Threat analysis and Situation report

By Syed Zaid Zaman Hamid

BrassTacks Threat analysis and Situation report which the treacherous media, idiotic politicians and the naive judiciary will NOT tell you:
Whatever we wrote in the last few weeks is rapidly being unfolded on all threat axis for Pakistan.

The US is now well and truly aggressive to provoke more wars within Pakistan and to force the Pak army to into a head-on collision with the tribes in North Waziristan and against Afghan resistance. The panic has already started to set in the tribes who are pondering over mass migration and exodus from the region, even towards Afghanistan where these Pakistani tribals would be easy prey for NATO and Indian military psy-ops operators to ignite their anger into rage against Pakistan and Pak army. On the other hand, NATO is literally raining missiles in North Waziristan against pro-Pakistan tribals and against Afghan resistance.

The Drone warfare is now creating a major crisis for Pakistan army as the military leadership is coming under severe pressure and criticism from the nation over their failure to stop this blatant abuse of national dignity and slaughter of innocent citizens.

“The strategy deployed by NATO/CIA/RAW is:

1. To attack and destroy Pakistan’s surveillance and early warning systems of the Navy, PAF and army to incapacitate their military capability to forewarn of any invasion on the country.

2. The second axis is to ignite the sectarian wars in Pakistan, just as in Syria and Lebanon. Dozens of Shias are being assassinated in macabre style killings all across the country. Not just that it would ignite the local sectarian wars, it would also destroy Pakistan’s relations with Iran.

3. Massive attacks on Pakistan army continue in FATA, tribal areas and in Baluchistan to keep the army bogged down in internal high intensity wars and to bleed the military’s resources to weaken it substantially so that it is not able to resist the external invasion.

4. NATO is also testing the waters and challenging the Pakistan’s defenses on the Western theatre. After the attack on Salala check post last year, NATO had stopped coming close to the Pakistan border. But now, they are aggressively intruding closer and even attacking close to the Pakistan border.

5. NATO/CIA drone strikes have become more frequent, lethal and destructive. The objective is to ignite the tribes into open rebellion against Pakistan army for being “collaborators” of the US which is killing women and children of the Pakistani tribals as massive “collateral damage”.

6. In Baluchistan, security forces are being targeted in a renewed and bloody campaign led by both TTP and the BLA. The sudden upsurge in violence and its vicious intensity is coordinated with the other axis of violence in the country. In addition to the attacks on the forces, trains, buses and energy infrastructure is also being attacked to cripple the provincial administration and critical services.

7. Chinese assets, interests and personnel in Pakistan are being targeted to disrupt the strategic relationship between Pakistan and China.

8. The panic and chaos which this urban war has created is now breaking the back of national economy and morale, throwing the entire country into fits of panic and chaos. The desperate measures being adopted by the PPP regime are only adding to the meltdown and panic.

9. Pressure is also being increased on Pakistan to declare war on the Afghan resistance and against friendly own tribes in North Waziristan. The US strategy is to deploy Pakistan to do the fighting for the NATO. As the violence touches the red hot levels in the country and the army is already over stretched, US is forcing the army leadership to open new deadlier fronts which would totally destroy not just the army but also any prospects of Pakistan having any strategic assets in the Afghan Pashtuns. The war in North Waziristan would not hurt any TTP assets which may be there as they would simply draw the army in but them melt back into Afghanistan, leaving the army to fight the local tribes and afghan resistance.

10. Massive propaganda, information war and Psy-ops have also been launched by the Indians as well as the CIA to prove that Pakistan’s nuclear assets are unsafe, the country is in a meltdown and that Pakistan is involved in spreading violence and terrorism in the neighboring countries especially against US forces in Afghanistan and India.

The war against Pakistan is now crystal clear. It has reached the last stages of deployment while the Pakistan army is well and truly surrounded but still not responding on the entire axis. Every day lost in removing this regime will be paid in massive bloodshed and destruction of the state, society and the army.

Within the government, the anarchy reigns supreme. The government and the judiciary at war with each other oblivious of the grave existential threats the nation faces. Army has remained a silent spectator of this political and judicial war and this has indeed brought the country to the brink of annihilation. Pakistan army is the last hope in this total and complete anarchy and chaos.

While the Pakistan army is indeed aware of the fatal encirclement of the state and the army, it is still reluctant to decisively intervene into the political chaos to salvage the country. The military leadership is still deliberating the crisis and has not made up their mind. In the next few weeks, they may not have the luxury of controlling the dynamics of the events, even if they want to then. Today, they can. After just a few weeks, the events would become out of control and then events would decide the destiny of the nation and the fate of its leaders.

Saddam, Qaddafi, Mubarak and now Bashar ul Asad also thought that they have infinite amount of time at their disposal. For Pakistani leaders the moment of truth just seems around the corner now.
Pakistan army is only fighting back at the military axis but have no response strategy for political chaos, economic meltdown, media war and ongoing social chaos. On the military axis, they have achieved some major success in recent days.

The following news report about the assassination of a major TTP leader in Afghanistan is a clear indication that TTP is well and truly protected in Afghanistan and their wounded are being treated in Afghan military hospitals. The news report that he has been killed in a Drone strike is non-sense as CIA does not do drones in Kunar. The militant has been eliminated by a Pak army strike after he was returning to Afghanistan from an attack inside Pakistan.

The encirclement of Pakistan is rapid and total. Now the UN is planning to send in a mission to Baluchistan to observe HR violations. Baluchistan is the prized target of the US policy towards Pakistan to cut a strategic corridor to Afghanistan bypassing the mainland. In the past also, US has been taking great interest in the internal chaos of Baluchistan to use it as a pretext to intervene. The anarchy in Baluchistan is not total also with hundreds of training camps and terrorist bases operating from Afghanistan.

Within Pakistan, the political chaos is at its peak. 27th August would be another day of infamy in Pakistan’s history as the battles between the Supreme Court and the Government threatens to bring down the state itself.
Pakistan is not too far from becoming another “Syria”. The global media war, regional encirclement, UN intervention, support to insurgencies in FATA and Baluchistan, urban war through political terrorist gangs in Karachi, psychological warfare through the paid media and direct interference into Pakistan’s social and religious circles through US AID is now tightening the grip of US and India on Pakistan’s entire social, political, economic and military fabric.

The following picture is from Syria but it may pass as from being Pakistan also. This is what happens when armies are forced to fight urban high intensity wars within own cities. This is the 4thGW, where fighting lines are not on the borders but in the major cities and towns. The soldiers are not uniformed opponents from regular armies but rag tag urban insurgents backed by regional powers. You DO NOT fight a war within your own cities or else get what the Syrians are getting now and Iraqis and Libyans tasted before them. This is what is planned for Pakistan now but the leadership and the judiciary is stone dead, deaf, dumb, blind and even collaborative to the collapse. I only wonder how the history would judge this nation which saw it coming but decided to fiddle only ??

Now even if Pak Army intervenes, the cost of recovering the nation from this anarchic state would be staggering. If the army still does not intervene, then it will be all over within the next 4 months.

Khair inshAllah. Pakistan Zindabaad.

For a change, something to celebrate

 

by Ayaz Amir
Friday, March 09, 2012

Banana republic, client state, dictation from the US? This is not how puppet states are supposed to behave. Following the American attacks on two of our border outposts, leaving 26 of our soldiers dead, Pakistan has held off the United States and – would you believe it? – the heavens have not fallen.

The Nato supply route across Pakistan remains closed, not a container getting through, and it is the Americans who are sweating. US envoy Marc Grossman wanted to visit Pakistan for a damage-repair operation but he was told the time was not opportune.

Time was when the sound of clicking heels was a regular feature of life in Islamabad. The new reserve is something vastly different. It comes as a result of the realization dawning in the corridors of national security early last year that instead of any appreciation coming Pakistan’s way for what it was doing to help the US in Afghanistan, in support of a mission seen increasingly as running into the sand, American behaviour was cocky and arrogant.

The Americans may put a brave face on the suspension of Nato supplies but it doesn’t take much to figure out that it would be a serious problem. Pakistan, however, is playing it cool, having made it known that a parliamentary committee is reviewing relations and whatever emerges from the exercise will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. Seldom in Pakistan’s history have the Americans so eagerly awaited a joint session of our parliament.

As everyone understands, parliamentary oversight is a bit of a fig-leaf. Government and GHQ will decide and parliament will go through the motions. In any event, the one-phone-call relationship is a thing of the past – although, to be fair to Pakistan, even that was greatly exaggerated. Whenever Pakistan has wanted to stand its ground it has been able to do so. When it has jumped into America’s lap it has done so on its own.

No one had to force or convert Gen Zia into backing the so-called mujahideen. It was his own decision. Gen Musharraf did not have to be threatened to fall into line post-Sep 11. In the wake of that occurrence Pakistan’s newly-discovered importance spelled the end of Musharraf’s international isolation. So he welcomed it.
Another issue on which Pakistan is sticking to an independent position is Iran.

Hillary Clinton did not so much warn Pakistan as state what she thought was the obvious: that the Iran gas pipeline would entail financial and economic consequences for Pakistan as per US law. But the riposte from Pakistan was quick, Foreign Minister Hina Khar – a lot smarter than her famous uncle, the once-upon-a-time Loin (sic) of Punjab, Malik Ghulam Mustafa Khar – saying that Pakistan would take a decision in its own interests.

The important thing remains that even as war-talk relating to Iran from Israel and the US is on the rise, Israel desperate for a US strike on Iran’s nuclear installations, Pakistan is not backing off from the Iran deal.

To say that Pakistan is breaking out on its own would be another exaggeration. But it is fair to say that the Americans are learning the limits of their influence in Islamabad. This is a good thing. Even close friends should not be taken lightly and the feeling had grown in Pakistan that the Americans were taking us for granted.
But here’s a remarkable thing. When official Pakistan was supposed to be in America’s pocket, or dancing to America’s tune, anti-Americanism at the level of public sentiment was strong and virulent. But with the relationship going a bit cold, the psychological necessity for overt and loud displays of anti-Americanism has diminished. On the banner of Pakistani patriotism America-bashing has slipped several notches. Pakistan seems a more relaxed place as a result. Long may it remain this way.

Pakistan must think long and hard before allowing a resumption of the Nato supply line although the best thing would be for it to remain closed.
Notice one thing more. Imran Khan’s rhetoric has gone a bit flat, the fizz having gone out of it. This is not because other parties have suddenly hit the comeback trail but because the American relationship has been downgraded. Some of the wind has been taken out of his sails.

In order to reignite popular anti-Americanism two conditions have to be met: more drone strikes and more American visitors descending on Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
Who’s really standing up to the Americans? Popular folklore would have it that it is the army which is calling the shots. But this is too black-and-white an explanation. The government and army are on the same page on this. On each and every matter – Raymond Davis, May 2, Salala, etc – if the army has taken a position, President Asif Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani have unequivocally backed it.

On Afghanistan, and on what happens next there, Zardari, Gilani and Kayani are one. Indeed, Zardari started cultivating President Karzai of Afghanistan when it was bad form in Pakistan to do so. And on Iran at the height of Memogate Zardari said something, this in Naudero, which wouldn’t have gone down too well with the Americans: that Pakistan would not be drawn into unwanted conflicts. He did not name Iran but the meaning was clear.

No one has been dealing separately with the Americans, which is one reason why General Headquarters, for all its Memogate fulminations, really has no charge against the political government. It also says something for the unwitting sophistication of the present diffusion of power – with no single power centre able to have its way in all things – that despite the friction between GHQ on one side and the political government on the other caused by the memo caper, the two sides are back to a working relationship.

Solitary dictators, under no compulsion to look around, have been the death of Pakistan. The present model of government suits Pakistan best – a decentralized system putting a premium on negotiation and consulting. But working this model requires flexibility and exceptional political skills. To the growing surprise and dismay of their detractors, Zardari and Gilani possess both in sufficient measure.
But not to put too fine a point on it, Pakistan is also being well served by its army leadership. How stereotypes crumble. Kayani was supposed to be an American creature.

Yet here it is him and Gen Shuja Pusha as the head of the ISI who have stood up to the Americans. Imagine the kind of pressure – congressional hearings, senatorial warnings, etc – they have had to face. But they have stuck to their guns…and, it should be noted, without undue horn-blowing or flag-waving.

Memogate was an exercise in folly but then the best men make mistakes. Zardari and Gilani seem clever today. But the imposition of governor’s rule in Punjab back in 2009 was their Memogate. The only thing to be said in their favour in that context is that they quickly recovered. Kayani and Pasha too will recover from their governor’s rule, if they haven’t done so already.

ISI chief is one of the key posts in our security hierarchy, one especially important in view of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan. We have had sinister figures and not a few outright dunces standing at the gates but, the memo intervention apart, Gen Pasha has been a clever head of the organization.

Let’s not be blinded by bias or prejudice. This is the freest democracy in our history, not because of any Abraham Lincoln but because of circumstances conspiring to bring about a diffusion of power and authority. Let us keep it this way, hoping all the while, and trusting to our good fairies, that the coming elections lead to a smooth democratic transition…this at a time when the Americans are cutting and running from Afghanistan.

The torch of government and democracy safely handed over…this will be a first in our history. If there is an occasion for some champagne that will be it.

CIA instigating mutiny in the Pakistani army

By M K Bhadrakumar

 

The unthinkable is happening. The United States

is confronting the Pakistani military leadership of General Parvez Kayani. An

extremely dangerous course to destabilise Pakistan is commencing. Can the

outcome be any different than in Iran in 1979? But then, the Americans are

like Bourbons; they never learn from their mistakes.

The NYT report today is unprecedented.

The report quotes US officials not less than 7 times, which is extraordinary,

including “an American military official involved with Pakistan for many

years”; “a senior American official”, etc. The dispatch is cleverly drafted to

convey the impression that a number of Pakistanis have been spoken to, but

reading between the lines, conceivably, these could also probably have been

indirect attribution by the American sources. A careful reading, in fact,

suggests that the dispatch is almost entirely based on deep briefing by some

top US intelligence official with great access to records relating to the most

highly sensitive US interactions with the Pak army leadership and who was

briefing on the basis of instructions from the highest level of the US

intelligence apparatus.

The report no doubt underscores that the US intelligence penetration of the

Pak defence forces goes very deep. It is no

joke to get a Pakistani officer taking part in an exclusive briefing by Kayani

at the National Defence University to share his notes with the US

interlocutors – unless he is their “mole”. This is like a morality play for we

Indians, too, where the US intelligence penetration is ever broadening and

deepening.

Quite obviously, the birds are coming to

roost. Pakistani military is paying the price for the big access it provided

to the US to interact with its officer corps within the framework of their

so-called “strategic partnership”. The Americans are now literally holding the

Pakistani army by its jugular veins. This should serve as a big warning for

all militaries of developing countries like India (which is also developing

intensive “mil-to-mil” ties with the US). In our country at least, it is even

terribly unfashionable to speak anymore of CIA activities. The NYT story flags

in no uncertain terms that although Cold War is over, history has not

ended.

What are the objectives behind the NYT story?

In sum, any whichever way we look at it, they all are highly diabolic. One, US

is rubbishing army chief Parvez Kayani and ISI head Shuja Pasha who at one

time were its own blue-eyed boys and whose successful careers and

post-retirement extensions in service the Americans carefully choreographed

fostered with a pliant civilian leadership in Islamabad, but now when the

crunch time comes, the folks are not “delivering”. In American culture, as

they say, there is nothing like free lunch.

The Americans are livid that their hefty “investment” has turned out to be

a waste in every sense. And. it was a very painstakingly arranged investment, too.

In short, the Americans finally realise that they might have made a miscalculation

about Kayani when they promoted his career.

Two, US intelligence estimation is that things can only go from bad to worse in

US-Pakistan relations from now onward.

All that is possible to slavage the relationship has been attempted. John Kerry,

Hillary Clinton, Mike Mullen – the so-called “friends of Pakistan” in the

Barack Obama administration – have all come to Islamabad and turned on the

charm offensive. But nothing worked. Then came CIA boss Leon Panetta with a

deal that like Marlon Brando said in the movie Godfather, Americans thought

the Pakistanis cannot afford to say ‘No’ to, but to their utter dismay, Kayani

showed him the door.

The Americans realise that Kayani is fighting

for his own survival – and so is Pasha – and that makes him jettison his

“pro-American” mindset and harmonise quickly with the overwhelming opinion

within the army, which is that the Americans pose a danger to Pakistan’s

national security and it is about time that the military leadership draws a

red line. Put simply, Pakistan fears that the Americans are out to grab their

nuclear stockpile. Pakistani people and the military expect Kayani to

disengage from the US-led Afghan war and instead pursue an independent course

in terms of the country’s perceived legitimate interests.

Three, there is a US attempt to exploit the growing indiscipline within the

Pak army and, if possible, to trigger a mutiny, which will bog down the army

leadership in a serious “domestic” crisis

that leaves no time for them for the foreseeable future to play any forceful

role in Afghanistan. In turn, it leaves the Americans a free hand to pursue

their own agenda. Time is of the essence of the matter and the US desperately

wants direct access to the Taliban leadership so as to strike a deal with them

without the ISI or Hamid Karzai coming in between.

The prime US objective is that Taliban should somehow come to a compromise

with them on the single most crucial issue of

permanent US military bases in Afghanistan. The negotiations over the

strategic partnership agreement with Karzai’s government are at a critical

point. The Taliban leadership of Mullah Omar robustly opposes the US proposal

to set up American and NATO bases on their country. The Americans are willing

to take the Taliban off the UN’s sanctions list and allow them to be part of

mainstream Afghan political life, including in the top echelons of leadership,

provided Mullah Omar and the Quetta Shura agree to play ball.

The US tried its damnest to get Kayani to bring

the Taliban to the reconciliation path. When these attempts failed, they tried

to establish direct contact with the Taliban leadership. But ISI has been

constantly frustrating the US intelligence activities in this direction and

reminding the US to stick to earlier pledges that Pakistan would have a key

role in the negotiations with the Taliban. The CIA and Pentagon have concluded

that so long as the Pakistani military leadership remains stubborn, they

cannot advance their agenda in Afghanistan.

Now, how do you get Kayani and the ISI to back

off? The US knows the style of functioning of the Pakistani military. The army

chief essentially works within a collegium of the 9 corps commanders. Thus, US

has concluded that it also has to tackle the collegium. The only way is to set

the army’s house on fire so that the generals get distracted by the

fire-dousing and the massive repair work and housecleaning that they will be

called upon to undertake as top priority for months if not years to come. To

rebuild a national institution like the armed forces takes years and

decades.

Four, the US won’t mind if Kayani is forced to

step aside from his position and the Pakistani military leadership breaks up

in disarray, as it opens up windows of opportunities to have Kayani and Pasha

replaced by more “dependable” people – Uncle Sam’s own men. There is every

possibility that the US has been grooming its favourites within the Pak army

corps for all contingencies. Pakistan is too important as a “key non-NATO

ally”. The CIA is greatly experienced in masterminding coup d-etat, including

“in-house” coup d’etat.

Almost all the best and the brightest Pak

army officers have passed through the US military academies at one time or

another. Given the sub-continent’s middle class mindset and post-modern

cultural ethos, elites in civil or military life take it for granted that US

backing is a useful asset for furthering career. The officers easily succumb

to US intelligence entrapment. Many such “sleepers” should be existing there

within the Pak army officer corps.

The big question remains: has someone in

Washington thought through the game plan to tame the Pakistani military? The

heart of the matter is that there is virulent “anti-Americanism” within the

Pak armed forces. Very often it overlaps with Islamist sympathies. Old-style

left wing “anti-Americanism” is almost non-existent in the Pakistani armed

forces – as in Ayaz Amir’s time. These tendencies in the military are almost

completely in sync with the overwhelming public opinion in the country as

well.

Over the past 3 decades at least, Pakistani

army officers have come to be recruited almost entirely from the lower middle

class – as in our country – and not from the landed aristocracy as in the

earlier decades up to the 1970s. These social strata are quintessentially

right wing in their ideology, nationalistic, and steeped in religiosity that

often becomes indistinguishable from militant religious faith.

Given the overall economic crisis in Pakistan

and the utterly discredited Pakistani political class (as a whole) and

countless other social inequities and tensions building up in an overall

climate of cascading violence and great uncertainties about the future gnawing

the mind of the average Pakistani today, a lurch toward extreme right wing

Islamist path is quite possible. The ingredients in Pakistan are almost

nearing those prevailing in Iran in the Shah’s era.

The major difference so far has been that

Pakistan has an armed forces “rooted in the soil” as a national institution,

which the public respected to the point of revering it, which on its part,

sincerely or not, also claimed to be the Praetorian Guards of the Pakistani

state. Now, in life, destroying comes very easy. Unless the Americans have

some very bright ideas about how to go about nation-building in Pakistan,

going by their track record in neighbouring Afghanistan, their present course

to discredit the military and incite its disintegration or weakening at the

present crisis point, is fraught with immense dangers.

The instability in the region may suit the US’

geo-strategy for consolidating its (and NATO’s) military presence in the

region but it will be a highly self-centred, almost cynical, perspective to

take on the problem, which has dangerous, almost explosive, potential for

regional security. Also, who it is that is in charge of the Pakistan policy in

Washington today, we do not know. To my mind, Obama administration doesn’t

have a clue since Richard Holbrooke passed away as to how to handle Pakistan.

The disturbing news in recent weeks has

been that all the old “Pakistan hands” in the USG have left the Obama

administration. It seems there has been a steady exodus of officials who knew

and understood how Pakistan works, and the depletion is almost one hundred

percent. That leaves an open field for the CIA to set the

policies.

The CIA boss Leon Panetta (who is tipped as

defense secretary) is an experienced and ambitious politico who knows how to

pull the wires in the Washington jungle – and, to boot it, he has an Italian

name. He is unlikely to forgive and forget the humiliation he suffered in

Rawalpindi last Friday. The NYT story suggests that it is not in his blood if

he doesn’t settle scores with the Rawalpindi crowd. If Marlon Brando were

around, he would agree.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian

Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri

Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and

Turkey.

Explain yourself!

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