Global News Journal

from Afghan Journal:

Ahead of Lisbon, soul-searching in Pakistan

For all of former Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf's faults, the one thing you would have to give him credit for is the emergence of a free press. It's every bit as fearless, and questioning as its counterpart across the border in India, sometimes even stepping over the line, as some complain.

Indeed east of the Suez, and perhaps all the way to Japan, it would be hard to find a media that is as unrestrained as in India and Pakistan, which is even more remarkable in the case of Pakistan given the threat posed by a deadly militancy.

And so in the run-up to the Lisbon summit where NATO leaders will decide, among other things, the way forward in Afghanistan, a few Pakistanis have spoken forcefully. They touch upon Pakistan's role as a conflicted ally in the war there and the extreme danger that the state itself  faces now because of its refusal, or inability to break ranks with militant organisations. More striking, they challenge some long-held beliefs relating to India and Pakistan, in ways you would think was unthinkable.

One of them is an influential Pakistani newspaper editor, who according to Arnaud de Borchgrave in a piece carried by the Atlantic Council, has just made the rounds of Washington, delivering a stunning indictment of some of the players involved in the Afghan conflict.  He can't be named and his comments were off-the-record, but meant for public use, Borchgrave says.

He has listed some of them, and I can do no better than sum them up here, given they speak so directly to the issues at the heart of a troubled region.

-  All four wars between India and Pakistan (1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999) were provoked by Pakistan.

from Afghan Journal:

America takes the war deeper into Pakistan

One of the most interesting things in Bob Woodward's re-telling of the Afghan war strategy in his book "Obama's Wars" is the approach toward Pakistan. It seems the Obama administration figured out pretty early on in its review that Pakistan was going to be the central batttleground, for this is where the main threat to America came from.

Indeed, the mission in Afghanistan was doomed so long as al Qaeda and the Taliban were sheltered in the mountains of northwest Pakistan straddling the Afghan border. The question was how do you deal with Pakistan?

Like much else, the administration debated long and hard just how far to push Pakistan to cracking down on the militants, some of whom it had spawned as assets in Aghanistan and as a front against its much bigger traditional enemy, India. One of those arguing for a tougher posture inside the administration was Dennis Blair, then the director of National Intelligence who thought there were just too many carrots being handed out and not enough sticks. He suggested the United States bomb targets inside Pakistan without seeking Islamabad's approval. "I think Pakistan would be completely, completely pissed off and they would probably take actions against us ... but they would probably adjust," he once told Obama.

Josh Rogin, recounting the debate from a piece in Foreign Policy, said that Obama chose a less confrontational path toward Pakistan. A year later, patience is running out. Last week's repeated incursions by NATO helicopters  from Afghanistan into Pakistan while pursuing militants seemed to signal a new, muscular strategy of the type Blair advocated.

Three Pakistani soldiers were killed in an attack by a NATO helicopter, triggering outrage and prompting authorities to close down a supply route for NATO troops in Afghanistan. Trucks carrying fuel for the foreign troops were set on fire in southern Pakistan in apparent retaliation for the soldiers' deaths, and on Monday, three guards were killed in an attack on tankers bound for Afghanistan in the nation's capital.

By choking off NATO supplies, even temporarily, the Pakistanis are saying they have had enough, says Robert Haddick, editor of The Small Wars Journal. While NATO said the helicopter strikes were carried out in self-defense after cross-border firing and in line with the rules of engagement, Pakistan saw it as a flagrant violation of its sovereignty, which is already under sustained pressure from the United States.

from Tales from the Trail:

U.S. lawmakers wonder, where did our love go? with Turkey

It almost sounded as if U.S. lawmakers felt jilted by Washington's long-time NATO ally Turkey.

"How do we get Turkey back?" demanded Representative Gary Ackerman at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing exploring "Turkey's New Foreign Policy Direction."

"Why is Turkish public opinion ... perhaps one of the most anti-American of any of the countries of the world?" asked the committee's chairman, Representative Howard Berman.

With a panel of experts on Turkey listening, Berman and other lawmakers listed their worries about recent Turkish policy turns on Iran, Israel and the Palestinians.

Concerns about Turkey had hit a new peak with its support of an aid convoy of ships that tried to run the Israeli blockade of the Gaza strip this summer, Berman said.

Turkey's contacts with the Islamist group Hamas -- which won the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election -- are "deeply offensive," Berman continued, and show Turkey doesn't respect Washington's list of foreign terrorist organizations (Hamas is on it).

And Turkey effectively dissed the United States again this week when its finance minister said it would boost trade with Iran, while ignoring non-United Nations sanctions, said Berman, the author of recent tough new unilateral U.S. sanctions on Tehran.

from Afghan Journal:

Is the surge failing in Afghanistan?

(Afghan women in a car in Kandahar province. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis)

Six months into the surge in Afghanistan, Americans and Afghans alike are asking the question whether it has worked and the ugly reality is that it has failed to make a difference, writes Jackson Diehl in the Washington Post.

To be sure, as U.S. President Barack Obama said last week only half the reinforcements he ordered in December have arrived and there is still more than a year to go before the troop withdrawals begin.

But comparisons with Iraq - America's other war - are hard to push away and they don't look good at all. Diehl says five months into the Iraq surge in 2007, sectarian violence was dropping, Sunni tribes were turning against al-Qaeda and the Iraqi government was delivering on its promises.

Afghanistan, in contrast, is a failure on all these counts. Violence has gone up and it cannot just be because more troops have been deployed in new areas and there is more fighting. As we wrote earlier, there were 400 attacks in one week in April, a majority of them roadside bombs.

On Tuesday, the Taliban struck in heavily-guarded Kabul, killing 18 people including six foreign troops  in a suicide attack on a NATO convoy. It was the biggest loss for NATO since September and the deadliest attack in the capital since a February raid.

from Afghan Journal:

Kandahar’s street without women

Afghan women wearing traditional burqas stand in the street in Kandahar November 7, 2007. REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly

Where women really stand in Afghan society didn't hit home to me until I walked down a busy market street in Kandahar without seeing a single woman. The birthplace of the Taliban, Kandahar is conservative even by Afghan standards.  It is also the focus of NATO's next big military offensive in Afghanistan,  and I spent a couple of days last week embedded with a U.S. military police unit there to report on plans for the offensive and the mood on the ground. 

Under a blistering afternoon sun, a group of U.S. and Canadian soldiers and military police led me down a road packed with shops on either side -- a bustling market street where you could buy anything from glass plates to spare bicycle parts. At first, I was taken in by the colourful sights and smells, some of which reminded me of my childhood in India -- giant bags of something resembling green and beige pasta shells, sweet shops stacked with glass containers of cookies and pastries, fruits and vegetables laid out on the ground, men sitting on a mat and drinking chai.  It was only after a while that I realized that the curious local faces staring at us were all male,  that each and every shopkeeper, assistant and hanger-on (and there were a lot of them) we had seen so far was a man.  Could it really be possible that we had walked about 200 metres along a busy market in the city center without seeing a single woman?

A Canadian soldier next to me chuckled when I mentioned it. "That's what my wife asks me as well when I send her pictures.  Where are the women? You rarely see them here, and when you do they're completely covered up," he said.  The general lack of women also probably explained why the Kandaharis were staring at me like I had just showed up from outer space. At every shop we stopped at to ask questions, a small crowd of boys and young men would gather around to find out what the fuss was about and after a few minutes of giggling and staring, some would take out cellphones to take pictures.

It was only towards the end of our stroll, when we had turned back, that I finally caught glimpse of a woman as she entered a car. She was wearing an all-enveloping burqa, and then another car passed by with three burqa-clad women in the backseat.  So women existed here after all.  I'd heard that Kandaharis were known for their good looks, and a colleague who had done a feature on a girls' school in Kandahar had mentioned their startlingly big eyes and perfect faces. In the end, I left Kandahar without seeing a single local woman's face -- at least on the streets; the exception being an old woman at the military base I was staying at, who may or may not have been from Kandahar.

Various people to whom I later mentioned the lack of women at the market put it down to perhaps the afternoon time when women stayed indoors and prepared dinner to an unusual coincidence that they found odd as well. 

War comes to Germany

Germans have spent the last six decades trying to be as un-militaristic as possible.

Their struggle to make a complete U-turn from their belligerent past has caused many an awkward moment for the country and its NATO allies. In avoiding the mere mention of the word “war” that seemed to be all but banished from their vocabulary, German leaders raised in a post-war era and the motto “Nie Wieder Krieg!” (No more war ever)  have gone through tortuous tongue-twisting excursions about what the increasingly deadly mission in Afghanistan isn’t – a war.

But all that angst about “war” was suspended, at least temporarily, on Friday when Chancellor Angela Merkel went, for the first time, to a funeral service for three German soldiers. They were killed in an ambush in Afghanistan on Good Friday.

Until now Merkel had kept her distance to the increasingly unpopular mission in Afghanistan and the 4,300 German soldiers stationed there. But on Friday she cut short a holiday to attend an emotional ceremony broadcast live on German TV networks, where she defended the country’s involvement despite 39 soldiers killed so far on what was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission. “Most soldiers would call it a civil war or simply war — and I can well understand that,” said Merkel, 55.

“What we experienced on Good Friday would understandably be called ‘war’ by most people — and me too,” said Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, 38. He offered a moving tribute, using language rarely heard to describe soldiers in post-war Germany.

 “I was trying to explain my sorrow to my daughter on Good Friday and she asked me if the three young men were ‘courageous heroes’ of our country (tapfere Helden unseres Landes) and whether it was okay to be proud of them,” said Guttenberg, who was close to tears.

“I answered both questions, not politically, but instead simply with ‘yes’.”

from Afghan Journal:

Taliban demand freedom of speech, condemn ban on attack cover

(Afghan widows in Kabul. Picture by Ahmad Masood)

Afghanistan's Taliban have condemned a government plan to ban live coverage of their attacks, saying the measure was a violation of free speech.   For a group that had itself banned television, not to mention music during its rule from 1996 to 2001, that's pretty rich irony.

On Monday, Afghan authorities announced a ban on filming of live attacks, saying such images emboldened the  militants who have launched strikes around the country just as NATO forces are in the middle of an offensive. A day later, officials promised to clarify the restrictions, and hinted they may row back from the most draconian measures.

But the Taliban appeared to have been stung to the quick and said that the ban was "an action against the recognized principles of freedom of speech" according to these reports. "By imposing the ban on the coverage of independent news organizations, the puppet government tries to hide its failure in face-to-face fights with the mujahedin in all corners of the country," the Taliban were quoted as saying.

The United States has also expressed concern over the Afghan government's move as have news organisations and rights groups.

from Afghan Journal:

Is demilitarised Europe affecting operations in Afghanistan?

German Bundeswehr army soldiers in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Picture by Fabrizio Bensch)

U.S. frustration with Europe's unwillingness or inability to commit resources to Afghanistan, both in terms of men and materiel, appears to have boiled over.  Last week U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates said in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington that public and political opposition to the military was so great in Europe  it was affecting NATO operations in Afghanistan. The alliance desperately needed combat helicopters and cargo planes, but years of successive cutbacks in defence funding by European nations had left it unable to rise to the challenge. 

 "The demilitarization of Europe — where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st," he said, addressing military officers from many of NATO's 28 member countries at the defense university.

If Europe were seen to be weak, it could provide a "temptation to miscalculation and aggression"  by hostile powers, Gates said in the sharpest criticism yet of its ally. The message was that  "pacifist" Europe had to pull its weight, realise that even if its borders were safe there were threats further afield, and bolster its defences. So far only five out of 28 member nations of NATO had reached an established target of increasing defence spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product. The United States, by contrast, spends 4 percent of its GDP on the military.

But some people are questioning why should Europe  go down the U.S. route? Stephen M.Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard University writes in his blog on Foreign Policy that a case can be made to stop subsidising Europe's defence by itself, but not follow America in its  grandiose nation-building schemes on the other side of the world.  "Europe is peaceful, democratic, and loosely united within the EU, and the danger of serious conflict there is remote. So if the United States is feeling over-extended and looking for a place to cut back, Europe seems like an ideal candidate," he says.

"Just don't expect them to start matching America's bloated defense effort. The EU member states don't face any any significant military threats, and they aren't especially interested in our grand schemes for social engineering in various far-flung places. So it's not clear why they would want a military akin to ours, even if we were no longer protecting them."

EU, NATO officials call for gender equality

By Sangeeta Shastry     

European Union and NATO officials have joined forces in calling for new efforts to ensure women are more involved in peacekeeping and conflict resolution. But differences remain on how to do so, and on whether gender quotas are the solution.

Officials told a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday that women were not represented sufficiently in policymaking and that impunity for crimes against women remained a problem, despite United Nations resolutions that are supposed to address such issues.

One of these, 10-year-old Resolution 1325, is intended to protect women and enhance their participation in peacekeeping. The other, Resolution 1888, was passed last year and addresses sexual violence during periods of conflict.    

Panellists said women were disproportionately victimised in conflicts and marginalised in peace efforts, and that this had a serious impact on global security and stability.

“This is not a women’s issue, but it’s a human rights issue,” said Margot Wallstrom, vice president of the European Union executive, the European Commission. “And I’ve come to realise that the security of a nation is best measured by the security of its women.”

Spain has made tackling violence against women a priority for its six-month EU presidency, and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called repeatedly for women to be strongly represented when member states were choosing their candidates to be part of his new executive.

Russia’s security proposals – about much more than security

Western responses to President Dmitry Medvedev’s proposal for a new European-Atlantic security body that stretches from Vancouver to Vladivostok have ranged from dismissive to lukewarm. None have been enthusiastic.

But some inside and outside Russia argue it would be unwise for Europe and the United States to reject the proposal out of hand, not least because, as one Russian official put it, this is one of the few occasions where Russia isn’t disagreeing but coming up with something constructive.

Yes Moscow’s draft treaty has gaps, they concede, yes it is almost entirely focused on security in the military sense and yes it doesn’t give much weight to liberal democracy and human rights as envisioned in modern perceptions of security – but it is a starting point for discussion.

Shutting Russia out plays in to the hands of those in Moscow, Washington and other capitals who prefer the simplicity of the Cold War’s zero sum game. It does no favours to modernisers in Russia who want to build cordial international relations, promote democratic society and build Russia’s economy away from its over-reliance on natural resources.

Russia needs stability outside its borders in order to modernise at home.

Twenty years after the collapse of communism, Russia and the rest of Europe are still struggling to establish a relationship of mutual trust and respect. They are bound by commerce – Europe is the prime market for Russian energy exports – but even that relationship is rarely straightforward. The annual Russia-Ukraine-EU gas drama is just one example of how fraught the relationship can be.

On a political and diplomatic level the complications are even greater. One need look no further than the 2008 war in Georgia when preconceptions and stereotypes dictated responses on all sides. Western media and many politicians condemned Russia outright. It was only with the publication of an EU commissioned report into the war this year that a fuller story was told. NATO’s steady expansion towards Russia’s borders has angered Moscow, where it has been noted that the Baltic states and central Europe became far more openly hostile to Russia once they had NATO and EU membership in the bag.