Indian Army Major Lies To Have Sex With Young Afghan Woman

After massive rapes in Kashmir, Indian soldiers open a new front in Afghanistan with this case of a married Indian army major with two children who claimed to have converted to Islam, who married an 18-year-old Afghan girl in Kabul and then dumped her. Now the girl is in New Delhi seeking justice. The case highlights Indian army’s violations against women in occupied Kashmir and Afghanistan. It also opens a little known secret: India’s controversial military presence in Afghanistan.

GULPARI NAZISH MEHSUD
WWW.PAKNATIONALISTS.COM

NEW DELHI, India-This story reveals not only how an Indian Army major deceived an unsuspecting Afghan girl, but it also reveals how India is covertly expanding its military presence in Afghanistan under the guise of development work, with American blessings, hurting the legitimate interests of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Major Chandrasekhar Pant was working at an Indian-funded civilian hospital in Kabul when he met an 18-year-old Afghan interpreter employed by the hospital management. Pant had an Indian wife and two children back in India but he lied to Sabera Ahmedzai that he was single. He met her parents and claimed to have converted to Islam to marry the girl, which he did. But three weeks later he left Afghanistan without informing his young wife.

It turned out he was redeployed by the Indian Army from Kabul to the border with China, adjoining the Chinese province of Tibet. He never contacted Sabera again.

In short, the Indian major entered into a fake marriage and lied about changing his religion just to have sex with the Afghan girl, who was 18 at the time.

But what Maj. Pant never expected is that the Afghan woman he deceived would reach New Delhi and take her case to Indian courts and to the Indian military.

“People in my country taunt me that I have been deceived by a doctor. He married me and went away. The local boys tease they don’t mind marrying me for 20 days,” Sabera told India’s IBN television.

Sabera Ahmedzai was born and brought up in Pakistan. When she finally managed to reach New Delhi and set out to find Major Pant, she discovered the Indian was not only married he also had two children. Not only this, Pant refused to recognize her as his wife and offered money and asked her to leave.

But instead she filed a petition in the Delhi high Court, asking Major Pant be tried under civilian and military rules and demanding compensation for destroying her life.

“When Sabera came to India on her own, she was surprised to find that Major Pant was already married and he refused to recognize her. Now a days, he is posted at 69th Mount Brigade Pithoragarh, Uttarakhand,” she says in her petition filed through an Indian lawyer, according to accounts in the Indian media.

The case has put Major Pant in a fix. He not only faces the charges brought by Ms. Ahmedzai, he also faces Indian Army’s own charges, including the serious offense of converting to another religion on a foreign soil while serving in the military without receiving a written permission.

The Delhi high court on Friday, 21 January, sought a response from the Indian government on Ms. Ahmedzai’s plea seeking sanction to prosecute for the alleged offence of bigamy by an Indian Army doctor who married her during his stay in Kabul and deserted her after coming back.

“Issue notice to the Centre (through Defense Secretary),” Justice S N Dhingra said and fixed the matter for March 8 for hearing on the plea of Sabera Ahmedzai, a resident of Kabul.

IBNLive has quoted sources at the Indian Army Medical Corps as saying, “Army Court of inquiry has found a prima facie case against Major Chandrasekhar Pant. A summary of evidence was conducted and the report has been submitted to the Central Army Commander. He is likely to be charged on two counts – bigamy and changing his religion without taking prior permission.”

“God will punish him for the wrong he has done to my life,” Sabera says. She is receiving help from Indian Muslims and from Kashmiris in the Indian capital.

The case is deeply embarrassing for the Indian army. Before relinquishing charge, former army chief general Deepak Kapoor told reporters Major Pant will be punished if found guilty.

The Indian army is also worried about its track record. Indian soldiers have been convicted of committing massive rapes across Indian occupied Kashmir. They are also at the top of a UN list for raping underage girls during peacekeeping missions in Africa. The cases are documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Indian rights groups. The last thing Indian army needs is a new record of wrongdoings committed by Indian soldiers in Afghanistan.

The case also draws attention to Indian military presence in Afghanistan. India is not part of the international military force in Afghanistan called ISAF. India is also not one of Afghanistan’s immediate neighbors. And yet it has the largest number of diplomats and diplomatic outposts in Afghanistan after the United States. Pakistan accuses India of using these diplomatic missions for espionage against China and Pakistan. The two nations share the longest border with Afghanistan of any country.

India has claimed its presence in Afghanistan is humanitarian. But it is interesting to note the Indian government chooses Indian military officers to work at Indian development projects in Afghanistan. It’s a disguised military presence at its best.

Pakistan unfazed over U.S. “raid plan”

By ANITA JOSHUA

Pakistan on Tuesday remained outwardly unfazed by a New York Times report suggesting senior American military commanders in Afghanistan were pushing for an expansion of Special Operations ground raids across the border into Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Without commenting on the veracity of the report, Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said: “The U.S. knows our position and redlines. We do not expect the U.S. to complicate matters involving counter-terrorism.” Maintaining that Pakistani security forces were capable of handling terrorists and militants, he said, “There is no question of allowing foreign troops inside Pakistan”.

As for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan trying to extend its operations to Pakistan, Mr. Basit said it had no such mandate. “We will not accept violation of our sovereignty.”

Part of the reason for Pakistan’s quiet response to the report is the way it made NATO sweat in October after a couple of ISAF helicopters intruded Pakistani airspace and killed Frontier Corps personnel positioned along the Afghanistan border. Islamabad closed its border with Afghanistan for ISAF supply trucks resulting in a blockade and an apology from NATO and the U.S. Pakistan is a major supply route for non-military cargo for ISAF. Having successfully communicated its position to NATO in that instance, Islamabad appears confident ISAF will not attempt another such misadventure in a hurry however desperate the U.S. may be to begin troop withdrawal from Afghanistan from July 2011.

The U.S. wants Pakistan to begin operations in North Waziristan as sanitising this “safe haven” of terrorists is seen as crucial to the success of the Global War on Terror. But on-record briefings by the American civil and military leadership in recent days suggest Washington has accepted Islamabad’s contention that it will do so at a time of its choosing.

While the Pakistan government has till now maintained that a final decision on when to launch operations in North Waziristan would be taken by the military, Chief of Army Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani was recently quoted by the media as saying the last call would be of the civilian administration.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported from Kabul that NATO had denied the NYT report. U.S. Rear-Admiral Gregory Smith, NATO’s deputy chief of communications, was quoted saying ISAF and its Afghan partners had developed a strong working relationship with the Pakistani military to address shared security issues. “This coordination recognises the sovereignty of Afghanistan and Pakistan to pursue insurgents and terrorists operative in respective border areas.”

Imposter Taliban proves Afghan talks cannot be held without Pakistan

Pak1stanfirst

Talks in Afghanistan cannot be held without Pakistan. This is evident from the fiasco in Kabul. Neither Karzia, nor NATO, nor Bharat, nor ISAF knew that the person the were talking to was an impostor!

A New York Times report published on Tuesday of a man posing as a Taliban leader in secret peace talks with the Afghan government in fact turning out to be an impostor, immediately sparked warnings from Pakistan’s security officials claiming that the case bore evidence of Washington’s lack of understanding of the central Asian country.

As reports filtered out during the past few months citing the initiation of talks between Afghan president Hamid Karzai and the Taliban with U.S. blessings, western and Pakistani officials confirmed in background interviews that the south Asian country, known for its links with Islamic militant groups, was being kept out of the process.

The talks appeared to be aimed at seeking a negotiated settlement between Karzai’s regime and the Taliban, to end the decade old conflict in Afghanistan since a U.S.-led campaign after the 9/11 attacks forced the downfall of the Taliban regime.

According to the New York Times, the impostor identified as Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, held three meetings with NATO and Afghan officials. “The fake Taliban leader even met with President Hamid Karzai, having been flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and ushered into the presidential palace,” said the newspaper, citing unidentified officials.

Pakistani officials in public have remained quiet on the reported talks but in private have criticized the U.S. for its support to the reported discussions. “The Americans believe they can support a process without Pakistan’s involvement. This is all wrong”, one senior Pakistani government official told CBS News in a background interview in August this year.

On Tuesday, a Pakistani intelligence official speaking to CBS News on condition of anonymity said the New York Times report confirms “what we have believed for long. You can’t exclude Pakistan and have a workable plan to bring about a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s long history of dealing with Afghan groups makes us the best equipped to know exactly which group to talk to and with what effect.”

Pakistan’s main counter-espionage intelligence agency known as the ISI or Inter-Services Intelligence has kept contacts with the main Afghan warlords, since the 1979 invasion of the central Asian country by the former Soviet Union was followed by Pakistan’s emergence as the main U.S.-backed conduit to build up an armed resistance against Moscow.

Since the 9/11 attacks however, Pakistan’s government says that it has abandoned all support to the Taliban after establishing close ties with the clerical regime during its rule over Afghanistan. But on Tuesday, a Western official in Islamabad who spoke to CBS News on condition of anonymity said: “There is still concern among Western countries over Pakistan’s past contacts with Islamic zealots continuing to remain intact. I believe, Pakistan has enormous clout in Afghanistan to help in a political process…”

Imposter Taliban proves Afghan talks cannot be held without Pakistan

Pak1stanfirst

Talks in Afghanistan cannot be held without Pakistan. This is evident from the fiasco in Kabul. Neither Karzia, nor NATO, nor Bharat, nor ISAF knew that the person the were talking to was an impostor!

A New York Times report published on Tuesday of a man posing as a Taliban leader in secret peace talks with the Afghan government in fact turning out to be an impostor, immediately sparked warnings from Pakistan’s security officials claiming that the case bore evidence of Washington’s lack of understanding of the central Asian country.

As reports filtered out during the past few months citing the initiation of talks between Afghan president Hamid Karzai and the Taliban with U.S. blessings, western and Pakistani officials confirmed in background interviews that the south Asian country, known for its links with Islamic militant groups, was being kept out of the process.

The talks appeared to be aimed at seeking a negotiated settlement between Karzai’s regime and the Taliban, to end the decade old conflict in Afghanistan since a U.S.-led campaign after the 9/11 attacks forced the downfall of the Taliban regime.

According to the New York Times, the impostor identified as Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, held three meetings with NATO and Afghan officials. “The fake Taliban leader even met with President Hamid Karzai, having been flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and ushered into the presidential palace,” said the newspaper, citing unidentified officials.

Pakistani officials in public have remained quiet on the reported talks but in private have criticized the U.S. for its support to the reported discussions. “The Americans believe they can support a process without Pakistan’s involvement. This is all wrong”, one senior Pakistani government official told CBS News in a background interview in August this year.

On Tuesday, a Pakistani intelligence official speaking to CBS News on condition of anonymity said the New York Times report confirms “what we have believed for long. You can’t exclude Pakistan and have a workable plan to bring about a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s long history of dealing with Afghan groups makes us the best equipped to know exactly which group to talk to and with what effect.”

Pakistan’s main counter-espionage intelligence agency known as the ISI or Inter-Services Intelligence has kept contacts with the main Afghan warlords, since the 1979 invasion of the central Asian country by the former Soviet Union was followed by Pakistan’s emergence as the main U.S.-backed conduit to build up an armed resistance against Moscow.

Since the 9/11 attacks however, Pakistan’s government says that it has abandoned all support to the Taliban after establishing close ties with the clerical regime during its rule over Afghanistan. But on Tuesday, a Western official in Islamabad who spoke to CBS News on condition of anonymity said: “There is still concern among Western countries over Pakistan’s past contacts with Islamic zealots continuing to remain intact. I believe, Pakistan has enormous clout in Afghanistan to help in a political process…”

Would US drones target Quetta?

by S M Hali

According to The Washington Post (WP), the US has renewed pressure on Pakistan to expand the areas inside the country where CIA drones can operate. Thus, the pressure was focused on including the area surrounding Quetta, where it believes the Afghan Taliban leadership is based. The US also sought to expand the area of operation in the tribal areas where 101 drone attacks had taken place this year. The paper also “revealed” that Pakistan has rejected the request, but agreed to more modest measures, including an expanded CIA presence in Quetta, where CIA-ISI teams have been formed to locate and capture senior members of the Taliban, adding that the disagreement over the scope of the drone programme underscores broader tensions between the two allies.

Moreover, it borders on the comical that a matter as sensitive as extending drone attacks to Quetta is being discussed through the media. Neither has the diplomatic channel been used, nor is the Pakistani government taking Parliament into confidence before rejecting the drone attacks or agreeing to an expanded role for the CIA in Balochistan. Anyway, US officials have confirmed the “request for expanded drone flights, citing concern that Quetta functions not only as a sanctuary for the Taliban leaders, but also as a base for sending money, recruits and explosives to the Taliban forces inside Afghanistan.” However, Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesperson Abdul Basit has categorically stated: “Pakistan has reservations over drone strikes…it would never allow any expansion in the campaign of drone strikes by the US on its territory.” He stressed that the attacks were producing a “drone-hardened generation” and has asked the US to revisit its drone attack policy and stop carrying out strikes in our tribal areas.

On the other hand, WP maliciously opines: “US officials have long suspected there are other reasons for Islamabad`s aversion, including concern that the drones might be used to conduct surveillance of Pakistani nuclear weapons facilities in Balochistan.” Commenting on the WP story, a diplomatic source said that during the US-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue last month, the Americans had indicated that they would like to expand the drone attacks to Quetta and to some new regions in FATA, but did not formally raise the issue.

Now the whole issue is being dragged through the media, which is certainly not in the best of diplomatic practices. Islamabad and Washington do not see eye to eye on the matter. While Washington insists that Balochistan is the headquarters of the so-called Quetta Shura, Islamabad denies the existence of any organisation, let alone operating from there. It is not comprehensible, how the NATO, ISAF and General Petraeus et al, have been unable to control the resistance movement by the Taliban in Aafghanistan, where the international forces are not only in high numbers, but are also equipped with a massive air power, have the facility of satellite imagery and Aerial Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance systems, which are the ultimate real time aid to aerial intelligence.

Despite all this, Eric Margolis has recently commented: “Amazing as it sounds, NATO, the world’s most powerful military alliance, may be losing the only war the 61-year old pact ever fought. All its soldiers, heavy bombers, tanks, helicopter gunships, armies of mercenaries, and electronic gear are being beaten by a bunch of lightly-armed Afghan farmers and mountain tribesmen.”

Perhaps, now the US/NATO want to shift the blame for their failures on Pakistan. Hence, the urgency to “do more”, the pressure on Pakistan to commence operation in North Waziristan and permit the US to expand the drone operations. The drones have already wreaked havoc in the country, killing nearly 2,000 innocent civilians, while the deaths of just about 30 suspected Al-Qaeda operatives have been claimed. Such a high collateral damage vis-à-vis target achievement is totally unacceptable.

Moreover, Quetta is highly urbanised and the collateral damage will be higher in case it is attacked. For a nation already reeling under the negative after-effects of the drone attacks, expanding the operation would be totally counterproductive and inflame the anti-Americanism prevalent in Pakistan. Even the enhanced cooperation with CIA is not being looked upon positively, since Pakistan’s own security agencies are fully capable of tackling the problem and do not need the cousins from Langley looking over their shoulders. NATO has already extended the exit date from Afghanistan to 2014, which has been rejected by the Taliban.

Ambassador Mark Sedwill, speaking at a media briefing after the NATO Summit, made a rare confession that talks with the Haqqani network – whom he described as the most irreconcilable of the Afghan warring factions – were not going well. Under the circumstances, US-led allies can ill afford to fish in troubled waters assuming that extending drone operations to Quetta will be fruitful. They must revisit their strategy, rather than alienate their only ally in the region – Pakistan.

Imposter Taliban proves Afghan talks cannot be held without Pakistan

Pak1stanfirst

Talks in Afghanistan cannot be held without Pakistan. This is evident from the fiasco in Kabul. Neither Karzia, nor NATO, nor Bharat, nor ISAF knew that the person the were talking to was an impostor!

A New York Times report published on Tuesday of a man posing as a Taliban leader in secret peace talks with the Afghan government in fact turning out to be an impostor, immediately sparked warnings from Pakistan’s security officials claiming that the case bore evidence of Washington’s lack of understanding of the central Asian country.

As reports filtered out during the past few months citing the initiation of talks between Afghan president Hamid Karzai and the Taliban with U.S. blessings, western and Pakistani officials confirmed in background interviews that the south Asian country, known for its links with Islamic militant groups, was being kept out of the process.

The talks appeared to be aimed at seeking a negotiated settlement between Karzai’s regime and the Taliban, to end the decade old conflict in Afghanistan since a U.S.-led campaign after the 9/11 attacks forced the downfall of the Taliban regime.

According to the New York Times, the impostor identified as Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, held three meetings with NATO and Afghan officials. “The fake Taliban leader even met with President Hamid Karzai, having been flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and ushered into the presidential palace,” said the newspaper, citing unidentified officials.

Pakistani officials in public have remained quiet on the reported talks but in private have criticized the U.S. for its support to the reported discussions. “The Americans believe they can support a process without Pakistan’s involvement. This is all wrong”, one senior Pakistani government official told CBS News in a background interview in August this year.

On Tuesday, a Pakistani intelligence official speaking to CBS News on condition of anonymity said the New York Times report confirms “what we have believed for long. You can’t exclude Pakistan and have a workable plan to bring about a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s long history of dealing with Afghan groups makes us the best equipped to know exactly which group to talk to and with what effect.”

Pakistan’s main counter-espionage intelligence agency known as the ISI or Inter-Services Intelligence has kept contacts with the main Afghan warlords, since the 1979 invasion of the central Asian country by the former Soviet Union was followed by Pakistan’s emergence as the main U.S.-backed conduit to build up an armed resistance against Moscow.

Since the 9/11 attacks however, Pakistan’s government says that it has abandoned all support to the Taliban after establishing close ties with the clerical regime during its rule over Afghanistan. But on Tuesday, a Western official in Islamabad who spoke to CBS News on condition of anonymity said: “There is still concern among Western countries over Pakistan’s past contacts with Islamic zealots continuing to remain intact. I believe, Pakistan has enormous clout in Afghanistan to help in a political process…”

U.S. Aids Taliban to Attend Talks on Making Peace

By THOM SHANKER, DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT

BRUSSELS – United States-led forces are permitting the movement of senior Taliban leaders to attend initial peace talks in Kabul, the clearest indication of American support for high-level discussions aimed at ending the war in Afghanistan, senior NATO and Obama administration officials said.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates spoke to members of the news media on Wednesday while flying to a NATO meeting in Brussels.

While the talks involve senior members of the Taliban, officials emphasized that they were preliminary, and that they could not tell how serious the insurgents – or the weak government of President Hamid Karzai – were about reaching an accord.

But comments by administration officials in Washington and a senior NATO official in Brussels on Wednesday indicated that the United States was doing more to encourage a peaceful settlement in Afghanistan than officials had previously disclosed, and might reflect growing pessimism that the buildup of American forces there will produce decisive gains against the Taliban insurgency.

The NATO official confirmed that “there has been outreach by very senior members of the Taliban to the highest levels of the Afghan government.” Though the talks are preliminary, he said, the prospect of negotiating a settlement of the war effort, now nine years old, is alluring enough that personnel from NATO nations in Afghanistan “have indeed facilitated to various degrees the contacts” by allowing Taliban leaders to travel to the Afghan capital.

Mr. Karzai has been trying for many months to persuade Taliban leaders to join his government, and the efforts intensified late last year after President Obama said that he intended to begin scaling back American troop levels in Afghanistan by the summer of 2011. American officials had earlier insisted that such talks were a sideshow to the main war effort and that they were unlikely to produce results until the Taliban felt weakened by the intensified NATO assault.

Now, some officials appear eager to show that they are pursuing a new approach in Afghanistan that explores a possible political settlement even as the military tries to step up pressure on the Taliban.

The top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, told reporters in Afghanistan recently that high-level Taliban leaders were reaching out to senior Afghan officials to start discussions. General Petraeus seems determined to show progress on achieving American goals in Afghanistan – both military and political – ahead of a December review of the war effort ordered by Mr. Obama.

Support for talks also comes as American officials have expressed a growing frustration with the complex role played by Pakistan, which provides safe haven for many insurgents and has ambitions of dictating the postwar political situation in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has insisted that any lasting solution in Afghanistan must involve reconciliation with the Taliban, and has urged the United States to participate in peace talks. At the same time, Pakistan has disrupted some efforts by Mr. Karzai to reach out to Taliban leaders hiding in Pakistan, presumably because he made those overtures without Pakistan’s approval.

It is not clear which Taliban leaders have been allowed to travel to Kabul to conduct talks with Mr. Karzai’s government. The NATO official also did not disclose what members of NATO’s Afghanistan force, the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, have done to support the talks beyond offering safe passage to insurgents participating in the discussions.

“It would be extremely difficult for a senior Taliban member to get to Kabul without being killed or captured if ISAF were not witting,” the official said. “And ISAF is witting.”

In Washington, officials have been more cautious about prospects for a peaceful settlement. One senior American official noted recently that the Taliban, while war-weary, had little incentive to make concessions because they still had the sense that they could outlast the American presence in the country. Mr. Karzai, others noted, can be an erratic negotiator, and part of the mystery in Kabul is whether he is keeping American and NATO allies abreast of his conversations.

Mr. Obama signed off on a policy early this year that talks were possible as long as Taliban leaders, at the end of the process, agreed to renounce violence, lay down their arms, and pledge fidelity to the Afghan Constitution. As recently as August, two senior American officials said, Mr. Obama was updated on the progress of those efforts, officials said, and reaffirmed that the United States should aid the process, even if the Taliban involved in the talks represented only breakaway factions of the insurgent group.

“We’re not expecting Mullah Omar to walk in the door,” one senior administration official said recently, referring to the Taliban figure Mullah Muhammad Omar. “But there have been pings from commanders a few notches down.”

The NATO official said: “These are in the very preliminary stages of discussions. So you would not yet characterize this by any means as a negotiation.”

The NATO official discussed developments in Afghanistan on standard diplomatic ground rules of anonymity because of the delicacy of the reconciliation discussions. The official spoke in advance of a NATO meeting in Brussels on Thursday that will include alliance ministers of foreign affairs and of defense. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates are scheduled to attend.

Next month, President Obama is expected to attend a NATO summit meeting in Lisbon, where the United States must make the case to nervous – and in some cases, soon-departing – allies that there is a viable plan for turning more of Afghanistan over to the government. That effort will have little chance of success, many officials believe, if there is no political path for integrating low-level Taliban fighters and reconciling with their leaders.

Congressional officials and independent experts voiced skepticism on Wednesday that the current discussions would lead to any immediate breakthrough.

“We’ve now got two years of reports of talks about talks, but none of it has panned out as serious,” said Bruce O. Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who led Mr. Obama’s first Afghanistan policy review.

But the increased NATO military operations in southern Afghanistan aimed at killing or capturing midlevel Taliban commanders has caused some Taliban leaders “nervousness about life and fortune,” Mr. Riedel said.

“It’s a more dicey game. You’re starting to see people wanting to put money down on all bets.”

Thom Shanker reported from Brussels, and David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

If Pakistani Govt. Orders Our Surrender, Will The Military Comply?

By SHIREEN M. MAZARI – The Nation

9/11: The War To Cripple Pakistan

1. Sovereign Guarantees’ vs. Sovereignty
2. Will the Pakistani military exercise self-defense and respond to NATO attack?
3. NATO has no mandate in Afghanistan, only ISAF does

How far is the Pakistani state prepared to go to undermining its national sovereignty and the safety of the lives of its citizens? Since 2004 mainly innocent Pakistani citizens have been killed by US drone strikes inside Pakistan. This is beyond the list of those Pakistanis handed over to the US in renditions by the Musharraf government, the most high profile being Dr. Aafia. The claim that she was not handed over but was whisked away by US covert operatives reflects even more badly on that state of our security establishment – that they cannot protect their own citizens in their own country from being kidnapped by foreign agencies!

Coming back to the drones, the advent of Obama to the Presidency led to an immediate upsurge of drone attacks, and as the US has always maintained, these attacks have the permission and cooperation of the Pakistan civilian leadership and its military. As a result, despite a national consensus against these drones, they continue to kill Pakistanis and the government continues with its lies to the people on this issue. This month, September, has seen the highest number of drone attacks for any month since the attacks began in 2004, with 20 strikes recorded so far and the month is not yet over.

Accompanying the drone attacks has been the growing presence of US overt and covert operatives across the length and breadth of Pakistan. This includes not only US Special Forces personnel, but also CIA, FBI operatives and the worse of the lot – the private contractors DynCorp and Xe (formerly Blackwater) aided and abetted by Pakistani mercenaries. And, not a squeak of protest from Pakistani officialdom. It is as if the whole state machinery has become an amalgam of mercenaries selling out Pakistan and its people.

The argument from the present political government is that they are merely implementing the sovereign guarantees given by the Musharraf regime to the US, but this is not plausible because the same government has also been claiming it is undoing the dictatorial legacies of the Musharraf government. In any case, how can this democratically elected government abide by sovereign guarantees to allow the killing of its own people? This is not to deny the presence of militants and even terrorists but they must be dealt with by our own people and under the law of the land. The state and government cannot abdicate their own responsibility towards its citizens – especially not a democratic government that has come to power – as they never tire of telling us these days – by a mandate from the people.

Worse still is, killing someone simply on suspicion of being a potential militant. But then the President’s remarks on the collateral damage being done by drones, as cited in Bob Woodward’s book, Obama’s Wars, says it all for the current political dispensation.

PAKISTANI MILITARY’S ROLE

As for the military, its justification of not protecting its citizens and territory against attacks by the US military in the form of drone attacks is even more absurd – that they are simply following orders of the civilian government. What instructions were they following in Musharraf’s times? In any case, this country sacrifices a lot to sustain a heavy defense budget so that its armed forces are given the best of everything. But in return they expect this military to defend its borders and its citizens from external military attacks – not to support them and turn on its own people under external diktat.

The armed forces may argue that they act on the directions of the federal government as directed under Article 245 of the Constitution which states: “The armed forces shall, under the directions of the federal government, defend Pakistan against external aggression or threat of war …”

So the questions that arise for us citizens are:

1. If the federal government tells the armed forces to allow foreign aggression against the country, will the armed forces comply? Is that what is happening right now?
2. Can the federal government legally take such a step? If so, who will defend the country against foreign aggression in the final analysis?

Incidentally, while many of us naively assumed the armed forces took an oath to defend Pakistan and its territory from its enemies and so on, when one sees the actual oath of the armed forces in Schedule III of the Constitution, it says nothing of the sort at all – they take an oath to defend the Constitution of Pakistan and not to indulge in any political activity – but nowhere are the words defense of territory or people in the oath!

Frankly, after examining Article 245 and the armed forces oath, as a citizen of Pakistan I do not feel as secure as I thought I was because tomorrow if the federal government orders the military to hand over our defense to an external power and even our nuclear assets, where will we be?

These issues are critical now, because with the complicity of the Pakistani state, the US drone attacks are not the only external aggression we are now facing. NATO has decided to target Pakistanis in our own territory and their helicopter gunships have been having an open season on the FATA people. Some whimpering from the Pakistani state has been heard but we still have to wait and see whether our defense forces will defend our borders against this expansion of external military aggression against Pakistan and its people.

Ironically, NATO has defended its forays into Pakistan as “right of self-defense”, while the Pakistanis seem to have no such right on their own territory!

To confuse the issue, NATO is using the reference of ISAF and a UN mandate, when we all know that ISAF is not NATO and that NATO forcibly grabbed the ISAF UN mandate. The question of its legitimacy in the context of Afghanistan is critical because it has been expanding its mandate and operational milieu ever since the end of bipolarity.

So, why should there be an issue of its legitimacy within the context of Afghanistan? Because it is an out-of-area operation. NATO still remains, in legal terms, a collective defense organization in terms of its legitimacy through the UN system – under Chapter VIII, Articles 52 and 53, as well as Chapter VII’s notion of collective self-defense as embodied in Article 51, which provides a very clear and limited framework for collective defense organizations. Regional collective defense organizations need to operate in the specific region of their membership since decision-making is restricted to this membership. Given the continuing European-Atlantic membership of NATO, it is somewhat disturbing to see NATO transforming itself from a collective defense organization (Article 5 of the NATO Charter is surely in the context of collective defense?) to a collective security organization to serve the interests of its membership or perhaps future “coalitions of the willing”. There is no legitimacy for any collective security organization other than the UN with its universal membership.

Even within the context of regional organizations, actions have to have a UN mandate and this is where the case of Afghanistan is unclear. Post-9/11, the UN Security Council, through Resolution 1386 (December 2001), sanctioned the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for Afghanistan. As stipulated in the Bonn Agreement of December 2001, the progressive expansion of the ISAF to other urban centers and other areas beyond Kabul was duly approved through follow-on UNSC resolutions.
So, where did NATO get into ISAF? Did the UNSC initiate NATO’s involvement or did NATO present a fait accompli to the UN Secretary General?

What is available on record is that NATO informed the UN Secretary General, through a letter dated October 2, 2003, from its Secretary General that on August 11, 2003, NATO had assumed “strategic command, control and coordination of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).” This was followed by another letter from the NATO Secretary General to the UN SG informing the latter of the North Atlantic Council’s agreement on a “longer-term strategy for NATO in its International Assistance Force (ISAF) role in Afghanistan.”

Both these letters were sent to the President of the UNSC by the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on October 7 with the request that they be brought to the attention of the UNSC. So, effectively NATO presented the UNSC with a fait accompli – which is why its presence in Afghanistan is legally questionable.

Meanwhile, for Pakistan the basic question that its civil and military leaders must answer is: How far will the state compromise the safety of its people and its own sovereignty to fulfill the so-called “sovereign guarantees” to the US?

NATO apologises over deaths of Pakistani soldiers

• Rasmussen hopes border will be open for supplies as soon as possible
• Qureshi says Pakistan will only reopen supply route once public anger eases, security improves

ISLAMABAD/BRUSSELS: NATO’s chief expressed regret on Monday for the deaths of Pakistani soldiers last week and said he hoped Pakistan’s border would reopen for NATO supplies to Afghanistan as soon as possible.

Angered by repeated attacks by NATO helicopters on targets within its borders, Pakistan blocked one of the supply routes for NATO troops in Afghanistan after a strike killed three Pakistani soldiers in the Kurram region.

Analysts and Western officials said Pakistan’s closure of the border for a few days would not seriously impact the war effort in Afghanistan.

“I expressed my regret for the incident last week in which Pakistani soldiers lost their lives,” NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said after meeting Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi in Brussels. “I expressed my hope the border will be open for supplies as soon as possible.”

The apology came after gunmen attacked a convoy of trucks taking goods to Western forces in Afghanistan on the outskirts of Islamabad, killing three guards. Rasmussen said the killing of the three soldiers was unintended and showed the need to improve coordination between the NATO and the Pakistani military.

Also, Qureshi expressed Pakistan’s concern over the border violations and attacks in Pakistani territory by NATO and ISAF forces.

He said that Pakistan would only reopen the supply route once public anger eases and security improves. “Unless the reaction cools down and we make sure that the supply line is secured, we cannot reopen it,” he said, adding that the UN mandate for ISAF was confined to Afghanistan and NATO/ISAF forces were again advised to refrain from any actions that constitute a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. agencies

Security in Afghanistan Is Deteriorating, Aid Groups Say

By ROD NORDLAND

KABUL, Afghanistan – Even as more American troops flow into the country, Afghanistan is more dangerous than it has ever been during this war, with security deteriorating in recent months, according to international organizations and humanitarian groups.

Declining security means that in many districts, aid workers and unarmed government employees can no longer travel safely. The road leading beyond this point in Wardak Province is unsafe.

Large parts of the country that were once completely safe, like most of the northern provinces, now have a substantial Taliban presence – even in areas where there are few Pashtuns, who previously were the Taliban’s only supporters. As NATO forces poured in and shifted to the south to battle the Taliban in their stronghold, the Taliban responded with a surge of their own, greatly increasing their activities in the north and parts of the east.

The worsening security comes as the Obama administration is under increasing pressure to show results to maintain public support for the war, and raises serious concerns about whether the country can hold legitimate nationwide elections for Parliament next Saturday.

Unarmed government employees can no longer travel safely in 30 percent of the country’s 368 districts, according to published United Nations estimates, and there are districts deemed too dangerous to visit in all but one of the country’s 34 provinces.

The number of insurgent attacks has increased significantly; in August 2009, insurgents carried out 630 attacks. This August, they initiated at least 1,353, according to the Afghan N.G.O. Safety Office, an independent organization financed by Western governments and agencies to monitor safety for aid workers.

An attack on a Western medical team in northern Afghanistan in early August, which killed 10 people, was the largest massacre in years of aid workers in Afghanistan.

“The humanitarian space is shrinking day by day,” said a CARE Afghanistan official, Abdul Kebar.

The International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, does not routinely release detailed data on attacks around the country, and the Afghan government stopped doing so in mid-2009. United Nations officials have also stopped releasing details of attacks, though they monitor them closely. Requests for access to that information were denied.

ISAF officials dispute the notion that security is slipping from them, pointing to their successes with targeted killings and captures of Taliban field commanders and members of the Taliban shadow government.

American military officials say the increased level of violence is related to the rise in the number of its forces here. The last 2,000 of 30,000 new American troops are expected to arrive in the next week or two, military officials say. The result is more military operations, they say, and more opportunities for the insurgents to attack coalition forces.

That does not entirely explain the increased activity of the Taliban in areas where they were seldom seen before, and where the coalition presence is light, however.

Last year, American military leaders adopted a strategy of concentrating operations in what they identified as 80 “key terrain districts,” mostly in the south and east of the country, less than a fourth of Afghanistan’s districts.

The idea was to attack the Taliban where they were strongest, and concentrate forces where populations were largest.

While how many fighters the insurgents have is a matter of estimate and conjecture, the impact they have had is easy enough to judge.

Last month, ISAF recorded 4,919 “kinetic events,” including small-arms fire, bombs and shelling, a 7 percent increase over the previous month, and a 49 percent increase over August 2009, according to Maj. Sunset R. Belinsky, an ISAF spokeswoman. August 2009 was itself an unusually active month for the insurgency as it sought to disrupt the presidential elections then.

With one attack after another, the Taliban and their insurgent allies have degraded security in almost every part of the country (the one exception is Panjshir Province in the north, which has never succumbed to Taliban control).

The Afghan N.G.O. Safety Office says that by almost every metric it has, Afghanistan is more dangerous now than at any time since 2001.

The most recent troop buildup comes in response to steady advances by the Taliban. Four years ago, the insurgents were active in only four provinces. Now they are active in 33 of 34, the organizations say.

“We do not support the perspective that this constitutes ‘things getting worse before they get better,’ ” said Nic Lee, director of the Afghan N.G.O. Safety Office, “but rather see it as being consistent with the five-year trend of things just getting worse.”

Despite the spread of the conflict, humanitarian organizations say they are still able to serve Afghans in much of the country. They have to be much more careful, restricting their movements and pulling back from some areas altogether.

They use Afghan workers rather than international staff members. They avoid travel by road and take greater security precautions. They have also taken to operating incognito as a matter of routine. As a result, while insurgent attacks have more than doubled since last year, attacks on N.G.O.’s have actually declined by 35 percent, Mr. Lee said.

Because of the lack of security, CARE, like many humanitarian groups, no longer uses the country’s principal highway, the Grand Trunk Road connecting Kabul, the capital, to Peshawar in Pakistan. CARE has 10 offices around the country to manage its 1,000 employees, but its own international staff members can safely visit only four or five of them, according to a spokeswoman, Jennifer Rowell.

Likewise, there is no longer an Oxfam sign on display in the entire country, although the British-based aid group finances projects in scores of villages, mostly staffed by Afghans.

“Most N.G.O.’s don’t send foreigners to most places any longer,” said Ashley Jackson, head of policy and advocacy for Oxfam in Kabul, referring to nongovernmental organizations. Like many major aid groups, Oxfam now subcontracts much of its work in the provinces to partners, usually Afghan aid groups.

The threat to government workers is just as severe. Last month, Afghan police and army officials asked the Independent Election Commission to cancel 938 of its proposed 6,835 polling centers, almost 14 percent, because it could not guarantee security for those areas. Polling places in 25 provinces were affected.

On Tuesday the election commission said it would cancel 81 other polling sites, nearly a fifth of the polling places in eastern Nangarhar Province, which was relatively safe during last year’s presidential election. The commission has warned that it may have to close still more polling centers in other provinces if the authorities cannot provide adequate security for voters.

Only 500 international observers are coming to monitor these elections, compared with more than a thousand last year, according to Jindad Spinghar of the Free and Fair Election Foundation. International observers will be able to go only to provincial capitals, not rural areas, where most of the population lives, he said. The election foundation, the leading Afghan monitoring group, has had to cut back its own observers, who will be watching only 60 percent of polling places.

“Because the control of the central government is decreasing,” Mr. Spinghar said, “power brokers and warlords will be able to use their influence at the local level, where there are no observers.” It was in just such areas in 2009 that widespread voting fraud took place, resulting in a disputed and internationally discredited presidential election.

Military officials counter that they are making headway against the Taliban. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the ISAF commander, said recently that NATO forces had killed or captured 2,974 insurgents this summer, 235 of them commanders. Last December, the military assessed Taliban strength at 25,000.

“While we do not routinely release data on total attacks around the country, we did expect the number of attacks to go up as the number of ISAF troops increased,” said Major Belinsky, the ISAF spokeswoman.

“We are pushing into areas where the Taliban have enjoyed safe haven in the past, and we are taking that away from them,” Major Belinsky said. “They are putting up a tough fight, with more tough fighting to come, but we are making progress.”

A top coalition general bristled recently when asked about views among some critics that NATO was losing the fight. “How do they know we’re losing? I can lay out rhyme and reason about where we’re making progress. We’re building, they’re destroying. I say to them, prove it.”

7 US troops, politician killed in Afghan unrest

KABUL (AFP) - Seven US soldiers and an election candidate have been killed in a wave of weekend attacks in Afghanistan, officials said Sunday, as President Hamid Karzai called for a rethink of Washington’s war strategy.

Two soldiers were killed Sunday in separate attacks, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

Five troops were killed in other militant violence in the south and east of the country, the areas hardest hit by the Taliban-led insurgency now reaching the end of its ninth and most deadly year.

A US military spokesman said all seven soldiers were US nationals.

Karzai told the visiting Norbert Lammert, president of the German parliament, that the counter-insurgency strategy must be rethought, according to a statement from Karzai’s office.

“Speaking about Afghanistan and regional security (Karzai) said that the strategy of the war on terrorism must be reassessed,” the statement said.

“The experience over the past years showed that fighting (Taliban) in Afghan villages has been ineffective and is not achieving anything but killing civilians.”

International troops have suffered escalating casualties as they step up the fight against a Taliban insurgency which has become increasingly deadly since the militants were ousted from power in a US-led invasion in late 2001.

The number of foreign soldiers killed in the war so far this year has now reached 472, compared with 521 who died during all of 2009, according to an AFP tally based on a count by the independent www.icasualties.org website.

Civilian casualties have also risen, but insurgents were responsible for over three quarters of the 1,271 deaths and 1,997 people wounded in the first six months of this year, according to a UN report this month.

About 141,000 US and NATO troops are deployed in Afghanistan to fight the insurgency and protect Karzai’s US-backed government.

The country is due to hold its second post-Taliban parliamentary elections on September 18 amid fears that insurgent attacks might disrupt the vote.

Candidate Abdul Manan, running for a seat in the western province of Herat, was shot dead Saturday in an attack blamed on the militants.

The Taliban are accused of being responsible for the deaths of two other candidates since the launch of the election campaign in early July.

Police Sunday also found the bodies of five members of the campaign team of female candidate Fawzya Galani, days after 10 of them were abducted.

The Taliban had claimed responsibility for the kidnapping in Herat province on Wednesday.

“We have found five of the abducted members of Ms. Galani’s campaign team. They were dumped on the side of a mountain,” said Nisar Ahmad Popal, the chief of Adrskan district, where the bodies were found.

“We don’t know where the other five are,” he said.

Police in the northern province of Faryab meanwhile said four women working for a local group treating drug addicts were snatched by gunmen on Saturday. Provincial police chief Khalilullah Andarabi blamed the abduction on “armed opposition groups”, a term used for the Taliban and other militants.

ISAF said eight civilians were also killed in a wave of attacks on Saturday including a suicide bombing.

NATO troops backed by Afghan security forces killed up to 15 insurgents in a battle in the eastern province of Paktia late on Saturday, ISAF said.

Separately, police on Sunday shot dead two suicide bombers as they headed towards the office of the governor of Farah province in the southwest.

The violence follows an attempt by a Taliban suicide bomber squad on Saturday to storm two US-run military bases in the eastern province of Khost. The US-led military said 30 rebels, 13 of them wearing suicide vests, staged the failed attacks on the bases, in which all were killed during gunbattles.

Violence has picked up in recent months as the Taliban insurgency has gathered pace in the face of a troop “surge” by international forces.

Karzai slams Pakistan … but with what?

Spearhead Research Analysis – 11.08.2010

By Shemrez Nauman Afzal
Research Analyst
Spearhead Research

A few days after the Wikileaks’ announcement of some 72,000 classified documents being leaked into the public domain, Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday urged his Western allies to destroy Islamist militant sanctuaries in neighbouring Pakistan, while an angry Islamabad described his statement as “incomprehensible”. As the Wikileaks’ Afghan War Diary – a compendium of secret U.S. communications during the Afghan War between 2004 and 2010 – contained some 120 documents that “gravely implicated” Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI), accusing it of “playing both sides” by actively funding, training and deploying Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan, President Karzai thought that the time was opportune enough to make his views heard on the issue as well.

Read Complete Article Here: http://www.zoneasia-pk.com/ZoneAsia-Pk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1331:karzai-slams-pakistan-but-with-what&catid=41:securityissues&Itemid=62

Dutch troops leave southern Afghanistan

By the CNN Wire Staff

Kabul, Afghanistan – More details about the Dutch withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan emerged on Monday.

The Netherlands became the first NATO ally to pull combat troops out of Afghanistan on Sunday as it handed over its mission in southern Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province to U.S. and Australian forces.

At the end of this year the Netherlands will have only 60 military personnel in Afghanistan, none in combat, Dutch Ministry of Defense spokeswoman Marloes Visser told CNN on Monday.

At the peak of their commitment, the Dutch had nearly 2,000 troops in Afghanistan. The bulk of that number, 1,500 personnel, were in Uruzgan, with 400 and 100 in Kandahar and Kabul, respectively.

Some staff units remain in Afghanistan, according to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, but the Air Task Force in Kandahar will pull out in December, emptying the country of Dutch troops. The remaining 60 personnel will work in the international headquarters in Kabul and Kandahar, Visser said.

The International Security Assistance Force-led multinational effort took over the Uruzgan mission Sunday. Combined Team-Uruzgan Commander, Colonel Jim Creighton, led a ceremony attended by acting governor for Uruzgan, Khodai Rahim Kahn, as well as ISAF and Afghan National Army personnel, according to an Australian Defence media release.

“The expansion of roads and bridges, the effectiveness of the Afghan National Security Forces, and enhanced security are examples of the improvements made by the hard work and efforts of Dutch and Australian personnel working with the Uruzgan leaders and people,” Creighton, who is from the United States, said.

More U.S. troops will have to enter the area to fill the void, he said.

“I am looking forward to building on the exceptional work that the Dutch and Australians have undertaken so far in Uruzgan.” Creighton said. Combined Team-Uruzgan includes around 1,800 US, Australian, Singaporean, Slovakian, New Zealand, and French personnel.

A 700-person task force will redeploy Dutch forces in Uruzgan Province back home, Visser said.

“The past four years brought the population of Uruzgan great improvements,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement Sunday. “Regrettably, the Netherlands is saddened by its 24 war casualties and 140 wounded.”

The Dutch government already had extended its mission by two years. NATO requested another extension as the United States and its allies beefed up forces at the end of 2009, but opposition to the proposal brought down Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s ruling coalition in February.

U.S. and NATO forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001 in retaliation for the al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington that September. Allied and local forces quickly toppled the Taliban, the Islamic militia that ruled most of Afghanistan and allowed al Qaeda to operate within its territory.

But top Taliban and al Qaeda leaders escaped the invasion, and Taliban fighters regrouped along the rugged border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The group is now battling both coalition forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s government.

Soldiers from the Afghan National Security Forces and Australian Special Forces killed Mullah Dawood, a Taliban insurgent leader in central Uruzgan, on July 14, according to an Australian Defence media release published Monday.

US enlists ex-warlord’s men for Afghan police force

By Claire Truscott (AFP)

RAWHANAY, Afghanistan – Drawing on a cigarette held between his tattooed fingers, Mohammed Daoud is thanked by an American junior officer for dispatching 5,000 Afghan militiamen to join the police force.

Sherzai, a burly Pashtun and ex-mujahideen, was governor of Kandahar from 2001 to 2003

“This would make me very happy to stand side by side with my friends,” US Lieutenant Jared Hollows tells the 35-year-old commander and loyalist of former warlord Gul Agha Sherzai in a village in Kandahar.

US troops fighting to control the southern province have cut a deal to bring Sherzai’s militia into the police, providing salaries and uniforms in return for help quelling Taliban unrest.

NATO commanders hope such deals can help reverse the tide of the nine-year Afghan war in the crucial months ahead under a strict timetable, as US President Barack Obama is keen to start getting troops out next year.

“We’re building an Afghan solution that puts the legitimate power where it belongs — in the government and in the security apparatus,” said US Lieutenant Colonel John Paginini, commander of the 1st squadron, 71st cavalry regiment.

“There is no distinction between them and any other policemen from any other tribe or any other family.”

But alliances with men like Sherzai — former warlords suspected of pursuing personal profit — are not universally welcomed.

At least 30 US and NATO soldiers died in Afghanistan last week. Record casualty numbers and tough fighting across the south have raised questions about the course of the war, with commanders under intense pressure to show progress.

“The time wasn’t right before, but it is now,” Daoud assured the Americans in Dand district just south of Kandahar city, the crude tattoos on his fingers apparently self-inked while behind bars during the 1980s Soviet-backed regime.

“They want to serve the district, the province, their country,” he added, without elaborating further on the decision to push his men into the police.

The case highlights the complexities behind many of the relationships that US field commanders try to forge with strongmen who can have competing interests in Afghanistan’s fractured, tribal society.

US General Stanley McChrystal, commander of the 142,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, has already warned that the Kandahar campaign will be slower than expected because Afghan forces are in short supply and the local population wary.

Named as a future president by his die-hard supporters, Sherzai, a burly Pashtun and ex-mujahideen, was governor of Kandahar from 2001 to 2003 before being relocated to run Nangarhar province on the Pakistani border.

Sherzai counts himself as a Karzai ally, but is reputed to be an arch rival of the president’s brother and Kandahar provincial council chief, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who is saddled with Western accusations of corruption and drug smuggling.

The governor of Dand, 32-year-old Hamadullah Nazick, who is close to both Sherzai and Wali Karzai, said any public harmony between the pair is fragile, with NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) acting as a sticking plaster.

“I don’t think Sherzai and Ahmed Wali Karzai will continue to get along after ISAF forces leave,” he tells AFP.

In Daoud’s home village of Rawhanay, new policemen proudly told AFP that Sherzai was their boss. The former warlord ran for the presidency against Karzai in 2009, withdrawing only days before the fraud-tainted election.

After bidding farewell to the Americans from his white-painted mud hut, Daoud pointed to the walls plastered with pictures of Sherzai.

“Everyone around here would like Gul Agha Sherzai to be the next president,” he told AFP.

But Carl Forsberg, an Afghanistan expert at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), said Sherzai’s militia is likely to continue to answer to him while wearing Afghan police uniform.

“We should be very cautious about any offer Sherzai makes to integrate his militias into the ANP (Afghan national police) because he will plan to ensure they stay under his influence,” he said.

“Sherzai has given clear signals that he would like to reassert himself in Kandahar politics (and) has always understood the importance of having ISAF support.”

The Shangri-la dialogue

By Ikram Sehgal

Defence personnel tend to be taciturn. Once in a while one is privileged to listen to uninhibited exchanges of views, the Annual IISS (International Institute of Strategic Studies) Summit in Singapore being one such event. Senior national security officials in the region often use the occasion to enunciate fresh thinking about relevant security issues. The Asia-Pacific Security Summit, or the “Shangri-La Dialogue,” is named after the hotel where it is held every year.

As was expected, the South Korean president used his plenary address to condemn North Korea for the unwarranted and devastating torpedo attack that destroyed the naval vessel Cheonan and cost the lives of 46 sailors. Attending his fourth consecutive “Shangri-La Dialogue,” US defence secretary Robert Gates said that the US was a Pacific nation deeply committed to contributing to both individual and collective security to ensure peace and prosperity in the region.

He condemned North Korea strongly for the surprise attack on the South Korean naval vessel, adding that such unwarranted, irrational behaviour could not go without severe censure and/or meaningful reprimand to go with enforceable sanctions. The US defence secretary called on China (and other nations having some say with North Korea) to restrain such rogue actions from threatening regional peace and, given North Korea’s crude nuclear capability, even world peace.