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Argos Media

Zakaria: Has Pakistan's Army Changed Its Stripes? | Newsweek Voices - Fareed Zakaria | ... - 0 views

www.newsweek.com/...195786

Pakistan US Husain Haqqani Fareed Zakaria Taliban

shared by Argos Media on 04 May 09 - Cached
  • It was only a few years ago that Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani diplomat who recently became ambassador to Washington, wrote a brilliant book arguing that the Pakistani government—despite public and private claims to the contrary—continued "to make a distinction between 'terrorists' … and 'freedom fighters' (the officially preferred label … for Kashmiri militants)." He added: "The Musharraf government also remains tolerant of remnants of Afghanistan's Taliban regime, hoping to use them in resuscitating Pakistan's influence in Afghanistan." The Pakistani military's world view—that it is surrounded by dangers and needs to be active in destabilizing its neighbors— remains central to Pakistan's basic strategy.
  • While President Musharraf broke with the overt and large-scale support that the military provides to the militant groups, and there have continued to be some moves against some jihadists, there is no evidence of a campaign to rid Pakistan of these groups. The leaders of the Afghan Taliban, headed up by Mullah Mohammed Omar, still work actively out of Quetta. The Army has never launched serious campaigns against the main Taliban-allied groups led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar or Jalaluddin Haqqani, both of whose networks are active in Pakistan. The group responsible for the Mumbai attacks, Lashkar-e-Taiba, has evaded any punishment, morphing in name and form but still operating in plain sight in Lahore. Even now, after allowing the Taliban to get within 60 miles of the capital, the Pakistani military has deployed only a few thousand troops to confront them, leaving the bulk of its million-man Army in the east, presumably in case India suddenly invades.
  • The rise of Islamic militants in Pakistan is not, Ambassador Haqqani writes, "the inadvertent outcome of some governments." It is "rooted in history and [is] a consistent policy of the Pakistani state." The author describes how, from its early years, the Pakistani military developed "a strategic commitment to jihadi ideology." It used Islam to mobilize the country and Army in every conflict with India. A textbook case was the 1965 war, when Pakistan's state-controlled media "generated a frenzy of jihad," complete with stories of heroic suicide missions, martyrdom and divine help.
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  • The Pakistani military has lost the wars it has fought via traditional means. But running guerrilla operations—against the Soviets, the Indians and the Afghans—has proved an extremely cost-effective way to keep its neighbors off balance.
  • The ambassador's book, "Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military," marshals strong evidence that, at least until recently, the Pakistani military made the pretense of arresting militants in order to get funds from Washington. But it never shut down the networks. "From the point of view of Pakistan's Islamists and their backers in the ISI [Pakistan's military intelligence]," Haqqani writes, "jihad is on hold but not yet over. Pakistan still has an unfinished agenda in Afghanistan and Kashmir.
  • The book concludes by telling how Pakistan's military has used the threat from these militant groups to maintain power, delegitimize the civilian government and—most crucial of all—keep aid flowing from the United States. And the book's author has now joined in this great game. Last week Ambassador Haqqani wrote an op-ed claiming that Pakistan was fighting these militant groups vigorously. The only problem, he explained, was that Washington was reluctant to provide the weapons, training and funds Pakistan needs. He has become a character out of the pages of his own book.
Argos Media

World Watches for U.S. Shift on Mideast - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...17prexy.html

US Israel Obama Rashid Khalidi Robert Malley Hamas Zbigniew Brzezinski Charles Freeman James Jones George Mitchell

shared by Argos Media on 17 May 09 - Cached
  • As a state senator in Chicago, Mr. Obama cultivated friendships with Arab-Americans, including Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American scholar and a critic of Israel. Mr. Obama and Mr. Khalidi had many dinners together, friends said, in which they discussed Palestinian issues.
  • Mr. Obama’s predecessors, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, came of age politically with the American-Israeli viewpoint of the Middle East conflict as their primary tutor, said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator. While each often expressed concern and empathy for the Palestinians — with Mr. Clinton, in particular, pushing hard for Middle East peace during the last months of his presidency — their early perspectives were shaped more by Israelis and American Jews than by Muslims, Mr. Levy said. “I think that Barack Obama, on this issue as well as many other issues, brings a fresh approach and a fresh background,” Mr. Levy said. “He’s certainly familiar with Israel’s concerns and with the closeness of the Israel-America relationship and with that narrative. But what I think might be different is a familiarity that I think President Obama almost certainly has with where the Palestinian grievance narrative is coming from.”
  • None of this necessarily means that Mr. Obama will chart a course that is different from his predecessors’. During the campaign he struck a position on Israel that was indistinguishable from those of his rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain, going so far as to say in 2008 that he supported Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. (He later attributed that statement to “poor phrasing in the speech,” telling Fareed Zakaria of CNN that he meant to say he did not want barbed wire running through Jerusalem.)
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  • Last year, for instance, Mr. Obama was quick to distance himself from Robert Malley, an informal adviser to his campaign, when reports arose that Mr. Malley, a special adviser to Mr. Clinton, had had direct contacts with Hamas, the militant Islamist organization that won the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 and that controls Gaza. Similarly, he distanced himself from Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser who was often critical of Israel, after complaints from some pro-Israel groups.
  • And Mr. Obama offered no public support for the appointment of Mr. Freeman to a top intelligence post in March after several congressional representatives and lobbyists complained that Mr. Freeman had an irrational hatred of Israel. Mr. Freeman angrily withdrew from consideration for the post.
  • But Mr. Freeman, in a telephone interview last week, said he still believed that Mr. Obama would go where his predecessors did not on Israel. Mr. Obama’s appointment of Gen. James L. Jones as his national security adviser — a man who has worked with Palestinians and Israelis to try to open up movement for Palestinians on the ground and who has sometimes irritated Israeli military officials — could foreshadow friction between the Obama administration and the Israeli government, several Middle East experts said.
  • The same is true for the appointment of George J. Mitchell as Mr. Obama’s special envoy to the region; Mr. Mitchell, who helped negotiate peace in Northern Ireland, has already hinted privately that the administration may have to look for ways to include Hamas, in some fashion, in a unity Palestinian government.
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