A mother mourns her son Mohammed Ali Khan, 15, a student who was killed during an attack by Taliban gunmen on the Army Public School, at her house in Peshawar December 16, 2014.
Credit: REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra
Pakistan’s Dance With Terrorists Just Backfired and Killed 132 Children -- Chris Allbritton, Daily Beast
For decades, Pakistan’s generals have treated jihadi groups as assets to use against India. That policy didn’t protect their very own children.
Today’s horrific attack in Peshawar on a military school, in which scores of children were killed by the Pakistani Taliban, should put Pakistan’s security choices over the last few decades in a stark light. And while the immediate reaction from the Pakistani military will no doubt be swift and terrible, Pakistan needs to think long and hard about what kind of country it wants to be when the initial retaliation is over.
Will it be one that continues to treat extremist groups as assets to use against its regional rivals? Or will this stomach-churning attack finally be the last straw that convinces the “establishment,” as it’s called, that playing with the fire of Islamic radicalism cannot continue.
Read more ....
Update: How Pakistan's Great Game in Afghanistan Gets Kids Killed at Home -- Tom Lasseter and Natalie Obiko Pearson, Bloomberg
My Comment: Regular readers of this blog know that I have never been a fan of Pakistan's "secret policy" of supporting certain extremist groups that have been waging war against the Afghan government and U.S./NATO forces for the past decade. The discovery of Bin Laden hiding in Pakistan was the final nail in the coffin (for me) that Pakistan was (and is) no longer a reliable ally. I also knew that if you dance with the devil you will get burned .... so yesterday's school massacre was not a surprise .... when you permit maniacs to operate in your country to wage mayhem in neighboring countries .... they will eventually target you.
5 comments:
The history of extremism, tribal war and conflict in the area, goes back to the Spring of 1979.
Turning the NWTA into the staging, arming and training grounds for the Muj and the "Afghans" was going to create long term issues.
You can't "radicalize" the Muj in the NWTA with out, also radicalizing the locals.
The border areas of Costa Rica along the border of Nicaraugua are still not "safe", a follow on effect of using that area as bases for the Contra War.
Jay, my uncle and his two sons (my cousins) fought in Afghanistan for the Soviet Army. My cousins served one tour .... but my uncle was there for a few years. I was busy doing my own thing during this time, but whenever I saw him he looked like hell.
After the war he told me stories on how stupid the entire Soviet military campaign was in Afghanistan .... and how it helped radicalize that part of the world. He rarely mentioned the role that the U.S. played .... his focus was always on the Soviet Union .... but in my opinion it is true .... the Soviets did screw it up, but the U.S. did not help the situation.
When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan after 9/11 my uncle's advice to my American friends was that they should go in .... be tough but fair ... kill the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies .... leave a thousand or two thousand special forces (far away and isolated in their bases) .... DO NOT nation build .... and then after a year or two get out with a warning that if they do not behave .... the U.S. will be back. Of course no one took his advice nor listened to his experience .... myself included.
When I think about it now .... if the advice of my uncle was taken or followed .... we would then definitely be living in a very very different world.
Your Uncle may not know this, and few remember it, but the Carter Government funnelled arms and money, set up the deal with the ISI and the Saudi's, to back the Muj., 6 months before the Soviets were invited/invaded in.
No real thought was given to how it would impact the region, all any of the US Planners were interested in was causeing the Soviets problems.
So here we are, 35 years later, pulling out after failing at all attempts at what the Afghan Government was sucessfully doing in 1978 when we blew it all up, with the effects of that, leaving the Hindu Kush, the NWTA, Balouchistan, Chechnia, Dagistan, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Yemen, the North of Africa, etc all falling apart.
When Bush elected to use the same guys who drove Afghanistan back into the Dark Ages, to topple the Taliban, the die was cast.
When the door closed on "fixing" Afghanistan in 2004, the US, bogging down in Iraq, was still refusing to admit that there was a problem.
Carter shipping weapons that forced the Soviet Union to invade .... it does make sense. I was young at the time, but I do remember via through my dad that there were some in the Foreign Office who objected to the Soviet invasion believing that it was a U.S. trap.
As for my uncle ... he passed away a few years ago, but I would love to pick his brains now.
http://www.counterpunch.org/1998/01/15/how-jimmy-carter-and-i-started-the-mujahideen/
""What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?"
Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998 (When asked if he regretted contributing to the rise in Islamic fundamentalism)
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