Pratima asked : Shekhar, What are your thoughts on the Pak-bashing that Hillary Clinton did today?.
\nImagine a war that has continued for 9 years, with 20,000 foreign troops, that has killed tens of thousands of people, many of them innocent men women and children, and plunged two countries into chaos that will take years to come out of – all in search of one man called Bin Laden that nobody mentions any more !!
\nI believe the American Policy in the region suffers from a clear lack of goals. How would they be able to declare victory, when they don’t really know what they want ? I have already argued that the Islamic form of democracy is not something the West understands or is willing to accept, while the western form of democracy will never succeed in Afghanistan.
\nSo Hilary Clinton’s frustration is showing. She effectively got as close to saying that the Pakistan Army secretly supports the Taliban as a visiting senior politician of the US can say within Pakistan. She said that is ‘not possible that the Pakistan’s Govt does not know where the Taliban hide outs and centres in Pakistan are”.
\nPartly of course there is a growing frustration within President Obama’s administration over their inability to control the Taliban either in Pakistan or in Afghanistan. And in the meantime billions of dollar worth of military aid is pouring into Pakistan from the US, and they are not even sure how much of that is actually landing up in Taliban hands. And as more US troops die in the region, Obama has to show tangible results if he to send more troops. Not only that, each day of terrorist activity pushes Pakistan to the brink of economic collapse, and the closer the terrorist organizations are to their goal of throwing a nuclear state into complete chaos, and take power. That is the scenario that the US fears, and the whole world should fear.
\nWhat the US must understand that the borders between Pakistan, Baluchistan and Afghanistan were created by the Colonial powers and are very porous. The lines created left families and cultures divided, but who have never really accepted or respected these borders. That is true about Iraq and Israel and Palestine and the Gaza strip too. Borders created by the colonists are the last but probably most devastating legacy of their colonization. And in this area community, family and tribal bonds are very strong. So many of the officers and soldiers in the Pakistan Army have family, community and friends across the border, and probably feel a greater affinity to them than many of their own army. So the Taliban is bound to have strong sympathizers and support in the Pakistan Army and the rugged tribal areas at the border. A support that grows everyday as American troops and government encourage the Pakistan Army to launch an offensive against their own kith and kin. Just as would happen to the Latino troops of Mexican origin in the US army if the US went to war on the borders with Mexico.
\nSomehow everyone has forgotten that the American troops went into Afghanistan and then into the the border areas of Pakistan in search of Bin Laden. No one talks about him anymore and the scope of the war seems to has just widened with no definite goal in mind. It’s becoming more and more indefinite, with consequences that are more and more dangerous to us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pratima asked : Shekhar, What are your thoughts on the Pak-bashing that Hillary Clinton did today?. Imagine a war that has continued for 9 years, with 20,000 foreign troops, that has killed tens of thousands of people, many of them innocent men women and children, and plunged two countries into chaos that will take years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"yoast_head":"\n