US Senators visit Af-Pak: Afghanistan – Pakistan agree on coordinated anti-terror operations


nsnbc : A U.S. congressional delegation led by Senator John McCain, visited the Afghan capital of Kabul on Tuesday following a visit in Islamabad, Pakistan. The visits came as the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is working to prepare a new Afghanistan strategy amid a resurgent Taliban and increased Islamic State activities in the country. However, the track-record of Senator McCain could suggest that de-escalation – despite an Afghani – Pakistani agreement on coordinated anti-terror operations, may not exactly be McCain’s top priority.

John McCain_Jul 2017_USA_PakistanMcCain, an Arizona Republican and chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters after the meetings that the Unites States needs to have a new strategy to win in Afghanistan, but that “the strongest nation on earth should be able to win this conflict”. The administration’s search for a new strategy was announced after the U.S.’s decision was made to deploy more troops to Afghanistan and after NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced that NATO would stay in Afghanistan beyond 2017.

“The old effort certainly didn’t work,” McCain said at the press conference. “They [Taliban] are not going to negotiate unless they think they are losing,” he added. “So we need to win and have the advantage on the battlefield and then enter into a serious negotiation to resolve the conflict. “Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said he would tell Trump after returning home that 8 600 American troops currently in Afghanistan “will not get the job done” and that more American troops along with more Nato troops should be deployed to “turn stalemate into success”. It is noteworthy that the Taliban leadership responded to the decision to deploy more U.S. troops to the country, calling it a failure that would aggravate the conflict rather than bringing peace.

Pakistan_Afg-Pak border Durand Line_2017One of the outcomes of the visit was that Pakistan and Afghanistan have agreed to conduct “coordinated, complementary” security operations against terrorist groups on their respective sides of the shared border, officials confirmed Wednesday. “The [U.S.] Senators said that the head of Pakistan’s armed forces, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, agreed to joint operations against terrorist groups in the Durand Line region,” said an Afghan statement after Tuesday’s talks between President Ashraf Ghani and the U.S. delegation.”

They said that the U.S. would provide monitoring and verification of these operations,” the statement quoted McCain’s delegation as saying, while sharing the Pakistani proposal with Ghani.

The nearly 2,600-kilometer, largely-porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is called the Durand Line – one of the many colonial and post-colonial era borders in the region that have fueled conflicts.

Both Afghanistan and Pakistan regularly accuse each other of not doing enough on their respective sides to stop terrorist infiltration. The allegations are blamed for deep mutual mistrust and strained bilateral ties. One other factor that aggravates this mistrust and the trend to destabilize, is that Pakistan perceives parts of Afghanistan as strategic depths that would be needed in the case of a major conflict with India over Kashmir – another product of colonial and post-colonial era arbitrarily enforced borders.

Part of the agreement on coordinated and complementary anti-terrorism operations is that when Pakistani forces plan counterterrorism actions on their side of the border, Afghan counterparts will be required to mobilize forces on the other side and the other way around to prevent terrorists from fleeing.

McCain and his fellow senators, including Lindsay Graham, Sheldon Whitehouse, Elizabeth Warren and David Perdue, held talks with Pakistani civilian and military leaders and visited a tribal region near the Afghan border on Monday before traveling to Kabul for talks with leaders there.

Photo of U.S. Senator John McCain meeting illegally in a rebel safe house with the heads of the “Free Syrian Army” in Idlib, Syria in April, 2013. In the left foreground, top al Qaeda terrorist leader Ibrahim al-Badri (aka Al-Baghdadi of ISIS, a.k.a. Caliph Ibrahim of the recently founded Islamic State with whom the Senator is talking. Behind Badri is visible Brigadier General Salim Idris (with glasses), the former military chief of the FSA, who has since fled to the Gulf states after the collapse of any semblance of the FSA. (Courtesy VoltaireNet.org)

Photo of U.S. Senator John McCain meeting illegally in a rebel safe house with the heads of the “Free Syrian Army” in Idlib, Syria in April, 2013. In the left foreground, top al Qaeda terrorist leader Ibrahim al-Badri (aka Al-Baghdadi of ISIS, a.k.a. Caliph Ibrahim of the recently founded Islamic State with whom the Senator is talking. Behind Badri is visible Brigadier General Salim Idris (with glasses), the former military chief of the FSA, who has since fled to the Gulf states after the collapse of any semblance of the FSA.

President Ghani has long blamed Pakistan for not upholding its commitments to prevent terrorists from using Pakistani soil against Afghanistan. He has lately linked complete normalization of relations to the involvement of a third country to oversee actions and commitments undertaken by Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Afghan government alleges that Taliban insurgents and their ally, the Haqqani network, are using sanctuaries inside Pakistan for sustaining the insurgency in Afghanistan, charges Islamabad strongly rejects.

The offer of “coordinated” operations to Afghanistan came as Pakistan’s military is building a fence on the long border and undertaking other fortification measures to deter militant infiltration in either direction. Islamabad has long complained that a lack of coordination from the Afghan side has allowed militants to flee security operations in the volatile Pakistani tribal belt and take refuge in Afghan border areas to plot attacks against Pakistan

Many independent observers would also question whether Senator McCain would be an appropriate person for promoting de-escalation and counterterrorism. It is important to note that accusations and maybe more importantly “indications” strongly suggest that Senator McCain isn’t always playing with a clean deck of cards when it comes to “utilizing” terrorist groups / militants to directly or indirectly serve U.S. interests by creating an unstable environment. It’s especially important to note this because the U.S. have clear geopolitical interests in Afghanistan. These would include limiting the influence of Iran, Russia and China in the region.

Following the overthrow of the Libyan government by “rebels”, McCain met with Abdelhakim Belhadj, the leader of the Al-Qaeda affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). Belhadj was then made the leader of the so-called then U.S. endorsed Tripoli Military Council – a name that probably was more palatable than Al-Qaeda. McCain was also playing a key role in the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2014. But maybe more important and controversial may be the fact that he, in April 2013, illegally crossed the border from Turkey into Syria and met with “rebel” leaders in a safe house in Idlib.

Present there, was not merely the leader of the allegedly “moderate” Free Syrian Army, but also Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Confronted with the fact that a photo of this encounter was leaked to the press, McCain claimed that he wasn’t aware Al-Baghdad would be present at the meeting. It was a statement that was repeated in most  media and “believed” by most media consumers who are not aware how the United States Diplomatic Security Service operates.

CH/L – nsnbc 06.07.2017



Source Article from https://nsnbc.me/2017/07/06/84756/

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