on earth, and that we are slowly depriving ourselves of. They say destiny will decide everyting.

It seems, however, that pleasant walks in the hills and vales of Kahoon Valley, through green grass, under white clouds, towards clear waters, do not lie in the destiny of future generations of Pakistanis.

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Source:

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Is India-Pakistan entente possible?

For India, the solution to the conflict will allow it to play a meaningful role in the region. — Photo by AFP

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INDIA PAKISTAN DIALOGUE PROCESS

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[Note for WoP readers: The Talks are scheduled between two neighbors who ever since independence have been on a warring path. People in South Asia as well as international observers have always been urging the two countries for such a process. Unfortunately the governments in both countries backtracked from these peace talks and a more belligerent stance was adopted particularly from the Indian side after the Mumabai attacks of Nov 2008. So now when these talks are being held, the holding these talks itself is a welcome sign for peace in the region.

My friend Peter Chamberlin has put in very pertinent remarks on this subject, so before you go to the main piece jotted down by Izzuddin Pal, first read this. Peter writes:-

INDIA under THREAT

Blankets cover bodies of Indian soldiers killed by insurgents in India’s West Bengal state. Maoist guerrillas are reported to be active in the 220 districts across 20 states and affects 40 per cent of the geographical area of the country.

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Gamini Weerakoon

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Despite India’s demonstration of its military and economic prowess beyond its borders, very recent events have demonstrated the extreme vulnerability of its internal security. On February 7, India test fired its nuclear capable Agni 3 missile from Wheeler Island in the Bay of Bengal.

This missile has a 3500 km range and its range covers vast areas of China and Pakistan. Reports said that: ‘pin point accuracy was achieved’. Defence Minister Antony announced recently India’s plans to raise two mountain divisions in North East India ‘not against China but as a part of the policy to strengthen armed forces in that region’. Meanwhile India has committed $ 1.3 billion in development assistance and infrastructure in Afghanistan.

HOME GROWN THREAT

On February 10 in a remote camp in Midnapore (West Bengal) 24 jawans (soldiers) of the Eastern Front Rifles in the Sildha camp were killed by Maoist guerrillas who arrived on motor cycles and four wheeled vehicles. Reports said that these poorly trained soldiers deployed to combat the Maoist guerrillas in an operation launched by the central government known as Operation Green Hunt against the guerrillas were sitting ducks.

Naxal Leader Kiserji had said that the attack was an answer to the government operation against them and asked that it be called off.

This movement that commenced in 1967 following the split of the Communist Party of India was recently described by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the greatest security threat to India. The movement has spread to 220 districts across 20 states and affects 40 per cent of the geographical area of the country. It controls a region known as the Red Corridor extending over 92,000 sq miles and the Indian intelligence organisation, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) estimated the strength of the Naxalites last year at 50,000 regular cadres in mass organisations with millions of sympathisers. The affected states are: West Bengal, Chattisgarh, Orissa, Andra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Jhakarland, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Map showing The Red Corridor of India

WRETCHED OF THE EARTH

This movement that has lasted for over four decades comprises the Wretched of the Earth of India. They are tribals, untouchables, and other spurned castes but also include radical students in large numbers as well as intellectuals. Some of the Naxals identified have been alumni of well known colleges whose products include leading Indian politicians. But the movement has failed to attract the support of mainstream political parties.

Reports speak of the state machinery systematically annihilating student supporters. Human rights groups have expressed concern about disappearance of such students and some estimates speak of 5000 Bengali students and intellectuals being killed. At the inception of the movement it was declared that assassination of ‘class enemies’ was an objective and that revolutionary warfare was to take place not only in the countryside but everywhere. Well known leader Majumdar was arrested and died in custody under ‘mysterious circumstances’. The movement poses a serious challenge to the Indian state but can it be eliminated by the use of force as is being presently attempted?

To those observers of the rise of India under free market capitalism the high rise buildings of Mumbai with vast areas of slum land around demonstrates the paradox of modern India.

The Naxalite movement originated during the days of Nehruvian socialism under Indira Gandhi. Socialism it is said has the capacity to make every one poor and did little to alleviate the abjectly poor. Now under free market capitalism, the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. How long will it take for the wealth to trickle down from the high rise buildings to the slum lands of Mumbai?

AL-QAEDA THREAT

An incident of even graver threat to the security of the Indian state was witnessed on February 13 when a bomb went off in a popular restaurant in the western city of Pune killing eight and injuring 33. This was the first such attack in India after Mumbai terrorist attack in November 2008. The Pune attack was significant in that responsibility for the attack was claimed by an organisation styled as the Indian Mujahideen. This group has been identified by the Indian media as a front created by the Islamic terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba ( LeT ), operating from Pakistan and another Islamic terror organisation Harkat-ul-Jihad to cover the tracks of the radical Students’ Islamic Movement of India.

[No more threats from Osama bin Laden??

India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has recently termed the Naxalites; a Maoist led movement that commenced in 1967 following the split of the Communist Party of India, as the greatest security threat to India].

It is now suspected that most of the bombings that took place in Indian cities last year were directed by LeT and carried out by the Indian Mujahideen.

A consolation for the United States and other western countries has been that even though India ranks third in terms of Muslim populated countries it has been largely left untouched by Islamic terror of the al Qaeda variety. President George W. Bush made specific mention of this in his speeches as president. If Islamic radicalism grips the Indian Muslim population of 160 million (13.3 percent) of the total Indian population, it could have immense destructive potential not only for India but entire South Asia.

Al Qaeda last week also threatened India against staging international sporting events such as the World Hockey Cup and the Commonwealth Games. A leading commander of the organisation Ilyas Kashmiri had warned the world not to send sportspeople to India, Asia Times an online internet channel said. However indications were that most countries were ignoring the threat.

Kashmir continues to rumble, and rattle India-Pakistan entente

INDO-PAK TALKS

India’s perennial problem of Kashmir remains unresolved. Kashmir is the font of most of South Asian ills and continues to be so. The two countries last week decided to hold talks at foreign secretary level on February 25 despite strong objections made in certain quarters in India that the talks should not be held in view of the Pune bombing. Indo-Pakistan talks that commenced in 2004 came to a halt after the Mumbai attacks but the Indian government and most of India’s geopolitical strategists held that nothing could be lost by holding the talks.

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Source: text, The Sunday Leader, cross posted at: There are no sunglasses Images: 1. Title image, Indian military men killed by Maoist insurgents in West Bengal 2. Middle, India’s red corridor 3. On right, Manmohan Singh & Osama bin Laden 4. Bottom, Kashmir rumbles & rattles

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India’s path to global power?

IF INDIA IS TO TAKE UP THE MANTLE OF GLOBAL LEADER STATUS, IT MUST REMAIN OPENAND WELCOMING, NOT CLOSED AND DRIVEN BY FEAR AND PREJUDICE.

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by Aijaz Zaka Syed

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Just when you think the likes of the Shiv Sena Party couldn’t get any more disingenuous and meaner, they get worse. After all, for nearly five decades Sena has done nothing but spew sweetness and light and you would think it had squeezed the last drops of political mileage out of spreading all round cheer and goodness. This time around though, it seems Sena and its rabble- rousing chief, Bal Thackeray, have finally bit off more than they can chew.

All these years, Sena has fed and grown on divisive and subversive politics. From targeting poor south Indians, or the Madrasis as they are contemptuously called, to attacking Muslims as “traitors and Pakistani agents”, Shiv Sena has swelled and expanded its ranks the way all such outfits do, by preying and playing on people’s deepest insecurities and complexes. Of late, north Indian “bhayyas”, or people from the Hindi heartland of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, have been the target of Sena’s campaign. From bashing up the north Indian youths appearing for job interviews and tests in Mumbai to attacking poor cabbies from small towns and villages working the city’s crowded streets, Shiv Sena has not just terrorised the city but has held the whole of India hostage to its brute power.

[Left: A symbol of Hindu militancy in India, Bal Thackeray, the head of Shiv Sena]

A great deal has been said about Mumbai’s infamous underworld and its stranglehold over the nation’s financial and cultural capital. But indeed it is Shiv Sena — and now its other franchise headed by Bal Thackeray’s nephew Raj Thackeray — that rules Mumbai’s streets. For years, from Bollywood’s most popular Khans to the powerful industrialists and billionaires, just about everybody who’s somebody has been cowering in their pants and paying obeisance to the deity at Matoshri from time to time. No one could survive in Mumbai by getting on the wrong side of the Sena. Ramgopal Verma captured it rather well in his dark and brooding blockbuster Sarkar, even though one couldn’t quite accept the redoubtable Amitabh Bachchan in Thackeray’s avatar. Big B succeeds in conveying the quiet menace of his character in his measure style, even glamourising the legend of Thackeray in the process.

Lately, there have been increasing signs that Mumbai, one of the greatest and most vibrant cities, wants to move on. It is showing signs of revolt against the kind of venomous politics the Sena and its allies have been playing all these years. This week, Mumbai and India sent a loud and clear message to the Thackerays, and everyone else who cared to pay attention, that they aren’t prepared to take any more baloney in the name of Marathi people and the so-called son of the soil. Shiv Sena’s tyranny is being challenged by Mumbai wallahs and ordinary Indians on two fronts: its campaign against so- called outsiders and its endless bashing of Muslims and Pakistan.

[Right: The defiant Khan (SRK) in a poster of his recently released film 'My name is KHAN'']

It was this changing mood that may have emboldened and encouraged Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to defy the Sena toughies. It was curiously uplifting to see Shah Rukh stiffen his spine and stand up to the terror tactics of the Thackerays. By refusing to eat his words criticising the exclusion of Pakistani cricketers in Indian Premier League matches, Shah Rukh may have made up for the moral spinelessness of the world’s biggest film industry all these years. The actor refused to give in and go down on his knees, as many before him repeatedly have, even when the Sena threatened to prevent the screening of his much-awaited movie, My Name is Khan. (As I write this, there are reports of Sena vandalising cinemas across the state)

For his part, Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the nation’s most celebrated political dynasty and probably a future leader of the world’s largest democracy, showed rare political and moral courage that has been lacking in the governing Congress for some time. Rahul not only took on the Sena for its campaign against north Indians by declaring that every inch of India belongs to all Indians, but he also travelled to Mumbai to take the local train to Dadar, right into the heart of Sena territory. Like a simple, ordinary guy confronting a neighbourhood bully in a Bollywood production, Rahul defied and vanquished the Sena in a manner not seen in years.

[Left: Though not much experienced in politics Rahul Gandhi can definitely be an instrument of change for the future of India. Many Indians believe he is the most preferred candidate for the role of India’s future prime minister]

Am I being sentimental here? Maybe. Perhaps, it was a routine populist gesture — the kind that comes naturally to our politicians. But there was something quintessentially Gandhian about Rahul taking that trip in the face of threats and dire warnings and peacefully but resolutely confronting the folk who only speak and understand the language of violence and force.

This is the way to go. If India is to attain the heights of greatness that it aspires to and deserves to achieve, it can do so only by following in the footsteps of Gandhi and other visionaries of modern India. If India is respected and admired around the world, it’s because of that vision, not because of the hate-fuelled politics practised by outfits like Shiv Sena, a party that has been repeatedly snubbed by the voters.

India wants to move on. In fact, it has already moved on from the poisoned temple-mosque politics of the 1980s and 1990s. It is evident in the decline of parties like Shiv Sena, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and others. This may be why even the BJP and its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), have criticised Thackeray, their ally and fellow traveller for years. This may be bad news for the Hindutva alliance, but it augurs well for India and its rich, diverse and pluralist society.

With the progressive decline of the United States, China and India are being seen around the world as the next superpowers. While China’s pace of growth is far more consistent, I believe it is India that is more qualified and deserves to be the next world leader. With its stable democratic institutions, genuinely independent judiciary and media, and a healthy civil society, India is best prepared to take over the mantle of global leadership from America.

The US has come this far and enjoys the eminence of global leadership not because of its military or economic might but because of its democratic institutions and the welcoming nature of its multicultural society. If America is where it finds itself today it is because it has constantly welcomed dreamers and go- getters and enterprising, talented and hard working people from around the world. It’s a nation of immigrants and its doors have always remained open for everyone who wants a slice of the American pie. It matters not where you come from or who you are. What matters is what you can bring to the table and how you can contribute.

This is the secret of American dream. If India is to be a world leader like America it can do so only by preserving and promoting its all- welcoming, all-embracing culture and attitude: an India where everyone gets his or her due with dignity. When Indians find themselves unwelcome in their own country, in cities like Mumbai, how can this amazing country ever hope to touch the heights of greatness that it seeks to touch?

The future belongs to the India of Rahul Gandhi, Shah Rukh Khan and Sachin Tendulkar, not to the banana republic that parties like Sena want to make out of India.

The writer is opinion editor of Khaleej Times .

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You might also like other posts from Aijaz Zaka Syed! 

1. What a billion Muslims Think 2. Lessons for Iran, Mideast in North Korea’s Nukes 3. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s Crime? 4. Attacking Pakistan? Don’t Do It. 5. Islamistische Gewalt (Der Spiegel Article)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the ‘Wonders of Pakistan’. The contents of this article too are the sole responsibility of the author(s). WoP will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this post.

YOUR COMMENT IS IMPORTANT

DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF YOUR COMMENT

Wonders of Pakistan supports freedom of expression and this commitment extends to our readers as well. Constraints however, apply in case of a violation of WoP Comments Policy. We also moderate hate speech, libel and gratuitous insults.

Blowback: Legacy of the CIA in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan

The least we can say is that in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan the U.S. reaps today what the CIA planted with the help of people like Congressman Charlie Wilson.

BLOWBACK

LEGACY OF THE CIA IN IRAN, AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN

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Argemiro Ferreira

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Osama Bin Laden was trained by the CIA to attack the Russians, liked it and then attacked the World Trade Center in New York. And the bombs in Pakistan (real) and Iran (hypothetical) are due, at least in part, to the same courtesy of the CIA. The current situation of these three countries reflects the past irresponsible behavior of U.S. intelligence.

The image of the hero on the white horse [image below] to save the girl from the clutches of the villain, be it a bank robber or Indian in defense of their invaded lands, is recurring in the fiction of Hollywood. Representative Charlie Wilson died, aged 76, on 10 February, some consider him a hero in real life. Reason: Congress poured billions of dollars to finance those who fought against the Russians in Afghanistan.

When he died of a heart attack, Wilson was already retired. But he represented Texas for 14 consecutive terms in the House. A book (“Charlie Wilson’s War – The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History” by George Crile), and a movie (“Charlie Wilson’s War” by Mike Nichols with Tom Hanks in the title role) portrayed him as a hero.

The week also marked the 31st anniversary of the revolution of the ayatollahs of Iran, which occurred just a few months before the invasion of Afghanistan. Iranians overthrew the regime of Shah Reza Pahlavi, installed in 1953 through the coup planned by the same CIA that used the secret funds provided by Mr. Wilson to recruit and arm Islamic radicals on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan.

The least we can say is that in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan the U.S. reaps today what the CIA planted with the help of people like Mr. Wilson.

Osama Bin Laden was trained by the CIA to attack the Russians, liked it and then attacked the World Trade Center in New York. And the bombs in Pakistan (real) and Iran (hypothetical) are due, at least in part, to the same courtesy of the CIA.

The current mess in Afghanistan (largely in the hands of Islamic radicals used by the CIA from 1979), Pakistan (where the CIA set up camps to attack the Russians in the neighboring country and encouraged the dream of a Pakistani Islamic nuclear bomb) and Iran (which now refuses to abandon uranium enrichment) reflects the past irresponsibility of U.S. intelligence.