Yousaf Alamgirian

ONE is amazed what America and its media want to achieve by putting allegations on Pakistan for leaking sensitive information with terrorists which help them flee before the operation. There seems only one reason behind this whole conspiracy that Americas had let down Pakistan as state and its armed forces by undergoing operation in Abbottabad. America says it was successful operation and America says Osama has been killed and again America says his dead body was thrown into the sea. We the Pakistanis and the other world are left with no option to believe what America is saying.

Ironically what so ever America wants to say it says through its media. Media is so advanced these days they it can build or break any of the public opinion. Media can break the myths even. Media is being used for framing the opinion and setting the agenda to defame any of the nation and its resolve. Pakistan is fighting a war to eradicate terrorism from the region. It is pertinent that Pakistan’s 35000 civilian citizens have been killed in the shape of terrorist and suicidal attacks. More than 5000 of its soldiers have given their lives in this resolve. Pakistan has faced more than 68 billion dollars loss so far. America despite paying tribute to Pakistan and its nation brought embarrassment the way Abbottabad sort of operation was conducted. It was nothing but to malign Pakistan sacrifices and undermine the role of Pakistan armed forces in WOT so much before to this operation American media and WikiLeaks started maligning ISI and armed forces for their links with terrorists. The country which is at the verge of destabilization because of this war was maligned for its illicit relation with the terrorist.

Yes one odd case can’t be ruled out as Pakistan army arrested a brigadier rank of an officer for his links with the extremists. However such a cases can’t be termed as that whole of the origination is of the same mindset. Pakistan armed forces have very clear and strict policy regarding its officers and soldiers so the chances of having their contacts with the extremists are really bleak. Still if any of the case happens strict disciplinary action is taken. Sacrifices of more than 5 thousand troops including officers and men both show its resolve to eradicate terrorism from this soil.

Matter of the fact is that America was engaged with the Taliban in talks since many months. The talks were under process through Karzai govt. Germany and Turkey was also playing role in this regard. America was engaged with some of the Taliban’s local factions as well which could provide America an honourable way to pull out its forces from Afghanistan. Abbottabad’s 2nd May operation however depicts America was not only banking on the talks to get an opportunity they designed such an operation which portrayed America and its commandoes real heroes of the world as they got hold of the Osma bin laden which means American masses are now safe. So American masses were unsafe due to a person hiding from them in order to save his life was portrayed major threat to the American masses. So this part of the masses while congratulating the American masses from the threats hope from these masses who are save from any sort of the fear of death to have some pity on the masses of the less advanced countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan and ask their government, the American establishment, not to spoil huge funds to kill the innocent masses as they don’t have to do anything with terrorists and Osama bin Laden .They want to educate their children and want to live peaceful life which is not possible till the time America doesn’t leave this region and pulls out its forces.

Americas paradigm shift in its policy depicts American strategy was different which was apparently shared with Pakistan and other regional countries. These countries were told that America was here to eradicate terrorism. The way America and its media has started bashing an allied country and its intelligence agencies shows its hidden motives. 2nd May and 22 May attacks have to been seen in the context of changing American policies for the region. After taking the oath president Obama gave his AfPak policy to tackle the menace of terrorism. It depicts they had already set their mind to ditch Pakistan and its forces. They were just looking for the appropriate timings to proceed.

It is not that simple an affair that soon after getting Osama, America and its media initiated certain allegation that Pakistan nukes are not safe and they may fall into the hands to the terrorists. America is crystal clear that Pakistan nukes are safe like anything they just propagate to build public opinion against Pakistan. The way American media was used to abuse Pakistan intelligence agencies’ role is alarming. American media is now going all out to question Pakistan’s trustworthy role in WOT by blaming the same for its relations with terrorist. It is not only a resolve to undermine Pakistan’s sacrifices but really an indecent kind of maligning as well.

Yossi Alpher

INSTEAD of wasting time and energy trying to revive a moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the United States and European Union should take another look at the Palestinian initiative to seek UN recognition in September.

What is described in some quarters as a recipe for new strife and confrontation can actually be leveraged into a win-win situation for Israelis, Palestinians and the world. The Palestinians under Mahmoud Abbas want the United Nations to grant them a sovereign state based on the 1967 boundaries with East Jerusalem as its capital. That’s all.

It is not asking the UN to solve the refugee/right-of-return issue or to determine who owns the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. It is opting to convert an intractable conflict between a state and a liberation movement into a state-to-state conflict with manageable parameters.

Why not offer the Palestinians what they want, but add elements that could render the resolution acceptable to a majority of Israelis?

Israel wants acceptance as a Jewish state with its recognised capital in Jerusalem. It needs assurances regarding the nature and priorities of future negotiations, with the truly intractable issues postponed to a later phase. It needs solid security arrangements, understandings regarding Hamas rule in Gaza, and a viable incentive from an Arab world that has long offered to reward it for moving forward with the Palestinians. Here are the components of a possible “win-win” UN resolution regarding Palestinian statehood:

Reaffirm support for the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the basis of two states for two peoples and the right of the Jewish and Palestinian peoples to self-determination, without prejudice to the rights of all citizens and minority groups. Recall, in this context, UN General Assembly resolution 181 of 1947 that called for the establishment of a Jewish state and an Arab state. Acknowledge institutional and security reform, economic development and state-building efforts — especially in the West Bank, under the leadership of President Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, which have helped lay the foundations for Palestinian statehood — and endorse the position articulated by the World Bank and the United Nations that the Palestinian Authority is “well positioned for the establishment of a state at any point in the near future.”

Accordingly, support the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 lines with its capital in East Jerusalem in parallel with Israel’s recognised capital in West Jerusalem, and with mutually agreed territorial swaps and modifications, subject to negotiation — a state that will live side by side with Israel in peace and security.

Recognise that extending the authority of a Palestinian state to the Gaza Strip will depend on effective control there by a legitimate Palestinian government that exercises authority in the West Bank, is committed to the Quartet principles and the Arab Peace Initiative and respects the commitments of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

Call for both states to engage in good faith negotiations on the basis of this and previous relevant resolutions and agreements in order to resolve all outstanding issues between them, beginning with the issues of borders, settlements, water and security arrangements. Specifically, security arrangements — including multi-layered international, regional and bilateral guarantees — should confront and neutralise threats and enable the phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from a demilitarised Palestinian state with an effective internal security force and without compromising Israeli security.

Note the importance of the Arab Peace Initiative, endorsed by the Arab League in 2002, and call for regional states to assist in creating an atmosphere conducive to negotiation and agreement, including by intensifying efforts to advance coexistence and normalisation of relations between Arab League members and Israel.

A creative and courageous approach to leveraging the Palestinian initiative will not end the conflict. But it could make it far more manageable. – KT

Air Commodore (R) Khalid Iqbal

PRESIDENT Obama has announced the draw down schedule of American troops from Afghanistan. Eighteen months ago, he was mis-led by his generals into a massive troop surge that he personally didn't fully support. He has now re-shuffled his war and diplomatic teams to lead the path of de-escalation. However, America and its ISAF/NATO paraphernalia appear as bewildered and clueless about the end objectives as they were ten years and billions of dollars earlier.

Neighbouring countries of Afghanistan are fearful of negative fallouts from Afghanistan similar to post Soviet withdrawal era. Though there are nearly a dozen functional initiatives at the international level focused on the Afghan conflict, unfortunately all of them are missing the very basic ingredient, the role of the six countries which have common borders with Afghanistan.

The UN Security Council has voted (resolutions 1988 &1989) to split joint sanctions` blacklist for Al Qaeda and the Taliban (mandated under resolution 1267). This distinction has long been argued for by independent analysts. It is indeed a long way from Holbrooke’s rhetoric that ‘only good Taliban are dead Taliban’. Bifurcation of these two entities is yet another major American retreat since Secretary Hillary Clinton`s speech to the Asia Society last February in which longstanding American preconditions to talks with the Afghan Taliban were reconfigured as end objectives.

Strategic failure for America is not that its military component in Afghanistan has failed; this has been a foregone conclusion by all serious security analysts since 2002, when America pushed the Afghan militants to the countries bordering Afghanistan. Real fiasco is that structures and institutions essential for incrementally squeezing the space for insurgency have failed to evolve. Even where there have been nominal military successes, a quandary haunts as to the viability of sustainable security, sans overwhelming American firepower and manpower. The Afghan government simply doesn’t have the capacity or ability to hold a fragile country at its own. Ultimately Americans are poised to handover Afghanistan to almost same forces from whom they snatched it a decade ago, and in an almost same status.

Last week President Karzai acknowledged for the first time that Afghanistan and the United States are engaged in peace talks with the Taliban. Though substantive negotiations are going on for over a year and are at a fairly advanced stage, America has underplayed it by saying that contacts are at the initial evaluation stage.

Under these circumstances, credit goes to the visionary approach of the President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov who foresaw the importance of regional dynamics towards peace and stability in Afghanistan way back in 1997, to mitigate the ill effects of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan which were, by then, beginning to threaten the stability of the entire region. At that time, collapse of Soviet Union had triggered a number of conflicts in Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan, and instability in Afghanistan was reinforcing the conflicts throughout Central Asia and beyond.

To provide structural and institutional support, “6+2” initiative was launched by Uzbekistan in 1999 involving six bordering counties of Afghanistan plus the US and Russia. Other five immediate neighbours of Afghanistan vis-à-vis Pakistan, Iran, China, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan enthusiastically supported the initiative. In 1999 and 2000 two rounds of peace talks were held in Tashkent, under the patronage of the UN, between representatives of Taliban Government and Northern Alliance of Afghanistan. The six neighbouring countries of Afghanistan along with the US and Russia opted to become the guarantors of the peace process between rival factions of Afghanistan. This process was well on its way to conclude a comprehensive agreement, however unfortunately it was interrupted by post 9/11 invasion of Afghanistan by foreign troops.

Moving forth, President Karimov proposed a variant of his previous concept to resolve the current impasse on Afghanistan during the Bucharest NATO summit in April 2008; “Since we are speaking about establishing the stability in Afghanistan, along with providing living needs of the Afghan people by using the possibilities of international assistance, it was expedient to resume the negotiation process on achieving peace and stability in Afghanistan in the framework of contact group ‘6+2’, which effectively operated during 1997-2001 with the support of the United Nations”. President Karimov proposed to transform the 6+2 contact group into 6+3 including NATO; he also spoke about the proposal at the United Nations General Assembly’s 65th meeting in 2010.

We need to evaluate this proposal in the context of success story of ‘Shanghai Cooperation Organization’. The SCO started off as a humble entity, created by China to enlist neighbouring states’ cooperation in maintaining stability in its turbulent Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan agreed to work with Beijing to prevent the cross-border population of ethnic Uighurs from mobilizing to challenge Chinese rule. In turn, they gained China’s cooperation in opposing their own separatist movements. Over the years, the SCO has developed an interesting infrastructure for security cooperation.

The SCO’s military and law-enforcement related military drills have become a regular event. Cooperation is not confined to terrorism alone; a number of organizational agreements require member states to target separatists and extremists as well. SCO states are under treaty obligation to honour each other’s blacklists of individuals and organizations accused of terrorism, separatism or extremism. A Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) based in Tashkent operates a sophisticated shared intelligence database accessible to all member states. SCO member states have agreed to extradite, and prevent the granting of refugee status to, individuals who are flagged by any member state as a terrorist, separatist or extremist threat.

Uzbekistan’s “6+3” initiative needs to be transposed on SCO’s practical experience to evolve appropriate structures and institutions to suit Afghanistan’s local conditions. There is absolute consensus on the composition of “6”; however “+3” factor needs careful scrutiny. Due to dubious strategy and ambiguous objectives, America has lost its credibility as an honest underwriter of peace in Afghanistan as well as in Asia. Russia’s recent military intervention in Afghanistan on the pretext of anti-narcotics operation drew a rage from Afghans who considered it as a litmus test by Russia on behest of America to explore the possibility of filling of post- America void in Afghanistan. Moreover, NATO is perceived as extension of America’s military power, hence its membership will only enhance the American clout in the “6+3” setup. Furthermore, Afghanistan needs to be associated with the process. Russia and America may be invited to join the initiative as observers.

It would be worthwhile to revise the “+3” component to comprise of Afghanistan, the United Nations and the OIC. Key groups of Taliban may be invited as observers. America may be asked to expedite its withdrawal and the security void may be filled by a UN peace mission composed of contingents drawn from the OIC member states, excluding the “6” and other neighbouring countries of Afghanistan. The “6+3” should find out the causes that have lead to frequent foreign interventions in Afghanistan and recommend measures to avoid recurrence, such measures should be implemented through UNSC resolution under chapter VII of the UN charter.