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CPEC’s Work-In-Progress: Gwadar
It is one thing to hear that Chinese nationals in Gwadar and site for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) get heightened, foolproof security and it is quite another to experience that security firsthand. And that is indeed what I can report as the Center for Research and Security Studies recntly arranged a tour of Gwadar for its Chinese counterparts from the Chinese Association for Friendship. Right off the bat, getting the security clearance was a comprehensive process. The smallest discrepancies or concerns were flagged and investigated until they reached a logical conclusion. Once the permits were squared away, and the identities of all Pakistani nationals had been confirmed against their National Identity Card numbers, we were cleared to visit. This is not to say that one cannot visit Gwadar as a Pakistan national; our clearance was required to be able to visit sensitive, CPEC-related areas. Once in the city, we were provided a military convoy that was responsible for all of our movement within Gwadar and stood guard every second the contingent spent in the city. Its presence was palpable, pervasive and persistent. When we spoke to our Chinese counterparts, not only did they express their gratitude, but commented on how impressed they were by the level of concern Pakistan had for their safety and well-being. Two features are prominent in the port city of Gwadar, a city that is often touted as having the potential to change the destiny of Pakistan, and rightly so. First, there is a sharp contrast between what is promised and what currently exists. You can see signs of construction everywhere, and granted the Chinese vision for CPEC is long-term, well-thought out and meticulously executed. Fresh roads are being paved, the port authority is spotless and fastidiously maintained, the mountain ranges are being carved into to make way or gather construction materials. But by and large, Gwadar is a small town filled with poor fishermen. Second, the...
Normalisation of Ties: Islamabad, Kabul Urged To Heal Rift
Delegates at an unofficial dialogue on Pakistan-Afghanistan affairs called for normalisation of relationship between the two countries, saying that tensions had negatively affected bilateral ties. The appeal was made a few days after Afghanistan joined India to boycott the SAARC Summit that Pakistan was scheduled to host in Islamabad in November. “Peace and stability is the priority of both nations. Disengagement, therefore, between the two governments is not desirable. High-level exchanges must be resumed to promote dialogue at all levels to create a conducive environment for removing mistrust,” a declaration issued on Thursday at the conclusion of the two-day-long dialogue in Lahore stated. The first meeting of the second phase of ‘Beyond Boundaries’, a Track I.5/II dialogue series, was undertaken by the Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) in partnership with its Afghan counterpart, Women Peace and Security Organization (WPSO). The series brings together from both countries prominent journalists, civil society activists, former diplomats, parliamentarians, academicians, former members of law enforcement and scholars as part of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Joint Committee (PAJC) for Beyond Boundaries phase II. The Pakistani side comprised MNA Shazia Marri, former chief of Balochistan Police Dr Shoaib Suddle, Maj-Gen (retd) Ejaz Awan, Ambassador Mian Sanaullah and analyst Imtiaz Gul. The Afghan delegation included Sayed Ishaq Gailani, Mozammil Shinwari, Wazhma Frogh, Palwasha Hassan, Ketabullah Khpolwak Sapai and Elay Ershad. The workshop was chaired by Dr Rasul Baksh Rais. The declaration also called for reviving the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) of Afghanistan, China, Pakistan and the US and that it should continue to encourage the Taliban to negotiate, adhering to well-defined goals indicating progress. “Terrorism is a common concern, which continues to affect families on both sides (of the border). Effective regulatory framework is needed to...
Eight Lessons from Afghanistan
On the security front, recent assessments of Afghanistan exude doom and gloom. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph F. Dunford called the situation “roughly a stalemate,” telling senators that nearly a third of the country is under the control of the Taliban and other militants. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) reported that the failure to effectively address corruption has “undermined the U.S. mission in Afghanistan by fueling grievances against the Afghan government and channeling material support to the insurgency.” Both the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee warned that, after 15 years and $783 billion in spending, public support for the war is eroding because there is little evidence of success. In fact, 2015 was Afghanistan’s deadliest year on record. Meanwhile in development quarters, a more optimistic spirit holds sway. Earlier this month international donors pledged over $15 billion in economic aid to Afghanistan for the next four years, close to the same level they agreed to provide during the last four years. The Afghan governmenttrumpeted progress on infrastructure development, private sector engagement, and good governance. USAID boasted that U.S. government support over the last decade has helped Afghanistan to achieve the largest increases in life expectancy and largest decreases in maternal and child mortality of any country in the world. According to the Afghan Ministry of Education, more than eight times as many children are in school now as in 2001, and 39 percent of them are girls. The State Department said it considers the Afghan government “an engaged and constructive partner” that is “committed to moving the country forward, strengthening its democracy, and deepening its institutional roots.” Although President Obama slowed the drawdown in U.S. troops from Afghanistan, vowing to keep 8,400 troops there until the end of his term, the next president...
Norway Increases Humanitarian Support To Afghanistan
‘Several hundred thousand Afghans who have been refugees in Pakistan are now returning home. This has created a vast need for humanitarian aid. Norway is therefore increasing its humanitarian support to Afghanistan by NOK 64 million,’ Foreign Minister Børge Brende said. It is estimated that 9 million people in Afghanistan – 1.3 million of them internally displaced – are in need of emergency aid. The situation is especially critical for several hundred thousand Afghan refugees who have returned from Pakistan to south-eastern Afghanistan since this summer. ‘The refugee situation is a strain on the authorities of Afghanistan and on international aid agencies. Norway is now responding to appeals by the UN and the International Organization for Migration. We are cooperating with partners that can effectively provide urgently needed emergency relief, including shelter, medicines, food and water, and sanitary facilities,’ said Mr Brende. Norway is channelling its humanitarian support through the Norwegian Refugee Council, the UN and IOM, which have long-standing experience in assisting internally displaced people and returning refugees. Many of those in need of help have been in Pakistan for decades and are facing a number of challenges – such as reclaiming their homes and land. Many also need legal aid to make a new start in Afghanistan. ‘Several thousand refugees are returning from Pakistan every day. Norway supports the efforts to provide humanitarian protection and assistance to people who are in a vulnerable situation,’ Mr Brende said. Norway has provided a total of NOK 240 million in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan in 2016. This article originally appeared on www.regjeringen.no, 18, October, 2016. Original link. Disclaimer: Views expressed in the article are not necessarily supported by CRSS.
Afghan repatriation creating acrimony; SAARC exit a bad move: Afghan delegates at LUMS/FC
The harsh attitude towards Afghan refugees has created a lot of problems and acrimony in Afghanistan. We hope the Pakistanis don’t want to destroy the 35 years of hospitality, and the goodwill it generated, by pursuing policies that have created more problems than solving them. These words were said by Abdul Hakim Mujahid, Member of Executive Board of the High Peace Council in Afghanistan. He was speaking at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) at a lecture/Q&A session conducted under the second phase of Beyond Boundaries (BB). BB is a Track I.5/II dialogue series undertaken by the Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) in partnership with Afghan counterpart Women Peace and Security Organization (WPSO) to foster better understanding and cooperation between civil society members of the two neighbors. A second, simultaneous session was conducted at Forman Christian College’s (FCC) Center of Public Policy and Governance (CPPG), featuring leading female parliamentarian Shazia Marri, and former Afghan presidential candidate Sayed Ishaq Gailani. The LUMS session also featured Wazhma Frogh, senior advisor to the Afghan Defense Minister, Ambassador Mian Sanaullah, and Dr. Rasul Baksh Rais. Frogh said that the Afghan delegation was there to initiate and promote a rational discourse on the two countries. She informed the students that in the post 9/11 Afghanistan, as many as 9 million children are going to schools, and that nearly 27 percent members of the parliament are women. It is a huge step forward for a male-dominated country. Amb. Sanaullah also echoed Hakimullah’s words in that any altercation only affects people and traders of both countries. He said that the benefit of this acrimony was only to a small pool of vested interests. At FC, Gailani, while fielding a question from Marri, said that Afghanistan exited the SAARC conference because the government follows the Indian directives. He said this move was ill-advised, against the...
US Should Leave Afghanistan — Now
Last week marked the fifteenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the longest war in U.S. history. There weren’t any victory parades or photo-ops with Afghanistan’s post-liberation leaders. That is because the war is ongoing. In fact, 15 years after launching a war against Afghanistan’s Taliban government in retaliation for an attack by Saudi-backed al-Qaida, the U.S.-backed forces are steadily losing territory back to the Taliban. What President Obama called “the good war” before took office in 2008, has become the “forgotten war” some eight years later. How many Americans know that we still have nearly 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan? Do any Americans know that the Taliban was never defeated, but now holds more ground in Afghanistan than at any point since 2001? Do they know the Taliban overran the provincial capital of Kunduz last week for a second time in a year and they threaten several other provincial capitals? Do Americans know that we are still wasting billions on “reconstruction” and other projects in Afghanistan that are, at best, boondoggles? According to a recent audit by the independent U.S. government body overseeing Afghan reconstruction, half a billion dollars was wasted on a contract for a U.S. company to maintain Afghan military vehicles. The contractor “fail[ed] to meet program objectives,” the audit found. Of course they still got paid, like thousands of others getting rich off of this failed war. Do Americans know that their government has spent at least $60 billion to train and equip Afghan security forces, yet these forces are still not capable of fighting on their own against the Taliban? We recently learned that an unknown but not insignificant number of those troops brought to the U.S. for training have deserted and are living illegally somewhere in the U.S. In the recent Taliban attack on Kunduz, it was reported that thousands of Afghan security personnel fled without firing a shot. According to a recent study by...
Security, border management, media, and refugees dominate first Pak-Afghan dialogue facilitated by CRSS/WPSO
An expanded commitment to peace and security in the region, the role of media in fostering this goal, border management, and refugees were the top items on the agenda of the first meeting of the second phase of Beyond Boundaries, a Track I.5/II dialogue series undertaken by the Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) in partnership with Afghan counterpart Women Peace and Security Organization (WPSO). The series brings together from both countries prominent journalists, civil society activists, former diplomats, parliamentarians, academicians, former members of law enforcement and scholars as part of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Joint Committee (PAJC) for Beyond Boundaries phase II. The Pakistani contingent comprised Dr. Shoaib Suddle, Maj. Gen. (retd) Ejaz Awan, Ambassador Mian Sanaullah, Muhammad Tahir, and MNA Shazia Marri, while the Afghan delegation comprised Sayed Ishaq Gailani, Mozammil Shinwari, Wazhma Frogh, Palwasha Hassan, Ketabullah Khpolwak Sapai, and Elay Ershad. The workshop was chaired by Dr. Rasul Baksh Rais. Speaking at the session, Elay Ershad, Member of the Oolasi Jirga (lower house of parliament) said every Pakistani and Afghan one is part of a puzzle which will be complete only if all of us work together. She said that members of media and the civil society should not resonate their respective government’s positions. We should come out of that mindset and propose our own independent thinking. Dr. Rasul Baksh Rais, eminent professor at LUMS, said that initiatives such as Beyond Boundaries are extremely important in a difficult geo-political environment and in view of the complicated bilateral relations. Governments usually lack vision, courage, and readiness for change and therefore it is the job of independent thinkers and think tanks to redirect the bilateral relationship. Syed Ishaq Gailani, a former MP and presidential candidate, bemoaned the latest visa restrictions such as no permission for entry into Cantonment areas as well...
Our Generals failed in Afghanistan
The United States military failed America in Afghanistan. It wasn’t a tactical failure. It was a failure of leadership. The ascent of David Petraeus and the Army’s rediscovery of counterinsurgency doctrine led many to believe that the military had dramatically adapted itself for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately the transformation was only skin deep. Petraeus was a myth, and the intellectual father of the Army only in the eyes of the national media. The institutional inertia of the military bureaucracy never caught up with the press releases. The result was a never-ending series of public pronouncements by senior leaders about the importance of counterinsurgency, accompanied by a continuation of Cold War-era personnel and rotation policies that explicitly short-changed the effort. Upon taking command in Afghanistan in 2009, General Stanley McChrystal made the rounds of his subordinate units and asked each of us, “What would you do differently if you had to stay until we won?” At the time I was in charge of operations for a brigade in the middle of tough fight in eastern Afghanistan. It was absolutely the right question, but in retrospect it was also a trick question. The answer was to get the right people into the fight, keep them there long enough to develop an understanding of the environment, and hold them accountable for progress, but that was not something the military was interested in doing. Instead, we stuck with a policy that rotated leaders through the country like tourists. Taking the lessons of unit cohesion from Vietnam, the military has followed a policy in Afghanistan where entire units rotate in and out of country every seven, nine, or 12 months. This model, more than the policy of individual rotation in Vietnam, ensures both tactical proficiency and unit cohesion at the soldier level. But it also is completely ill-suited for a counterinsurgency campaign. It makes sense to limit the time soldiers spend conducting tactical...
GHQ Attack Planner Killed In Tank IBO
One of the planners of a brazen terrorist assault on the military headquarters was killed in an intelligence-based operation in a southern district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa on Wednesday. Ten terrorists, donning military fatigues, attacked the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi on Oct 10, 2009. An hour-long siege ensued that left over a dozen people, including nine soldiers, dead. A Peshawar-based senior security official confirmed to The Express Tribune that Akbar Ali, aka Badi, was killed in an IBO in Gomal area on the fringes of Tank district and South Waziristan Agency. The area, also called Gomal Darra, stretches to Afghanistan. “Security forces surrounded a compound where Akbar Ali was present along with other militants. They were asked to surrender, but instead of turning themselves in they opened fire on security forces,” the security official said. “In the ensuing gunfight, Akbar Ali was killed.” Akbar Ali was one of the top commanders of the Shura-e-Mujahideen Waziristan and had expertise in training suicide bombers, security officials said. He was also involved in several attacks on security forces and installations. Akbar Ali was part of the terrorist team that had mounted the GHQ attack. He was a close aide of Qari Hussain, the main trainers of suicide bombers in the country. Security officials believe he was also involved in kidnapping engineers from Gomal Zam dam, killing of peace committee elders in Tank as well several other sectarian attacks in the country. This article originally appeared in The Express Tribune 20, 2016. Original link. Disclaimer: Views expressed in the article are not necessarily supported by CRSS.
Goa Declaration Furthers Case for Our NSG Membership, Says India
BRICS exposed the limitations of India's diplomacy of outrage+ in dealing with the issue of cross-border terrorism, but the government did manage to generate what it sees as a favourable response to India's NSG membership bid Top government sources said it was at India's insistence that the declaration included a paragraph saying nuclear energy was going to play an important role in allowing some BRICS nations to meet their Paris climate change agreement+commitments. "We recognise that nuclear energy will play a significant role for some of the BRICS countries in meeting their 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement commitments and for reducing global greenhouse gas emissions in the long term," said the declaration. "In this regard, we underline the importance of predictability in accessing technology and finance for expansion of civil nuclear energy capacity which would contribute to the sustainable development of BRICS countries," it added. This, a top government official said, was "exactly the language used by India for entry into the NSG". While the Goa Declaration does not in any way dilute China's position that India can't join NSG as a non-NPT signatory, it does underscore the significance of India's bid before it comes up for reconsideration in a possible NSG meeting next month, said the official. India finally ratified the Paris agreement on Gandhi Jayanti. In June though, after its membership campaign came unstuck at the NSG meeting in Seoul mainly because of opposition from China+ , India had threatened to delay the ratification. "An early positive decision by the NSG would have allowed us to move forward on the Paris agreement," it had said. India is the only BRICS country which is not a member of the 48-nation group. A handful of countries led by China, in what India sees as a delaying tactic, have sought a criteria-based approach in considering membership applications. India instead wants a merit-based approach in considering such applications....
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I am also a member of National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting. Recently, we held a meeting with the Director General of Radio Pakistan and we told them to initiate such local programs (like Constituency Hour) in regional languages to educate and inform people. Even Indian Radio can be heard in FATA which is being used for propaganda purposes and must be closed. Therefore, we should launch some standard and quality programs like CRSS that will change the taste of the listeners.