Who is on the run?

[unknownprince]

Who is on the run?

Who is on the run? | Pakistan | News | Newspaper | Daily | English | Online

Published: August 11, 2011


Talking to reporters in an off-camera briefing, Pentagon’s spokesman Col Dave Lapan repeated what Defence Secretary Leon Panetta had earlier said that the Taliban were on the run. Analysis of the realities on the ground would prove it otherwise. Not only does it rebut the claim, but also suggests that it is, in fact, the US and NATO forces, which are on the run. Whatever the pretext – the economic crisis that has been building up since long mainly as a result of the astronomical amount of money being spent on prosecuting the war on terror, which is also adversely affecting the Americans’ lifestyle; the public pressure at home to withdraw troops because of the unending flow of body bags; or the fighting forces’ own weariness at pursuing an enemy, which is adept at playing hide and seek in the mountainous hideouts, – the end result is departure of the invading forces. The Taliban (read Pashtuns) constitute the majority ethnic community in Afghanistan, and if Mr Panetta thinks ‘it is only a matter of time before they are eliminated’, he is not living in the real world. Ultimately, the occupying forces would have to leave. The truth is that both, the Secretary and the spokesman, were trying to allay fears voiced by some political analysts that the death of more than 30 Special Forces men, including 22 Navy SEALs, last week might turn out to be watershed of a resurgent resistance.
Another secret CIA-Pentagon report expresses alarm at Pakistan Army officers and soldiers with a religious bent of mind, who it thinks are in majority and could have access to nuclear assets, and maintains that American monitors in the garb of Embassy officials have been sent to Pakistan. The report raises several questions of serious nature. First, it is none of US concern what kind of men comprise Pakistan Army; we have the right to recruit what suits our best interests. Would the defence establishment of the US stand our criticism of its armed forces just because there are a sizeable number of Jewish or Christian fundamentalists? Secondly, Pakistan as well as credible institutions in the world have shown their complete confidence in the safety and security procedures we have adopted to protect our nuclear arsenal. Thirdly, the Pakistan government and security agencies need to explain under what circumstances they let the American monitors come in the country as Embassy officials.
There is no doubt in the report’s assessment that the political setup in power in the country is, unfortunately, ready and willing to bow before the type of policies the Americans choose to adopt. That is a fly in the ointment; otherwise, the entire public, with the exception of a small group of West-leaning people, as well as the armed forces are bitterly opposed to them. Pakistan Army consists of patriotic people and is against US designs in the region and in that it is not merely responding to the sentiments of the people; both are on the same page. And both would love to see the harmful foreign influence to end immediately.

[unknownprince]

some parts of this article are overdone, especially, since half the article is about "patriotic Pakistanis.

The beginning part on Afghanistan is well the all-so obvious fact that seems to escape the US medias' 'facts.'

[Toramana]

Taleban and their propagandadists are on the run...that is an obvious fact that can't be concealed with neogoebalist propaganda with aid from PressTV.

[unknownprince]

oh delusional, and foolish one. Taliban control the majority of Afghanistan, and their reach continues to spread. Why? Because people resent and oppose the US occupation. Obviously, not everyone agrees with their perspectives, but every Afghan is opposed to the US occupation, and do not tolerate it at all. They hate them.

Is the race to the exit beginning in Afghanistan?

By M K Bhadrakumar – August 7, 2011

It may seem a minor detail that the US special forces men (known as SEAL) who were killed in the Taliban attack Friday night in Wardak province in Afghanistan were drawn from the same unit that undertook the Abbottabad operation. But it will get played out in a big way in the Afghan bazaar. An unquantifiable factor is that in the Afghan perceptions Taliban fighters would increasingly look like men from Mars. These are the incidents that become the stuff of legends. No doubt, the propaganda boost for the Taliban from the Wardak incident is going to be enormous — and its psychological impact on the Afghan mind no less. The contrast with the Afghan government that isn”t getting its act together can’t be sharper.
Quite obviously, the killing in Wardak took a back seat in the US media — nay, the western media — in comparison with the downgrading of US’ credit rating. Another sign of the priorities of the Barack Obama administration and the US’s western allies in the coming months. The Afghan war merits all the attention that the Obama administration and NATO countries can spare and what it is going to get may be far short of that. So, what happens next? If one or two incidents of large scale casualties take place, all bets are off. Obama may call it day. As things stand, Time magazine featured an exceptionally gloomy picture of the state of play in Afghanistan.
The Time story doubts whether the new US ambassador Ryan Crocker, who is a genuine area specialist and a ‘consummate diplomat’ and struck up a good record in Iraq is going to make much of a difference. Time says that everyone it interviewed in Afghanistan agreed that “things are bad and is only going to get worse.” It ends with a devastating quotation from an unnamed ‘foreign analyst’, presumably a high-level American based in Kabul: “The situation here [in Afghanistan] is toxic and unraveling… Transition is simply a code word for managing defeat and retreat. It’s just a matter of how we [US] put a domestic political wrapper around it so it doesn’t look like defeat and retreat.” And the incredible part is that the Time story was written before the Wardak incident. Read it here []Post-Petraeus Afghanistan: Turning Defeat into Transition -- Printout -- TIME.


Posted in Politics.
Tagged with Add new tag, Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, Taliban.
By M K Bhadrakumar – August 7, 2011




Taliban gatecrash into Obama’s birthday party

By M K Bhadrakumar – August 6, 2011

The stunning news from Afghanistan about the Taliban shooting down a NATO helicopter with 31 US special forces troopers and 7 Afghan commandos comes on a bad day for Barack Obama with Standard & Poor humbling America by lowering its AAA credit rating for the first time in history. Neither happening becomes a lethal blow for the US’s standing as superpower, but they would contribute to the pall of gloom descending on Washington. The fizz has certainly gone out of the Afghan ’surge’, and as Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman wrote in his weekend column, Obama’s dismal failure in fixing the economy stands out as a ‘truly terrible reality’.
The two ‘realities’ are in danger of coalescing and soon becoming one single reality — a growing opinion within the political class that for preserving the strength of the American economy in these hard times, US should tailor its foreign policy to “fit the cloth we have”, as Harvard professor and author Joseph Nye wrote in NYT this week. Put simply, Nye said, “such a strategy would avoid involvement of ground forces in major wars in Asia or in other poor countries.”
If so, Taliban have done mankind a favour. The Middle East, Africa and Asia can heave a sigh of relief, in that case, that the era of US imperialism is over. However, that is wishful thinking. If anything, the indications from the Middle East at the moment is that the US is hoping to keep 10000 troops in Iraq even after the withdrawal date, and that pressure on Syria and Iran is mounting. The big question is whether Obama can withstand a few more deathly blows by the Taliban, like today’s. Obama will be most vulnerable in the coming months if one or two major incidents take place down the line. For the present Taliban have gatecrashed into his 50th birthday party in Chicago.
Remember the bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut in October 1983 and the slaughter of 241 US troops by a suicide bomber, which prompted Ronald Reagan to forthwith withdraw US troops from the Levant? My gut feeling is that something very big like the Lebanon attack is likely brewing in Afghanistan. There is an uneasy stillness in the air despite this being the peak of summer (’fighting season’), which is unnatural.
Some sort of a devastating Taliban blow killing a few dozen American troops cannot be ruled out. Today’s incident took place virtually on the outskirts of Kabul and it shows how consolidated the Taliban presence has become. I read a graphic account of Taliban having infiltrated even the impregnable Mazar-i-Sharif region. The US is out on a limb in the region with Pakistan and Iran on hostile terms with it and possibly coordinating their ‘resistance’ to the US military presence.


Posted in Military, Politics.
Tagged with Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Lebanon, Ronald Reagan, Taliban.
By M K Bhadrakumar – August 6, 2011

[khushal]

Pashto Nasheed Very Nice Nasheed 2011 Woss Mondo Ta ye Gora. - YouTube