Permanent strains in US-Pakistan ties-1

-DR. ABDUL RUFF

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ONE

Until recently and for many years since Sept-11 hoax, Pakistani soil served as safe sanctuary, on payment basis,  for the NATO state terrorists for advancing their joint objectives. NATO terrorists occupy and terrorize both Afghanistan and Pakistan, killing Muslims in millions, but they just fool the world by saying these people are terrorists. After their joint terror attack on Pakistanis, the NATO gang is still eager to get Islamabad to reopen all its terror routes in Pakistan to kill Pakistanis. 

Pakistan has resisted the pressure to resume NATO supplies and has again asked the US to halt the drone attacks and tender an apology. This is not the first time that Islamabad has defied Washington. Pakistan has faced 30 years of sanctions because it did not toe the US line in the sixties, seventies and nineties! The Pakistani Army and the civilian leadership is again defying Washington and may again face sanctions! All this and the history of US-Pakistani relations have already been factored into the Pakistani demands to the US.

In order to  coerce Islamabad to bend sufficiently before the Americans, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was invited to the NATO summit in Chicago amid expectations that Pakistan would eventually lift a six-month blockade against NATO supply trucks that was put in place after US air strikes killed 26 Pakistani troops in November. As planed in advance, the notorious NATO urged Islamabad to back NATO efforts to "stabilize" Afghanistan after being destabilized as they prepared for talks with President Zardari, on the eve of a NATO summit. 

More than 50 leaders attended the summit, including heads of state and government from the 28 NATO countries, along with puppet Presidents Karzai and Zardari. The US invited Zardari to the summit, in the hope of signing a deal to reopen the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to US transport.

A row between the US and Pakistan over supply routes to Afghanistan threatened to overshadow the summit of NATO leaders in Chicago. The two sides have been unable to reach agreement on Pakistan's conditions for reopening the routes, closed after a US air strike killed several troops. 

NATO has been claiming that the Supply routes from Pakistan are not so important because NATO is able to get its supplies from the do called Northern corridor which traverses a dozen or so countries. That has been a blatant lie. Pakistan is crucial and critical to NATO’s own survival in Afghanistan. Obviously, if the routes through Pakistan were not important to NATO it would not be pressuring Pakistan to open the routes.

The NATO conference and the seduction of an invitation to Chicago is as irrelevant as the “Final declaration”, dated July 21, 1954, of the Geneva Conference on the problem of restoring peace in Indochina. The Chicago Conference on Afghanistan is as irrelevant as the conference in Bonn–if Pakistan is absent.

In the Geneva conference in 1953 the representatives of Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam, France, Laos, the People’s Republic of China, the State of Viet-Nam, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the UK and the USA took part. What was missing were the real Vietnamese. All the so called peace conferences after the “Final one” in 1954 solved nothing. France and the US lost and colonialism and neo-colonialism was banished from the Gulf of Tonkin. “Vietnamization” meant the transfer of power from the Americans to the surrogate Generals who would have held the fort for the Americans. It didn’t work in Saigon, and now it won’t work in Kabul.

The French are withdrawing from Kapsia and the new French president who had campaigned on the issue of a pull out of NATO at the end of 2013–doesn’t want anything to do with Afghanistan. The US flag and the French banners have come down in many parts of Afghanistan, and the keys to the city have been handed over to Karzai. However the fact remains that Karzai controls very little outside his palace. Sarkozy thinks that the infiltration in the so called Afghan National Army (ANR) has been underestimated.

Karzai is fretting the ominous clouds over most of Afghanistan. The Talibs are coming as sure ad the Vietcong came.

So far, about 20 Flag ceremonies of “transfer power to locals” have taken place across the country, part of the unfolding plan for all NATO combat troops to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.” These ceremonies and the US commitment to Karzai are as ephemeral as those made to the Vietnamese Generals. In this region which borders Pakistan, the Talibans still have power bases in districts within an hour’s drive of Jalalabad, and just to the north, in Kunar Province, they have fought pitched battles with American troops as recently as November.” This is the reality on the ground.

TWO

The summit ended with troop withdrawals from Afghanistan dominating the agenda. France insists that its troops will return by the end of 2012. President Francois Hollande said the issue was "non-negotiable because it was a question of French sovereignty. 

The US needs the supply lines opened through Pakistan–not to send new troops, but to begin the massive withdrawal from Pakistan. Most of the mercenaries will have left by this summer. The Pakistan Army is rebuilding the Pakistan Railways to allow the US to withdraw. The US will be paying for the continuation of the supply chain through Pakistan.

The lines have clearly been drawn. The new Pakistan will be tactically resurgent and non-compliant. There is a wind of change, and an air of defiance in the youth of Pakistan.  No government in Islamabad hereafter will be able to make or continue the shady deals that were made in the recent past. .

The summit  endorsed plans to hand over combat command to Afghan forces by mid-2013 and seek progress in opening routes for troop withdrawals which  would be completed in year 2014. The handover is expected to be completed by 2014, but several other NATO leaders are under domestic political pressure to bring troops home earlier. 

USA generally warns to members there were still "great challenges ahead", urging leaders to "pool resources". The NATO rogue states hoped to reach a commitment on who pays how much towards funding Afghan forces after 2014.Some nations - including the US, Australia, Britain, and Germany - have pledged to contribute to an international fund to help Afghan forces after the NATO pullout. 

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said before the summit that it was "not likely" that the US would be prepared to pay the higher amount demanded by Pakistan. Washington is expected to pay half of an estimated $4bn (£2.5bn) needed every year. USA is perhaps unhappy about the fee, given that US is already giving Pakistan large amounts of aid. US officials say no bilateral meeting planned between Zardari and Obama, although the Pakistani leader met Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The summit was seeking to reconcile two different messages. President Obama spoke of a "transformational decade" in Afghanistan and the enormous "sacrifices" of the "American people" on the road to peace, stability and development. 

NATO terror secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said there would be "no rush for the exits" and the mission would shift from combat to support. It is telling the public in NATO countries that the fighting in Afghanistan is coming to an end for their troops, while reassuring the Afghans that the alliance will not stop “operations” after 2014.

THREE - Observations 

Humanity hates monstrous and murderous NATO and its ugly terror wars for alien resources by showcasing its terror prowess. . The summit was taking place amid heavy security. Outside the conference, riot police clashed with demonstrators protesting about war, climate change and a wide range of other issues.

The summit was taking place amid heavy security. Outside the conference, riot police clashed with demonstrators protesting about war, climate change and a wide range of other issues.

More than 10 years after the US toppled the Taliban regime, violence is continuing unabated in Afghanistan. According to UN figures, the number of deaths reached a record 3,031 in 2011 - the great majority caused by militants. Earlier this month, the Taliban announced the start of their annual spring offensive.

The NATO conference in Chicago in Chicago is as irrelevant as NATO itself. A meeting to discuss the rearrangement of the chairs on the deck of the Titanic will not abort NATO’s inevitable collision with the iceberg called Afghanistan. The NATO ships are headed to oblivion and the rise in the rhetoric from Brussels and Washington cannot hide their frustration. The higher decibel level cannot obfuscate the facts on the ground in Afghanistan.

NATO an anarchism of the Cold war was unable to prevent a resurgent Russia in browbeating the Europeans to take a middle of the road policy viz a viz Moscow, NATO has been unable to justify its existence ever since. NATO accomplishments in Europe for the past two decades have been minimal, it’s performance in Iraq and Libya is dismal and it’s total defeat in Afghanistan spells its death knell.

Pakistan is already a Major- Non-NATO-Ally (MNNA) and that status means a hill of beans for most Pakistanis.  But the MNNA was a concoction of General Powell to get India also on board , but becoming a MNNA has not brought any advantages to Pakistan. Rather, it destabilized the nation, killed thousands of innocent Muslims.

Pakistan would not open the supply lines until and unless the US halts the drone attacks. Attending the Chicago conference is no big deal. The future of Afghanistan will be defined on the battlefield and not around a conference table. In fact the future of Afghanistan had already been decided. NATO and ISAF are leaving, the Talibs are the enduring reality in Afghanistan and Pakistan has won!

Threats to Pakistani sovereignty are not a new phenomenon. Pakistan’s are used to them and see them for what they are worth–anger at being defeated in the Hindu Kush. The transit "dispute" remains – and will remain- unresolved. The route was closed in November after a US drone attack killed several Pakistani troops.

Obviously, the “historic” honeymoon between dictatorial USA and its puppet Pakistan has come to an end.  Islamabad has finally risen to the occasion to straight away tell the Washington bosses that it can no longer take the NATO insult and abuse in terms of terror attacks.

Enough is long ago enough!