Riaz Haq writes this data-driven blog to provide information, express his opinions and make comments on many topics. Subjects include personal activities, education, South Asia, South Asian community, regional and international affairs and US politics to financial markets. For investors interested in South Asia, Riaz has another blog called South Asia Investor at http://www.southasiainvestor.com and a YouTube video channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkrIDyFbC9N9evXYb9cA_gQ
On the first cup, you're a stranger, and on the second, a guest. By the third cup, you're family.
First introduced to the West by Greg Mortenson's book title "Three Cups of Tea", the Pakistani tea proverb has been seized by Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is trying to make friends with General Asfaq Parvez Kayani seen by the Americans as the key to getting Pakistan's help in Afghanistan. The US military leader likes to tell people he's on his third cup of tea with the head of Pakistan Army, according to the US weekly magazine Newsweek.
There has been a series of meetings between Adm. Mullen and Gen. Kayani in Islamabad, Washington, aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, and other locations since Gen. Kayani was appointed by President Musharraf as Pakistan's chief of army staff in 2007. Mullen thinks there has been significant progress.
In an interview, Mullen has told NEWSWEEK that Kayani was making promises and keeping them. Mullen may want to return the favor. Last week, according to one of the sources, Pakistan requested more equipment, including Scout UAVs for reconnaissance and devices to intercept communications. And there's still the matter of those airstrikes, which Kayani says are fueling anti-US sentiments among the Pakistani people. During his recent Washington visit, according to Pakistani sources, Kayani and Pakistani ministers pressed Washington to halt unmanned Predator attacks, which in recent months have reportedly killed about a dozen top Qaeda and Taliban operatives, along with dozens of innocent civilians. The administration's response: no.
It seems to me that the Pakistani tea analogy only applies when both parties seek a genuine alliance as equals rather than total compliance, which is effectively what US appears to be seeking from Pakistani military in the ongoing Mullen-Kayani talks. Regardless of the amount of money and equipment the US offers him, Kayani can not afford to be seen by Pakistanis as caving in to the US demands. Families do not expect their members and friends to attack the family home. The continuing American Predator strikes represent the biggest stumbling block in the way of serious and committed US-Pakistan military alliance in Pakistan-Afghan border areas.
Mullen's experience with Kayani should serve as a warning for Amb. Holbrooke, the bulldozer, as he seeks Pakistan's help to resolve the crisis in Afghanistan.
As Richard C. Holbrooke arrives as US Special Envoy in Pakistan tomorrow, there are a lot of questions and speculations as to the man, his agenda, strategy and tactics in developing and implementing a new policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan. Having been a career diplomat and Clinton adviser, Holbrooke is not an unknown entity. Given Holbrooke's tough-as-nails reputation, Indians were very concerned about having him explicitly address Kashmir as part of his portfolio. India, therefore, lobbied and managed to "prune the portfolio of the Obama administration's top envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard C. Holbrooke -- basically eliminating the contested region of Kashmir from his job description", according to Washington Post.
Holbrooke is nicknamed "the Bulldozer" for arm-twisting warring leaders to the negotiating table as he hammered out the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended the war in Bosnia, a peace that has stuck. The Indians are quite happy to see this "Bulldozer" riding roughshod over Pakistan.
According to Jewish News, Richard Holbrooke is proud of his Jewish heritage. He only spent a year as the U.S. ambassador to Germany, but he tried to make sure that his hosts would not forget he is a son of German Jews. Visitors to Holbrooke's official residence were greeted by an ambassador who proudly displayed a photo of his grandfather, a Jewish businessman, in his World War I Germany army uniform. "I show it to German visitors as a symbol of what they lost," Holbrooke told The New York Times in a 1994 interview.
To help readers get insights into Holbrooke's thinking as a diplomat, here is an Op Ed piece he wrote for the Washington Post last March:
PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Pakistan has had a such run of bad news in recent years that it may seem delusional to describe the current mood here as hopeful. Yet that is the impression this country -- often called by the American media the most dangerous on Earth -- is offering a visitor.
The main reason for the new mood is the return of a vibrant democratic process and what is widely believed to be the end of a decade of military rule. Less than two months after Benazir Bhutto's murder, her Pakistan People's Party and the party of her chief rival, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, swept parliamentary elections that were widely accepted as honest. They have formed a Pakistani version of a grand coalition, with Bhutto's PPP on top.
The victory of these parties -- broadly based political organizations with widespread popular appeal -- is only half the story. The other half is equally important: The military seems to have pulled out of the political arena, at least temporarily, after President Pervez Musharraf's party won less than 20 percent of the seats in the newly elected National Assembly. Since Musharraf's real power base was as military commander, when he "took off his uniform" last year, it turned out that his residual power as president was largely ceremonial -- "like the queen of England," as one enthusiastic new parliamentarian put it. The new military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, has said emphatically that the military should stay out of politics. In a country where the military has stepped into the political process with unfortunate regularity since the birth of the nation in 1947, this could be the biggest news of all -- if Kiyani and his colleagues mean it. The military has a central role to play in Pakistan's security, but not in the political arena.
Another positive straw in the wind is the poor showing of the overtly religious parties in February's elections -- they got only 4 percent of the total vote. In the volatile tribal areas near the Afghan border, where the Taliban and al-Qaeda have had a sanctuary from NATO operations in Afghanistan, the Muslim parties were shut out.
This does not mean, of course, that the border region is free of terrorists; sheltered deep in the valleys and villages of western Pakistan, they pose a serious threat to American and NATO troops fighting in Afghanistan. Dealing with them will require a massive program of security and development that goes far beyond the current plan, which is about $150 million in U.S. assistance per year. After visiting the border areas this week, I believe that the place to start is with a vastly improved, better-equipped, better-trained and better-paid Frontier Corps. This ancient force, created by the British in the 19th century, has only 50,000 troops; incredibly, it faces a better-armed Taliban and local rebel groups. Put another way, the eastern front of the American war in Afghanistan is surely worth more than $150 million a year -- money that, I should note, has not yet arrived in any significant amount.
Huge mistakes were made by the Musharraf regime in the tribal areas. Even Musharraf admits that his government's 2006 peace deal with the Taliban was a disaster that gave the Taliban a huge advantage in the Pakistani tribal areas and greatly weakened the NATO effort in Afghanistan. (Inexplicably, the United States publicly endorsed the deal, perhaps as part of its generally pro-Musharraf policies.)
But it seems a large overstatement to see the militants in the tribal areas as a threat to the rest of Pakistan. Pakistan's problems -- including terrorism -- are monumental, and its future is uncertain. (A bright spot in recent years has been a quietly improving relationship with India.) But Pakistan, the world's second-largest Muslim nation, is too big and its civil society -- with its deeply established political parties, its free press, its vibrant and very visible lawyers, its thousands of nongovernmental organizations, its huge business community, and its own moderate Muslim leaders -- too extensive to in fact become "the world's most dangerous nation."
For their part, educated Pakistanis are following the American presidential campaign carefully. Whoever is elected, they will continue to pay close attention to Washington. (An example: Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto's widower and co-chairman of the PPP, told me that in choosing a woman to be speaker of the National Assembly, he was deeply influenced by his wife's friendship with Nancy Pelosi.)
Over decades, Washington has usually sent mixed signals to Pakistan. This time the message should be clear and consistent: democracy, reconciliation, the military out of politics, a new policy for the tribal areas -- and more democracy.
Here is a video clip about Holbrooke's appointment:
After repeatedly emphasizing that Kashmir issue between India and Pakistan is inextricably linked to Afghanistan crisis, President Barack Obama has begun to backtrack on the need for resolving Kashmir.
The clearest signal yet of this change of heart came this week when Kashmir was dropped from special envoy Richard Holbrooke's mandate under pressure from Indian lobby in Washington. According to Washington Post, India managed to "prune the portfolio of the Obama administration's top envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard C. Holbrooke -- basically eliminating the contested region of Kashmir from his job description".
In run-up to the last US presidential elections and until recently, it was widely known that Obama believes the situation in Afghanistan is inextricably linked to the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. “The most important thing we’re going to have to do with respect to Afghanistan, is actually deal with Pakistan,” Obama said in an interview on October 30 with MSNBC. “And we’ve got work with the newly elected government there in a coherent way that says, terrorism is now a threat to you. Extremism is a threat to you. We should probably try to facilitate a better understanding between Pakistan and India and try to resolve the Kashmir crisis so that they can stay focused not on India, but on the situation with those militants.”
Obama reiterated his emphasis on Kashmir in a December 7 interview on NBC's Meet The Press. He said, "...as I've said before, we can't continue to look at Afghanistan in isolation. We have to see it as a part of a regional problem that includes Pakistan, includes India, includes Kashmir, includes Iran. And part of the kind of foreign policy I want to shape is one in which we have tough, direct diplomacy combined with more effective military operations, focused on what is the number one threat against U.S. interests and U.S. lives. And that's al-Qaeda and, and, and their various affiliates, and we are going to go after them fiercely in the years to come."
The deletion is seen as a significant diplomatic concession to India that reflects increasingly warm ties between the country and the United States, according to South Asia analysts.
Indian diplomats, worried about Holbrooke's tough-as-nails reputation, wanted to keep him away from Kashmir, according to several Indian officials and Indian news media reports. Holbrooke is nicknamed "the Bulldozer" for arm-twisting warring leaders to the negotiating table as he hammered out the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended the war in Bosnia, a peace that has stuck. The Indians are quite happy to see this "Bulldozer" riding roughshod over Pakistan.
Recalling her meeting with Holbrooke and Richard Perle in Kazakhstan, Pakistani analyst Shireen Mazari wrote recently that she "was surprised by the similarity of views they both held towards the Muslim world in general, and towards what the U.S. was doing post-9/11 in Afghanistan. Also, if we remember that Holbrooke was Hillary Clinton's senior policy adviser, we will understand where he is really coming from. After all, Hillary Clinton supported the Iraq war until it became unpopular in the U.S.!"
Mazari further added, "Again, it was Holbrooke ( who happens to be Jewish-American), as the U.S. ambassador at the UN, who arranged for Israel to be admitted into a regional grouping of Western European and other nations–to allow Israel access to membership of crucial committees and other privileges. Interestingly, Scott Ritter, a UN Weapons' Inspector in Iraq (1991-1998), has recalled how, in a television discussion in October 2001, Holbrooke had rejected any form of diplomacy in Afghanistan and had favored only military action. Hardly the sort of man who will be open to the sensitivities of Pakistan!"
"I think it is time for us -- having fobbed off Holbrooke -- to sit quietly and ask where are we and how do we manage the situation," said C. Raja Mohan, an Indian strategic analyst who served on India's national security advisory board in 2006.
"Intellectually, it is impossible to disentangle these problems (Afghanistan and Kashmir) from each other," said Daniel Markey, a South Asia expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. "The smartest thing is to work on this behind the scenes."
Time Magazine reports that the Obama Administration is not going to buy India's line that the U.S. should butt out of Kashmir. The President himself plainly believes there's a role for the U.S. to play.However, it's not clear how the US would play such a role.
The fact that Obama has already begun to show serious weakness in his dealings with India does not augur well for the success of any back-channel negotiations. If anything, it'll just mean more pressure on Pakistan to essentially agree to whatever terms are dictated by India through Holbrooke, the "Bulldozer".
In an earlier post, I had expressed the hope that Obama and his allies will show tough love to India and Israel, the kind of tough love that makes two of America's best friends see what is truly in their own best interest. The latest news about Obama's attitude suggests that my hope was misplaced. As far as India and Israel are concerned, we are likely to see a lot of diplomatic activity but no real fundamental shifts from the failed Bush policies of coddling Israel and India. The early indications are that Obama's "change" will only be skin-deep when it comes to changing the course of events in South Asia and the Middle East. On the contrary, Afghanistan and Pakistan will likely become Obama's Indochina, far worse than Bush's Iraq.
Here are two videos to explain Kashmir. The first is on the Obama vision of solving the Kashmir issue. The second is a comprehensive video on the origins of Kashmir dispute and the positions of various parties as presented by Pakistani Peace Activist Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy:
