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U.S. military says Taliban set to retake power: report

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  • #31
    S2,

    Yup. Real effort on the part of the Taliban and ISI to hijack the mujahideen legacy while conveniently forgetting they wouldn't cross the street to assist, for instance, Ahmad Shad Massoud. The reason for this historical duplicity is obvious.
    well said indeed. for that matter, massoud was, and is, worth 100x more than the sh*t of a karzai today.
    There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

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    • #32
      You kept him there.And please,don't peddle BS about free elections.
      Funnt.The Soviets replaced Karmal with the chief of intelligence,Najibullah,when it was too late.Had they put him in power earlier,things might have turned different.Another chief of intelligence,Saleh,was thrown out at the whim of the Pakistanis.He may also come to power way too late.
      Those who know don't speak
      He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. Luke 22:36

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      • #33
        mihais,

        You kept him there.And please,don't peddle BS about free elections.
        Funnt.The Soviets replaced Karmal with the chief of intelligence,Najibullah,when it was too late.Had they put him in power earlier,things might have turned different.Another chief of intelligence,Saleh,was thrown out at the whim of the Pakistanis.He may also come to power way too late.
        we, or rather the bush administration-- in all of its infinite wisdom-- installed him. as for keeping him there, part of his being a worthless bastard is his propensity for being an amazing, long-lasting thorn in the side of the US. removal would have probably made things worse, although he is doing his best every day to disprove that statement.
        There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

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        • #34
          The Bonn Accord in December of 2001 remains an interesting fęte. The bonhomie accompanying the ascendance of western military power over the taliban was born from all things seeming possible. Now...I'm uncertain here but I sense that this vision of omnipotence required that America, the U.N. and others do all humanly possible to raise forth the simple but dignified afghans. Yup. White man's burden, don't you know, and all that pseudo colonial do-gooder sh!t attached with it.

          IIRC, it wasn't solely America that pushed this. It can be said fairly, however, that America was certainly a push-over for all the glad-tiding "one for all and all for one" spirit floating about in those heady days. What if, however, we'd said,

          "Fcuk no. We did our bit and ripped out the taliban. All we'll continue caring about is hauling those mangy azzes belonging to Osama Bin Laden and Aymen Al Zawahiri to justice. You cats go play "A Man Who Would Be King". We ain't interested."

          Saving the afghans in spite of themselves (and others) has proven yet another pointless exercise in ill-conceived and misplaced altruism.
          "This aggression will not stand, man!" Jeff Lebowski
          "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool." Lester Bangs

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          • #35
            S2,

            IIRC, it wasn't solely America that pushed this. It can be said fairly, however, that America was certainly a push-over for all the glad-tiding "one for all and all for one" spirit floating about in those heady days. What if, however, we'd said,

            "Fcuk no. We did our bit and ripped out the taliban. All we'll continue caring about is hauling those mangy azzes belonging to Osama Bin Laden and Aymen Al Zawahiri to justice. You cats go play "A Man Who Would Be King". We ain't interested."
            seems to me we could have done it two ways. either just eliminate AQ and kick the taliban a few times on the way out to make sure they got the lesson, or go full-up colonial. we meandered aimlessly between the two; enough involvement to rile people up, not enough involvement to make them either like us OR fear us.

            there was approximately 5 years of quiet in which the US could have either gotten out or, alternatively, set up its own structure. we're paying for that waste of time in spades now.

            Saving the afghans in spite of themselves (and others) has proven yet another pointless exercise in ill-conceived and misplaced altruism.
            it was not so much altruism but arrogance. afghanistan was supposed to be the demonstration of how democracy, capitalism, and the american way could be reliably brought to a people at the point of a bayonet, prior to the transformation of the middle east along the same lines.

            seeing the worldview of america now compared to where it was in those halycon days of 2000-2001 is absolutely amazing.
            There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

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            • #36
              The Fog of Peace: The Delusion of Taliban Talks | The AfPak Channel
              The Fog of Peace
              By Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason Wednesday, January 18, 2012 - 4:03 PM Share

              Afghanistan policy, like Vietnam policy before it, has taken on a life of its own, impervious to ground truth. The simple reality is that "peace talks" with the Taliban have no chance whatever of a positive outcome from the perspective of U.S. policy. Just as it did in Vietnam, the United States has been fighting the wrong war in Afghanistan with the wrong strategy from the very beginning.

              In Vietnam, the United States was ideologically hell-bent on fighting a war against communism, and shaped its strategy accordingly. For nearly a decade in Afghanistan, the United States has insisted on fighting a secular war, a counterinsurgency, against a religious movement. However, our enemy in North Vietnam was not fighting a war for communism, and in Afghanistan our enemies are not fighting an insurgency. They are fighting a jihad, and no South Asian jihad in history has ever ended in a negotiated settlement. And this one will not either. There is no overlap between the way insurgencies and charismatic religious movements of this archetype in the Pashtun belt end. Insurgencies by definition have both political and military arms. Regardless of what they have learned to say, the Taliban does not. One hundred percent of the movement's leaders are Muslim clerics. After fighting a second war in Asia the wrong way for almost a decade, the United States is now again desperately seeking a way out of the quagmire from within the wrong set of potential outcomes.

              The primary reasons why "peace talks" are delusional are three fold: First, there is no"Taliban" in the sense the proponents of talks envision it. To believe so is cultural mirroring at its peak. Second, the enemy is interested in pre-withdrawal concessions, not a settlement, in an alien culture in which seeking negotiations to end a war is surrender. To believe otherwise is simply wishful thinking. And third, no understanding with senior clerics in the Taliban movement has ever out lived the airplane flight back to New York. Like a second marriage, trusting the "Taliban" to keep a bargain is a victory of hope over experience.

              First, the best way to understand the "Taliban" is not as a political entity that can carry out negotiations, but as an event in time analogous to the First Crusade. It is a loose network of military-religious orders which share a common goal, quite similar to the Crusader orders, which included the Knights Templar, Knights of Malta, and the Knights Hospitaller. The "Taliban" is comprised of similar military-religious orders, including, to name a few, the Haqqani network, the Quetta Shura, the Tora Bora Front, the Tehrik-i-Taliban, the Lashkar-i-Taiba, Hisb-i-Islami Khalis, and Hisb-i-Islami Gulbuddin. Like the crusaders, who shared a common purpose and owed allegiance to the Pope in Rome, the "Taliban" groups share a common purpose and acknowledge the religious supremacy of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Amir-ul-Mumaneen, or "Leader of the Faithful," in Quetta. And like the crusader groups, the "Taliban" groups have no real "political wing," because in the jihadist mindset now ascendant in the Pashtun region, Islam and governance are not separate entities. The church and the state cannot be disaggregated in this way.

              Just as the Knights of Malta did not agree on policy matters with the Knights Templar, and carried out radically different strategies in the Holy Land, so the various groups of the jihad often fundamentally disagree with one another on how to achieve their common goal of establishing religious rule over disputed territory. Each jihadist group has, just as each crusader group had, its own unique and complex internal dynamics. And, just as the Pope was distant from the Holy Land, Mullah Omar is distant physically and operationally from the central battlefields in Afghanistan. The course of events in Afghanistan, as were those on the ground in Acre, Tyre, or Jerusalem, are decided by local dynamics, events, and power struggles -- not by the Pope, and not by Mullah Omar. Just as the Vatican had no practical control over the behavior of the Knights Templar on the ground in Jerusalem, the Quetta Shura has none over the operational activities of the Haqqani Network, the Tehrik-i-Taliban, or even its own local commanders fighting in Afghanistan. Even if one could find bonafide representatives of the Quetta Shura, and not a conartist Quetta cobbler as was the case last time, the Quetta Shura cannot control events in Afghanistan any more than the Vatican could control events in the Holy Land in the eleventh century.

              Second, the motives of any such representatives simply do not now and will never coincide with our own. The Quetta Shura has no genuine interest whatsoever in any "peace talks" or negotiations except to gain concessions such as the release of their comrades in Guantanamo Bay. They have fought for almost 20 years for control of Afghanistan and are now within two years of the withdrawal of foreign troops. As the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) makes unequivocally clear, they have not in anyway changed their intent to retake control of Afghanistan and reestablish their Islamist state. If they had any interest in genuine talks, they would hardly have assassinated Berhanuddin Rabanni, head of the Afghan High Peace Council and the Karzai regime's lead negotiator, last year.

              Furthermore, although the Pentagon has added the imaginary golden fabric of "progress" and the imaginary significance of the "attrition of mid-level leadership" to the emperor's new clothes of peace talks in Afghanistan, both of these are simply fictitious. The reality is, despite all the Pentagon smoke and mirrors, the new NIE shows there has been no sustainable progress in Afghanistan, and the enemy still has a virtually unlimited supply of soldiers and leaders. There are hundreds of thousands of recruits waiting to join the cause in Pakistan, every village has a mullah to lead them on the battlefield, and the madrassas of Pakistan produce hundreds of new militant mullahs every year. They have extensive direct and indirect military support from the Pakistani government and army. And just as the Saigon government was in Vietnam in 1970, the Karzai kleptocracy in Kabul is illegitimate, incompetent, and utterly unpopular in Afghanistan today. As the desertion of a third of the tiny Afghan National Army each year proves, almost no one except Americans and Britons are willing to die for it. On a good day, the Afghan National Army has perhaps 100,000 men under arms. In a sobering comparison, the South Vietnamese army (ARVN) had more than a million men under arms, including a large, modern air force, in a country one quarter the size of Afghanistan, and it collapsed in three weeks of fighting in 1976. The Taliban, who have studied American military history, fully understand this calculus.

              Finally, the last nail in the coffin for "peace talks" is simply pragmatic. The Taliban in its original, unsplintered form, was a notoriously unreliable partner in discussions. In seeking to mediate with its elements between 1996 and 2001, foreign groups representing every interest from health care to oil pipelines to preservation of antiquities found that every "understanding" with the Taliban had completely unraveled before the foreign negotiators had even landed back in New York or London. The Taliban of 1996-2001, which was infinitely more centralized and controllable than it is today, never kept a single such agreement for more than a week.

              In summary, wishful thinking aside, there is no central, political entity called the "Taliban" with whom to negotiate. The enemy is not interested in "peace talks" when they are convinced they have already won a complete victory against a hated and infidel puppet regime and an American puppeteer they now see as weak. And even if all that were not true, today's disaggregated jihadist groups would not and could not keep any bargain which a few members of one crusader order might make in any case. "Peace talks" and hopes of a negotiated solution in Afghanistan are delusional, and American policy-makers should be devoting their time and efforts to managing the coming civil war in Afghanistan rather than weaving any more new clothes for the emperor. In the next phase ofthe war, which will certainly begin when NATO has removed most of its combat power from the country, the United States will face stark political and military choices in determining the modality and extent of its support to the non-Pashtun ethnic groups who will oppose the Taliban's restoration.

              Thomas H.Johnson is a Research Professor in the National Security Affairs Department at the Naval Postgraduate School and the Director of the Program for Culture & Conflict Studies. M. Chris Mason is a retired Foreign Service Officer with long experience in South Asia and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies in Washington, DC.
              To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

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              • #37
                Agree with the above article.

                The Taliban movement is fed by grinding poverty and a class struggle which the radical Islamists milk to instill a specific religious doctrine promising a utopian Islamist cure for their downtrodden state.

                The only real cure is a civil war in which the Islamists are brutally beat down while an economy is built to expand the middle class. To say that there has been no progress, is not true and one only has to look at the state of Kabul in 2001, and Kabul today. The city is bustling with life than ever before.

                IMO, there are only 2 ways to truly win this war.

                One is to invade Pakistan and brutally massacre the Taliban and their mullahs, something which will induce trauma into the Islamists and turn people away from confronting the power sitting in Kabul. I do not foresee this happening as modern day armies (most of them anyway) do not resort to terrorizing groups of people, even if they be the homes of terrorists themselves!

                The second way to win the war would be to dig in, barricade and prepare for the long haul, while the rest of Afghanistan is helped to economically leave the impoverished Pakistani tribal belt behind, giving Afghans a distinct economically superior identity vis-a-vis their Pakistani tribal brethren. Ofcourse this would mean the tribal Taliban turn against the Pakistani government faster than they would if allowed to take over Kabul; but than, I would say Pakistan deserves it for propping them up in the first place, and in the end would be forced to take on the Taliban for the sake of its own survival.

                The second option is more feasible but there is extensive war weariness in the West against this war, as more and more people are questioning why exactly should they care about Afghanistan. It is true, too, for the Westerners do not have as big a stake in the country as Afghanistan's neighbours do; i.e. Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and India. I do hope that in the thinning of Western forces or finances in support of Afghanistan in the future, these nations become bigger and more pro-active players in the country. (And hopefully Iran starts setting some long term goals instead of giving arms to Taliban just to screw the Americans).


                They are fighting a jihad, and no South Asian jihad in history has ever ended in a negotiated settlement.
                Being an avid follower of Punjabi history, I can name two such instances off the top of my head which render this statement false.

                One, the Muslim Nawabs of Punjab, headed by Wazir Khan, proclaimed Jihad against Banda Bahadur's Sikh armies. Their "Jihad" ended shortly after Wazir Khan was defeated, beheaded and hung in the open marketplace. Many of the Muslim Jihadist Nawabs, Nawab of Malerkotla being a major one, were quick to declare an end to their Jihad and accepted suzerainty under Sikh rule.

                Second instance was the Jihad proclaimed by Syed Ahmad Barelvi in the Pashtun tribal belt against Sikh rule. The movement was called Tehrik-e-Muhammadiya. Although initially it gained momentum, but once Barelvi was captured and killed by the Sikh armies, along with hundreds of his supporters, his Jihadist movement fizzled away along with him.
                Last edited by Tronic; 12 Feb 12,, 02:47.
                Cow is the only animal that not only inhales oxygen, but also exhales it.
                -Rekha Arya, Former Minister of Animal Husbandry

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                • #38
                  What to do troung

                  Your article details how we are pissing against the wind today.

                  All the discussions we had here over why it was not good to go with this good/bad taliban strategy have come to nought.

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                  • #39
                    Originally posted by Tronic View Post
                    The second way to win the war would be to dig in, barricade and prepare for the long haul, while the rest of Afghanistan is helped to economically leave the impoverished Pakistani tribal belt behind, giving Afghans a distinct economically superior identity vis-a-vis their Pakistani tribal brethren. Ofcourse this would mean the tribal Taliban turn against the Pakistani government faster than they would if allowed to take over Kabul; but than, I would say Pakistan deserves it for propping them up in the first place, and in the end would be forced to take on the Taliban for the sake of its own survival.

                    The second option is more feasible but there is extensive war weariness in the West against this war, as more and more people are questioning why exactly should they care about Afghanistan. It is true, too, for the Westerners do not have as big a stake in the country as Afghanistan's neighbours do; i.e. Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and India. I do hope that in the thinning of Western forces or finances in support of Afghanistan in the future, these nations become bigger and more pro-active players in the country. (And hopefully Iran starts setting some long term goals instead of giving arms to Taliban just to screw the Americans).
                    This requires India to maintain good relations with Iran as they are our only access to Afghanistan.

                    That's going to become increasingly harder given the current western mood against Iran.

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                    • #40
                      Originally posted by Double Edge View Post
                      This requires India to maintain good relations with Iran as they are our only access to Afghanistan.
                      Well, having good relations is beneficial to both Iran and India. The Chah Bahar port can greatly uplift Iran's eastern half economically by becoming the gateway of Central Asia to the Indian Ocean. It also helps Afghanistan by making it a commercial transit point.

                      That's going to become increasingly harder given the current western mood against Iran.
                      India is not the West. It needs to sit on the fence on this one.
                      Cow is the only animal that not only inhales oxygen, but also exhales it.
                      -Rekha Arya, Former Minister of Animal Husbandry

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                      • #41
                        This commentary will not be welcome in the state dept

                        The Afghanistan equation: U.S. + Taliban + Pakistan = peace? | LA Times Op-Ed | Feb 08 2012

                        A Peace negotiated by outsiders will never hold, but there is a role for the United States.

                        By Peter Tomsen

                        February 8, 2012

                        In 1989, soon after I was appointed U.S. special envoy and ambassador on Afghanistan, the late mujahedin commander Abdul Haq conveyed a warning to me. Attempts by foreigners to organize the unruly, unpredictable and divided Afghan people would always fail, he said. He compared such efforts to a bazaar merchant trying to balance the weight of frogs on opposite trays of a produce scale. The merchant can load frogs on one tray. But as he begins to load the second tray, some of the frogs on the first one will inevitably jump off. And as he reloads them, frogs on the second tray will leap to the ground. Eventually, even the most determined merchant will give up.

                        I have thought of that analogy often during the last year, as the United States and Germany have reached out to Mullah Mohammed Omar's Taliban in Pakistan. The diplomacy has been cloaked in secrecy, though occasional news of it has leaked out. And now, it has apparently produced a tentative agreement, yet to be implemented, to open a Taliban office in Qatar to begin more serious negotiations.

                        But these efforts seem unlikely to lead to a successful negotiated settlement of the differences between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

                        So far, it has been American and German diplomats — with behind-the-scenes participation by Pakistan — powering the process. The Afghan government was not even aware of key aspects of the negotiations until December. That's problematic.

                        Afghan President Hamid Karzai has reluctantly agreed to support the establishment of a Taliban office in Qatar, and the U.S. side says his representatives will participate in the process. But the Taliban has rejected meetings with the Afghan government, which it doesn't recognize as legitimate.

                        Adding confusion to this already complicated scenario, on Jan. 30 the Afghan government announced that Karzai will meet with Taliban representatives outside the Qatar framework in Saudi Arabia, a claim that the Taliban publicly denies. Also, former and current administration officials say that Omar sent a letter to the White House in July on the peace talks. But on Feb. 4, the Taliban's "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" office in Pakistan said it "rejects this baseless rumor with the strongest of words."

                        Are you beginning to understand the frogs-on-scales analogy?

                        For all their differences, Karzai and the Afghan Taliban have one thing in common: a distrust of outside initiatives aimed at knitting Afghans together. Foreign forays into the forbidding Afghan political caldron have invariably spawned greater disunity. They upset traditional tribal and ethnic consensus processes that Afghans informally use to resolve their differences.

                        If the United States has any hope of a successful outcome in Afghanistan, these shaky steps to launch peace negotiations must be reinforced by two policy thrusts. First, though the U.S. should be encouraging and supportive, it should withdraw from direct involvement in the intra-Afghan negotiations. And second, Washington should adopt a tougher strategic posture toward Pakistani-supported terrorist groups — including the Al Qaeda-linked Quetta Shura and Haqqani network — which are fomenting terrorism in the region and globally from sanctuaries within Pakistan.

                        Unfortunately, there are already clear signs that direct, unilateral U.S. involvement in the Afghan reconciliation process will continue, and that it will undermine rather than assist intra-Afghan negotiations.

                        One problem with direct American involvement is that it could exacerbate political fragmentation inside Afghanistan. Bargaining by Americans outside Karzai's purview while he is reaching out to the Taliban separately threatens to make his negotiations irrelevant. The Northern Alliance and other opposition groups have no great desire to cooperate with the Karzai government, and if there's an American channel to the Taliban open too, they're likely to focus on that instead of on Taliban negotiations with the official Afghan government.

                        But this doesn't mean there is no role for United States to play. The Obama administration needs to focus on the cold reality that U.S. and Pakistani policies on Afghanistan and global terrorism are contradictory and threatening to the long-term national security interests of both the U.S. and Afghanistan. To continue to pretend otherwise will only fuel international terrorism from protected Taliban and Haqqani sanctuaries in Pakistan. In recent testimony before Congress, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper told skeptical senators of both parties that the administration is looking for ways to "minimize the impact of these safe havens." But that is woefully inadequate. Terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan must be dismantled.

                        Pakistan's interests differ from those of Afghanistan, and the Afghans will be rightfully suspicious of Pakistani influence on any negotiations. Each time Pakistan's army andInter-Services Intelligence agency have inserted themselves in the intra-Afghan dialogue over the last two decades, it has been to subvert it. The U.S. needs to focus its influence on preventing that from happening this time.

                        The confusing American "fight and talk" tactic toward the ISI-backed Quetta Shura and Haqqani network reflects the larger seesaw pattern of U.S. policy toward Pakistan. Last fall, tough talk from both Adm. Michael G. Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested that the U.S. had lost patience with Pakistan's support for the Haqqani network and would put increasing pressure on Islamabad to close militant sanctuaries in Pakistan. But since then, the U.S. seems to have flinched, reverting to the failed policy of indulgence rather than pressing Pakistan's military to dismantle the well-documented terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan.

                        The Obama administration is understandably eager to show progress on the intra-Afghan negotiating front as it takes the wise and necessary step of drawing down U.S. troops and transferring lead responsibility to Afghans to defend their own country. But progress will come only through disengaging from direct involvement in the intra-Afghan dialogue, even while encouraging the Afghan sides to reach agreement. And the U.S. must demand that Pakistan do the same.

                        A Jan. 24 statement bythe U.S. Embassyin Kabul after a visit to the region by Marc Grossman, the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, had it right: "Only Afghans can decide the future of Afghanistan." This guideline should dominate U.S. policy on intra-Afghan reconciliation.

                        Peter Tomsen is the author of the just-published "The Wars of Afghanistan." He was U.S. special envoy and ambassador on Afghanistan from 1989 to 1992.

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                        • #42
                          Originally posted by Tronic View Post
                          India is not the West. It needs to sit on the fence on this one.
                          And we are doing just that for the moment.

                          Delhi refuses to toe US line on Iran standoff | The Telegraph | Feb 10 2012

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                          • #43
                            Originally posted by Tronic View Post
                            India is not the West. It needs to sit on the fence on this one.
                            A world power does not sit on the fence. A middle power does.

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                            • #44
                              Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
                              A world power does not sit on the fence. A middle power does.

                              Sir, I do not agree that India should risk its relationship with Iran to try and fix screw ups which the Pakistanis are awarded for, and in exchange loose its foothold in Central Asia. Even the Iranian screw up has its roots in the Pakistanis not being stopped (nor punished) from running a nuclear Walmart. AQ Khan today lives a lavish life in his mansion in Islamabad, bestowed with the title "Mohsin-e-Pakistan" (Saviour of Pakistan). I do not agree than, that India should risk its relations with Iran and overlook its own interests when the country responsible for this mess is lavishly awarded.

                              Besides, just my own personal opinion/rant; I believe an Iranian nuke is aimed at Saudi influence anyways. Last I checked, those same Saudis were the ones which funded the nukes pointing towards my country from our Western border. Sooo... the Saudis are free to deal with Iran themselves. :whome:
                              Cow is the only animal that not only inhales oxygen, but also exhales it.
                              -Rekha Arya, Former Minister of Animal Husbandry

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                              • #45
                                There's sitting on the fence and then, there's forcing a situation through. If Iran is in the interest of India, then India should have no qualms about supportting Iran. As I stated, world powers do not sit on the fence. They force the issue to their favour.

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