‘US facing no-win situation in Pakistan’: BS

‘US facing no-win situation in Pakistan’

( Loosing the Info WAR )

* Ex-CIA official says Musharraf and his generals will pay lip service to US demands
* US wants compliant Pakistan

By Khalid Hasan Friday, November 16, 2007

WASHINGTON: The United States is now confronted with an essentially no-win situation in Pakistan, the result of many years of ad hoc policies based on an abiding faith in the power of US military force coupled with ignorance of the strategic, cultural and psychological realities of the region, according to a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official.

Graham E Fuller, a former vice-chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, writes in a publication called Global Viewpoint that at heart there is an incompatibility of American strategic interests with those of Pakistan, particularly as perceived by the country’s strategic elite. Powerful popular forces of Pakistani and Islamic nationalism intensify this divide.

Washington wants what Pakistan will not deliver, or cannot deliver except to a modest degree. Bush wants to destroy Al Qaeda in the Pak-Afghan region, a goal shared by President General Pervez Musharraf.

But while Al Qaeda lacks native roots in Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden is still the object of sympathy by huge numbers in Pakistan and beyond. Humbled Muslim societies everywhere see Bin Laden as one of the few figures in the Muslim world willing to stand up with honour and bravery to the American colossus and defy its imperial ambitions.

( They think this, because of the USA's failed Info War in Pakti. al Qaeda killing Muslims, women, children, bombing Mosques and Market places honour, honour: no just a Info war Failure.)

That makes Bin Laden more popular than Bush or Musharraf, even if most of the population does not share the Qaeda chief’s vision of violent global jihadi struggle.

Lip service: According to Fuller, Washington’s demands continue to cut closer to the Pakistani bone. Bush wants Pakistan to cut off cross-border contact between Pakistan and Afghanistan, to deny Pakistan as a safe haven for the Afghan Taliban. Musharraf and his generals will pay lip service to this goal, but they will not ultimately do it.

The reasons are not complex. As distasteful a symbol of primitive Islamic practice as the Taliban have been, today they represent essentially the major vehicle for Pashtun nationalism in Afghanistan, the single biggest ethnic group and much under-represented in the US-backed Karzai government. More important, there are twice as many ethnic Pashtuns in Pakistan itself as there are in Afghanistan. The cross-border ties are inextricable: clan, family, history, culture, language, religion. This ethnic organism will not be sundered by the arbitrary and unpopular borders between the two countries. Pashtuns can do, and will casually ignore this artificial divide. The Taliban as a political and ideological movement is growing more powerful within Pakistan itself.

Pakistan, Fuller points out, already has one powerful enemy on its eastern flank — India. It cannot afford to have a hostile Afghanistan on its western side. Every Pakistani strategic thinker knows this. Yet under the Karzai government in Afghanistan, the enemies of Pakistan — the anti-Pashtun Northern Alliance, and a strong Indian political and intelligence presence — have grown strong. Pakistan’s primary voice and influence inside Afghanistan comes mainly via the Taliban, supported behind the scenes by the Pakistani military on strategic grounds. Washington may rail at this, but it cannot change these facts on the ground. Pakistan’s government is meanwhile still heavily influenced by powerful feudal rural landholders with regressive social and economic policies. The country desperately needs agricultural and social reform. But reform will undercut the powerful feudalists, a key pillar of power. Former premier Benazir Bhutto, for all her Western polish, herself represents those very landowning powers in her native Sindh region. The kind of deep social reform required is not in the offing, neither with Musharraf nor with Bhutto. She has been tested — twice — and found wanting.

Compliant Pakistan: Fuller argues that Washington wants a compliant Pakistan that will dutifully play its assigned role in the US regional hegemonic vision. Washington will take it any way it can get it, with or without democracy. So US calls for democracy are now issued in panic and ring hollow after six years of support for the Musharraf dictatorship. Pakistani liberals condemn the US for supporting the Pakistani military dictatorship for so long in the name of an unpopular “war against terror” and perceive US confrontationalism as only serving to inflame the militant jihadists.

( No mention of the terrorist confrontations, beheadings, bombings and He says USA is 'inflaming' the terrorist...his reasoning is so obtuse as to be beyond logic )

Nor can the crisis in Pakistan be viewed in isolation. It is of a piece with the war in Afghanistan, and is inextricably linked as well to broader convulsions across the Middle East.

He writes, “Today the US military presence is perhaps the single most inflammatory element in politics across the region. The American military response to this regional challenge only serves to exacerbate it. Sadly, Pakistan is now swift on the heels of Iraq and Afghanistan in heading toward increased civil strife and bitter anti-American emotions ... The region will only calm down following a withdrawal of US forces.”

( Iraq calmed down, and civil strife is declining, and no withdrawal of USA troops yet. )

SOURCE:

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This is a good example of Info War, and their propaganda is getting through, where is the USA's Pashtoon media blitz? VOA? FM stations? Cell Phone network, TV?

Inside look at Tilaban ( Video )

Gerald