Obama announces end of combat mission in Iraq
Sep 1, 2010 World News, war on terror
President Barack Obama declared an end to the seven-year US combat mission in Iraq and told war-weary Americans that our central mission as a people is to restore the sagging US economy and US must focus on its fight against al Qaeda and the war in Afghanistan.
Obama, who inherited the war from President George W. Bush and is fighting another in Afghanistan, said he had fulfilled a 2008 campaign promise to end US combat operations in Iraq. After seven years of bloodshed that has brought sacrifice from Americans and Iraqis and consumed vast resources from tight budgets, Obama said that Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country. Obama hailed the removal of all but 50,000 U.S. troops, who will have a training and advisory role, saying that this was my pledge to the American people as a candidate for this office. Obama has promised to pull all US troops out of Iraq by the end of 2011. The effective change on the ground will not be huge because the U.S. military has already been switching the focus toward training and support over the past year. Iraqi forces have been taking the lead since a bilateral security pact came into force in 2009.
Tags: Iraq, iraq war, NATO, obama, President Barack Obama, US
Can Obama make “peace” in the Middle East
May 11, 2010 Videos
Tags: cia, Middle East, NATO, obama, war on terror
VIDEO: “Nuclear Terrorism”: Al Qaeda is an Upcoming Nuclear Power according to president Obama
Apr 28, 2010 World News, war on terror
Obama is masking the real issues over nuclear weapons by presenting the idea that nuclear terrorism is a major threat, shared Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Canadian Centre for Research on Globalization.
“What is disturbing about this summit in Washington is the fact that the real threat to global security is nuclear war between countries. It is not Al-Qaeda which in any event is an intelligence asset of the CIA, which is the threat, ”Chossudovsky acknowledged. “It is an elusive network of organizations. The real threat is the threat of nuclear war and particularly the threat of a nuclear attack by the United States and Israel directed against Iran.”
In addition, the summit was useful for the US to establish dialogue with China and Russia regarding the nuclear program of Iran, thinks Chossudovsky. Both China and Russia are strictly against military actions against Iran and do not support economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic, while Obama recently issued a new military nuclear doctrine that admits using nuclear weapons against “rogue states” – implying Iran to be one of them.
“All the NATO countries, headed by the US and including Israel, they have nuclear weapons targeted at Iran,”noted Chossudovsky.
He stated that “The nuclear summit is in fact a smokescreen, a camouflage of the real dangers of nuclear war.”
America’s demand to transfer nuclear materials to some safe place in the US is an absurd operation, believes Chossudovsky.
Michel Chossudovsky told RT that: “As far as it goes, in the present context, the US is the most dangerous threat to global security and what this conference aims at achieving is to diffuse this understanding. It’s a PR campaign which seeks to present the nuclear threat in some distorted way, so that people who listen to the media report will believe that Al-Qaeda, Bin Laden and global terrorism is the issue, rather than the strategic objectives of the US which include now the preemptive use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.”
“At this stage the US administration is not interested in negotiating, it is interested in creating an environment which will justify a possible nuclear attack on Iran,” concluded Chossudovsky.
Tags: afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, iran, Iraq, nukes, obama, USA, war, war on terror
Obama: Iran Sanctions Within Weeks
Mar 31, 2010 Videos, World News
March 30, 2010 — Speaking at a press conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, President Obama made a bit of unexpected news. While there has been word of new sanctions targeting Iran, there has only been a vague time-line. Tuesday, Obama made it clear they are coming soon, saying he expects them set up in “weeks.”
Tags: iran, Iran Sanctions, Nicolas Sarkozy, obama
Webster Tarpley: US-China Relations Could Get Worse
Mar 25, 2010 Videos, World News
China is urging the US government to cancel plans for President Barack Obama to meet next week with Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. Chinese-US relations have already deteriorated over Taiwan, electronic security, and now with the potential economic threat by China.
This meeting means relations between the two countries are going to get even worse. The White House confirmed that President Obama will meet the Dalai Lama on February 18, despite China’s objections.
Tags: Barack Obama, china, obama, US, US relations, US-China Relations
Obama’s future lies in Pak help: Mushahid
Mar 17, 2010 News & Events, Pakistan
TheNation
ISLAMABAD – Pakistan Muslim League (Q) Secretary General, Mushahid Hussain Sayed on Tuesday said that Pakistan should not repeat its mistakes and must not have any favourite in Afghanistan.
The US needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs the US; therefore, Pakistan should play its cards intelligently, Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed stated this while speaking at a seminar on ‘Pakistan’s Geo-strategic Challenges and Response’, which was organised by the NUST Business School of the National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST). It was held in connection with a series of the talks to celebrate Pakistan Day.
Speaking on the subject, Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed stated that Pakistan had been facing crisis for the last three decades. He identified five major developments that took place in the region over the last three decades, which influenced the geo-strategic environment of Pakistan. Soviet’s invasion of Afghanistan made Pakistan a central point for the international diplomacy.
Revolution in Iran where the monarchy was overthrown and anti-US sentiment took a new turn, he added. For the first time, the West took Islam as a threat to it.
The establishment of the Rapid Deployment Force, which gave birth to Central Command of the US Army in July 1979, brought the US forces in the region, he observed. The modernisation of China totally transformed it from rural-agrarian to a modern industrial nation. Today, according to Mushahid Hussain, it is not G7 or G20; it is only G2 (US and China), which matters in the international relations. Lastly, after the invasion of Soviet Union in Afghanistan, the arms and ammunition worth $5.2 billion provided by the West and Arabs to Mujahideen to fight against Soviets in Afghanistan. Pakistan played a pivotal role in defeating Soviet Union, he continued.
Tags: afghanistan, Mushahid, obama, Pakistan, war on terror
Will US-NATO Start World War III by Attacking Iran?
Mar 11, 2010 News & Events, Videos
A UN nuclear watchdog report suggests Iran could be developing a nuclear bomb, apparently confirming long-held suspicions in the West. But Tehran denies the claims, again insisting that its atomic intentions are peaceful. Michel Chossudovsky, who’s from an independent Canadian policy research group, believes that what Iran says hardly matters, because the U.S. is planning for war…
Pakistan Has Caught More Taliban Than You Think
Feb 25, 2010 Pakistan, pakistan politics
FP
Since Oct. 7, 2001, when the first U.S. B-52 bombers began bombarding Taliban installations around Kabul, the United States and its allies have been waiting for Pakistan to demonstrate its sincerity in the war being fought on Afghan soil. The arrest of nine Taliban militants in the Pakistani city of Karachi, including the Afghan Taliban’s second in command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, may indicate a fundamental shift in Pakistan’s relations with the NATO states fighting in Afghanistan.
Despite former President Pervez Musharraf’s repeated public commitment to the war on terror, the U.S. intelligence community has remained wary of its Pakistani interlocutors — the military and the mighty Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s main spy agency — because of their longstanding complicity with Afghanistan’s Taliban factions. Its suspicions kept falling on the ISI for allegedly protecting Afghan Taliban leaders such as Mullah Omar, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and Sirajuddin Haqqani, the eldest son of veteran jihadist leader Jalaluddin Haqqani.
The arrest of Baradar, known as the Taliban’s master strategist, might put an end to these rumors. This success was followed by a deluge of arrests of other Taliban and jihadi leaders, likely on evidence provided by Baradar. These include Ameer Muawiya, an associate of Osama bin Laden responsible for foreign al Qaeda militants in Pakistan’s border areas, and Akhunzada Popalzai, also known as Mohammad Younis, a former Taliban shadow governor in Afghanistan’s southern Zabul province and ex-police chief of Kabul. Earlier this week, the Pakistani police also picked up Maulvi Kabir, a former governor of Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province, from a town about 20 kilometers east of Peshawar.
Pakistan also captured a number of other significant figures in the raid that netted it Baradar. Others captured in Karachi include Hamza, a former Afghan army commander in Helmand province during Taliban rule; Abu Riyad al-Zarqawi, a liaison with Chechen and Tajik militants in Pakistan’s border area; and Mullah Abdul Salam and Mullah Mohammad, former shadow governors for Kunduz province and Baghlan province, respectively.
The arrest of over a dozen key Taliban commanders amounts to a serious blow to the insurgency in Afghanistan. Intriguingly, while Pakistani officials claim Baradar was captured in Karachi, some sources insist the arrest took place several days earlier in Baluchistan, the Pakistani southwestern province along the border with Afghanistan. But regardless of where Baradar was picked up, the utility of the intelligence gained from his capture and the motives of Pakistan in going after the Afghan Taliban, this development is significant in many ways.
First, Baradar has become the latest in a long string of Taliban stalwarts captured by Pakistani and U.S. authorities. The ISI, possibly working in conjunction with the CIA, was responsible for the killing of key Taliban commanders Mullah Dadullah and Akhtar Mohammad Osmani in 2006. The 2007 arrest of Mullah Obaidullah, the former Taliban defense minister and Baradar’s predecessor, was also apparently the result of a joint operation — not so different from the arrest, in 2003, of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. The expanding list of Pakistani successes underscores the ever-increasing army-to-army cooperation and intelligence sharing between the two countries.
Intelligence officials in Islamabad also point to the Feb. 17 drone strike in North Waziristan as further evidence of growing intelligence cooperation between the United States and Pakistan. The attack killed Muhammad Haqqani, the 30-year-old son of Jalaluddin Haqqani and the younger brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is leading the Haqqani network in the area. U.S. officials have long accused Pakistan of protecting the Haqqanis, and this strike could be proof that the two allies are increasingly on the same page on this issue.
Perhaps the most important reason for the improved ties between these two allies is the personal rapport that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen and Centcom chief Gen. David Petraeus have cultivated with Pakistani Chief of Army Staff Lt. Gen. Ashfaq Kayani and the head of the ISI, Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha.
Since assuming his position as Army Chief from Musharraf in November 2007, Kayani has quietly endeavored to distance himself from his predecessor, relieving Musharraf’s allies of sensitive duties and charting a new course in the Army’s relationship with the United States. He has increasingly provided U.S. military commanders with operational details and critical information concerning regional developments.
Tags: Af Pak, afghanistan, cia, Kiyani, Mullah Obaidullah, obama, Pak Army, Pakistan, taliban, war on terror
A new understanding for the U.S. and Pakistan?
Feb 11, 2010 News & Events, Pakistan
By Imtiaz Gul, FP
During a briefing at his office in the garrison town of Rawalpindi earlier this month, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani staunchly defended Pakistan’s efforts to combat the militant groups operating on its territory, while pointing toward the still-prominent perceived threat from India as a reason for not taking the operations further.
“During our counterterror campaign we have lost 2,273 army and paramilitary soldiers including three generals, five brigadiers, as many as 73 senior intelligence operatives, and also faced the blowback from Islamist militants,” Kayani told us, citing internal instability, a violent spate of suicide bombings — 87 in 2009 alone — and an adverse impact on Pakistan’s economy.
The Pakistani Army has been conducting counterinsurgency campaigns in 11 tribal areas plus Swat since 2007, including some 209 major military operations, and has committed almost 150,000 of its 550,000-troop army to this effort in the northwestern border regions, the general told us. Kayani noted that Pakistan remains concerned about India’s Pakistan-specific military capability, as six of India’s 13 strike corps are currently deployed along the border, and India’s involvement in Afghanistan is ongoing.
Kayani also pointed to the “Cold Start doctrine” propounded by archrival India and the talk of “limited war” under a “nuclear overhang,” suggested by the outgoing Indian army chief in November, saying that this policy and rhetoric do alarm Pakistan’s security apparatus. “You plan on an adversary’s capability and not intentions,” Kayani explained. While the capability takes years to build, intentions may change overnight and Pakistan simply cannot depend on other’s intentions, he reasoned.
“I explained to NATO leaders in Brussels [during a recent security conference there] that understanding Pakistan’s strategic framework would help them understand the situation in a much better way,” Kayani said. Before his late January presentation in Brussels, Kayani had made a similar forceful case before the U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at the Army’s headquarters in Rawalpindi. “If you care about India getting upset, care about us as well. You have to balance the concern for India with concern for our interests,” was the blunt message he described.
Kayani reiterated Pakistan’s commitment to a “peaceful, stable, and friendly Afghanistan.” As he said earlier this month, “We cannot wish for Afghanistan anything that we don’t wish for Pakistan.” In this context he brushed aside the allegations of Pakistan pursuing “a strategic depth policy” in Afghanistan. “This does not imply controlling Afghanistan. If Afghanistan is peaceful, stable, and friendly we have our strategic depth because our western border is secure… You’re not looking both ways — as simple as that.”
Kayani again insisted that Pakistan must “consolidate our gains and fully stabilize the areas secured, lest they fall back to terrorists,” in response to the oft-repeated demand from the U.S. that Pakistan move against militants based in North Waziristan. “Constraints of our capability to absorb and operate, limited cutting edge counterintelligence and counterterrorism capability, and limited budgetary space should be factored in,” he said, referring to last fall’s Pakistani military operations in South Waziristan, which had served as a of terrorism for Pakistani, Arab, and Uzbek Islamist militants. Kayani explained that the Army had managed to hamper militant logistics and restrict operating space in North Waziristan.
From that, it’s straightforward to discern that Kayani’s army would far prefer to choose the scale and timing of any military operations into North Waziristan, rather than be dictated to by the United States. The Army says that any “military adventures into the tribal regions require extreme caution and consideration for the future.” International troops will not be in Afghanistan forever, the Pakistani argument runs, so in several years Pakistan will be on its own to co-exist with the very tribes that would be hurt when or if the Pakistani Army moves against the militants nestled among them. Thus, Kayani has been explaining to the U.S. and NATO that Pakistan must balance the West’s comparatively short-term interests in containing and eliminating the insurgencies with its own long-term objectives, namely securing its western border without offending the tribes that live in that region.
And when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen said in December that he “couldn’t give the Pakistani Army anything but an ‘A’ for how they’ve conducted their battle so far,” it was after Mullen had spent several hours flying over the mountains and gorges of Pakistan’s Swat Valley with Kayani. Mullen was apparently so impressed that he asked Kayani to take the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChrystal on a similar tour so he could “get a sense of how and what you need to fight in such a difficult terrain,” according to the general.
McChrystal flew over from Kabul shortly thereafter for the detailed aerial view of Swat’s hilly and forested topography that had served as a natural sanctuary for the terrorists of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and left with an appreciation for Pakistan’s counterinsurgency campaign, according to Kayani. For Kayani, who took charge of Pakistan’s army in November 2007, this was hard-earned praise.
And recently, President Obama asked Congress for an additional $500 million to support Pakistan. If approved, the ‘Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund’ would jump to $1.2 billion in the fiscal year beginning on October 1, 2010, and the money under the fund would be used to train and equip the Pakistan military to fight militants more effectively along the Afghan border.
Several Pakistani generals, including Kayani, believe the praise by Mullen and the subsequent request by Obama for additional counterinsurgency funding for their anti-militant reflects a new understanding among the coalition of Pakistani concerns and constraints. The language and vocabulary emanating from Washington and London toward Islamabad has changed in recent months, a prerequisite for creating greater trust among the coalition partners, according to Pakistani generals. Let us see what wonders the changed vocabulary can work in the coming months.
Tags: cia, Gen Kiyani, obama, Pak Army, Pakistan, US, war, war on terror
