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Headlines : "War on Terror"Pakistan's Taliban at the Gates
Security analysts fear that Pakistan’s security forces lack the training, equipment and expertise to tackle the burgeoning domestic extremist insurgency. The West’s most important ally in the war on terror is faltering, distracted by the political crisis in the capital and taking heavy losses that sap the morale in its ranks.
Vice Chief of Army Staff, Ashfaq Kyani, who is slated to take over from Musharraf when he retires as army chief, is already taking steps to remedy some of the military’s worst problems. On Monday, he visited troops in Swat to raise morale and is taking concrete steps to get them more training and equipment. Even as U.S. military commanders return again and again to well-thumbed counterinsurgency textbooks dating to Vietnam to help with current engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan too has to learn the art of counterinsurgency.
[Posted By Dilated_Rebel]Republished from Truthout
The local police precinct in the village of Matta has a new sign: Taliban Station. The same thing in the village of Kabal – in fact, nine of the twelve districts in the picturesque Swat Valley, 100 miles from Pakistan’s capital, have been taken over by militants, who have torched music shops, barred girls from going to school, forced women to wear burqas and decreed that men must grow beards. As if to complete the flashback to Taliban-era Afghanistan, the new overlords have even attempted to blow up centuries-old Buddhist monuments.
But this is not Afghanistan, of course, or even the tribal lands of the frontier provinces. The Swat valley is Pakistan’s premier tourist destination, home to its only ski slope and a haven for trout fishing. But it has become increasingly embattled in the face of an anti-government campaign, over the past five months, by the charismatic radio preacher Maulana Fazlullah, known as the FM mullah, who has spawned a wave of fundamentalist militancy that has swept from the Afghan frontier through the lawless tribal areas of Waziristan and into the settled areas far from the border.
Posted by Dilated_Rebel
Born and raised very humbly in a “small town” in southern California, I was a product of different worlds. Literally, part of my family descends from Mexico the rest from Portugal and Uruguay. This mixture had kept me from supporting any racist psyche found...
You’ve got to be a bit unbalanced to prioritize blowing up statues and forcing men to grow beards once you take power. I wonder what their pamphlets look like.
“Men of Pakistan: Aren’t you distressed by the lack of beards?”
Oh, good… fundamentalist douchebags knocking on the door…
Ashfaq? Holy cow Mushie. What the hell kind of name is that? I’m sorry but REALLY.
Kyani, btw, is Time’s spelling. Seems like everyone else is using Kiyani
Who is this Kiyani guy
Filled with qualities of head and heart, Kiyani is perceived as a purposeful and pragmatic commander and an embodiment of professionalism. Considered in the army circles as a liberal and thinking general, Kiyani is a chain smoker with a tendency to mumble. Excellence and perfection are said to be the hallmarks of his personality. An avid golfer and a keen sportsman, Kiyani also happens to be the President of the Pakistan Golf Association. Military circles point out that it is after a long interval that the army’s command is being assumed by a traditional Punjabi soldier who comes from the Potohari belt of Jhelum. The harsh and arid region of Jhelum is famed throughout the Subcontinent for only one product – soldiers. The last traditional Punjabi soldier to have become the army chief was General Asif Nawaz, who died under mysterious circumstances in January 1993 – being the only COAS to have expired before the completion of his three-year tenure.
Military circles say the rise of General Kiyani through the ranks of the Pakistan Army has been rapid, if not extraordinary. They point out that this would be the first time that the son of a non-commissioned officer (NCO) would head the Pakistan Army. His humble background as the son of an NCO has endeared him to the junior ranks of the army. Kiyani received his education from Military College Jhelum and was commissioned in the Baloch Regiment in August 1971. He has held many important military appointments throughout his career. He is a graduate of the Command and Staff College Quetta, Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, US and National Defence College, Islamabad. Having commanded an infantry battalion, infantry brigade, infantry division and a corps, Kiyani possesses wide-ranging experience in command, instructional and staff appointments. Besides participating in the 1971 war, he has served as Brigade Major in two Infantry Brigades, General Staff Officer-1 and Director Military Operations in Military Operations Directorate, Director General in Military Intelligence Directorate and has been the Chief of the General Staff of the Pakistan Army.
With distinctions in his education and professional career, both in Pakistan and abroad, Kiyani has been appointed to command the Pakistan Army at a time when Pakistan is passing through a very critical phase of its history. Although Kiyani has always kept a low public profile, people who have worked closely with him speak highly of his abilities – more highly in some cases than his boss might like. They describe him as a tough commander and a hard task master who not only excels in professional military matters and affairs of internal and external security, but also belongs to a rare breed of army officers who have a sound intellectual base. To them, he is an improved version of former COAS General Jehangir Karamat, who was made to leave the slot of the army chief by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Incidentally, General Kiyani happened to be the ONLY intelligence chief who did NOT file an affidavit before the Supreme Court AGAINST Chief Justice (CJ) Iftikhar Chaudhry while defending Musharraf in the presidential reference filed against the top judge. Insiders say during the meeting held at Musharraf’s office at which the decision to suspend him was taken, Kiyani was the only person who kept quiet and did not utter a word either in support of Musharraf’ decision or in criticism of the CJ. However, his close associates say whatever Ashfaq Kiyani did shows his professionalism, and the fact remains that he is a dedicated Musharraf loyalist who is being made the next COAS primarily because his boss believes that he is the best man to shore up vital support for him after he quits his army job to become a civilian head of state.
Following the two assassination attempts on General Musharraf in Rawalpindi way back in December 2003, Kiyani was tasked to head the successful investigations. Within months, he unravelled both the plots and arrested most of those involved, which earned him the president’s trust and gratitude. “When Kiyani got tough, the problems of coordination disappeared and the agencies started working like a well-oiled machine,” recalls Musharraf himself in his autobiography, In the Line of Fire. Kiyani was rewarded in 2004 with promotion to the chief of ISI, and the next year his agency scored big with the arrest of al Qaeda’s most wanted chief operational commander, Abu Faraj Libbi, who had allegedly masterminded the Rawalpindi assassination attempts on Musharraf’s life. However, his critics point out that even though he has been projected as a highly successful chief of the ISI, it was during his tenure that the neo-Taliban staged a comeback in the tribal areas of Pakistan with a big bang and the Pakistan Army practically lost control over the Pashtun belt, thus enabling al Qaeda to establish its sanctuaries in the Waziristan region on the Pak-Afghan border.
Nice move, I’d say. Sir.
Lt Gen Kiani headed Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence agency from 2004 until last month. You remember them, they’re the Gov’t agency that is suspected to have been involved with the hijackers of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, having paid the ringleader Mohammad Atta?
Often alleged to be an invisible force in Pakistani politics and countless incidents around the world, it is one of the most significant and secretive intelligence agencies that exist today…
Where would you put the ISI in the context of the CIA, the Mosad, and the KGB?
Competitive? Would you say the ISI ranks neck and neck with the CIA, the Mosad and the KGB? Would you say, of the four, that they ranked number 1?
Shit, Mushie, I’d take that as a compliment any day.
Except, of course, those are the four we most know about. LOL. You just CAN’T win.
Micro – Where would you put the ISI in the context of the CIA, the Mosad, and the KGB?
There isn’t a ranking. They’re all essentially versions of the same thing under different heads. And they should all be trusted as such…
I’d say there’s a ranking. But I’m a Hegelian Leftist. If you were a Hegelian Leftist, and you had to cluster those guys, how would you cluster them, in terms of their respective interests?
Come on, take a gander — would you say today’s ISI, not to be confused with the Before Bhutto’s Return ISI, is closer in kind to the CIA, the Mosad or the KGB?
Wait. What’s the difference between a Hegelian Leftist and a Left Hegelian?
the first you might smash in the face if he tried to talk to you in a bar, the second you’d actually go to the bother of dragging outside in order to have room to swing your leg in a wider arc
at least that’s what they told me last night in the pub
heh…
Hey I replied to you on the other afghan thread tcs…
I know, Memn… i just can’t think of anything else to say. I agree with you about 90%, and the remaining 10% I’m still trying to work through in my head.