McChrystal’s Ouster May Embolden Pakistan’s Diplomatic Efforts

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McChrystal’s Ouster May Embolden Pakistan’s Diplomatic Efforts
Pakistan Courting Karzai for Power-Sharing Deal
by Jason Ditz, June 24, 2010
Already courting Afghan President Hamid Karzai with offers to help broker a “power-sharing” deal with militant groups along their mutual border, Pakistan is expected to be further emboldened in their effort by the ouster of General Stanley McChrystal.
Gen. Kayani

Afghan officials say that General Parvez Kayani has personally offered to broker a deal between Karzai and the Taliban’s leadership, the Quetta Shura, while Pakistani intelligence officials underscore the growing belief that the US military cannot win in Afghanistan.

US officials are expressing concerns about this, saying it “creates a bigger breach between us and Karzai,” but this sort of double-dealing is nothing new in the politics of the region, and with the US openly losing faith in Karzai it is perhaps only natural that he is warming up to other potential backers: it is quite obvious he would not survive in his position long without somebody propping him up.

The US has made no secret of its opposition to these various diplomatic solutions to the Afghan war, accepting the idea of bribing low level Taliban to change sides but opposing anything that would include shared leadership in a new unity government.

At the same time while Pakistan is broaching the subject of peace deals, they are also fighting massive numbers of conflicts against militant groups along the border, again at the behest of the US. Officials are saying the US pressure to launch ever more offensives in Pakistan will continue under Petraeus’ watch.

source:http://news.antiwar.com/2010/06/24/m...matic-efforts/




McChrystal's exit not to reduce pressure on Pakistan in fighting militancy: experts

by Syed Moazzam Hashmi

ISLAMABAD, June 24 (Xinhua) -- The exit of the United States top commander General McChrystal and approved entry of General Petraeus from the Afghanistan's battlefield would not reduce America's pressure on Pakistan, which is in the loop in fight against homegrown militancy in the region, experts said Thursday
"Apparently, the main U.S. policy would remain unchanged," remarked Arshi Saleem, senior research analyst at the Institute of Regional Studies (IRS) in Pakistani capital Islamabad while discussing the implications of this major change-of-guards in the complicated regional mosaic.

"Pakistan should be well aware of the fact that change in command would not reduce the U.S. pressure on Pakistan's fight against militancy," Arshi Saleem told Xinhua on Thursday.

The U.S. President Barack Obama sacked "loudmouth" General Stanley A. McChrystal on Wednesday following his controversial criticism on the White House and Obama's top administration on policy issues.

Obama said that McChrystal's remarks in a "Rolling Stone" article undermined the civilian control of the military "at the core of our democratic system," noting the decision to replace the general did not involve any disagreement over strategy or personal issues, CNN reported on Wednesday.

President Obama also announced General David Petraeus as McChrystal's replacement to command 140,000 U.S. and multinational troops fighting insurgency in war-torn Afghanistan, since the ouster of Taliban regime in 2001.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen announced that the Alliance's would maintain its policy in Afghanistan. While reacting to this sudden change, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said that Taliban would continue to fight against foreign troops.

One can expect some change in the U.S. policy on Afghanistan. However, expecting a similar fate of the U.S. policy toward Pakistan is a far cry, as both the outgoing and incoming American generals were two poles apart in their approach and thinking.

General McChrystal seems to be more comfortable with Obama's predecessor George W. Bush and Republican ideals. He believed in continuing confrontation with Taliban and eliminating them through combat. He had asked for an additional 30,000 troops to keep fighting insurgent Taliban in Afghanistan where the U.S. had plans to withdrawing July 2011.

It would have continued fighting in Afghanistan and kept American pressure there, which was conflicting with the shifting U. S. policy of engaging Taliban into negotiations and bringing them into main stream politics and governance in the insurgency plagued country, analysts said.

Whereas Gen. Petraeus had help U.S. disengage in Iraq and shift over to Afghanistan as Commanding General of Multinational Force in Iraq. His presence in Afghanistan would emphasize engaging mainstream Afghan Taliban into active dialogue.

Arshi Saleem summarized both American generals saying, " McChrystal, a true soldier was more aggressive in behavior advocating police action against extremists while Petraeus is more into limited military action and diplomatic, plus engaging into dialogue with those who give up violence."

With his approach Petraeus would help the U.S. disengage its presence in Afghanistan, but it does not mean that he would have similar policy for Pakistan, something that makes the incoming commander more loved by the democrats.

Experts said that the U.S. pressure will continue or rather would be increased to combat terrorism and operations in Pakistan would continue.
source:http://news.xinhuanet.com/english201...13367680_2.htm


Pakistan Is Said to Pursue Foothold in Afghanistan

By JANE PERLEZ, ERIC SCHMITT and CARLOTTA GALL.
Published: June 24, 2010

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan is exploiting the troubled United States military effort in Afghanistan to drive home a political settlement with Afghanistan that would give Pakistan important influence there but is likely to undermine United States interests, Pakistani and American officials said.

The dismissal of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal will almost certainly embolden the Pakistanis in their plan as they detect increasing American uncertainty, Pakistani officials said. The Pakistani Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, preferred General McChrystal to his successor, Gen. David H. Petraeus, whom he considers more of a politician than a military strategist, said people who had spoken recently with General Kayani.

Pakistan is presenting itself as the new viable partner for Afghanistan to President Hamid Karzai, who has soured on the Americans. Pakistani officials say they can deliver the network of Sirajuddin Haqqani, an ally of Al Qaeda who runs a major part of the insurgency in Afghanistan, into a power-sharing arrangement.

In addition, Afghan officials say, the Pakistanis are pushing various other proxies, with General Kayani personally offering to broker a deal with the Taliban leadership.

Washington has watched with some nervousness as General Kayani and Pakistan’s spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, shuttle between Islamabad and Kabul, telling Mr. Karzai that they agree with his assessment that the United States cannot win in Afghanistan, and that a postwar Afghanistan should incorporate the Haqqani network, a longtime Pakistani asset. In a sign of the shift in momentum, the two Pakistani officials were next scheduled to visit Kabul on Monday, according to Afghan TV.

Despite General McChrystal’s 11 visits to General Kayani in Islamabad in the past year, the Pakistanis have not been altogether forthcoming on details of the conversations in the last two months, making the Pakistani moves even more worrisome for the United States, said an American official involved in the administration’s Afghanistan and Pakistan deliberations.

“They know this creates a bigger breach between us and Karzai,” the American official said.

Though encouraged by Washington, the thaw heightens the risk that the United States will find itself cut out of what amounts to a separate peace between the Afghans and Pakistanis, and one that does not necessarily guarantee Washington’s prime objective in the war: denying Al Qaeda a haven.

It also provides another indication of how Pakistan, ostensibly an American ally, has worked many opposing sides in the war to safeguard its ultimate interest in having an Afghanistan that is pliable and free of the influence of its main strategic obsession, its more powerful neighbor, India.

The Haqqani network has long been Pakistan’s crucial anti-India asset and has remained virtually untouched by Pakistani forces in their redoubt inside Pakistan, in the tribal areas on the Afghan border, even as the Americans have pressed Pakistan for an offensive against it.

General Kayani has resisted the American pleas, saying his troops are too busy fighting the Pakistani Taliban in other parts of the tribal areas.

But there have long been suspicions among Afghan, American and other Western officials that the Pakistanis were holding the Haqqanis in reserve for just such a moment, as a lever to shape the outcome of the war in its favor.

On repeated occasions, Pakistan has used the Haqqani fighters to hit Indian targets inside Afghanistan, according to American intelligence officials. The Haqqanis have also hit American ones, a possible signal from the Pakistanis to the Americans that it is in their interest, too, to embrace a deal.

General Petraeus told Congress last week that Haqqani fighters were responsible for recent major attacks in Kabul and the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, adding that he had informed General Kayani.

Some officials in the Obama administration have not ruled out incorporating the Haqqani network in an Afghan settlement, though they stress that President Obama’s policy calls for Al Qaeda to be separated from the network. American officials are skeptical that that can be accomplished.

Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, said on a visit to Islamabad last weekend that it was “hard to imagine” the Haqqani network in an Afghan arrangement, but added, “Who knows?”

At a briefing this week at the headquarters of Pakistan’s premier spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistani analysts laid out a view of the war that dovetailed neatly with the doubts expressed by Mr. Karzai. They depicted a stark picture of an American military campaign in Afghanistan “that will not succeed.”

They said the Taliban were gaining strength. Despite the impending arrival of new American troops, they concluded the “security situation would become more dangerous,” resulting in an erosion of the American will to fight.

“That is the reason why Karzai is trying to negotiate now,” a senior analyst said.
General Pasha, the head of the intelligence agency, dashed to Kabul on the eve of Mr. Karzai’s visit to Washington in May, an American official said. Neither Mr. Karzai nor the Pakistanis mentioned to the Americans about incorporating the Haqqanis in a postwar Afghanistan, the official said.

Pakistan has already won what it sees as an important concession in Kabul, the resignations this month of the intelligence chief, Amrullah Saleh, and the interior minister, Hanif Atmar. The two officials, favored by Washington, were viewed by Pakistan as major obstacles to its vision of hard-core Taliban fighters’ being part of an Afghanistan settlement, though the circumstances of their resignations did not suggest any connection to Pakistan.

Coupled with their strategic interests, the Pakistanis say they have chosen this juncture to open talks with Mr. Karzai because, even before the controversy over General McChrystal, they sensed uncertainty — “a lack of fire in the belly,” said one Pakistani — within the Obama administration over the Afghan fight.

“The American timetable for getting out makes it easier for Pakistan to play a more visible role,” said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the spokesman for the Pakistani Army. He was referring to the July 2011 date set by Mr. Obama for the start of the withdrawal of some American combat troops.

The offer by Pakistan to make the Haqqanis part of the solution in Afghanistan has now been adopted as basic Pakistani policy, said Rifaat Hussain, a professor of international relations at Islamabad University, and a confidant of top military generals.

“The establishment thinks that without getting Haqqani on board, efforts to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan will be doomed,” Mr. Hussain said. “Haqqani has a large fighting force, and by co-opting him into a power-sharing arrangement a lot of bloodshed can be avoided.”

The recent trips by General Kayani and General Pasha to Kabul were an “effort to make this happen,” he said.

Afghan officials said General Kayani had offered to broker a deal with the Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, and had sent envoys to Kabul from another insurgent leader and longtime Pakistani ally, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, with the offer of a 15-point peace plan in March.

As for the Haqqanis, whose fighters stretch across eastern Afghanistan all the way to Kabul, they are prepared to break with Al Qaeda, Pakistani intelligence and military officials said.

The Taliban, including the Haqqani group, are ready to “do a deal” over Al Qaeda, a senior Pakistani official close to the Pakistani Army said. The Haqqanis could tell Al Qaeda to move elsewhere because it had been given nine years of protection since 9/11, the official said.

But this official acknowledged that the Haqqanis and Al Qaeda were too “thick” with each other for a separation to happen. They had provided each other with fighters, money and other resources over a long period of time, he said.

Also, there appeared to be no idea where the Qaeda forces would go, and no answer to whether the Haqqanis would hand over Osama bin Laden and his second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri, the official said.

The Haqqanis may be playing their own game with their hosts, the Pakistanis, Mr. Hussain said.

“Many believe that Haqqanis’ willingness to cut its links with Al Qaeda is a tactical move which is aimed at thwarting the impending military action by the Pakistani Army in North Waziristan,” he said.

source:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/wo...ef=global-home