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  • Just the thing the Paks don't need right now

    Angry Over Decades of Mistreatment, Pashtuns in Pakistan Rally in Search for Dignity | The Wire | Mar 12 2018

    For the first time in Pakistan’s 70-year history, the Pashtuns from the tribal regions, supported by others from the “settled areas”, converged on the federal capital Islamabad to protest and seek justice for Naqeeb. This came to be known as the Pashtun Long March (PLM) and drew upwards of five to six thousand people who chanted daily, for a week, in Islamabad: “Da Sanga Azadi Da … What kind of freedom is this, in which Pashtuns are being murdered, being ruined”.

    The current mobilisation is essentially a civil and human rights movement that seeks redressal of their grievances within the four corners of the Pakistani constitution. The ten-day-long sit-in in Islamabad had really straightforward demands:

    a) arrest, prosecute and punish the SSP Rao Anwar;

    b) clear landmines from FATA;

    c) stop insulting, humiliating and stereotyping Pashtuns, especially the women, at the FATA check-posts;

    d) produce or bring to book the missing Pashtuns.

    The first round of protests in Islamabad did not yield anything concrete. The leaders of the PLM met with the Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and the directors of the military’s intelligence and public relation wings. There were reassurances from the state and its functionaries that the demands will be met and even a few dozen missing persons were surreptitiously released.

    No meaningful initiative, however, has been taken formally to put into practice the PTM’s demands, forcing the latter’s leadership to continue with their protests in the Pashtun territories. The incredibly warm welcome they have received in the Pashtun areas of Balochistan province and the provincial capital Quetta, where they were joined by the ethnic Baloch and Hazaras, has unnerved the army and its intelligence wing.

    Mainstream Pakistani media is accustomed to self-censorship and toes the army’s line in a docile manner and has a near-complete blackout over the PLM. The issue, however, is not going to go away by denying it social or conventional media coverage. There are genuine grievances that need to be addressed, and soon.

    It is unlikely that the Pakistani army will cave in to the Pashtun demands anytime soon. The Pakistan army’s Afghan jihadism project is one of the corner-stones of its regional policies and it is unlikely to abandon it. The organisers of the Pashtun protests have to conceive their response to a recalcitrant continuation of the disastrous policy and calibrate it to remain non-violent, organised and constitutional.

    Forty years of injustice cannot be undone within days or even months; what is heartening is that the young Pashtun leadership is stepping up to the plate.


    The 'Pakistan is too dangerous to fail' trope

    Pashtun crowd shouts down ISI Taliban stooge
    Last edited by Double Edge; 15 Mar 18,, 00:54.

    Comment


    • Worth a listen for AMB Ron Neumans's remarks, he's the main act here



      Afghan policy moved from time based to conditions based. What are those conditions ? inadequately defined

      What is the US objective, THE GOAL in Afghanistan ? inadequately defined again. So there is space for alternative misleading narratives. The Americans have left this question open for now. It means American people don't get a proper answer to this question as yet.

      What is the US doing in Afghanistan now ? training afghan forces to a higher level. This is certainly doable. The problem in the past was cramming too much in a limited time frame. He gives the example of taking a 10th grader, putting them in college, providing tutoring and then expecting them to graduate in two years. The problem was that damn time limit. When people can't get the job done then say the mission was a failure, the recruits were a failure. Just like the title of this discussion thread (!)

      I never see articles in the Indian press slamming Afghan recruits for not being capable. So there is a degree of covering one's ass after getting funding and not being able to deliver suitable candidates. After all can't blame the people who funded the programs with unrealistic time frames. If you said anything at the time about unrealistic time frames bla bla you'd lose the project to a competitor.

      So, the idea is to get the training right this time. Realistic time frame where battlefield benefits are realised ? 2019-2020 DOD estimates. Maybe. Now if these dates aren't communicated there will be people saying it was all a failure by the end of this year itself if they can't see tangible results. If you then say it was expected to take 3-4 yrs you get condemned for making excuses.

      1:00:14 it's interesting that he thinks the US can sustain this effort. Congress has learnt the mistakes from Iraq and IS and is less likely to push for a complete pullout from Afghanistan unlike in the past. This is good. When you don't have to also fight DC, chances of success improve. And as the general earlier stated, Iraq & Syria winding down means more resources in Afghanistan for CENTCOM

      Then have to keep up the pressure on the Afghan govt to deliver. Pressure on the Paks will continue. Question is how soon do the Americans blink. In the past they've tried pressure but only for short periods. So if the US wants to get compliance from the Paks they are going to have to apply pressure for longer. Relations will become much worse between the US & Pakistan, after it gets worse we have to see whether the Americans blink first. If the Americans don't blink then we get to see whether the Paks comply.

      Stay the course in other words. No re-evaluation and fiddling with policy every six months because that is sure to screw it up. Now is not the time to be questioning policy. Leave that for a couple more years. Until then give the policy that exists serious effort.

      I suspect there wasn't a complete pull out in 2015 because doing that would mean funds dry up. No people in theatre people tend to forget about the theatre.

      US cannot be a combatant and a mediator at the same time. So a third party mediator is required. WHO ? can't be the UN because they're a participant in the war too. Maybe Norway or similar.

      Afghans have to talk to Afghans but Taliban don't want to talk to the slave soldiers of the Kabul Govt. Taliban wants to talk to the US because US toppled them, played a role in setting up the national unity govt and is an active party in the war today. But the US can't cut a separate deal with the Taliban or it would undercut the Kabul govt.

      After an agreement is reached who will enforce it. Do they follow agreements in Afghanistan ? no evidence to suggest that in the last forty years. It's like medieval Europe where agreements are kept until one side or the other is strong enough to break them, What role does the US play here. Unless the goal is to get an agreement then get out and leave it at that.

      So leverage is required. Two levers that may or not work. Pressure on the Paks to change their policy. Pressure or not put on the Taliban in the battlefield. Are these two levers sufficient. Debatable. A third lever is the Afghan govt. If it performs better, if its troops perform better then people become more optimistic about that govt. All three levers are possible, not one of them is guaranteed and none are fast and certain. A fourth lever can be the international arena. Iran, Russia & China and the US working with them.

      45:50 Asst secretary Sedney doesn't trust SIGAR. Surprising. Bad predictions and analysis. He disagrees that this policy is a loose slowly policy. Calling it out before its had time to take effect.

      Afghanistan has a bright long term future if it can only survive its short term leaders.

      How to gauge progress in Afghanistan ? not possible in the short term, longer term is to see how well do the police & military work together. They do not currently and are horrible mismatch. Second, if smaller units are under threat how well can they be reinforced by the police or military. Right now this is handled poorly. Finally, cutting down on the number of politically motivated generals who are corrupt as well as inefficient. If these three look good in say a year or two then we can be confident about progress. otherwise if the politicising and power networks in Afghanistan continue to defeat cooperation between leaders of military & security units then progress is poor. The policy won't deliver if continued longer.

      If you are still confused hopefully you are now confused in a much more sophisticated way : D
      Last edited by Double Edge; 16 Mar 18,, 16:46.

      Comment


      • Pakistani covert support for Taliban revealed
        Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

        Comment


        • Husain Haqqani gets slammed a lot by his own people. In a talk about a year ago at Hudson, one guy in the audience had to be ejected for calling him a RAW agent. Haqqani was part of the team that put together a tough policy recommendation for dealing with Pakistan that seems to have been accepted by the Trump administration. Having one person of the team that compiled the report working in the administration after certainly helped. Lisa Curtis.

          ‘Pakistan is isolated and has fewer friends in the international community’ | Asia Times | Mar 19 2018

          For some time now, Pakistan has been able to take one step forward to get relief from international pressure, followed by two steps back once the pressure is off and another step forward, when the pressure resumes. The fundamental change in attitude has not been forthcoming.
          Last edited by Double Edge; 19 Mar 18,, 16:54.

          Comment


          • RIP and god bless. Such bravery...

            Bahadur the brave: Afghan bomb disposal hero killed | AFP | Mar 09 2018

            Mamoon Durrani
            ,AFP•March 9, 2018

            Bahadur Agha, a bomb disposal technician wounded six times by the Taliban, joked the seventh would be his last. He was right: after dismantling hundreds of IEDs barehanded, this Afghan hero died defusing one final device.

            Crawling along the ground ahead of Afghan military convoys, the 31-year-old policeman saved countless lives in southern Helmand province, defusing landmines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) without a face shield, helmet, body armour or gloves.

            With nothing to protect his body, Bahadur knew that one wrong move could be his last. But he had apparently accepted the poor odds for survival.

            "Six times I've been injured, seventh time maybe I'll be finished," he told VICE News reporter Ben Anderson in October 2016, smiling at the camera.

            Last December the fateful moment came.

            Four decades of war have left Afghanistan as one of the most mined countries in the world.

            Figures from the United Nations show that IEDs killed more than 600 civilians across the country last year, including more than 100 in Helmand alone -- among them, Bahadur.

            His brother-in-law Ahmad Shah Zaland said the Taliban had begun laying two mines instead of one: when the first is deactivated, the second explodes. "The second mine... took Bahadur away from us," he told AFP.

            Given the security situation in Helmand, news of his death did not become widely known until last month.

            Relatives and colleagues described a patriotic, skilled man driven by grief and rage over the death of family members, including his mother, at the hands of the Taliban.

            In the VICE documentary, he told Anderson that "my family is finished, everything is finished".

            "Maybe I die, no problem," he said.

            Anderson, who shared news of Bahadur's death on Twitter, said he had watched the policeman ignore gunfire as he crawled on the ground to defuse IEDs hidden in the middle of the road, clearing a path for the soldiers sheltering in armoured vehicles behind him.

            "We were getting shot at but he didn't care. Everyone else took cover, he stood up and walked around," Anderson told AFP.

            "He said he didn't care if he lived or died, he just wanted to kill the Taliban. And it was obvious this was true, he was totally traumatised.

            "He should have been taken off the battlefield long ago... although he probably would have refused to leave."

            - Lonely funeral -

            Bahadur, who joined the police aged 15, had shown Anderson the physical scars left by bullet and shrapnel wounds he had received during mine-clearing operations.

            "One had entered his forehead but not touched his brain," Anderson said.

            Former colleagues in Helmand, the restive poppy-growing province still largely controlled by the Taliban more than 16 years after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, said he lived up to his name -- Bahadur, which in Pashto means "the brave" or "the hero".

            "When it was complicated, it was always Bahadur who did it," one colleague, Haibatullah, told AFP, before adding bitterly: "The government does not care about our lives."

            Bahadur's commander Ghulam Dawood Tarakhail recalled a "brave and patriotic officer" who "defused hundreds of roadside bombs or landmines".

            "Bahadur was a skilled and professional deminer," Tarakhail told AFP, adding that just three weeks before he died Bahadur was awarded a medal for his service.

            Despite his sacrifice, Bahadur's untimely death has gone largely unnoticed in the war-torn country that has been numbed by the relentless and bloody violence.

            Thousands of troops and police have been killed or wounded in the grinding conflict, but official figures on the number of casualties among security forces are no longer made public.

            "Only 15 to 20 people" showed up at Bahadur's funeral the next day to pray in front of the coffin draped with an Afghan flag and a photo of the dead man stuck to one side, according to Mullah Yaar Gul, a tribal elder.

            He is survived by his wife and baby son, whose enormous, kohl-lined black eyes laugh at the camera in snapshots seen by AFP.

            Ahmad Shah Zaland said his brother-in-law's "greatest wish" was to see his months-old son walk.

            "His wish was taken to the grave."
            This is Bahadur back in 2016

            Last edited by Double Edge; 20 Mar 18,, 14:30.

            Comment


            • The Americans are not happy. Pakistan 'must do more' against Taliban: Mike Pence tells Shahid Khaqani Abbasi
              Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

              Comment


              • Is this show running out of steam ?

                U.S. Military Will Not Pursue Taliban Into Pakistan | Real clear Defense | mar 21 2018

                A Pentagon spokesman said that the U.S. military will not conduct hot pursuit of Taliban and allied jihadist fighters from Afghanistan into Pakistan. Additionally, the spokesman said that the military would be fine if the Taliban was operating on the Pakistani side of the border.

                “We have no authority to go into Pakistan,” Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Mike Andrews told Pajhwok Afghan News. U.S. forces could ask for authority to chase Taliban fighters as they cross the border into Pakistan, but approval for such action “would certainly be the exception and not the norm,” he continued.

                “Say, for example, we have troops in contact and then the Taliban forces go across the border,” Andrews told Pajhwok. “They are clearly inside Pakistan then. There’s no change with regards to respecting the territorial sovereignty of Pakistan.”

                In the past the U.S. military has defended its right to pursue Taliban forces retreating into Pakistan under its “inherent right of self defense.”

                Currently, the U.S. leaves the heavy lifting in Pakistan to covert airstrikes using unmanned Predators and Reapers against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan’s tribal areas. There have been eight such strikes inside Paksitan so far in 2018.

                The Pentagon spokesman also said that the U.S. military can accept the Taliban presence inside Pakistan just as long as Afghanistan was secured.

                “If the Taliban reside in Pakistan and we are able to provide safety and support and to help secure districts and provinces within Afghanistan, I think that is a tradeoff that we’re willing to make,” Andrews said, according to Pajhwok. “Because it’s not necessarily about these people over in Pakistan, it is about the Afghan people.

                “But that’s something within Pakistan, that’s something the nation of Pakistan has got to resolve. Now we’re going to stay focused on Afghanistan.”

                Additionally, Andrews said that the U.S. military is “hopeful Pakistan will take action because not only do we feel it is going to serve Afghanistan, but it’s going to help protect Pakistan, India and the entire region.”

                Comment


                • Meanwhile, the Taliban have accepted Ghani's approach

                  Afghan Taliban accepts President Ghani's peace dialogue | WION | Mar 05 2018

                  "The armed group (Taliban) said they will join the peace process if employed on the TAPI project. They will also ensure the project's security,"

                  This comes after a group of 10 insurgents also joined the peace process in support of the TAPI project.

                  Meanwhile, Pakistan also supported Ghani's initiative, in what was seen as the first possible breakthrough in the thawing of frosty ties between Kabul and Islamabad.

                  Comment


                  • Old wine in a new bottle

                    The Pakistani Army is trying to convince the world it’s on the verge of a great transformation | The Print | Mar 20 2018

                    HUSAIN HAQQANI 20 March, 2018

                    Every few years, the Pakistani media initiates a discussion about how the nation’s military is becoming more committed to moving away from Jihadi terrorism, building democracy at home, and achieving peace with the neighbours.

                    Some sections of the international press pick up the theme while western diplomats and American generals voice hope that Pakistan’s current military chief will pave the way for incremental progress, even if his predecessors failed to do the same.

                    It is necessary, therefore, to compare what is being described in the Pakistani media these days as the ‘Bajwa Doctrine’ — a description of the army’s ‘altered’ worldview based on an ostensibly off-the-record briefing of select journalists by Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff, General Qamar Javed Bajwa — with similar descriptions of the country’s change of direction under different military leaders.

                    Most of the discussion at General Bajwa’s briefing was on political matters, which explains why it was formally labelled ‘off-the-record’. But because its purpose was to let the Pakistan army’s views be known to the world, including to the country’s politicians, it has been reported widely.

                    In fact, there was not even a proforma protest by General Bajwa’s team over the fact that an off-the-record conversation should not be reported with full attribution.

                    In any other country, the army commander would not publicly voice his institution’s displeasure with the Constitution or on the elected government’s handling of the economy. In 2010, US General Stanley McChrystal had to step down because his staff had made critical remarks about President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan policy.

                    But then, this is Pakistan. Here, army commanders are not fired or asked to resign by elected civilian leaders. Instead, Pakistan’s army commanders have a tradition of sending prime ministers packing.

                    In 1999, when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif tried to exercise his constitutional authority to appoint a new Chief of Army Staff, he found himself out of job and in prison. The general he tried to fire, Pervez Musharraf, ended up ruling the country for the next nine years.

                    To be fair to General Bajwa, his distaste for a military coup might be the reason he chose to convey the army’s displeasure about political developments through a press briefing.

                    If the media, the Supreme Court judges, and the politicians know what the army wants, they might just make it all happen without General Bajwa, the honourable soldier, having to soil his hands with direct involvement in politics.

                    And there might be the additional benefit of persuading a senior American military figure, in this case CENTCOM commander General Joseph Votel, to bear with the Pakistani commander while he tries to steady the ship of state and do the right things, especially in Afghanistan.

                    After all, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani (army chief 2007-2013), managed to sell the ‘change around the corner’ concept to Admiral Michael Mullen for a few years until, after 26 in-person meetings, Mullen concluded that he had been wasting his time.

                    General Bajwa cannot avoid politics even if he wishes to, because he presides over an officers’ corps that spends more time thinking about politics than about purely professional matters.

                    Dr Aqil Shah proves that methodically in his empirical study ‘The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan’ (2014, Harvard University Press.)

                    Notwithstanding his personal distaste for getting directly embroiled in politics, every Pakistani commander must give voice to his institution’s views and beliefs, most of which have remained static and unaltered since the ascendance in 1951 of General (later Field Marshal) Ayub Khan as the first indigenous Muslim commander of the army left for Pakistan by the British.

                    The training and education of Pakistan’s military officers tends to cast their minds in a similar mould, with very little variation, and their worldview remains mostly unaltered by changing realities around them.

                    Georgetown University professor Christine Fair makes that point in her analysis of Pakistan army officers’ writings, which was published as the book ‘Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War’ (2014, Oxford University Press.)

                    Thus, General Bajwa’s recently expressed views are somewhat rehashed versions of views expressed by Ayub Khan and almost all others who have commanded the Pakistan army in between. There are variations of language and of emphasis, but the essential content on domestic politics, regional affairs, and the army’s institutional primacy is similar.

                    Some Pakistani generals, like Zia-ul-Haq, used more Islamic idiom; others such as Ayub and Musharraf chose more Western-oriented themes. But some things remain unchanged. Pakistan’s generals do not like Pakistan’s politicians, they do not like regional autonomy and prefer a highly centralised state, and their basic opinion on foreign policy generally coincides.

                    Thus, Bajwa criticised the Eighteenth Amendment to Pakistan’s Constitution, passed by two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament in 2010, because it “has changed Pakistan from a federation to confederation”. The army remains opposed to provincial or ethnic autonomy, as it has consistently done before and after it went to war against Bengalis seeking self-rule in erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

                    Gen. Bajwa reportedly described the Eighteenth Amendment and its redistribution of power between Pakistan’s central and provincial governments as “more dangerous” than the six-point programme of Bangladesh’s founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

                    On Afghanistan, General Bajwa spoke of ‘peaceful coexistence with neighbouring countries’ and not having expansionist designs in Afghanistan, just like the ‘Kayani Doctrine’ circa 2009-2010. The doctrine’s only priority, we are told, is Pakistan and it “believes in totally wiping out terrorism from Pakistan. It is making sure that no safe havens [will] be spared for the terrorists”.

                    “General Bajwa and his team have a clear vision of peaceful and prosperous Pakistan and they want to make Pakistan totally violence free,” said one gushing account of the army chief’s press conference-that-was-not-a-press conference. “They want the militant groups to be de-weaponised and brought to the mainstream like Ireland and other strife-stricken countries where warring groups were dealt in an ideal way.”

                    But no one should expect a complete end to support for Afghan Taliban or the Haqqani Network or the elimination of India-oriented Jihadis like Jaish-e-Muhammad or Lashkar-e-Taiba, because Pakistan’s army under General Bajwa is unlikely to eliminate something it continues to refuse to acknowledge.

                    Within a few days of General Bajwa’s laying out his ‘doctrine’, the head of the military’s public relations wing declared that all Jihadi groups had already lost their safe havens in Pakistan — a ‘mission accomplished’ statement that renders having to do anything further unnecessary.

                    The only area where General Bajwa broke some new ground was on the question of relations with India, invoking the analogy of US-Canada relations and recognising China’s advice that Pakistan should seek means other than war to resolve the Kashmir issue.

                    But his assertion that there can be no war between two neighbouring nuclear countries came with the caveat that Pakistan must wait through the ‘stubbornness’ of the ‘extremist Modi regime’.

                    From Ayub to Musharraf to Kayani and now Bajwa, the most consistent theme in the thinking of Pakistan’s generals remains the belief that contending ideas about Pakistan’s direction remain a threat to Pakistan’s survival and stability, and that the army is better suited than civilian institutions to define Pakistan’s national interest.

                    Unless that rejection of pluralism and the entrenched notion of institutional supremacy is abandoned, the burden of history will continue to suggest continuity rather than change in the thinking of Pakistan’s military.

                    Newly-labelled doctrines and well-worded statements, nominally off-the-record to create the illusion of candour, are unlikely to persuade sceptics that the Pakistan army, and because of it the country, is on the verge of a fundamental transformation.

                    Husain Haqqani, director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute in Washington D.C., was Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States from 2008-11. His forthcoming book is ‘Reimagining Pakistan.’

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by Double Edge View Post
                      Meanwhile, the Taliban have accepted Ghani's approach

                      Afghan Taliban accepts President Ghani's peace dialogue | WION | Mar 05 2018
                      Can someone please enlighten me why India has signed on TAPI? Brain-dead zombies rule South Block now?
                      Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by Oracle View Post
                        Can someone please enlighten me why India has signed on TAPI? Brain-dead zombies rule South Block now?
                        Parliamentary panel recommended. Turkmens have the fourth largest proven reserves of gas in the world. They are in the hock to China and desperate to get their product out. Pricing will be attractive. This means commissions to be had along the route. Taliban have signed on to it. So the Afghan leg is taken care of

                        5% stake for India, Afghanistan & Pakistan. Turkmens pick up the remaining 85%

                        Turkmen because the earlier IPI is more risky to go ahead with. Because its from Iran. Iran is unhappy about this deal.

                        Americans are the bigger problem here not the Paks as counter-intuitive as it may seem : D
                        Last edited by Double Edge; 27 Mar 18,, 13:46.

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by Double Edge View Post
                          Parliamentary panel recommended. Turkmens have the fourth largest proven reserves of gas in the world. They are in the hock to China and desperate to get their product out. Pricing will be attractive. This means commissions to be had along the route. Taliban have signed on to it. So the Afghan leg is taken care of

                          5% stake for India, Afghanistan & Pakistan. Turkmens pick up the remaining 85%

                          Turkmen because the earlier IPI is more risky to go ahead with. Because its from Iran. Iran is unhappy about this deal.

                          Americans are the bigger problem here not the Paks as counter-intuitive as it may seem : D
                          So Turkmenistan wants to hedge a different bet than China, alright. Has the GoI forgotten who controls the Taliban? Or to be more precise, the Taliban says and does, what the ISI wants it to say and do. India is walking right into a trap laid by the Pakmil and ISI and the baniya mentality continues.

                          Baniya = merchant of petty goods.

                          Everytime there is a change of guard in the Pakmil, there are raised expectations in Delhi. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat.
                          Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

                          Comment


                          • US versus China war within Pakistan

                            3 points that I thought of sometime back and this article talks about those.
                            #1. The judiciary in Pak is Pakmils' harem. Sorry, Pakistan is Pakmils' harem.
                            #2. China's support to India focused terrorist groups in Pak will continue.
                            #3. There is no 2 front war to be fought. It's a single front.

                            Which leads me to think the celebrations in Delhi, after the FATF listing of Pak, as a group of pansies celebrating virginity lost in an orgy. US arm-twisted KSA with a full time position, and India-US+ combine convinced China to drop support for VPChair of that group. India guided by lethargic babus continues to act dumb, axing it's feet for the nth time for wins so small, that it fizzles out after a week.

                            Diplomatically isolating Pak will never yield any results, as the Pakmil loves this narrative and uses it to continue to tighten its grip on Pak, while ordinary Indians celebrate Paks listing as some sort of fulfilled prophecy.
                            Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Oracle View Post
                              So Turkmenistan wants to hedge a different bet than China, alright. Has the GoI forgotten who controls the Taliban? Or to be more precise, the Taliban says and does, what the ISI wants it to say and do. India is walking right into a trap laid by the Pakmil and ISI and the baniya mentality continues.

                              Baniya = merchant of petty goods.

                              Everytime there is a change of guard in the Pakmil, there are raised expectations in Delhi. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat.
                              Can you articulate what the downside to India will be in this affair ? this trap you speak of

                              TAPI is just one more option among others. Since we are the biggest customers, if ever supply gets cut it reverberates right back down the line. They all lose as well. This means our position in this deal is good. It means everybody along the line has an incentive to keep the tap open, yes ?

                              Prices are market driven so we don't get held to ransom. We might even be able to negotiate better than market given our weight in this deal. Turkmens have debts to repay to China.

                              need to find a copy of the parliamentary panel's report if they have made it public, there will be more details as to their thinking

                              Presently there are no expectations in Delhi about the Paks. Rather its the other side that is waiting for a change of guard. They see no progress ie appeasement can be had from the stubborn Modi govt : D
                              Last edited by Double Edge; 27 Mar 18,, 15:21.

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Oracle View Post
                                An interesting read

                                Which leads me to think the celebrations in Delhi, after the FATF listing of Pak, as a group of pansies celebrating virginity lost in an orgy. US arm-twisted KSA with a full time position, and India-US+ combine convinced China to drop support for VPChair of that group. India guided by lethargic babus continues to act dumb, axing it's feet for the nth time for wins so small, that it fizzles out after a week.

                                Diplomatically isolating Pak will never yield any results, as the Pakmil loves this narrative and uses it to continue to tighten its grip on Pak, while ordinary Indians celebrate Paks listing as some sort of fulfilled prophecy.
                                I think you are under estimating the effect of that listing and also jumping the gun about the effects it will have. Wait till June, the Paks have to come up with a plan that will pass muster.

                                The charge is terror financing. How are they going to pull this one off.

                                This isn't just diplomatic isolation but risks becoming economic isolation. That will have multiple second order effects throughout the country. Effects will be apparent over the years. It won't bring them to their heels immediately. But it will just be a constant drag every time they want to do something. Remember they are trying to attract investment as a potential future fast growth state. This FATF listing puts quite a dampener on that.
                                Last edited by Double Edge; 27 Mar 18,, 16:08.

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