Barack Obama throws an entire nation under the bus, and Lindsey Graham ignores Hamid Karzai's major point about the strategic pact

President Barack Obama chose the first White House press conference of 2012 to throw Afghanistan under the bus. He did this by saying that the time had come for the United States to "transition" out of Afghanistan because the violence aimed at Americans in response to the Burned Korans incident was "unacceptable."

He added that this didn't mean a change in the plan to end all U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan by the end of 2014. But his remark added fuel to rumors flying around Washington since last week that he would use the NATO summit in May to move up the deadline date.

It's possible Obama's remark was at least partly intended as a counter-move to President Hamid Karzai's ongoing refusal to budge on two issues that have been holding up signing of the U.S.-Afghanistan strategic partnership agreement, which is crafted to govern the U.S. role in Afghanistan after 2014.

Yet if I were an Afghan who fears a precipitous U.S. exit from Afghanistan would unleash large-scale massacres, I wouldn't pin my hopes on the idea that Obama is just bluffing. Among people who've studied Obama's political career, he is infamous for betraying people, even those people who've been instrumental to his rise in power, and doing so even so for a small political gain.

In fact the slang term for such betrayal -- throwing someone "under the bus" -- gained popularity in the USA because of Obama's ruthlessness with those who least deserve the treatment.

He even threw his own grandmother under the bus by portraying her as someone prejudiced against blacks. He did this to burnish his 'black' credentials with a radio audience of black Americans in Philadelphia. His grandmother, who was still alive at the time if my memory serves, was white. She was the person who took on the responsibility of raising him after his mother abandoned him.

That's our President and Commander-in-Chief, who has all the instincts of a long-lived satrap.

Whether or not he was bluffing, Obama knew his remark about Afghanistan would give additional impetus to calls within his Democratic party base that the USA immediately quit Afghanistan. He'll need every vote he can get from the base if the U.S. economy is still in the doldrums on election day. Throwing Afghanistan under the bus is a negligible price to pay, in Obama's political calculus, if that would help lock in more of his voter base.

Although it would be a small detail to Obama, by hooking up the threat of immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan with the Koran burning incident, he was also putting General John Allen, Commander of ISAF, in a bad position. In the immediate wake of the revenge murders of American soldiers that were ostensibly connected with the Koran burnings, Allen passionately urged the American troops under his command not to retaliate for the murders and to 'stay the course' for the sake of the 50-nation NATO mission in Afghanistan.

Allen's words now ring hollow in light of the rationale Obama proffered for the U.S. to "transition" out of Afghanistan.

Another American politician who's now intimating that the U.S. should quit Afghanistan earlier than agreed is Republican Senator Lindsay Graham. Senator Graham has always been a staunch supporter of the U.S. staying the course in Afghanistan, but he lost his temper with Hamid Karzai over the issue of the stalled strategic pact. Graham is studiously overlooking something, but I'll let him blow off steam before I mention what that something is. From his remarks on March 6, reported by Foreign Policy's Josh Rogin:

If Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai doesn't change his tune fast on two key U.S. demands, the U.S. military should just pack up and go home and leave Afghanistan for good, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said today.

Graham, who has been one of the strongest congressional supporters for continuing the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan beyond 2014, said today that unless Karzai relents on his demands that the United States immediately hand over control of Afghan prisoners and end night raids against insurgents, there is no way the U.S. can achieve its objectives in Afghanistan and therefore should just end its involvement there.

"If the president of the country can't understand how irrational it is to expect us to turn over prisoners and if he doesn't understand that the night raids have been the biggest blow to the Taliban ... then there is no hope of winning. None," Graham said in the hallways of the Capitol Building just before entering the GOP caucus lunch.

"So if he insists that all the prisoners have to be turned over by March 9 and that we have to stop night raids, that means we will fail in Afghanistan and that means Lindsey Graham pulls the plug. It means that I no longer believe we can win and we might as well get out of there sooner rather than later."

Graham acknowledged that those two issues were crucial in ongoing negotiations over a U.S.-Afghanistan Status of Forces Agreement, which would provide the legal basis for the ongoing presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond the end of 2014, the deadline President Barack Obama has set for transferring full control of the country back to the Afghans.

"I am going to pull the plug on Afghanistan from a personal point of view if we don't get this strategic partnership signed," Graham said.

"Karzai's insistence that all detainees we have in our custody be turned over by Friday to an Afghan system that will let guys walk right out the door and start killing Americans again is a non-starter."

Graham, who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations' State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee, visited Kabul and met with Karzai late last month.

Today he said he supports a U.S.-Afghanistan agreement for a post-2014 presence of about 20,000 U.S. troops, with three or four U.S. airbases and coordination in the military, political, and economic spheres.

"But I'm not going to support signing that agreement if Karzai insists that we end night raids, which are the biggest blow available to our forces against the enemy," he said. "If he requires that we end night raids, we'll have no hope of being successful."

Regarding the prisoners, Graham said that any follow-on U.S. force would be put at risk if U.S.-held prisoners, currently numbering over 3,000, were placed under Afghan control.

"I cannot go back home to South Carolina and tell a mother, ‘I'm sorry your son or daughter was killed today by a guy we had in custody but let go for no good reason.' We want Afghan sovereignty over prisoners but they're not there yet," he said.

"That's not good governance. That hurts the Afghan villagers that have been preyed on by these people and it sure as hell puts our people at risk. I want an agreement but not at all costs."

The senator is ignoring one singular fact. Over the years Hamid Karzai's most consistent and adamant demand has been the U.S. government recognize that the vast majority of people killing the sons of American mothers and preying on innocent Afghan villagers are doing so with support from Pakistan's military.

So from Karzai's point of view, what does it accomplish to keep harassing Afghans with night raids and jailing an endless parade of proxies, if NATO won't deal forcefully with the locus of the 'Taliban insurgency' in Afghanistan?

I wouldn't call that point of view irrational. I'd call Lindsey Graham the irrational one for expecting that NATO and Afghan security forces can somehow prevail by emptying the ocean with a sieve.

I'd also call Graham a fool for failing to recognize that American troops are unwittingly helping Pakistan's regime carry out population control, Pakistani-style.

What does he think is happening, when Pakistan's military/ISI train the country's 'undesirables' -- the low castes, the least educated, the mentally ill, the Afghans living in refugee camps -- to set IEDs, then hand them an AK-47 and send them across the border to die by the hundreds of thousands at the hands of NATO troops?

However, here in the United States we have another term for that kind of population control. It's called democide.

Koran burning at Bagram: Um, is some government trying to sabotage Obama's plans for US combat operations in Afghanistan beyond 2014?

UPDATE
See my February 26 post, Not Since Mazar-i-Sharif, or why the story of the Koran burning incident at Bagram Airfield is improbable

**************
I might regret publishing my thoughts on this matter but my intuition seems to have been running my show for more than 24 hours. I just hope it doesn't leave me with egg on my face because I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories; over the years on this blog I've done my share to quash false news stories and rumor-mongering.

Besides, I've already taken one flyer this month by guessing that someone in the German Nato command had leaked a secret Nato report (The State of the Taliban) to the press. Then I learned that the only two press outlets that had seen the report were British. That doesn't rule out Germany and it doesn't necessarily mean someone in the British command leaked the report; he could have showed it to MI6 and said, 'Don't breathe a word of this to anyone.' (As to whether anyone in the Afghan government had seen the Nato report, dunno.)

But if I'm going to choose this month to make a fool of myself I might as well go the whole hog. To pick up from where I left off yesterday morning. You may recall I as much accused my brain of laziness because it balked at finishing an essay, which was written to answer the rest of B. Doran's questions and comments about the Afghan War. Doran's main point was that the United States should bail on the war, simply walk away -- a sentiment shared I think by many Americans. Even the editorial staff at Bloomberg asked on February 21 whether the USA should consider leaving Afghanistan much earlier than President Obama has mapped out.

My view is that the United States should stay in Afghanistan as long as possible but with a different policy toward Pakistan. But just before I could present my view, my brain suddenly wanted a blanket and a drink of water. Then after my business meeting it wanted to go outside and play. So it was too tired to finish the essay but not too tired to cavort in 62 degree weather. (It was a beautiful day yesterday in Washington.)

At 7:19 in the evening I finally walk into the house. I turn on the TV looking for news and there's Shepard Smith intoning, "The U.S. embassy in Kabul is on lockdown."

This is Fox News Cable we're talking about so I immediately seek verification from the wire services; I can't find it although McClatchy and Bloomberg had just broken reports that the embassy was taking precautions and had recalled staff. But even without a technical lockdown the news reports were grim. All hell had broken loose in Afghanistan earlier in the day, Afghan time.

What had started on Tuesday as protests outside Bagram air base about some copies of the Koran that had been found burned or charred at Bagram air base had by Wednesday exploded into galloping riots across Afghanistan. NATO and the U.S. government had been kept busy on Wednesday giving apologies to any Afghan official who would listen and promising a full investigation of the burning incident.

Of course the Afghan Taliban were having a field day with the story and doing whatever they could to help stoke outrage against the U.S. for what U.S. and NATO plaintively insisted was a mistake.

My first reaction was that the crisis couldn't have come at a worse time for the Obama administration. Obama and Hamid Karzai are just about to finalize a security partnership agreement. The sticking points are Nato night raids and whether the U.S. should transfer prisons it runs in Afghanistan to the Afghan government. And dang! that's where the burned copies of the Koran supposedly came from -- a U.S.-run prison at Bagram.

How did the Korans get in the position to be burned? The question is still under investigation but from Bloomberg's report (filed 7:39 PM ET February 22):

The Korans were damaged after soldiers culled them, with other books, from a library at a prison for alleged Taliban and allied Islamic militant fighters, ISAF said in a statement. The volumes were thrown into a pile of debris for burning and pulled out by Afghan employees at the base.

My second reaction was to cook shrimp and rice and watch Survivor. (I try to stay with fish and rice on Survivor nights; I always feel guilty eating steak while I watch half-starved contestants stagger through the challenges the show's sadistic game coordinators think up.) I'd had my fill of Afghan War news for the day.

But before turning in I checked on the internet for news from Pakistan, and saw the following report; it's undated but it must have been published within the past 24-48 hours; before then I think I would have seen it. The report is unconfirmed but if it's true it takes the prize as the strangest news of the month:

US presses Pakistan to allow bases near Iran: Report
Online News (Pakistan)

New Delhi: The United States is reportedly putting pressure on Pakistan to allow Washington to establish intelligence bases in the country’s Balochistan province to gather intelligence on Iran, Indian media reported on Wednesday.

According to a report published by The Times of India, the US Congress has been discussing a resolution to recognize the right of Baloch people to self-determination as a means of putting pressure on Islamabad to give in to the US demands.

The move elicited angry reactions from Pakistan’s top leaders including Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani who described it as an attack on the country’s sovereignty. Pakistan’s foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, also said though the resolution was an isolated move by a few individuals, it “is contrary to the principles of the UN Charter and international law.”

The report said that three officials, two from the security agencies and one from diplomatic circles, confirmed that American diplomats and military leaders have been requesting for permission to allow their agents to operate near the Iranian border in Balochistan.

Now the Obama administration would hotly deny that it's playing the Balochistan independence card to pressure Islamabad about anything; in fact, Obama has distanced himself from the resolution, as has almost everyone in official Washington. Although I think in light of news from Reuters that his administration protested a little too much when it officially announced, in response to the Balochistan resolution flap, that the US respected Pakistan’s sovereignty. As to how much the US respects it, Reuters India reported this morning:

US pushed ahead with drone strikes despite Pakistani resistance
by Missy Ryan and Mark Hosenball
February 23, 2012 5:04am IST

Washington (Reuters): Shortly before the United States ended a two-month pause in missile strikes on militants in Pakistan last month, senior US officials telephoned their Pakistani counterparts and told them Washington would be resuming its covert drone program despite mounting objections in Islamabad.

Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were among those who spoke with Pakistani officials shortly before the eight-week pause in the drone program ended, sources familiar with the issue said.

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke to his Pakistani counterpart General Ashfaq Kayani around the same time, the sources said, but a US defense official said the two men did not discuss drone strikes.

The strike that followed on 10 January, when US aircraft fired missiles at a home in the North Waziristan tribal area, was the first such attack since US aircraft, in a mishap that plunged bilateral ties into a tailspin, killed 24 Pakistani soldiers along remote border with Afghanistan.

The 26 November border incident infuriated a vulnerable government in Islamabad and prompted Pakistani officials to signal that they would no longer accept US drone strikes.

So if you've been wondering how it was that the drone strikes resumed even though Islamabad was still blocking NATO supply shipments to Afghanistan, now you know.

But there you have it; a strange claim hanging out there, like a hanging chad, that the U.S. wants to set up an Iran monitoring base in Balochistan.

So my last thought before I fell asleep was, 'What a strange month this has been.'

I awakened this morning with the same thought. I guess my intuition noticed that coincidences have been piling up since February 1, when it just so happened that the secret Nato report was leaked on the eve of an important meeting in Brussels about the Afghan War.

By the way have you ever read any of the statements that the British press pulled from that report? They're dynamite -- although after the leak the U.S., Nato and Pakistan tried to downplay the statements as merely anecdotal. Yes they are anecdotal but together the thousands of statements are the first exhaustively detailed compilation of claims that Pakistan's military/ISI controls the Taliban -- the same Taliban who've been killing Nato troops. And when that small mountain of claims is taken with all the evidence and intell that's surfaced since 2006 about the Pakistani military's ongoing involvement with the Taliban and al Qaeda, the implications are damning -- damning of Nato.

When was the Nato report made available to Nato commanders? January of this year, from a news report; it didn't give the day so I don't know whether that was before or after the assassination of four French troops on January 20 (or reported on that date), which provoked Nicolas Sarkozy to threaten to pull all French troops out of Afghanistan.

Allegedly the Afghan soldier who opened fire on the troops wasn't a Taliban operative; the claim was that he was a nutter who was simply angry about a video of U.S. soldiers urinating on corpses of alleged Taliban.

Whatever the truth of the matter on the heels of the fallout came the leaked Nato report, on the morning (U.K. time) of February 1.

By the afternoon of the same day, SecDef Leon Panetta had announced to reporters on a plane flight to the Brussels meeting that the U.S. was moving up by a year its plan to draw down U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan. The surprise announcement and the uproar that followed it took the media's mind off the leaked Nato report.

On February 3 a British military journal attempted to tamp down news reports that the British Nato command was now following the new U.S. plan. I don't have the link at my fingertips but paraphrasing the spokesperson said that the 'new' plan was actually one that the British command had intended to follow all along. Not true, commented a British newspaper (Daily Mail or Telegraph); it dug up a quote from an earlier date showing that the command had agreed at the time to stay with the 2014 drawdown timeframe.

In the days that followed, the media reported that the Obama administration was engaged in 'frantic' behind-the-scenes efforts to mend fences with Pakistan's government/military. I wonder how frantic the efforts were, if Obama restarted the drone strikes by informing the Pakistanis to suck it up if they had objections -- and, if that strange report is true, by telling Islamabad that he wanted to set up an Iran monitoring post in Balochistan, of all places. The report is strange because the province is engaged in a veritable insurgency against Islamabad, which is trying like heck to stay on the good side of Tehran.

Then, when Karzai balked over two points in the strategic partnership agreement (Nato night raids and Afghan control of U.S.-run prisons) a delegation from the U.S. Congress, led by Senator John McCain went to Afghanistan to talk turkey with him. That was on Sunday, February 19.

Let me see; what happened next? Oh yes -- on Tuesday, February 21, burned Korans were found at Bagram air base. Which placed the strategic pact in jeopardy, which brings us to today:

Taliban urge Afghans to kill "invaders" amid new Koran burning protests

By Mirwais Harooni
February 23, 2012 12:58pm IST

KABUL (Reuters) - The Taliban urged Afghans on Thursday to target foreign military bases and kill Westerners in retaliation for burnings of copies of the Koran at NATO's main base in the country as a third day of violent protests began.

Thousands of demonstrators rallied across the country, some chanting "Death to America!", Reuters witnesses and officials said. In eastern Kabul, hundreds of youths threw rocks at police, who fired shots into the air to try disperse the crowds.

"Our brave people must target the military bases of invader forces, their military convoys and their invader bases," read an e-mailed Taliban statement released by spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

"They have to kill them (Westerners), beat them and capture them to give them a lesson to never dare desecrate the holy Koran again."

The Koran burnings could make it even more difficult for U.S.-led NATO forces to win the hearts and minds of Afghans and bring the Taliban to the negotiating table ahead of the withdrawal of foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.

Muslims consider the Koran the literal word of God and treat each book with deep reverence. Desecration is considered one of the worst forms of blasphemy.

Large protests erupted in eastern Laghman province and the eastern city of Jalalabad, despite an appeal by President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday for calm after officials said six people were shot dead and dozens wounded in demonstrations.

Protests also kicked off in the relatively stable northern provinces of Badakhshan and Takhar on the border with Tajikistan, as well as nearby Baghlan province.

The fury could complicate efforts by U.S. and NATO forces to reach agreement on a strategic pact currently under consideration with the Afghan government that would allow a sharply reduced number of western troops in the country well beyond their combat exit deadline of end-2014.

Underscoring these concerns, hundreds of students in Jalalabad rejected any strategic pact with the United States, saying they would "take up jihad" if one were sealed.

The U.S. government and the American commander of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan apologised for "unintentional" burnings after Afghan labourers found charred copies of the Koran while collecting rubbish at the huge Bagram Airbase, about an hour's drive north of Kabul.

There were quite a number of other events in February relating to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nato that I haven't listed, such as the uproar that was set off when an Afghan ministry (I forget which one) plopped out with a plan to remove from the Afghan military any soldiers with family in Pakistan. This, in an effort to flummox soldiers who were working under orders from 'Taliban' (read, 'ISI'). This move is long overdue, if the army is to cut down on infiltrators.

As to what the NDS -- Afghanistan's version of MI5 -- is going to do to eject infiltrators, gee maybe rehire Amrullah Saleh and the team that walked out of NDS with him when he resigned? According to one analyst, the NDS is now rife with ISI spies and spies from other governments. I will find the link to the report but right now I'm beginning to worry that if I don't get this post out the door fast, my brain is going to start asking for a blankey and glass of water. I'm already hearing,'The radio is saying it's gonna be 70 degrees today.'

Okay; so what's on the burner today, besides a lot of hopping mad Afghans, and an expected announcement from Nato about the results of their investigation into the burned Korans? From the Express Tribune (Pakistan)

US State Department spokesperson Mark Toner confirmed that the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar on Thursday on the sidelines of the 2012 London Somalia Conference.

Speaking to reporters at the daily press briefing, Toner said that both leaders had many things to discuss. “Our goal remains to put this relationship back on track, you know, to try to put some of the problems that we have had in the relationship, some of the challenges behind us and move productively forward.”

In response to a story by Reuters on Afghan officials meeting with members of the Taliban in Quetta, Toner said that he did not have any information about these meetings.

When asked if President Karzai was taking an active role in response to being reportedly bypassed on earlier reconciliation talks between the Taliban and the US, Toner denied it and said that the meetings between US Special Representative for Af-Pak Marc Grossman and Afghan President Hamid Karzai were an indication that the US was consulting with him.

He added that President Karzai was supportive of the process, and said that at some point the US would like to step away and “have it be an Afghan-to-Afghan reconciliation process.”

The State Department spokesperson was also asked about Secretary Clinton’s earlier statements about Pakistan taking action against certain groups present in Pakistan, to which he said, “We’ve been very clear about our red lines and, indeed, the Afghan government’s red lines for those Taliban who would participate in any reconciliation process.
[...]

Nice to know a little clarity is emerging, isn't it? This way we don't have to read 'deny deny deny' all the time. Maybe Khar will give Clinton a head's up on how the Pakistani Parliament is getting along with its review of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. The results of the review were expected last week. (See update below for summary of the Clinton-Khar meeting.)

As to whether I really think my intuition has seized on anything -- if it has then I might owe my brain an apology if it wasn't being lazy yesterday, only trying to delay my publishing an opinion before I'd mulled over more facts.

Probably there is no conspiracy; probably it's a bunch of officials and brass going off in 20 different directions as they scramble to get out of the Afghan War yesterday. Just so long as they aren't scrambling to get the U.S. military out of Afghanistan before it's ready to go.

*****************
UPDATE 1:15 PM ET
Associated Press via WSJ has a short report on the Clinton-Khar meeting in London:

LONDON—U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Thursday for the resumption of a full range of formal contacts with Pakistan after its parliament completes a review of strained ties between the two countries.

At a meeting on the sidelines of an international conference on Somalia in London, Mrs. Clinton outlined to Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar a series of steps the U.S. would like to see once the review has been completed.

A senior U.S. official said those steps include visits by top American diplomats, including the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Marc Grossman, Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides and the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Rajiv Shah, along with a return to three-way talks between the U.S., Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Pakistan declined a visit by Mr. Grossman earlier this year.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the private meeting, said the U.S. would respect the parliamentary review but wanted to prepare for a return to "structured conversations" once the review is complete. Mrs. Clinton, the official said, wanted "to get ready to get back into business with Pakistan." A vote on the review is expected in mid-March.

U.S.-Pakistan ties have been troubled for some time, mainly over alleged Pakistani support for Islamist extremists, but deteriorated badly in November when U.S. airstrikes accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at two Afghan border posts, fueling an already pervasive anti-American sentiment throughout the country.

That incident sparked the parliamentary review, which is aimed at producing a new set of guidelines for the bilateral relationship that could pave the way for repairing relations.

Madame Ambassador, regimes that live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones

February 10, The News Tribe (Pakistan):

Washington: Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States Sherry Rehman has conveyed the reservations of Pakistan to the US administration on the US Congress Comittee debate on Balochistan was tantamount to helping terrorists operating in the province.
[...]
Ambassador Rehman, in her meetings with the congressmen and senior officials of the US administration, said that the Congress hearing was marked by a blatant disregard for history and inflammatory use of selective facts.

“It is deeply regrettable that the legislature of a country that calls itself a friend of Pakistan should allow itself to be used as a platform by those advocating the dismemberment of Pakistan and provide justification to terrorists attempting to hold Balochistan, and Pakistan, hostage,” she said.

The subcommittee on oversights and investigations of the House Foreign Affairs Committee had held the hearing on 8th February with testimonies from human rights organizations and policy analysts on the human rights violations and target-killings in Balochistan.

”Pakistan views this hearing with serious concern and considers it unacceptable in no uncertain terms,” she stated adding that this kind of an exercise constituted interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs. The hearing, she observed, would be detrimental to building mutual trust and confidence and “will add to suspicions in Pakistan about the American motives in the region and concerning Pakistan.”
[...]

She was just getting warmed up; News Tribe has her full statement. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the ISI is under judicial fire in Pakistan for the first time in its existence. Does this mean the spy agency is indeed Gen. Kayani's sacrificial goat? We'll find out soon enough.

Meanwhile, back at the indoor putting green, the White House announced yesterday that President Obama and his national security team had undertaken a review of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. From (Pakistan's) Dawn, dateline today:

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama has reviewed efforts to improve ties with Pakistan with his national security team, the White House said on Thursday as media reports indicated that both countries were trying vigorously to reduce tensions that have bedevilled their relations for more than a year now.

At Wednesday’s meeting, President Obama “received an update on our engagement with the Pakistani government on a range of issues of mutual interest, including efforts to strengthen cooperation along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border,” the White House said.

US sources told Dawn that the White House had been regularly consulting Pakistan’s new ambassador in Washington, Sherry Rehman, on these issues.

Last week, Ambassador Rehman and a Pakistani defence team met the head of the US Central Command, General James N. Mattis, at the embassy. Soon after the meeting, The New York Times reported that Gen Mattis would visit Islamabad later this month for talks with Pakistani military chief and other officials and he might also convey an official apology on the Nov 26 Nato attack on a Pakistani post that killed 24 soldiers.

Pakistan has long demanded such an apology as an important step towards improving ties.

Another sign that both sides are making serious efforts to overcome their differences came earlier Thursday when US ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter hinted that Nato supplies might have resumed through Pakistani airspace. Pakistan had blocked the supplies after the Nov 26 attack and Washington wanted Islamabad to open both land and air routes as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, Ms Rehman is having another important meeting with senior White House officials on apparently accelerated attempts by both sides to rebuild a relationship that has gone sour.

She also met Senator John Kerry, who is considered the Obama administration’s unofficial envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan on Capitol Hill and is often sent to Islamabad for dealing with contentious issues.

Asked for comments on these meetings, Ms Rehman said she could not discuss ongoing negotiations but both sides were eager to leave behind the bitterness of the past year and move ahead with a new zeal.

“Pakistan is still reviewing the full spectrum of its relations with the US in a historic parliamentary review, which will anchor forthcoming decisions in the solid background of public consent,” she said.

So. I gather from Dawn that the good news to emerge from the review is that Obama decided not to give Kayani the shirt off his back. Did he decide to give Kayani the shirt off your back? This is Dawn we're talking about; the glass is always half full on Pakistan's side of the table. I assume we'll have more definite news of Obama's decisions when Gen. Mattis returns from his trip to Pakistan.

All right; I'm outta here until next week. Have fun reading last night's two posts. Oh, one more thing: last week I guessed that the German command at NATO leaked the top secret NATO report titled, The State of the Taliban, which fingered the ISI as aiding and abetting the Afghan Taliban. I also half-joked that the one time I was willing not to blame the British for something was probably the one time I was wrong about them.

It turns out that the only journalists to read the report prior to its leak worked for two British media outlets: the BBC and the (London) Times; this, according to the Economist.

Heh.

That doesn't make it definite that the leaker was with the British command but it is suggestive. The report was leaked on the eve of a NATO foreign ministers' meeting. The next day the Telegraph reported that a substantial cut in British combat troops would occur in 2013 -- a claim that a defense ministry spokesperson denied but in such a way as to make it seem that the troop cuts were always planned for that year. Not. According to the Telegraph.

Well, if it was the British, I don't hold it against them. The public had a right and a need to know about the report.

Okay, my weekend is now officially underway; I'm off to down a thimblefull of sherry, for medicinal purposes only, of course. Cheers!

President Obama learns the hard way about Pakistani military mindset

"It was always understood within the Obama administration that any public recognition that Pakistan was committed to supporting the Taliban could be politically dangerous to the war effort. As a result, Obama’s national security team decided early on to deny the complicity of Pakistani Chief of Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and director of the ISI intelligence agency Shuja Pasha, despite the knowledge that they were fully behind the policy."

Over the years I've had differences with investigative journalist/historian Gareth Porter's opinions on U.S. national security policy, but when he decides to pull together a summary of a situation he can leave many other journalists in the dust. So it is with his review of how President Barack Obama came to realize the folly of attempting to placate Pakistan's military on the matter of its support for the Taliban:

Obama Troop Surge Decision Ignored Pak-Taliban Ties
Inter Press Service
05/23/2011
By Gareth Porter

The unilateral U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden created a spike in mutual recriminations between U.S. and Pakistani politicians, but their fundamental conflict of interest over Afghanistan was already driving the two countries toward serious confrontation.

The pivotal event in relations between the Barack Obama administration and Pakistan was the decision by Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan in 2009, despite the knowledge that Pakistan was committed to supporting the Taliban insurgents as a strategic policy in its conflict with India.

Obama launched a desperate, last-minute effort to get some kind of commitment from the Pakistanis to reduce their support for the Taliban before the decision to escalate the war. But he did not reconsider the decision after that effort had clearly failed.

It was always understood within the Obama administration that any public recognition that Pakistan was committed to supporting the Taliban could be politically dangerous to the war effort. As a result, Obama’s national security team decided early on to deny the complicity of Pakistani Chief of Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and director of the ISI intelligence agency Shuja Pasha, despite the knowledge that they were fully behind the policy.

On March 26, 2009, a story in the New York Times provided the most detailed news media account up to that date of Pakistani assistance to the Taliban. But the story quoted anonymous U.S. officials as blaming “mid-level ISI operatives” and expressing doubt that top Pakistani officials in Islamabad were directly coordinating the clandestine efforts by ISI operatives to assist the Taliban.

That did not reflect the briefing Obama had gotten from George W. Bush’s director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, after his election. McConnell had learned from communications intercepts that Kayani considered the Haqqani network, which was being targeted as the most serious threat to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, as a “strategic asset.”

As Obama approached a decision on Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s request for another troop increase of as much as 40,000 troops, the Pakistani military’s determination to use the Taliban and the Haqqani network to advance Pakistani interests in Afghanistan was a major issue in the policy debate.

Opponents of the troop surge request, including Vice President Joe Biden, deputy national security adviser Tom Donilon and Afghanistan War coordinator Douglas Lute, argued that the Pakistanis were not going to change their policy toward Afghanistan, according to Bob Woodward’s account in Obama’s Wars.

Biden argued in a meeting on Sept. 13, 2009, that Pakistan was determined to avoid an Afghan government “led by a Pashtun sympathetic to India”—i.e., Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The conclusion was that the Pakistanis would continue to aid the insurgency the U.S. was trying to defeat.

Despite that argument, as the policy-making process was entering its final weeks, Obama tried to exert high-level pressure on Pakistan.

In a Nov. 11, 2009, letter to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, Obama said Pakistan’s use of such “proxy groups” as Haqqani and the Taliban would no longer be tolerated, as Woodward recounts. National Security Adviser James Jones and Counterterrorism adviser John Brennan were sent to Islamabad to deliver the message.

Obama wanted Pakistan to understand that he would take unilateral action against the Taliban and Haqqani safe havens in Pakistan, including accelerated drone strikes and commando raids, unless Pakistani forces attacked them.

That message was clearly received. A Pakistani official told the New York Times, “Jones’s message was if that Pakistani help wasn’t forthcoming, the United States would have to do it themselves.”

The week of Nov. 17, CIA Director Leon Panetta met with Pasha and other top Pakistani officials, and complained about the presence of the Taliban leadership headquarters in Quetta, Baluchistan, according to Woodward’s account. He cited intelligence that bombs were being made there, then “taken across the border and blowing up Americans.”

Panetta proposed joint U.S.-Pakistani operations on the ground aimed at the Quetta Shura, but Kayani refused.

In a response to Obama’s letter late in November, Zardari voiced the Pakistani military’s rationale for Pakistan’s use of Afghan insurgents to protect its interests in Pakistan. He charged that “neighboring intelligence agencies”—meaning India—”are using Afghan soil to perpetuate violence in Pakistan.”

And Zardari did not give a clear response to Obama’s invitation to plan joint operations against those forces.

When Obama met with his national security team for the final time on Nov. 29, he knew that the pressure tactic had failed. Lute, Obama’s Afghanistan coordinator, warned that Pakistani policy was one of four major, interacting risks of a troop surge policy.

But Obama approved a plan for 30,000 additional troops anyway, suggesting that the decision was driven by the political-bureaucratic momentum of the war rather than by a rational assessment of cost, risk, and benefit.

Throughout 2010, the Pakistani military continued to make clear its refusal to compromise on its interests in Afghanistan. In late January, U.S. and Pakistani authorities picked up Mullah Ghani Baradar, the second-ranking official in the Taliban Quetta Shura, in a raid in Karachi—apparently without realizing in advance that Baradar was present.

But when the United States sought to extradite Baradar to Afghanistan, the Pakistanis refused. And Baradar and several other members of the Quetta Shura who had been detained by the Pakistanis were reported in October 2010 to have been released.

In a January 2011 interview with Public Broadcasting System’s Frontline, Gen. David Petraeus, by then the commander in Afghanistan, was asked about Pakistan’s release of top Taliban leaders. “We’ve actually had a conversation on this very recently,” said Petraeus blandly, “and in fact there has been a request for information.”

Two National Intelligence Estimates on Afghanistan and Pakistan in December 2010 pointed once again to the centrality of Pakistani policy to the outcome of the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan.

The NIE on Afghanistan concluded that the United States was unlikely to succeed in Afghanistan unless Pakistan changed its policy to take military action against insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan. But the estimate on Pakistan made it clear that no such change in Pakistani policy could be expected.

In mid-December, the Obama administration issued a five-page summary of its December 2010 review of the Afghanistan War, which concluded that the “gains” were “fragile and reversible” and that consolidating those gains “will require that we make more progress with Pakistan to eliminate sanctuaries for violent extremist networks.”

Immediately after that review, the New York Times reported a military proposal for cross-border raids into Pakistan aimed at capturing Taliban commanders for interrogation back in Afghanistan.

Beginning in late 2010, moreover, the U.S. infiltrated hundreds of unilateral intelligence agents into Pakistan, suggesting an intention to carry out further cross-border raids.

Those moves had already alarmed Pakistan’s military leaders well before the U.S. raid against bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad.

And in a classified report sent to Congress in early April, the Obama administration strongly criticized Pakistan’s failure to attack insurgent safe havens in Mohmand in northwest Pakistan for three straight years, as reported by the New York Times April 5.

Moeed Yusuf, director of the South Asia program at the U.S. Institute of Peace, who has been leading a study of Pakistani elite opinion on relations with the United States, believes the crisis in U.S.-Pakistan relations can be blamed on a failure of both governments to acknowledge explicitly the existence of a fundamental conflict of interests.

“If there is a strategic divergence of interests, I think Pakistan needs to put it on the table,” said Yusuf. Pakistani leaders “need to be very candid about why it’s not in their interests” to do what Washington wants, he said.

If the interests at stake are not brought into the open, Yusuf suggested, “A rupture is possible.”