Its USA's fault that she trusts her own enemies.
--- In alochona@yahoogroups.com, Isha Khan <bdmailer@...> wrote:
>
> *U.S. courts Pakistan's top general, with little result
> *
>
> By Karin Brulliard and Karen DeYoung
> Washington Post Staff Writers
> Saturday, January 1, 2011
>
> ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - Countless U.S. officials in recent years have lectured
> and listened to Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the man many view as the most powerful
> in Pakistan. They have drunk tea and played golf with him, feted him and
> flown with him in helicopters.
>
> But they have yet to persuade him to undertake what the Obama
> administration's recent strategy
> review<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/14/AR2010121407420.html>concluded
> is a key to success in the Afghan war - the elimination of havens
> inside Pakistan where the Taliban plots and stages attacks on coalition
> troops in Afghanistan.
>
> Kayani, who as Pakistan's army chief has more direct say over the country's
> security strategy than its president or prime minister, has resisted
> personal appeals from President Obama, U.S. military commanders and senior
> diplomats. Recent U.S. intelligence estimates have concluded that he is
> unlikely to change his mind anytime soon. Despite the entreaties, officials
> say, Kayani doesn't trust U.S. motivations and is hedging his bets in case the
> American strategy for Afghanistan
> fails<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/23/AR2010112307089.html>.
>
>
> In many ways, Kayani is the personification of the vexing problem posed by
> Pakistan. Like the influential military establishment he represents, he
> views Afghanistan on a timeline stretching far beyond the U.S. withdrawal,
> which is slated to begin this summer. While the Obama administration sees
> the insurgents as an enemy force to be defeated as quickly and directly as
> possible, Pakistan has long regarded them as useful proxies in protecting
> its western flank from inroads by India, its historical adversary.
>
> "Kayani wants to talk about the end state in South Asia," said one of
> several Obama administration officials who spoke on the condition of
> anonymity about the sensitive relationship. U.S. generals, the official
> said, "want to talk about the next drone attacks."
>
> The administration has praised Kayani for operations in 2009 and 2010
> against domestic militants in the Swat
> Valley<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/30/AR2009053001090.html>and
> in South
> Waziristan<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/17/AR2009101700673.html>,
> and has dramatically increased its military and economic assistance to
> Pakistan. But it has grown frustrated that the general has not launched a
> ground assault against Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda sanctuaries in North
> Waziristan.
>
> Kayani has promised action when he has enough troops available, although he
> has given no indication of when that might be. Most of Pakistan's
> half-million-man army remains facing east, toward India.
>
> In recent months, Kayani has sometimes become defiant. When U.S.-Pakistani
> tensions spiked in September, after two Pakistani soldiers were killed by an
> Afghanistan-based American helicopter gunship pursuing insurgents on the
> wrong side of the border, he personally ordered the closure of the main
> frontier crossing<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/30/AR2010093000491.html>for
> U.S. military supplies into Afghanistan, according to U.S. and
> Pakistani
> officials.
>
> In October, administration officials choreographed a White House meeting for
> Kayani at which Obama could directly deliver his message of urgency. The
> army chief heard him out, then provided a 13-page document updating
> Pakistan's strategic perspective and noting the gap between short-term U.S.
> concerns and Pakistan's long-term interests, according to U.S. officials.
>
> Kayani reportedly was infuriated by the recent WikiLeaks release of U.S.
> diplomatic cables<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/30/AR2010113007679.html>,
> some of which depicted him as far chummier with the Americans and more
> deeply involved in Pakistani politics than his carefully crafted domestic
> persona would suggest. In one cable, sent to Washington by the U.S. Embassy
> in Islamabad last year, he was quoted as discussing with U.S. officials a
> possible removal of Pakistan's president and his preferred replacement.
>
> On the eve of the cable's publication in November, the normally aloof and
> soft-spoken general ranted for hours on the subject of irreconcilable
> U.S.-Pakistan differences in a session with a group of Pakistani
> journalists.
>
> The two countries' "frames of reference" regarding regional security "can
> never be the same," he said, according to news accounts. Calling Pakistan
> America's "most bullied ally," Kayani said that the "real aim of U.S.
> strategy is to de-nuclearize Pakistan."
> *The general's suspicions*
>
> Kayani was a star student at the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff
> College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., in 1988, writing his master's thesis on
> "Strengths and Weaknesses of the Afghan Resistance Movement." He was among
> the last Pakistanis to graduate from the college before the United States
> cut off military assistance to Islamabad in 1990 in response to Pakistan's
> suspected nuclear weapons program. Eight years later, both Pakistan and
> India conducted tests of nuclear devices.
>
> The estrangement lasted until President George W. Bush lifted the sanctions
> in 2001, less than two weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
>
> Kayani is far from alone in the Pakistani military in suspecting that the
> United States will abandon Pakistan once it has achieved its goals in
> Afghanistan, and that its goal remains to leave Pakistan defenseless against
> nuclear-armed India.
>
> Kayani "is one of the most anti-India chiefs Pakistan has ever had," one
> U.S. official said.
>
> The son of a noncommissioned army officer, Kayani was commissioned as a
> second lieutenant in 1971. He was chief of military operations during the
> 2001-02 Pakistan-India crisis. As head of Pakistan's Inter-Services
> Intelligence agency from 2004 to 2007, he served as a point man for
> back-channel talks with India initiated by then-President Pervez Musharraf.
> When Musharraf resigned<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/18/AR2008081800418.html>in
> 2008, the talks abruptly ended.
>
> The Pakistani military has long been involved in politics, but few believe
> that the general seeks to lead the nation. "He has stated from the beginning
> that he has no desire to involve the military in running the country," said
> Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council. But
> that does not mean Kayani would stand by "if there was a failure of civilian
> institutions," Nawaz said. "The army would step in."
> *'Mind-boggling'*
>
> Even some Pakistanis see Kayani's India-centric view as dated, self-serving
> and potentially disastrous as the insurgents the country has harbored
> increasingly turn on Pakistan itself.
>
> "Nine years into the Afghanistan war, we're fighting various strands of
> militancy, and we still have an army chief who considers India the major
> threat," said Cyril Almeida, an editor and columnist at the English-language
> newspaper Dawn. "That's mind-boggling."
>
> Kayani has cultivated the approval of a strongly anti-American public that
> opinion polls indicate now holds the military in far higher esteem than it
> does the weak civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari. Pakistani
> officials say the need for public support is a key reason for rebuffing U.S.
> pleas for an offensive in North Waziristan. In addition to necessitating the
> transfer of troops from the Indian border, Pakistani military and
> intelligence officials say such a campaign would incite domestic terrorism
> and uproot local communities. Residents who left their homes during the
> South Waziristan offensive more than a year ago have only recently been
> allowed to begin returning to their villages.
> *The real power broker*
>
> Pakistani democracy activists fault the United States for professing to
> support Pakistan's civilian government while at the same time bolstering
> Kayani with frequent high-level visits and giving him a prominent role in
> strategic talks with Islamabad.
>
> Obama administration officials said in response that while they voice
> support for Pakistan's weak civilian government at every opportunity, the
> reality is that the army chief is the one who can produce results.
>
> "We have this policy objective, so who do we talk to?" one official said.
> "It's increasingly clear that we have to talk to Kayani."
>
> Most of the talking is done by Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint
> Chiefs of Staff. In more than 30 face-to-face meetings with Kayani,
> including 21 visits to Pakistan since late 2007, Mullen has sought to
> reverse what both sides call a "trust deficit" between the two militaries.
>
> But the patience of other U.S. officials has worn thin. Gen. David H.
> Petraeus, the commander of the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, has
> adopted a much tougher attitude toward Kayani than his predecessor, Gen.
> Stanley A. McChrystal, had, according to several U.S. officials.
>
> For his part, Kayani complains that he is "always asking Petraeus what is
> the strategic objective" in Afghanistan, according to a friend, retired air
> marshal Shahzad Chaudhry.
>
> As the Obama administration struggles to assess the fruits of its investment
> in Pakistan, some officials said the United States now accepts that pleas
> and military assistance will not change Kayani's thinking. Mullen and
> Richard C. Holbrooke, who served as the administration's special
> representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan until his death last
> month,<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/13/AR2010121306799.html>thought
> that "getting Kayani to trust us enough" to be honest constituted
> progress, one official said.
>
> But what Kayani has honestly told them, the official said, is: "I don't
> trust you."
> brulliardk@... deyoungk@...
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/31/AR2010123103993_pf.html
>
------------------------------------
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