Pakistan’s antagonized relations with its neighbors

Pakistan's relationships with its neighboring countries have been strained for several decades, with current tensions particularly evident with Iran, Afghanistan, and India. These strained relations stem from a complex history and various geopolitical factors.

Historically, Pakistan enjoyed close ties with Iran, notably during the RCD era. However, following the revolution in Iran, relations soured, partly due to pressure from the United States. US-imposed sanctions on Iran and efforts to isolate it, including influencing Saudi Arabia to sever ties, further exacerbated tensions. Allegations suggest that countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait supported Iraq during its decade-long war with Iran.

The Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline project, once of significant importance, faced setbacks due to US influence. India, under US pressure, withdrew from the project, citing the threat of economic sanctions. In an attempt to mitigate these challenges, Pakistan turned to Saudi Arabia for crude oil supplies on deferred payment terms.

Despite hopes for improved relations following diplomatic efforts brokered by China between Saudi Arabia and Iran, ongoing cross-border terrorism activities between Pakistan and Iran have hindered progress on projects like the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline.

The relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan has been marked by fluctuating dynamics, oscillating between cooperation and hostility. India's involvement, including support for anti-Pakistan elements in Afghanistan and participation in infrastructure projects like the Chabahar Port, has further complicated matters, seeking to undermine Pakistan's regional influence.

US foreign policy interests heavily influence the dynamics between India and Pakistan, with the former receiving substantial military support to counterbalance China, often at Pakistan's expense. Some analysts believe that entrenched hard-line positions in both countries will continue to hinder any prospects for improved relations.

Critics argue that Pakistan's foreign policy, historically aligned with US interests, prevents the country from overcoming its most pressing challenges independently. This dependence on external support, particularly from the United States, perpetuates Pakistan's vulnerability in international affairs.

Qatar: Al Udeid US Air Base

According to a CNN report the United States has quietly reached an agreement that extends its military presence at a sprawling base in Qatar for another 10 years.

The deal, which has not been announced publicly, highlights Washington’s reliance on the tiny Gulf country that has recently played a central role in mediating the release of Americans from captivity in Gaza and Venezuela.

The Al Udeid Air Base, located in the desert southwest of Doha, is the biggest US military installation in the Middle East and can house more than 10,000 American troops.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin personally visited Al Udeid and thanked Qatar for their increased spending on the base.

Austin made no mention of the renewal and the Biden administration has not publicized it – at a time when Qatar has come under growing scrutiny for hosting senior Hamas leaders.

Qatari officials have countered that it was only after a US request during the Obama administration that Hamas was allowed to open a political office in Doha.

The base has been a pivotal hub for the US Central Command’s air operations in or around Afghanistan, Iran and across the Middle East. The Qatari and British Air Forces also operate from the base.

The extension comes as the US has bolstered its presence in the region amid escalating threats from Iran-backed militant groups in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

After Hamas kidnapped some 240 hostages from Israel on October 07, 2023 Qatar has been the primary go-between with Hamas to broker the initial release of scores of the Israeli and international hostages. It continues to be central in the talks to try to revive hostage negotiations, coordinating with the CIA and Israel’s Mossad, as well as Egypt.

Their part in the months of negotiations over Americans detained by Venezuela was less public but came to light after President Nicolas Maduro released 10 Americans last month in exchange for a close ally accused by the US of laundering hundreds of millions of dollars.

Qatar’s involvement in both sets of negotiations has been seen as an extension of the mediating role the country has taken on with other US enemies, including Iran and the Taliban. 

Its vast oil and natural gas wealth, coupled with ability to act as a facilitator, allow Qatar to punch above its weight.

While their hosting of Hamas leadership was no secret, the brutality of the October 7 massacre in Israel has ignited criticism of Qatar and calls for them to expel Hamas.

President Joe Biden has spoken about his conversations with Qatar’s emir but at times hasn’t given them the credit they feel they deserve.

Biden did not mention Qatar in a November op-ed in The Washington Post, while Egypt and other Middle East allies were referenced. Nor did Biden highlight Qatar’s part in the release of the detainees in Venezuela in his official statement.

Thousands of Afghans were flown from Kabul to Al Udeid during the chaotic American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. US military personnel struggled to provide for the massive influx of refugees from what Biden called “one of the largest, most difficult airlifts in history.”

Qatar has committed billions of its own funds upgrade the facilities for US Airmen at the base. Al Udeid became CENTCOM’s main air base in 2003, shifting forces and assets from the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, where the presence of a large number of American military personnel was more sensitive and controversial.

“We’ll do this through Qatar’s commitment to contribute significant resources to increase capabilities here at Al Udeid Air Base, and that will support both of our forces for years to come,” Austin added.

 

 

Pak US relationship a saga of ‘Marriage of Convenience’

Soon after the results started pouring in following the February 08 general elections in Pakistan, several members of the US Congress, as well as the US State Department, expressed concern over alleged interference in the polls, with the former even calling on President Joe Biden not to recognize the incoming government until a transparent investigation into the allegations. I invite the readers to read a blog posted as back as on May 03, 2022.

In today’s blog I am daring to negate an impression created by an article written by Ms Maleeha Lodi (Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States, United Kingdom and United Nations) and published in Pakistan’s leading English newspaper. I am taking an extreme position by saying, “Pakistan’s foreign policy has always remained subservient to the US mantra”.

Please allow me to begin with the U2 incident, when the US pilot-less planes used to takeoff from a Pakistani airbase near Peshawar for spying USSR. At one point the situation got so nasty that USSR threatened to attack Pakistan.

Badaber: A secret US intelligence facility in Pakistan

In July 1958, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower requested permission from the Pakistani Prime Minister Feroze Khan Noon for the United States to establish a secret intelligence facility in Pakistan and for the U-2 spy plane to fly from Pakistan. The U-2 flew at altitudes that could not be reached by Soviet fighter jets of the era; it was believed to be beyond the reach of Soviet missiles as well. A facility established in Badaber (Peshawar Air Station), 10 miles (16 km) from Peshawar, was a cover for a major communications intercept operation run by the United States National Security Agency (NSA). Badaber was an excellent location because of its proximity to Soviet central Asia. This enabled the monitoring of missile test sites, key infrastructure and communications. The U-2 "spy-in-the-sky" was allowed to use the Pakistan Air Force section of Peshawar Airport to gain vital photo intelligence in an era before satellite observation.

I would also invite the readers to recall last-minute cancellation of the visit of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan to USSR and going to the United States around the same dates.

This also reminds me the US ditching Pakistan at the time of creation of Bangladesh. State-owned Pakistani media kept on telling the US feet could arrive any minute, which never arrived. This creates an impression that the US supported creation of Bangladesh.

Now coming to Afghan proxy war, Pakistan played two opposite roles: first it supported Taliban in averting USSR attack in a quest to reach warm water and then supporting US/Nato troops in crushing the same Taliban.

Please also allow me to share conspiracy theory, “Pakistan and United States have enjoyed cordial relationships due military rule”. The readers are invited to read details of Ayub, Zia and Musharraf eras.

I am also inclined to share another public opinion, The US-Pakistan relationship is a saga of ‘Marriage of Convenience’.

It is often said, ‘Pakistan is a frontline allay of United States in war against terrorism’. Some analysts interpret it ‘Pakistan is partner in proxy wars but when it comes to Investment and trade India is the US darling’.

I tend to subscribe to this theory based on my follow up of the construction of Chabahar Port in Iran. Despite economic sanctions on Iran, India invested millions of dollars in the construction of this port and allied road and rail links to connect with Afghanistan and Central Asian states. Please also note that Pakistan was not allowed to import oil from Iran during this period.

The United States was more than smart in facilitating India in the construction of Chabahar Port and allied infrastructure. The prime US motive was to create an alternative access to land-locked Afghanistan, extended to Central Asian states.

But the real objective was to undermine Pakistan’s importance in Afghan transit trade. There is no denying to the fact that Pakistan still offers cost effective and shortest route to Afghanistan.

Before I conclude let me say, “Pakistan under the influence of the United States has not recognized Taliban Government in Afghanistan”. While Afghans are facing shortage of food and medicines, the two countries are not allowed to trade in local currencies; the United States has not released foreign exchange reserves of Afghanistan.

 

Pakistan: Instability coming down the road

Pakistan’s elections held on February 08, were meant to bring stability to the country after almost two years of turmoil but the outcome of the polls has deepened political divisions. It will also bring more instability to a nuclear-armed, 240-million strong country already shaky at best in a critically important geostrategic region.

In the months leading up to the long-awaited elections, the judiciary and the military pursued a dual track strategy: ensure that the highly popular former prime minister, Imran Khan, is never able to run for political office again and reinvigorate the political fortunes of Nawaz Sharif, the three-time former prime minister and leader of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz).

Following his loss of power in a parliamentary vote of no confidence in April 2022, Khan was relentlessly pursued by the judiciary which eventually handed him three sentences for corruption, leaking state secrets and an illegal marriage, for a total of 24 years. He was barred from politics and sent to gaol. His Pakistan Justice Movement (PTI) was disbanded, its electoral symbol (the cricket bat) outlawed, and its members banned from running as PTI members.

Nawaz Sharif—a convicted corrupt politician who’s had an ambivalent relationship with the army for 40 years, was brought back from a four-year self-exile in London as an alternative to Khan. Soon after Nawaz’s return to Pakistan the corruption charges he faced were dropped and his life ban from politics was lifted.

The path was now clear for his smooth return to power. However, what was meant to be a walk in the park for Nawaz and the PML(N) turned out very differently on election day. The millions of pro-Imran Khan supporters were not interested in singing off the score sheet handed over to them.

Even with all the measures taken to ensure there was no level playing field, and the ballot stuffing at a number of polling stations, the PML(N), was only able to win the second largest number of seats (75).

The former PTI members—running as independents—won the largest number of seats, 93 of the 266 up for grabs. The independents’ total seats could increase as they are contesting the result of over a dozen others they claim have been stolen from them. Nevertheless, Nawaz declared victory, and will try—with great difficulty, to form a coalition government with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) of the late Benazir Bhutto. The only bond between the PML(N) and the PPP is that their hatred of each other is slightly less than their hatred of the PTI.

International reaction to these elections, including from the US, the UK and the EU, was negative, with several countries calling for investigations into the allegations of vote-tempering and pre-poll obstructions. The Australian government also made it clear that that it was concerned that ‘the Pakistani people were restricted in their choice, since not all political parties were allowed to contest these elections’.

Notwithstanding the evidence to the contrary, much of it posted on social media platforms even though mobile internet connections were restricted, the Chief of Army Staff, General Asim Munir, commended the Electoral Commission for running such a successful election and stressed the significance of free and unhindered participation by Pakistani people in exercising their right to vote.

Similarly, the caretaker prime minister, Anwaarul Haq Kakar, believed that the ‘nation had accepted the results’ and the country needed to move on. Moreover, he brushed aside international criticism of the elections as ‘not that big a deal’.

Despite the compromised nature of these polls, a PML(N)-led coalition government is the most likely—but not certain—outcome of the elections. According to the latest reports, it would be led by Shehbaz Sharif, Nawaz’s younger brother who was prime minister after Khan was ousted in April 2022.

The real power will still be held behind the scenes by Nawaz Sharif. Given the fragility of the coalition, which will include smaller parties and non-PTI-leaning independents, this will be a weak government with little legitimacy. This is unfortunate given that whoever is prime minister will have to make some particularly difficult decisions on the economy, handle adroitly the country’s foreign relations, and manage a growing terrorist threat.

Pakistan is an economic mess, with 40% of the population living under the poverty line, an inflation rate that has hit 30%, a rupee whose value has halved in 10 years, and barely enough foreign exchange to cover the cost of imports for a month or so.

The country avoided economic meltdown in August 2023 by securing a standby arrangement of US$3 billion with the IMF. However, this bailout runs out in March and a new one—the 24th in Pakistan’s history—will need to be negotiated.

The IMF will undoubtedly demand that the government implement more austerity measures, including continuing to reduce subsidies on essential commodities. Imposing draconian economic measures on an already struggling population will not be easy, particularly given Nawaz’s lack of popular support. We can expect serious social unrest down the road.

A Shehbaz-led government will also have to deal with the growing terrorist threat, mainly but not solely from the Afghanistan-based Pakistan Taliban (TTP), which has continued to increase since the Taliban took over in neighbouring Afghanistan in August 2021. Pakistan has repeatedly demanded that the Taliban government of Afghanistan cease to support the TTP. But the Taliban isn’t about to turn on the TTP, an organisation with which it has deep ideological, operational, historical and tribal links. Kabul also knows that the Pakistani military doesn’t want to escalate this issue by pursuing the TTP unto Afghan territory. Moreover, given Pakistan’s poor fiscal position, it cannot afford another expensive military operation. Accordingly, Pakistan-Afghan relations will probably continue to be frozen, and the scourge of terrorism to fester.

This will not be well received by the leaders in Beijing who persistently press Pakistan to do more against the terrorists roaming the countryside regularly killing Chinese workers and officials working on the US$60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).  Pakistan already has some 10,000 security personnel dedicated solely to the protection of Chinese interests in Pakistan. Still, relations with China will continue on an even keel or even deepen. It was after all under Nawaz’s third stint (2013-2018), that CPEC started.

Pakistanis can expect Indo-Pakistan relations to possibly improve. The personal dynamics between Nawaz and Indian PM Narendra Modi have been good in the past. Nawaz attended Modi’s 2014 inauguration and Modi visited Nawaz in Lahore in December 2015—the first visit by an Indian leader in more than a decade. But while Nawaz would probably be interested in improving relations with Delhi, it was the perception that he was warming up too much to the Indians when he was in power which critically contributed to the military orchestrating his downfall in 2017. Shehbaz, under the guidance of Nawaz, is unlikely to make the same mistake.

Despite Washington’s public criticism of Pakistan’s seriously flawed election, the Biden administration is committed to ‘strengthening its security cooperation’ with Islamabad regardless as to who eventually becomes prime minister. Pakistan continues to be a valuable regional partner, being in a unique position to monitor developments in Afghanistan.

Finally, whilst Washington may have had issues with the election process, it will absolutely not miss Imran Khan, who repeatedly accused the US of having been instrumental, with the help of Pakistan’s military, in his downfall in April 2022.

US Secretary of State meeting with General Asim Munir—the man who effectively runs Pakistan, in Washington only a few weeks before the elections only reinforced this common perception in Pakistan. However, given Munir’s massive miscalculation on the elections, his days may well be numbered.

How long the next prime minister will last in office is anyone’s guess, but given that no prime minister has ever completed their term in Pakistan’s 75-year history, it is suspect the odds are poor that Shehbaz Sharif will break that tradition.

Courtesy: The Strategist

 

Iran and India reach final agreement on Chabahar port development

Iran and India have reached the final agreement for the development of Iran’s southeastern Chabahar Port. The agreement to develop the strategic port was reached during a meeting between Iranian Transport and Urban Development Minister Mehrdad Bazrpash and Indian Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

In this meeting, the Iranian minister proposed the formation of a joint transportation committee to expand cooperation between the two sides and stated that the formation of this working committee will enable the activation of transit capacities and the use of the North-South corridor.

The Indian minister, for his part, emphasized his country's readiness for new investments in the fields of transportation and transit in Iran and invited the Iranian minister to visit India.

As Iran's only oceanic port on the Gulf of Oman, Chabahar Port holds great significance for the country both politically and economically. The country has taken serious measures for developing this port in order to improve the country’s maritime trade.

The port consists of Shahid Kalantari and Shahid Beheshti terminals, each of which has five berth facilities. The port is located in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan Province and is about 120 kilometers southwest of Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province, where the China-funded Gwadar port is situated.

In May 2016, India, Iran, and Afghanistan signed a trilateral agreement for the strategically-located Chabahar port to give New Delhi access to Kabul and Central Asia.

Later, based on a separate deal with Iran, India agreed to install and operate modern loading and unloading equipment including mobile harbor cranes in Shahid Beheshti Port in Chabahar.

Under the framework of the mentioned agreement, the Indian side has been operating in Shahid Beheshti port in the form of a build–operate–transfer (BOT) contract; this is the first time that such a contract has been implemented in one of the country's ports with 100 percent foreign investment.

The first consignment of Indian equipment for the development of port activities at Chabahar port worth US$8.5 million arrived in the southeastern port in January 2021.

Back in last July, India’s ambassador to Tehran said Iran’s southeastern Chabahar Port is a golden opportunity for India to expand its economic ties.

“Chabahar's position in the expansion of trade exchanges in West Asia, Eurasia, and even Europe is unique,” the envoy said during a visit to the port.

 

Deepening relations between Iran and Afghanistan

Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi held talks with Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Acting Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs of the Taliban government on Monday. 

Baradar is leading a high-ranking Taliban delegation that arrived in the Iranian capital of Tehran on Saturday. He also met with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian on Sunday. 

According to Baradar’s office, the two sides discussed political and economic relations, effective coordination between their respective nations, water resource management, transit agreements, and enhancement of Afghanistan’s imports and exports through Iran.

The official and his protégé have traveled to Iran with the aim of meeting and negotiating with Iranian economic officials in order to enhance trade and economic cooperation, develop bilateral relations, and explore more areas of cooperation in transit, transportation, customs, and environment.

The delegation, consisting of 30 Taliban officials, will also travel to other Iranian provinces and are due to be briefed on major economic projects of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

This trip is taking place while according to the latest statistics, Iran's share of the Afghan market amounts to 35%. Afghan investors also account for a considerable portion of foreign investments in Iran.

Iran has repeatedly voiced its support for Afghanistan’s security and prosperity. The country currently hosts a population of more than 5 million Afghan refugees and attaches great significance to its ties with Afghanistan. 

Since taking office, President Ebrahim Raisi’s administration has emphasized the necessity of friendly and comprehensive relations with Iran’s neighbors. 

Afghanistan has been ruled by the Taliban since the United States. hastily withdrew its forces from the country in August 2021. It currently grapples with various security and humanitarian challenges, which are thought to be the results of more than two decades of American occupation.

Iran has repeatedly expressed willingness to work closely with the Taliban while calling for an inclusive government in the war-stricken country. 

 

Afghans need immediate help

Families in western Afghanistan, who have lost everything to a series of devastating earthquakes, need urgent assistance to withstand the harsh winter. Temperature has already dropped into single digit.

With about two-thirds of the affected areas assessed, more than 21,500 homes are confirmed destroyed and a further 17,000 severely damaged, according to the UN humanitarian affairs coordination office (OCHA). Over 154,000 people have been impacted.

The number includes about 7,500 pregnant women, many of whom lost family members. The death of their loved ones has taken a devastating toll, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) said.

The agency has deployed psychosocial counselors to help them cope with overwhelming loss.

“They need someone to listen to them and help them cope with their trauma,” said counselor Faiza Zarie, adding that the availability of psychosocial support is critical.

Women also face other challenges — heightened risks of preventable maternal death, gender-based violence and hunger.

UNFPA is working to address reproductive health needs. It issued a funding appeal for US$11.6 million to continue delivering life-saving sexual and reproductive health supplies and services.

Access to medical care has also been severely affected, with at least 40 facilities reported damaged, a region that was already largely deprived of essential health services before the disaster.

The World Health Organization (WHO) warns that services for about 580,000 people have been severely disrupted.

“Health workers are also affected by the disaster — either from loss of family members or from fear of collapsing health facilities, which makes it even harder for them to provide the health care their communities need,” Alaa AbouZeid, WHO team leader emergencies in Afghanistan, told reporters in Geneva, from Kabul.

“The health consequences are staggering,” she added

The UN agency has been one of the first responders on the ground, supporting hospitals with medicines and supplies and organizing mobile health and nutrition teams.

Sustaining health services will require extra resources, and WHO and partners have launched an appeal for US$7.9 million to provide support for the next six months.

Afghan earthquakes kill more than 2,000

More than 2,000 people were killed in earthquakes in Afghanistan and more than 9,000 injured, the Taliban administration said on Sunday, in the deadliest tremors to rock the quake-prone mountainous country in years.

The Saturday quakes in the west of the country hit 35 km (20 miles) northwest of the city of Herat, with one of 6.3 magnitude, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said.

They were among the world's deadliest quakes in a year when tremors in Turkey and Syria killed an estimated 50,000 in February this year

Janan Sayeeq, spokesman for the Ministry of Disasters, said 2,053 people were killed, 9,240 injured and 1,320 houses damaged or destroyed. The death toll spiked from 500 reported earlier on Sunday by the Red Crescent.

Ten rescue teams were in the area, which borders Iran, Sayeeq told a press conference.

More than 200 dead had been brought to various hospitals, said a Herat health department official who identified himself as Dr Danish, adding most of them were women and children.

Bodies had been taken to several places - military bases, hospitals, Danish said.

Beds were set up outside the main hospital in Herat to receive a flood of victims, photos on social media showed.

Food, drinking water, medicine, clothes and tents were urgently needed for rescue and relief, Suhail Shaheen, the head of the Taliban political office in Qatar, said in a message to the media.

The mediaeval minarets of Herat sustained some damage, photographs on social media showed, with cracks visible and tiles fallen off.

Hemmed in by mountains, Afghanistan has a history of strong earthquakes, many in the rugged Hindu Kush region bordering Pakistan.

Death tolls often rise when information comes in from more remote parts of a country where decades of war have left infrastructure in a shambles, and relief and rescue operations difficult to organize.

Afghanistan's healthcare system, reliant almost entirely on foreign aid, has faced crippling cuts in the two years since the Taliban took over and much international assistance, which had formed the backbone of the economy, was halted.

Diplomats and aid officials say concerns over Taliban restrictions on women and competing global humanitarian crises are causing donors to pull back on financial support.

The Islamist government has ordered most Afghan female aid staff not to work, although with exemptions in health and education.

In August, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross said it was likely to end its financial support for 25 Afghan hospitals because of funding constraints. It was not immediately clear if the Herat hospital was on that list.

The quakes triggered panic in Herat, resident Naseema said.

"People left their houses, we all are on the streets," she wrote in a text message to Reuters on Saturday, adding that the city was feeling aftershocks.

There are a total of 202 public health facilities in Herat province, one of which is the major regional hospital where 500 casualties had been taken, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a report on Sunday.

A vast majority of the facilities are smaller basic health centres and logistical challenges were hindering operations, particularly in remote areas, the WHO said.

"While search and rescue operations remain ongoing, casualties in these areas have not yet been fully identified," it said.

 

 

 

 

 

Pakistan Victim of Geopolitics

I am pleased to share one of my articles published in Eurasia Review on December 27, 2012. Despite lapse of more than a decade, many of the assertions seem most current as Pakistan continue to suffer from unabated interference of the super powers. 

Since independence Pakistan has remained the focus of global and regional powers. The country is termed a natural corridor for trade ‑ including energy products ‑ gateway to Central Asia and landlocked Afghanistan.

There is a perception that often regimes are installed and toppled in Pakistan by the super powers to achieve their vested interest. This is evident from cold war era to occupation of Afghanistan and from love and hate relationship with India to creation of Taliban (phantom now having many offspring).

At present Pakistan is facing extremely volatile situation, which has become a threat for its own existence. Fighting a proxy war for United States in Afghanistan for nearly four decade has completely destroyed the economic and social fabric of the country. Pakistan is suffering from the influx of foreign militant groups getting funds and arms from different global operators.

Analysts say over the years Pakistan has been towing foreign and military policy of the United States, which has often offended USSR, China, India and Iran. Therefore, one needs to analyze Pakistan’s relationship with Afghanistan, India and Iran, enjoying common borders with the country. It may not be wrong to say that at present Pakistan doesn’t enjoy cordial relation with none of these countries.

Pakistan helped Afghans in averting USSR attack. After the pullout of USSR forces Afghanistan plunged into civil war. It was often alleged that Pushtoons were supported by Pakistan and Northern Alliance was highly annoyed. After 9/11 Pakistan was made to fight Taliban under the US dictate. As the time for withdrawal of Nato forces is getting closer Pakistan once again faces a precarious position.

When British Raj left the subcontinent in 1947 it left a thorn, Kashmir. Since independence India and Pakistan have been living in constant state of war, spending billions of dollars annually on the purchase of conventional as well as non-conventional arms and have also attained the status of atomic powers. However, both the countries suffer from extreme poverty. There seems no probability of reconciliation between the two countries because of presence of hawks on both the sides. Even the trade relations could not be normalized due to Kashmir dispute as Hindus are not ready for another division of Hindustan on the basis of religion.

Pakistan and Iran have enjoyed the best time till toppling of Shah’s rule as both the countries were under the US influence. Iran has been persistently enduring economic sanctions for more than three decades after the Islamic revolution. Pakistan is suffering from severe energy crisis but not allowed to construct Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline or even buy Iranian crude oil under food for oil program. Iran has often complaint that certain outfits, most notorious being Jundullah, having its base in Balochistan province of Pakistan, are involved in cross border terrorism.

Pakistan also faces a difficult situation when Saudi Arabia, under the US pressure asks it to do or not to do certain things. One such example is Saudi Arabia promising to meet Pakistan’s oil requirement if it opts not to buy Iranian oil. There are also allegations and counter allegations that Saudi Arabia and Iran are supporting Sunni and Shia factions in Pakistan. This point is being highlighted by referring to sectarian killings. However, Pakistanis have no doubt that killing is being done by those who are neither Sunni nor Shia. This point got credence when it was discovered that Taliban involved in attack on Peshawar airbase had tattoos on their bodies.

Till today, Pakistan offers the shortest and cost effective route to landlocked Afghanistan, leading to Central Asian countries. Gwadar deep seaport has been constructed in Balochistan province with the financial and technical assistance of China. India often raises its concerns on Chinese presence along Pakistan’s coastal belt. However, India is not only constructing Chabahar port in Iran but also road and rail links up to Central Asia via Afghanistan.

Pakistanis completely fail to understand the duality of US policy. India was asked to withdraw itself from Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project and also rewarded nuclear technology in return. On top of that it has not been stopped from building port and supporting infrastructure in Iran. Some experts say all this is being done to construct an alternate route once the objective of creation of greater Balochistan is achieved. This new country will be created taking one slice each from Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The level of US pressure on Pakistan can also be gauged from the fact that President, Asif Ali Zardari, on the eleventh hour, cancelled his visit to Tehran and went straight to UK. The new date of his visit to Iran has not been announced as yet. This reminds Pakistani’s of a similar cancelled visit of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan to USSR and he instead went to United States.

It is also on record that Chinese experts working in Pakistan have often come under attack to make them leave Pakistan. Chinese experts working on Gwadar and Thar coal projects have been repeatedly attacked. At one stage it was feared that Chinese will completely withdraw their support for Thar coal mining and power plant.

China has also complaints that some extremist Muslim groups are trying to create disturbance in one of its province bordering with Pakistan. It seems these attempts are made to disrupt trade being done through this land route.

 

 

US didn't anticipate Afghanistan exit chaos

Key failures by both the Trump and Biden administrations contributed to a chaotic and deadly end to the two-decade US presence in Afghanistan, according to a State Department review that was published Friday. 

Among these included that senior officials did not prepare for worst case scenarios and appreciate how quickly the situation could devolve, key leadership roles were not empowered with authority and firmly held policy positions failed to take into account dissenting opinions.

The review focused on the State Department’s responsibilities during the period where the US was ending its military presence in Afghanistan, offering recommendations on how the agency could better prepare for and respond to extraordinary crises in unstable security environments.

The report, called the After Action Review, was commissioned by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the aftermath of the US pullout of Afghanistan, which formally ended on August 31, 2021.

It was released with little notice and fanfare in the afternoon of a holiday weekend, when Congress is out of session and the administration is unlikely to face public questioning from journalists at press briefings. 

It also comes nearly two years after US officials first committed to critically reviewing the pullout from Afghanistan, which marked one of the lowest moments for President Biden’s term and has contributed to criticism, and raised concern over how the US government prepares for evacuating Americans in times of crisis.

While the US managed to evacuate more than 120,000 people from Afghanistan over the course of two weeks, including more than 85,000 Afghans, the disorganized effort led to a swell of people rushing to the gates of Hamid Karzai International Airport over several days, and a subsequent suicide bomb blast killing 13 US service members and more than 150 Afghans.

The administration drew intense criticism for the chaos and the State Department in particular is the target of Republican criticisms that the agency failed to prepare for a worst-case scenario and that resulted in more than 100,000 Afghan allies left behind.

The report notes that diplomats serving in Kabul that were forced to shutter their operations at the embassy and establish an ad-hoc evacuation plan at the airport confronted a task of unprecedented scale and complexity.

Tehran and Kabul reach major trade agreements

During the visit of the head of the Iranian Trade Promotion Organization (TPO)’s Afghan desk to Afghanistan, important agreements were made for the development of trade relations between the two countries, the TPO portal reported.

Hamidreza Karbalaie Esmaili’s visit to Afghanistan was aimed at improving trade relations between the two neighbors in the fields of technical and engineering services, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment, petrochemical products, food industry, etc.

During the visit, Esmaili met and held talks with the economic, commercial, and medical officials of the country, including the acting minister of public health, first deputy of the chamber of commerce and investment, director general of Afghanistan customs, deputy and senior advisor to the acting minister of trade, consul general of Iran in Herat, border guard commissioner, and director general of Dogharoun customs.

Following the talks, the two sides reached initial agreements for completing several infrastructure projects and decided to begin negotiations on a preferential trade agreement and expanding customs cooperation.

During the talks, the parties prepared a list of 10 commodity items for the implementation of the first phase of the preferential trade agreement. The number of items will be increased in the near future.

Also, agreements were made regarding the formation of a joint industrial zone at the two countries' border, with energy infrastructure being supplied by Iran and the investment for establishing the zone being provided by Afghan businessmen in collaboration with the Iranian private sector.

The Afghan side also announced its readiness to open a transit route from Pakistan to Iran’s Khorasan Razavi Province via the Taftan-Chaman-Islam Qala-Mashhad route, which will reduce the route between the two countries from 1,500 to less than 1,000 kilometers.

Acceptance of elite Afghan students in various medical and non-medical fields in Iranian universities and bilateral cooperation regarding the specialized training of Afghan medical staff by sending Iranian professors to Afghanistan were among other subjects that the parties agreed upon.

 

Nearly 80 students, mostly girls, poisoned in Afghanistan

Nearly 80 primary school students, mostly girls, are suspected to have been poisoned over the weekend and taken to hospital in Afghanistan’s Sangcharak district, Mohammad Rahmani, the head of the Education Department in the northern Sar-e-Pul province, told CNN.

The intelligence unit of the provincial police department said they are still investigating the matter, according to Rahmani, who said he spoke to police directly. So far officials are unclear on the culprit, the motive, and the potential type of poison possibly used against the school children, he added.

The investigation was prompted by accounts of 17 female students in one school on Saturday, and a day later, 60 others, mostly girls, at another school in a nearby village, Rahmani said.

“After reaching school in the morning, the students suddenly started feeling dizzy, headache, and nausea,” Rahmani said. The students were admitted to a local hospital, but 14 whose situation was more critical were transported to a hospital in the provincial capital, according to Rahmani.

A doctor at Sar-e-Pul hospital confirmed to CNN that some of the girls were admitted to hospital and he believes they were poisoned based on their symptoms.

The education of girls has become a divisive issue in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover of the country in 2021, where the group proceeded to strip away hard won freedoms for women and exclude them from public life.

Some of its most striking restrictions have been around education, with girls barred from returning to secondary schools and universities, depriving an entire generation of academic opportunities.

Following international pressure, the Taliban kept primary schools open for girls until around the age of 12, Reuters reported.

Several poisoning attacks against schoolgirls took place during Afghanistan’s previous foreign-backed government. In 2012, more than 170 women and girls were hospitalized after drinking apparently poisoned well water at a school. Local health officials blamed the acts on extremists opposed to women’s education.

Iran’s annual trade with ECO members reaches US$20.5 billion

According to Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration (IRICA), country’s trade with the members of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) reached U$20.5 billion in the calendar year 1401.

According to Mohammad Rezvani-Far, Iran exported US$13 billion worth of commodities to the member nations, while the imports from these were reported at US$7.5 billion.

Referring to the trade potentials of ECO member countries in various fields, such as rail and land transport, common borders, as well as territorial and population size, Rezvani-Far said the volume of commercial exchanges with ECO members should be more than this figure.

“IRICA is fully prepared to take the necessary measures for increasing the volume of trade and transit exchanges with ECO members in order to achieve the organization’s goals set according to the ECO agreement,” he said.

The official underlined the development of transit ties with ECO members as a way of boosting trade exchanges with the mentioned countries.

“Iran has many customs agreements and memorandums with ECO member countries, and in order for these agreements to be operational in line with the provisions of the ECO agreement, it is suggested that the ECO secretariat announces the necessary measures needed to be taken with the cooperation of the members,” he noted.

Iran and ECO members traded more than 23.723 million tons of goods worth US$11.71 billion during the Iranian calendar year 1400, of which the share of exports was 18.419 million tons of goods worth US$6.890 billion and the share of imports from these countries was 5.312 million tons worth US$4.819 billion.

Petroleum products, dairy products, foodstuff, fresh and dried fruits, juices and citrus fruits, carpets, saffron, fish, caviar, ornamental aquatic products, various stones, construction equipment, clothing, industrial equipment, bags and shoes, medicine, and health supplies, as well as plastic products, were Iran’s main exported items to ECO members last year, while basic goods, industrial machinery, raw materials for production, and medical supplies and medicine, were the top imported goods from ECO member states.

The Economic Cooperation Organization or ECO is an Asian political and economic intergovernmental organization that was founded in 1985 in Tehran by the leaders of Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey.

 

US War on terror has killed more than 4.5 million since 9/11

A report, by the Costs of War project at Brown University in the American state of Rhode Island reveals that around 4.5 million people have been killed due to the US-led military adventurism in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia.

According to the research, the operations have indirectly killed millions more due to destruction of economies, public services, infrastructure, and the environment, which adds to the death toll long after bombs are dropped and increases over time.

Many long-term and under-appreciated consequences of war that was need to be studied in more detail.

The research indicates that the direct war fatalities or killing of nearly one million people is an undercount “precise mortality figure remains unknown”.

The estimates of war deaths in Iraq have been particularly controversial. A 2006 article in The Lancet estimated that approximately 600,000 Iraqis had died due to war violence between 2003 and 2006.

The controversy over the conflicting reports on the death toll in Iraq stems from news outlets that are opposed to the war, who overplayed the death toll, while those who supported the illegal invasion downplayed the death toll.

There have been various unbiased studies that concluded more than one million Iraqis have been killed as a result of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq from 2003 to 2011.

The Iraqi deaths can be considered an undercount because of almost daily bombings that killed hundreds of Iraqis. Add to the era of the US and Daesh from 2014 to 2017 where hundreds of thousands of others were slaughtered and it’s not difficult to imagine more than one million Iraqis have died and continue to die today as a result of the US war on terror.   

There is little doubt that the US has brought nothing but insecurity and instability to West Asia, with its military presence. In January 2018, the Leader of Iran's Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said,

"America's corrupting presence in this region should end… In this region, they brought war, discord, sedition, destruction, destruction of infrastructure.  Of course, wherever they stepped in the world, they acted the same way... this must end."

The report put special emphasis on the effects of US wars on women and children who suffer the brunt of these ongoing impacts the most.

The report notes that while people were killed in fighting, far more, especially children, have been killed by the reverberating effects of US wars, such as the spread of disease and damage to public services.

"More studies are necessary on the impact of war’s destruction of public services, especially beyond the healthcare system, on population health," the report says.

"Damage to water and sanitation systems, roads, and commercial infrastructure such as ports, for instance, have significant but less understood consequences."

The research says wars and conflicts which the US has waged or been engaged in under the pretext of countering terrorism since September 11, 2001 makes clear that the impacts of war's ongoing violence are so vast and complex that they are unquantifiable.

It should be noted that after the September 11 attacks, the US waged wars and sparked conflicts, especially in West Asia under the pretext of fighting terrorism. However, as a result of the US military adventurism, there has been an extremely sharp rise in terrorist groups that had no presence in West Asia or countries such as Somalia before Washington’s intervention in the region.

In other words, war on terror has had the complete opposite effect of the slogan under which the Pentagon waged a campaign of instability in West Asia that allowed terrorism to flourish.

Millions of people are still in distress, pain and traumatized in both current and former warzones, the study says, calling on the US as well as its allies to alleviate the ongoing losses and suffering of millions of people and provide the required reparations, though not easy or cheap. This is something imperative, the report points out.

The report focuses on Afghanistan as an example of how people, in particular women and children, the most vulnerable in society, are dying because, despite the US (shambolic) withdrawal, the damage Washington inflicted on Afghanistan’s vital services, such as the health sector and the damage the US caused to the country’s sanitation and other infrastructure in the 20 years of war and occupation means Afghans are still dying today.  

"Though in 2021 the United States withdrew military forces from Afghanistan, officially ending a war that began with its invasion 20 years’ prior, today Afghans are suffering and dying from war-related causes at higher rates than ever," the report alarmingly points out.

In the case of Somalia for example, US intervention and the war that followed has prevented the delivery of humanitarian aid, which the research says exacerbated famine; this is a natural disaster that could have been alleviated if the US instead chose to spend a vast amount of money in humanitarian assistance programs and not radicalizing the local population (and increasing terrorism and bloodshed) by bombing civilians with drones in the sky.  

Critics argue that if the United States had not waged war against countries in West Asia or provoked conflicts in the region, then other parties would not have engaged in any combat missions. In this case, the US must be solely held responsible for the disturbing direct and indirect death toll as a result of its provocative and illegal military measures. 

 

Implications of Saudi-Iran deal for Pakistan

Implications of the apparent rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran extend even further, with significant consequences for vital neighboring regions like South Asia and other populous Muslim countries, including, notably, Pakistan.

The recent announcement of a China-brokered peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran initially took the world by surprise. The debate persists concerning whether this deal will last, its potential implications for the United States, what it means for the Middle East region (including Israel), and what brokering this agreement indicates about China’s rising power.

Pakistan has for decades been an arena in the proxy war between Riyadh and Tehran that was sparked soon after the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

Saudi Arabia provided financial and ideological backing to many Sunni militant groups trained in Pakistan that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was arming to wage a jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Some of these groups, such as Sipah-e-Sahaba, and its offshoot, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, later turned their guns on the sizeable Shi’a minority in Pakistan.

Iran responded by offering support to Pakistani Shi’a militants to counter this Sunni militancy. Iran also began to cooperate with India in Afghanistan after the Soviets withdrew in 1989 and US attention shifted away from the region.

New Delhi and Tehran notably both supported the Northern Alliance — comprised of a mixture of ethnic minorities, including the Shi’a — in the latter’s resistance to the predominantly Sunni Pashtun Taliban, which enjoyed good relations with Riyadh and Islamabad.

The post-9/11 US-led intervention in Afghanistan caused a seismic shift in regional alliances. Motivated, in part, by its longstanding rivalry with the United States, Iran began cultivating ties with the Taliban as they waged war against the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Pakistan’s relations with Iran also improved during this time. Despite some friction along their shared border, Iran and Pakistan broached the possibility of regional energy cooperation, which ultimately led to the two countries signing a bilateral natural gas pipeline deal in 2013. Nonetheless, Pakistan continued dragging its feet on completing its portion of the pipeline, fearing both Saudi and American displeasure over cooperation with its heavily sanctioned western neighbor.

Pakistan’s relations with the US, meanwhile, have been tenuous at best, soured by their divergent strategic objectives in Afghanistan and America’s increasing reliance on India to counteract Chinese influence across South and Southeast Asia.

Pakistan has doubled down on its military and diplomatic ties with China, and the two have significantly boosted their economic ties by launching the US$62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in 2015, dubbed a flagship project of China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

China included many Middle Eastern countries in the BRI, and it inked a 25-year strategic trade and investment accord with Iran in 2021, estimated to be worth between US$200 billion and US$300 billion. China’s move to involve Iran in the BRI may partly have been prompted by its desire to undermine India’s investment in the Iranian Chabahar deep-sea port on the Indian Ocean, viewed as a rival to the Chinese-controlled Pakistani deep-sea port in Gwadar.

For its part, Iran is trying to balance its relations with India and China. India used the Chabahar seaport to send shipments to Afghanistan, bypassing the need to cross Pakistani territory. Despite facing constraints due to the international sanctions regime, India had secured US waivers to buy Iranian oil and to invest in Chabahar.

Whether India will be able to maintain those relations with the Islamic Republic as its ties with the US continue to grow remains to be seen, but the increasing acrimony between China and India certainly makes it unlikely that Chabahar and Gwadar can become ‘sister ports’ to help enhance broader regional trade and connectivity.

Beijing’s attempt to simultaneously loop Iran and many of its arch-rival Arab states into the BRI may have been a key factor that informed its decision to step in to mediate one of the thorniest rivalries between Muslim nations in the Middle East. Other Muslim countries in the Gulf region and beyond, such as the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Pakistan, have applauded this high-profile Chinese diplomatic maneuver.

For Pakistan, in particular, the tempering of the protracted Saudi-Iran rivalry could not only help lessen long-running domestic sectarian frictions but also alleviate pressure on Pakistani decision makers to involve Islamabad in contentious proxy tussles elsewhere in the Muslim world, as happened in Yemen.

Even if the still fragile Saudi-Iranian rapprochement holds, Pakistan’s ability to improve its ties with the Islamic Republic will still be kept in check by concerns over further antagonizing the United States.

Biden administration officials have cautiously welcomed Chinese efforts to try to de-escalate tensions in the troubled region while expressing reservations about Iran’s likelihood to stick to the deal.

For many Muslim-majority countries, including Pakistan, Beijing’s diplomatic endeavors are more immediately relevant and beneficial than those undertaken by Washington to bring the Gulf states and Israel together to deter Iran.

Courtesy: Middle East Institute

Iran and Pakistan key players in Afghan peace process

Ms. Hina Rabbani, Pakistan’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs, said the role of Iran and Pakistan are crucial to ensuring long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan.

Rabbani made the remarks in a meeting with Mohammad Ali Hosseini, the Iranian ambassador to Pakistan.

With reference to her recent visit with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian on the heels of the fourth Foreign Ministerial Meeting of Afghanistan’s neighbors in Samarkand, Rabbani emphasized the crucial contributions that Pakistan and Iran make to regional stability, particularly when it comes to matters pertaining to Afghanistan.

Regarding the resumption of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Rabbani also said Pakistan warmly welcomes restoration of ties between Tehran and Riyadh.

The conversation between Pakistan’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs and Ambassador Hosseini focused on the importance of building strong political, economic, and commercial connections between Islamabad and Tehran.

Hosseini stated that trade between Iran and Pakistan has grown greatly in recent years and is projected to grow further by enhancing infrastructure at the two nations’ borders.

Hosseini and Rabbani discussed increasing Iran’s electricity exports to Pakistan as well as arranging the formal opening of the Pishin-Mand border market.

The discussion also covered ways to activate bilateral cooperation mechanism such the Political Advisory Committee, Joint Consular Commission, and Special Committee on Security.

The Iranian ambassador also met separately with Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs Sardar Ayaz Sadiq. During the talks, the Pakistani officials stressed the significance of advancing high-level consultations between the two friendly and neighboring countries in order to deepen bilateral cooperation in a variety of areas.

 

Afghanistan should not be used for geopolitical rivalry

On Thursday, the foreign ministers of Iran, China, Russia and Pakistan held a quadrilateral informal meeting on Afghanistan in Samarkand, Uzbekistan to discuss the situation in the war-torn country.

Among the four countries meeting in Samarkand, Iran, Pakistan and China share border with Afghanistan, which fell to the Taliban in August 2021.

The chief diplomats released a joint statement in which they called on Taliban authorities to form an inclusive government with the participation of all ethnic groups and political institutions.

Meanwhile, the statement also asked the de facto authorities to lift all restriction measures against women and ethnic minorities in the country.

The statement also emphasized that a peaceful Afghanistan is in the international community’s interest and that the country should be a place for international cooperation rather than geopolitical rivalry.

The statement also blamed the United States and its allies for the current state of affairs in the country and asked for the immediate lifting of unilateral sanctions against Afghanistan and releasing its assets to benefit the people. 

The four foreign ministers also stressed the importance of respecting Afghanistan’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity.

They also expressed their support for the principle of “Afghan ownership and Afghan leadership” to determine the political and development path of the country, according to Press TV.

The four countries also expressed concern about the security situation and the growing terrorism in Afghanistan. They reiterated that terrorist groups based in Afghanistan severely threaten regional and global peace. 

Meanwhile, the four countries asked the de facto government in Kabul to “take tangible action in fighting against terrorism and eliminating terrorist groups in the country.”

All terrorist groups based in the country, including Daesh, East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and Jaish ul-Adl pose a serious threat to regional and international security, the ministers warned.

The first quadrilateral meeting on Afghanistan was held on September 16, 2022 on the sidelines the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan.

 

United States always soliciting war, not peace

In a brilliant op-ed published in the New York Times, the Quincy Institute's Trita Parsi explained how China, with help from Iraq, was able to mediate and resolve the deeply-rooted conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia, whereas the United States was in no position to do so after siding with the Saudi kingdom against Iran for decades.

The title of Parsi's article, "The US is not an indispensable peacemaker", refers to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's use of the term "indispensable nation" to describe the US role in the post Cold War world.

The irony in Parsi's use of Albright's term is that she generally used it to refer to US war-making, not peacemaking. In 1998, Albright toured the Middle East and then the United States to rally support for President Clinton's threat to bomb Iraq. After failing to win support in the Middle East, she was confronted by heckling and critical questions during a televised event at Ohio State University, and she appeared on the Today Show the next morning to respond to public opposition in a more controlled setting.

Albright claimed, "..if we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see here the danger to all of us. I know that the American men and women in uniform are always prepared to sacrifice for freedom, democracy and the American way of life."

Albright's readiness to take the sacrifices of American troops for granted had already got her into trouble when she famously asked General Colin Powell, "What's the use of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?" Powell wrote in his memoirs, "I thought I would have an aneurysm."

But Powell himself later caved to the neocons, or the "fucking crazies" as he called them in private, and dutifully read the lies they made up to try to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq to the UN Security Council in February 2003.

For the past 25 years, administrations of both parties have caved to the "crazies" at every turn. Albright and the neocons' exceptionalist rhetoric, now standard fare across the US political spectrum, leads the United States into conflicts all over the world, in an unequivocal, Manichean way that defines the side it supports as the side of good and the other side as evil, foreclosing any chance that the United States can later play the role of an impartial or credible mediator.

Today, this is true in the war in Yemen, where the US chose to join a Saudi-led alliance that committed systematic war crimes, instead of remaining neutral and preserving its credibility as a potential mediator.

It also applies, most notoriously, to the US blank check for endless Israeli aggression against the Palestinians, which doom its mediation efforts to failure.

For China, however, it is precisely its policy of neutrality that has enabled it to mediate a peace agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and the same applies to the African Union's successful peace negotiations in Ethiopia, and to Turkey's promising mediation between Russia and Ukraine, which might have ended the slaughter in Ukraine in its first two months but for American and British determination to keep trying to pressure and weaken Russia.

Neutrality has become anathema to US policymakers. George W. Bush's threat, "You are with us, or you are with the terrorists," has become an established, if unspoken, core assumption of 21st century US foreign policy.

The response of the American public to the cognitive dissonance between our wrong assumptions about the world and the real world they keep colliding with has been to turn inward and embrace an ethos of individualism.

This can range from New Age spiritual disengagement to a chauvinistic America First attitude. Whatever form it takes for each of us, it allows us to persuade ourselves that the distant rumble of bombs, albeit mostly American ones, is not our problem.

The US corporate media has validated and increased our ignorance by drastically reducing foreign news coverage and turning TV news into a profit-driven echo chamber peopled by pundits in studios who seem to know even less about the world than the rest of us.

Most US politicians now rise through the legal bribery system from local to state to national politics, and arrive in Washington knowing next to nothing about foreign policy. This leaves them as vulnerable as the public to neocon clichés like the ten or twelve packed into Albright's vague justification for bombing Iraq: freedom, democracy, the American way of life, stand tall, the danger to all of us, we are America, indispensable nation, sacrifice, American men and women in uniform, and "we have to use force."

Faced with such a solid wall of nationalistic drivel, Republicans and Democrats alike have left foreign policy firmly in the experienced but deadly hands of the neocons, who have brought the world only chaos and violence for 25 years.

All but the most principled progressive or libertarian members of Congress go along to get along with policies so at odds with the real world that they risk destroying it, whether by ever-escalating warfare or by suicidal inaction on the climate crisis and other real-world problems that we must cooperate with other countries to solve if we are to survive.

It is no wonder that Americans think the world's problems are insoluble and that peace is unattainable, because our country has so totally abused its unipolar moment of global dominance to persuade us that that is the case. But these policies are choices, and there are alternatives, as China and other countries are dramatically demonstrating.

President Lula da Silva of Brazil is proposing to form a "peace club" of peacemaking nations to mediate an end to the war in Ukraine, and this offers new hope for peace.

During his election campaign and his first year in office, President Biden repeatedly promised to usher in a new era of American diplomacy, after decades of war and record military spending. Zach Vertin, now a senior adviser to UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield wrote in 2020 that Biden's effort to "rebuild a decimated State Department" should include setting up a "mediation support unit… staffed by experts whose sole mandate is to ensure our diplomats have the tools they need to succeed in waging peace."

Biden's meager response to this call from Vertin and others was finally unveiled in March 2022, after he dismissed Russia's diplomatic initiatives and Russia invaded Ukraine.

The State Department's new Negotiations Support Unit consists of three junior staffers quartered within the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations. This is the extent of Biden's token commitment to peacemaking, as the barn door swings in the wind and the four horsemen of the apocalypse - War, Famine, Conquest and Death - run wild across the Earth.

As Zach Vertin wrote, "It is often assumed that mediation and negotiation are skills readily available to anyone engaged in politics or diplomacy, especially veteran diplomats and senior government appointees. But that is not the case. Professional mediation is a specialized, often highly technical, tradecraft in its own right."

The mass destruction of war is also specialized and technical, and the United States now invests close to a trillion dollars per year in it. The appointment of three junior State Department staffers to try to make peace in a world threatened and intimidated by their own country's trillion-dollar war machine only reaffirms that peace is not a priority for the US government.

By contrast, the European Union created its Mediation Support Team in 2009 and now has 20 team members working with other teams from individual EU countries. The UN's Department of Political and Peace Building Affairs has a staff of 4,500, spread all across the world.

The tragedy of American diplomacy today is that it is diplomacy for war, not for peace. The State Department's top priorities are not to make peace, nor even to actually win wars, which the United States has failed to do since 1945, apart from the reconquest of small neocolonial outposts in Grenada, Panama, and Kuwait.

Its actual priorities are to bully other countries to join US-led war coalitions and buy US weapons, to mute calls for peace in international fora, to enforce illegal and deadly coercive sanctions, and to manipulate other countries into sacrificing their people in US proxy wars.

The result is to keep spreading violence and chaos across the world. If we want to stop our rulers from marching us toward nuclear war, climate catastrophe, and mass extinction, we had better take off our blinders and start insisting on policies that reflect our best instincts and our common interests, instead of the interests of the warmongers and merchants of death who profit from war.

 

Pakistan’s Meltdown

I am delighted to share an article by Dr. Kamran Bokhari. While many Pakistanis, particularly the establishment may not agree with many points, Pakistanis must read and try to understand the narrative.

Dr. Bokhari is the Director of Analytical Development at the New Lines Institute for Strategy & Policy in Washington, DC. He is also a national security and foreign policy specialist at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute. He has served as the Coordinator for Central Asia Studies at the US Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute.

Decades-old political economic problems in Pakistan are coming to a head. The South Asian nation needs billions of dollars in financial assistance to avoid a default at a time when its usual patrons are disinclined to bail it out.

 The International Monetary Fund is insisting on tough reforms that the fragile coalition government cannot institute without taking a major political hit in an election year.

Even if Islamabad dodges this particular bullet, it will have to massively overhaul the way it has managed the world’s fifth-most populous country.

If it cannot, then it will further push Pakistan toward a systemic breakdown, which has major consequences for security in the world’s most densely populated region.

An IMF team is visiting Pakistan from January 31 to February 09 to continue discussions on the release of US$1.18 billion in assistance, part of a $6 billion aid program that was agreed on in 2019 (and increased to US$7 billion in 2022) but that has since stalled.

Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves have slumped to about US$3.68 billion, barely enough to cover three weeks of imports. Inflation was already at 25% when the government announced on January 29 a 16% hike in gasoline and diesel prices that will likely rise much further.

A few days earlier, the Pakistani rupee fell 9.6% against the US dollar, the biggest one-day drop in over two decades, after the government removed unofficial caps and allowed the currency to move toward a market-based exchange rate.

Earlier in the month, the country’s civil and military leadership traveled to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to secure the funds needed to avert a financial meltdown. Reports surfaced that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi would provide several billion dollars. In sharp contrast with their past behavior, they aren’t willing to write a blank check; the Saudi finance minister said January 18 that the kingdom was no longer providing direct grants and deposits to debtor nations without seeing reforms.

The Saudis, the Emiratis and others who could provide the cash want to first see the Pakistanis accept an IMF program. Besides, the beleaguered South Asian nation’s financial needs far outstrip the global appetite to assist.

Islamabad, has been struggling to finalize what would be the country’s 23rd IMF arrangement since it first knocked on the lender’s doors in 1958.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, which heads the fragile and increasingly unpopular coalition government, has a lot to lose by agreeing to IMF terms that are bound to exacerbate harsh economic conditions. As it is, the PML-N and its allies are facing an uphill electoral battle against the populist opposition Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) party of former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Still, Pakistan’s political instability is the result of a much deeper malaise. Since the end of Pakistan’s fourth military dictatorship in 2008, the country nominally has experienced its longest stretch of civilian governance. 2013 marked the first time one democratically elected government transferred power to another. But the army continued to encumber both governments, and in 2018 it engineered the rise to power of Khan’s PTI in hopes that it would finally have a pliant civilian actor. That experiment was a colossal failure. It has weakened the military politically and has thus plunged the country into uncharted territory.

A similar situation has emerged on the economic front. Pakistan has always had financial problems, which over the decades continued to worsen. The country got by only because of a periodic influx of US assistance, made possible by the broader global geopolitics of the time. There have been three such long periods – 1958-69, 1977-88 and 1999-2008 – each under a different military regime and coming at the height of the Cold War, the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, and the post-9/11 war on terror, respectively.

In today’s changed circumstances, Pakistan is facing an unprecedented financial crisis because it never developed a viable economy and is without external bailout options.

Without a major reform process – which is unlikely given the acute state of social and political divisions – Pakistan’s situation is likely to worsen. Its annual population growth rate is 1.9%, which is 237 times that of the global rate, and its fertility rate exceeds the global rate by 157%. At this pace, in another 10 years the country will have added 50 million people, increasing its population to 275 million. There is already a massive youth population.

Sixty percent of Pakistanis are under the age of 23. As many as 44% of all Pakistani children between the ages of 5 and 16 do not attend school. Females make up almost half the population, and literacy among them is at 48 percent.

Dealing with the multiplicity of crises plaguing the country requires a political consensus. This is extremely difficult in the current highly polarized political climate, which is unlikely to abate anytime soon. Pakistan’s powerful military establishment, which has intervened in politics for much of the country’s history, is in an unprecedented dilemma.

After the failure of its latest attempt to shape the country’s political economy, which ended with the April 2022 ouster of Khan, the top brass publicly committed to keeping the army out of politics. Rationalizing the economy, however, will take a long time – assuming the country’s tumultuous politics can be brought under control.

In moments like these, when normal politics produces only more chaos, the pressure (or temptation) for the army to hit pause or reset on the constitutional process is high. However, the general staff has been down that road many times, only to end up exacerbating the problems it aimed to solve. When problems are such that degradation is happening much more quickly than is the realistic efforts to fix them, stalling the political process could be akin to an out of the frying pan and into the fire type situation.

The only other option is to continue the slow path toward recovery, which is fraught with perils. As large swathes of the population suffer under the weight of debilitating economic conditions, intra-elite political struggles intensify. These are precisely the conditions that Islamist militants – both Taliban rebels and Islamic State militants ensconced in the neighboring emirate in Afghanistan – hope to exploit. A resurgent jihadist insurgency will likely force an already weakened Pakistani state into a new major military campaign – one that has serious potential to spill over across the border.

It is this nightmare scenario – a cash-strapped Pakistani state whose security is compromised on its western flank – that will eventually result in Arab Gulf states, China and the United States gaining greater influence in the country. Washington cannot allow Pakistan to descend into chaos, especially with Afghanistan under a Taliban regime. Likewise, China, which has pumped tens of billions of dollars’ worth of Belt and Road funds into the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, is not going to sit by and watch its investment sink.

Pakistan is thus going to become an even bigger arena for the US-Chinese competition.

Meanwhile, the Saudis and the Emiratis, who have long played a major role in periodically mediating intra-elite power struggles in Pakistan, will likely have greater influence over Pakistan’s internal workings.

In India, which only months ago surpassed the UK to become the world’s fifth largest economy, there is immense concern over how a financially collapsing Pakistan could affect New Delhi’s upward trajectory.

While it is too early to speak with any specificity on how external powers will behave, Pakistan can’t continue to chug along as it has. It may not always appear this way, especially in chronically fragile states, but long-term dysfunction adds up. Major fissures have emerged that outstrip Pakistan’s available resources, disrupting the status quo in which it was able to get by for so long.