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- Posted: Sun, 04 Mar 2012 19:29:04 +0000
washu_2004
What would the ideal situation be for the jihadi terrorists?
Driving a wedge between the US and Pakistan, its closest regional ally by use of a 5th column smear campaign spread by western sympathizers and useful idiots would be perfect for them.
Driving a wedge between the US and Pakistan, its closest regional ally by use of a 5th column smear campaign spread by western sympathizers and useful idiots would be perfect for them.
Are you seriously attributing responsibility for the damage to US-Pakistan relations to the insurgents alone? That's preposterous, bordering on hilarious.
1. Many Pakistanis have been angry with their government's cooperative policy towards the US-led coalition's invasion and occupation of Afghanistan since it began, rather like many Egyptians were upset with Mubarak over his perceived refusal to put the needs of the country and their Islamic duties before political machinations with the west. We were always going to see this significant political bloc make eventual headway. It was obvious to any intelligent observer.
2. Early in the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan was given a lot in the way of political platitudes and an increased amount of aid assistance from the United States, as well as debt forgiveness. Furthermore, the United States offered impressive rewards to Pakistanis in the early days of the war in exchange for Taliban fighters captured in their country. While this program probably led to the capture and detainment of a great deal of knowingly false positives, it did serve to dull some of the antagonistic fervour, especially along the border regions where most captures took place. With the end of the actual Taliban of years gone by and the switch to an insurgency situation, the financial incentives have slowly diminished, and their veneer has been dulled.
3. In the late 2000s it came to light that the vast majority of the aid that the United was using to purchase the continued support and assistance of the Pakistani military was being misspent. You see, the United States has been footing the bill for the Pakistani military's various assistance efforts in the War on Terror, but Pakistan has rarely, if ever, displayed any particular enthusiasm towards this. Upon taking a closer look it was found that they were inflating their costs by exorbitant amounts and putting the money they had defrauded from the United States over the years towards other expenditures of no use to the coalition forces. As a result of this, effective aid to Pakistan has actually been reduced, in spite of an overt continuation of aid roughly equivalent to previous totals. Much of the money, assigned through United States contractors, is now siphoned back to the United States. Due to this and the increased scrutiny of Pakistan's expenditures, the transactional side of US-Pakistan relations had already begun cooling about four years ago.
4. In recent years we have also seen increased suspicion on the part of the United States government and coalition forces towards the ISI's activities. Years before the raid that would eventually end in Osama bin Laden's death, the circumstances surrounding which first brought concerns over Pakistan's loyalties to light in the eyes of much of the public, there was already suspicion that the ISI was tipping off radical Islamists operating within their country to coalition activities. Suspicions like these are what motivated your government to draw down on Osama bin Laden's compound without alerting the Pakistani government to its intent, after all.
5. Years of drone attacks in Pakistan have done incredible damage to whatever goodwill there may have been in the relationship. In part because they they have been done in coordination with the Pakistani government, this has proven to be a fundamental issue. It ties back into my first point in a rather direct way. Indeed, this issue more than any other is of great concern because Pakistan's government has maintained a public stance of moral outrage throughout the drone campaign, deflecting all of the public's blame and anger onto the United States. However, with the eventual release of information proving the Pakistani government an accessory in the drone campaign, their own public approval has been greatly diminished. To address the campaign itself, there have been over 300 drone strikes killing anywhere between 2400 and 3050 people. Actual civilian death tolls have been highly contested, but near as I can tell the best estimate is roughly between 450 and 810. There's also little verification of the militants killed, so the whole data set is quite fuzzy. What's most interesting about this is that, while there are widespread protests against the campaign throughout Pakistan, the people polled as being most publicly supportive have been residents of the Waziristan region where many of the strikes have taken place, but I think I'm beginning to run into a tangent.
6. Lastly, the knockout blow was landed in November of last year when 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed by a NATO air strike. This was the straw that broke the camel's proverbial back, and since then the Pakistani government has been reeling under sustained calls for a renewed chilling of US-Pakistan relations both from within its military forces and from its people. This has led to the closure of the NATO supply line through Pakistan and the evacuation of the Shamsi air base, which has led us into the present day diplomatic situation.
None of this addresses what many Americans have simply never seemed to understand: the United States and Pakistan had terrible relations all the way up to 9/11 and the War on Terror. You were enemies, not friends, and you were never going to become friends simply on account of your two governments seeing short term gain in a closer relationship. You falling out now doesn't indicate a sad parting of forlorn lovers so much as a return to normalcy in your relations. Once you've accounted for all of these, then you can begin to blame radical Islamists for the role they've played in 'driving a wedge' between your country and Pakistan. I think you'll find that they were plenty far enough apart already.
