The combative but talented U.S. special envoy
to Afghanistan and
Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke: He's not Mr. Popularity
in the region.
The Frontier Post,
Pakistan
Richard Holbrooke Had Better Cut the 'Baloney'
"He claims
that the Taliban insurgency carries out its attacks on American and NATO forces
in Afghanistan from sanctuaries inside Pakistan's tribal region. If that's the
case, then what fighters are the American commanders so proudly boasting of
having vanquished in Marja?"
Pakistan Prime Minister Gilani believes there has been a 'major paradigm shift' in Pakistan-U.S. relations. But it would appear that the 'Pakistan street' has yet to be convinced.
To parade the patent baloney
that he's been implausibly peddling, Obama's AfPak special envoy Richard
Holbrooke must think people are stupid, or else he's too clever by half. He claims
that the Taliban insurgency carries out its attacks on American and NATO forces
in Afghanistan from sanctuaries inside Pakistan's tribal region. If that's the
case, then what fighters are the American commanders so proudly boasting of
having vanquished in Marja
- and who are the fighters they now plan to take on in Kandahar?
They are Afghan Taliban - isn't
that what American commanders themselves are saying? And aren't they publicly repeating
again and again that they're now working on a strategy in occupied Afghanistan to
capture and hold population centers and woo people away from militants by
offering them civic services? Isn't this a clear admission that resistance to U.S.-led
coalition forces actually lies inside Afghanistan - and that the fighters attacking
coalition forces are also based in Afghanistan?
Then where does Holbrook's
preposterous talk come from? In the face of the damning realities on the ground,
his discourse is demonstrably trite and obsolete. That bogie many might have
sold in years gone be, courtesy of the conformist American and Western media which
disseminated the uncritical and loyally-motivated musings of CIA plants - like the
satrap anointed by the Bush Administration [Karzai] to administer occupied
Afghanistan in collaboration with its blue-eyed Northern Alliance and Afghan
warlords.
But that's over now - the
realities on the ground are too harsh and too difficult to gloss over. Not only
are the Afghan Taliban deeply and lethally entrenched in the country's south
and east, they have expanded to the north and the west as well. Even Afghan
President Hamid Karzai, who lovingly played the role of CIA asset, is finding
it hard to ignore this compelling reality. He's making peace overtures to the
Taliban, including to their top leaders, who at one time he was averse to talking
to.
If the American occupiers had
indeed been truthful, they wouldn't have goofed up so terribly in Afghanistan.
They would have kept an eye on the developing situation in post-Taliban
Afghanistan and taken all needed measures to put things on an even keel. The
country wouldn't have become the world's largest poppy grower and drugs
supplier, nor would hundreds of thousands of weapons have disappeared
inexplicably and unaccountably from its defense ministry's armories and the arsenals
of coalition forces. And by now, with its landmass for the most part under government
writ, the country would certainly have established a more effective security
apparatus and functional administrative machinery. But they willingly and
happily allowed themselves to be led down the garden path by the CIA, which
instead of endeavoring to pacify Afghanistan, took to adventurist pursuits in the
neighborhood - especially Pakistan.
In collusion with RAW spy
agency [India's Research and Analysis Wing], the CIA infested and softened up
Pakistan's soft underbelly - the tribal regions bordering Afghanistan - along
with its strategically located Baluchistan Province.
It cloned monstrosities like Nek
Muhammad Wazir, Baitullah
Mehsud and Maulana
Fazlullah, bankrolled them fabulously and then armed them to the teeth,
making of them a grave internal security threat to this nation. And while its
clones played the game of death with our innocent civilians, the CIA all the
while peddled the ruse - courtesy of a pliant Western media - that all was honky
dory in Afghanistan and the Taliban were operating from sanctuaries in
Pakistan's tribal areas. In fact, the Afghan Taliban were freely entrenching
themselves and becoming stronger and stronger in their Afghan havens - where
they have grown into a formidable fighting force.
Holbrook would do well to
keep his bunk to himself, as now it's too odious to endure, particularly to
Pakistani ears - even of the CIA still has compliant minds here to say things
that Western listeners crave to hear. The brave Pakistani military is having a
hard time picking out the wild oats that the CIA has so meanly and thuggishly
sowed. It has demolished the CIA-backed terrorist infrastructure in Swat and Malakand, and is now
engaged in a gigantic campaign to do the same to the CIA's best-laid-plans in
the tribal region. If Holbrooke is brave at all, he should speak the truth and
tell the world of the CIA's vile adventurism in Pakistan. His reviling of this
country carries no credibility to any objective observer.
