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Articles, Opinions & Views: Frenemy Pakistan By Andrew Harrod

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No Atheists
In A Foxhole

Rudyard Kipling

" ā€œWhen you're left wounded on
Afganistan's plains and

the women come out to cut up what remains,
Just roll to your rifle

and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldierā€
General Douglas MacArthur

" ā€œWe are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.ā€

ā€œIt is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.ā€
ā€œOld soldiers never die; they just fade away.
ā€œThe soldier, above all other people, prays for peace,
for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.ā€
ā€œMay God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .ā€
ā€œThe object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

ā€œNobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
ā€œIt is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died.
Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."

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Frenemy Pakistan By Andrew Harrod
Friday, October 08, 2021

Richard Clarke

Jihad Watch : ā€œTo this day, Usama bin Laden is a popular icon in Pakistan. Mosques and affiliated madrassas schools in Pakistan teach hatred of America and all that is not Islam,ā€ wrote high-ranking National Security Council veteran Richard Clarke in 2004. His memoir Against All Enemies: Inside Americaā€™s War on Terror provided ample proof of Pakistanā€™s duplicity as a ā€œfrenemyā€ to the West, facts that undermined again his previously examined optimism about ā€œreal Islam.ā€

Just as Clarke analyzed Saudi Arabiaā€™s ambiguous relationship to jihadist threats, ā€œPakistan had been tentative and bifurcated before September 11ā€ with respect to Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in neighboring Afghanistan. He explained:

The militaryā€™s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate had provided the Taliban with arms, men, and information. ISID personnel had trained Kashmiri terrorists at al Qaeda camps and worked with al Qaeda-related terrorists to put pressure on India. Pakistani police and security services, on the other hand, had arrested al Qaeda personnel transiting en route to Afghanistan, when given specific information by U.S. authorities.

Americaā€™s hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after he orchestrated the August 7, 1998, bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania brought Pakistanā€™s dual allegiances into sharp relief. Clarke noted:

Al Qaeda members had moved freely through Pakistan to Afghanistan. Despite the fact that Pakistanā€™s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate was training, equipping, and advising the Taliban in Afghanistan, they professed no ability to influence that group to close terrorist camps and hand over bin Laden.

Such excuses left Clarke unimpressed:

I believed that if Pakistanā€™s ISID wanted to capture bin Laden or tell us where he was, they could have done so with little effort. They did not cooperate with us because ISID saw al Qaeda as helpful to the Taliban. ISID also saw al Qaeda and its affiliates as helpful in pressuring India, particularly in Kashmir. Some, like General Hamid Gul, the former director of ISID, also appeared to share bin Ladenā€™s anti-Western ideology.

In response to the East African embassy bombings, President Bill Clinton ultimately ordered cruise missile strikes on Afghan Al Qaeda camps on August 20, 1998, which involved flightpaths across Pakistani airspace. During strike planning, American policymakers considered forewarning Pakistan, particularly given that the Pakistanis might misperceive the American missiles as an attack from neighboring India, Pakistanā€™s historic enemy. In the end, Clarke and others rejected advising the Pakistanis, for ā€œ[i]f they were told in advance, some of us believed that the ISID would alert the Taliban and possibly al Qaeda.ā€

During the missile strikes, Clarke recalled,

Pakistani ISID officers were killed. The Pakistanis were reported by media sources to be present at the camp training Kashmiri terrorists. ISID had several offices around Afghanistan and was assisting the Taliban in its fight to gain control of the northern part of the country where the Northern Alliance still held out.

In any future strikes on Al Qaeda, American conflicts with Pakistan, a country of 238 million as of 2021, entailed serious ramifications, particularly given that both Pakistan and India face each other off as nuclear powers. So warned Marine General Anthony Zinni, commander of United States Central Command (CENTCOM), which covered Afghanistan and neighboring Southwest Asia. He, Clarke recalled,

advised against further bombings because of the negative effect they had in Pakistan. Zinni was afraid that we would cause a public outcry in Pakistan that would force that nuclear power to distance itself from us. We could lose the leverage necessary to prevent India and Pakistan from going to war, nuclear war.

ā€œMore disturbing,ā€ Clarke added, ā€œare reports that some scientists who had worked on Pakistanā€™s nuclear program are also al Qaeda sympathizers and have discussed their expertise with al Qaeda, Libya, Iran, North Korea, and others.ā€ He moreover did not necessarily trust in Pakistani security over nuclear materials. ā€œLarge areas of Pakistan along the Afghan border are still not controlled by the central government and offer sanctuary to the Taliban and al Qaeda. All of this is true about a country that also has nuclear weapons,ā€ he wrote.

Clarke saw a certain glimmer of hope in General Pervez Musharraf, who was Pakistanā€™s dictator during 9/11 after having become in 1999 the latest general in Pakistani history to seize power. After 9/11, Clarke wrote,

and despite the popularity of al Qaeda in parts of Pakistan, General Musharraf courageously pressed his agencies to help the U.S. find any al Qaeda presence in the country. Two of al Qaedaā€™s top operational managers, Khalid Sheik Muhammad and Abu Zubayda, were among those found and arrested in joint Pakistani-American actions.

Yet CIA analyst Michael Scheuer emphasized in his 2002 book, Through Our Enemiesā€™ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America, Musharrafā€™s precarious position. Scheuer, then the head of the CIAā€™s Bin Laden Unit in the years before and after 9/11, wrote that:

Since the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States, Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf appears to have taken up permanent residence between the proverbial rock and a hard place. In an effort to avoid American ire and win Western aid for Pakistanā€™s failing economy, Musharraf provided bases from which the U.S. military has attacked bin Laden and took an array of policy gambles that would have stunned the most experienced riverboat gambler. In fewer than ninety days, Musharraf reversed twenty-two years of Pakistani Afghan policy and helped to unseat the first genuine pro-Pakistan government in Kabul since partition of the subcontinent. He next announced steps to begin backing Pakistan away from its historic support for the jihad in Kashmir.

Likewise, Scheuer noted,

Musharraf embarked on a program to reduce the political power and armaments of the countryā€™s religions parties and mandated changes that would moderate the content of the Islamic education presented by the vast, mujahedin-producing, network of religious schools, or madrassas, in Pakistan.

However, such bold moves, Scheuer warned, for Musharraf

has not yet earned an even remotely acceptable return on his investment. He was won some economic aid, but not enough to stop the economyā€™s deterioration. He also has not been able to pry loose from the United States Pakistanā€™s long bought-and-paid-for F-16s [American relaxation of nuclear sanctions on Pakistan, given its post-9/11 importance, finally allowed the acquisition in 2006.]. Thus his support for the U.S. war on terrorism has not won the expected large scale benefits.

Scheuer concluded that the

goal of Musharrafā€™s moves to tame militant Islam in Pakistan have received some positive domestic response, but they are increasingly opposed because they are being characterized as kowtowing to the Americans.

In the face of such daunting challenges and grim prognoses, Clarke advocated development aid for perennially unstable Pakistan, which he puzzlingly described as ā€œ[o]nce an example of an Islamic democracy with a high-tech future.ā€ Despite repeated documentation in the years since 9/11 that jihadists do not come from poor backgrounds, he wrote that the

ideological battle for the hearts and minds of Pakistanis will only be won by the secular modernists if they can be seen to be improving the standard of living for the many poor, uneducated Pakistanis among whom al Qaeda derives much of its support.

Clarke speculated about what his hero Bill Clinton would have done were he still president after 9/11 for ā€œstabilizing Pakistan.ā€ This would have included ā€œpushing hard for a security arrangement between India and Pakistan to create a nuclear free zone,ā€ Clarke wrote. Given that India desires nuclear deterrence against not just Pakistan but also China, denuclearizing the Indian subcontinent seems even more utopian than Clintonā€™s 1994 attempt to denuclearize North Korea.

For all the difficulties Clarke described in Pakistan, as confirmed by Scheuer, Clarke once again exhibited his usual habit of looking on Islamā€™s bright side. He did not indicate any awareness that American material largesse might be incapable of overcoming factors such as Islamic fanaticism, Pakistanā€™s own definitions of national interest, or simple corruption. Unsurprisingly, Clarke revealed himself in his 2004 memoir as an advocate of nation-building in Afghanistan, a project that would finally catastrophically collapse 20 years after 9/11, as a future article will analyze.

posted by Major D Swami (Retired) @ 8:03 AM  
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