rssChristine Fair on Pakistan
Friday, October 10, 2008 at 12:43 pm
- 7 Comments
Christine Fair of RAND runs through some of the reasons why militancy has grown in Pakistan despite something like $10 billion in mostly military aid coming from the U.S. since 9/11.
She makes a Prince joke (!) about the “terrorist formerly known as Beitullah Mehsud,” head of the Pakistani Taliban. Mehsud is launching “absolutely unprecedented” attacks on the Inter-Services Intelligence agency of Pakistan, which birthed the Taliban in the 1990s.
There are retaliatory strikes against the Pakistani military around the country emanating from the Federal Administered Tribal Areas. “What happens in FATA doesn’t stay in FATA,”she says.
No one reacts, to Fair’s dissatisfaction. “What, you don’t watch commercials?”
Big laughs.
OK, no laughing matter: “$13 billion later, we should not be expecting Beitullah Mehsud to be giving interviews to journalists from the BBC,” Fair says.
Part of the problem is — contrary to classic counterinsurgency doctrine, which privileges the need for local forces to fight insurgents — the Frontier Corps of the Pakistani military. These are the same guys who “still work with the Taliban… an ongoing problem,” and one the U.S. hasn’t been able to solve. Plus, we’re returning to “the ISI working with the Taliban,” as evidenced by the ISI bombing the Indian Embassy in Kabul.
“It doesn’t appear as if Pakistan has strategically abandoned militancy as a tool of foreign policy,” Fair says. “And they’re under attack because of their embrace of the United States.”
It’s easy to say that Pakistan shouldn’t appease Al Qaeda, but there seems to be not much of a constituency in the country for attacking Al Qaeda because “most Pakistanis don’t feel that Al Qaeda is a threat” to them.
Lessons of the last eight years: Don’t support the Pakistani Army and expect it to provide either support to civil society or anything more than grudging opposition to Al Qaeda.
So, instead “forge a real working relationship with the Pakistan Army” instead of a “highly-transactional one” that we currently have. “We pay them for operations that we don’t jointly plan and hope they’ll be executed.”
What’ll be different?
Fair doesn’t really say. But we “have to build at the same time, strategically, the institutions that can support democracy in Pakistan.”
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7 Comments
Comment posted October 10, 2008 @ 6:48 pm
Miss Fair, I had the honour to have made your aquaintences,
I wish I had'nt. Your fair demeanour is only skin deep. You are not an intellectual as you bandy about, but it is just that, skin deep, no intellect, Univerity of Chicago notwithstanding.
I wonder how much RAW paid for your Punjabi lessons. You have a distinct Penchant of “defiling” & hurling “Spiteful invectives” about Pak in general & Army in particular. What ever you are peddling, I ain't buying, why? I can smell a Indian Plant against Pashtuns & Punjabis, who still get wet nightmares in the great dehli's “Hinduvata” East Block.
You see, we know what “great game” Hindu is playing in league with the drugie; Karzai. You Americans are so child like, led by your finger by Hindu to ruin in Afghanistan. So, you think if you have your stooge Zardari in a new transactional “Honky Dory” Deliverance in FATA or Afghanistan? consider, three afghan wars, and what did Brits had to show for it? Remember Maiwand? I guess you cannot even find it on Google earth. I recommend that you leave the fighting to real Pashtun men & go back to your Arm Chair Strategies.
Warm Regards,
P.S. Open a branch of RAND, in SWA, (thats South Waziristan Agency, if you were wondering) !
Warrior Pashtun.
Comment posted October 10, 2008 @ 8:22 pm
dear Haider, ilave and respect your comments about miss fair. She might be fair but she is not fair to the hospitility of Pakistan and Punjabis in particular. Its better she is sent to SWA for a few days to see what Indians, isreals, Afghans, and Americans are doing with this country. Indians can sell hounor to destabilise pakistan. Let her see for herself what pushtons are and how they respect women folk. But Indian do not do the same. Moreover american are no different, what they did to DR Afia is an eye opener for all.
Comment posted October 11, 2008 @ 8:36 am
tats bullshit. She obviously spent more time reading popular news sources and less on the ground in Pakistan. ISI is the very soul of pakistan army
Comment posted April 6, 2009 @ 3:03 am
i address this to the panel who discussed under the heading What is wrong with Pakistan? The names were Christine Fair, Sumit Patil, Stephen Cohen, Aqil Shah and others.
None of the comments I read were deep enough to fully touch the bottom of the problem. people like me believe that whatever has been tried as remedies of the problem has all failed. It is time to go back to the drawing board. No more half measures will suffice. As they popularly say in Pakistan' the dog has fallen into the well, it must be taken out. Merely changing the water will not help'. Or ' When the house is burning, you look for someone to kill the fire rather than looking for a new interior decorator'. Or ' You can change the soap to have a bath but if the water remains infected and filthy, nothing will come out'.
Mr. Obama there is no short or long term solution to this problem. If there is filth and shit heaping up in a closed room and one day the stink overpowers everyone and you open the door to investigate and find cockroache s and lot's of them feeding themselves off the shit. You cry eurika. Problem is visible. You use very strong germicides and kill all those cockroaches. Happy. Close the door again. problem gone. Yes but only just. Very soon the germicides loose their power and the process starts again. because no body cared about the shit/ filth still heaped in the closed room.
No mr. Obama has to take some visionary steps. This Sub Continent is a collection of un natural geographic divisions. You don't need to be Einstine to know this historical fact. Put the whole of subcontinent ( India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh etc.) into it's natural shape and in no time all the problems will disappear. Is this such a novel idea. No sir! The same model was tried 100 years back in the moddle east. Today a common person living in middle east is happy, contented, at peace with himself. Who cares if his country is called UAE or Qatar or what?
Then the same model was tried in Europe after 1945. Today an individual european by and large feel the same as mentioned above for middle east.
Now is the time to apply this twice tested successful model on the region called sub continent. Star working on common man. Create environment for him to exist with self respect, honor, dignity and the problems will vanish. Mr. Obame you may become a legend in your own time.
Comment posted April 6, 2009 @ 10:03 am
i address this to the panel who discussed under the heading What is wrong with Pakistan? The names were Christine Fair, Sumit Patil, Stephen Cohen, Aqil Shah and others.
None of the comments I read were deep enough to fully touch the bottom of the problem. people like me believe that whatever has been tried as remedies of the problem has all failed. It is time to go back to the drawing board. No more half measures will suffice. As they popularly say in Pakistan' the dog has fallen into the well, it must be taken out. Merely changing the water will not help'. Or ' When the house is burning, you look for someone to kill the fire rather than looking for a new interior decorator'. Or ' You can change the soap to have a bath but if the water remains infected and filthy, nothing will come out'.
Mr. Obama there is no short or long term solution to this problem. If there is filth and shit heaping up in a closed room and one day the stink overpowers everyone and you open the door to investigate and find cockroache s and lot's of them feeding themselves off the shit. You cry eurika. Problem is visible. You use very strong germicides and kill all those cockroaches. Happy. Close the door again. problem gone. Yes but only just. Very soon the germicides loose their power and the process starts again. because no body cared about the shit/ filth still heaped in the closed room.
No mr. Obama has to take some visionary steps. This Sub Continent is a collection of un natural geographic divisions. You don't need to be Einstine to know this historical fact. Put the whole of subcontinent ( India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh etc.) into it's natural shape and in no time all the problems will disappear. Is this such a novel idea. No sir! The same model was tried 100 years back in the moddle east. Today a common person living in middle east is happy, contented, at peace with himself. Who cares if his country is called UAE or Qatar or what?
Then the same model was tried in Europe after 1945. Today an individual european by and large feel the same as mentioned above for middle east.
Now is the time to apply this twice tested successful model on the region called sub continent. Star working on common man. Create environment for him to exist with self respect, honor, dignity and the problems will vanish. Mr. Obame you may become a legend in your own time.
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