"No Priorities, No Peace
July 22, 2010: Peace talks between India and Pakistan continue to be stalled by Pakistani refusal to deal with Indian, Afghan and U.S. accusations that Pakistani officials are aiding Islamic terrorists. Not just the ISI (the Pakistani CIA), but members of the military and civil service. Pakistan refuses to openly acknowledge such cooperation with Islamic terrorists, and India considers this cooperation a key factor in the continued Islamic terrorist activity against India. The U.S., which provides Pakistan with several billion dollars worth of aid a year, has been unable to get the Pakistanis to root out all the Islamic radical sympathizers in the government. However, the Pakistanis have fired many of the more outspoken and active Islamic radicals in the ISI, army and civil service. But there are still a lot of these terrorism sympathizers on the government payroll, and the politicians don't want to risk wider violence by trying to clear them all out. Thus peace talks are stalled because India wants to talk about security (terrorism) first, while Pakistan wants to discuss borders (Kashmir) first. More moderate officials in both nations, and the rest of the world (especially the U.S.) are trying to get both nuclear armed nations to discuss all their problems simultaneously, and just get on with it.
This terrorist support can be seen in the tribal territories, where the army continues to chase down Taliban groups everywhere except North Waziristan, and other areas where Islamic radicals that operate in Afghanistan, but have not attacked the Pakistani government. Despite continuous U.S. prodding, the Pakistani government refuses to finish off the Islamic terrorist base areas. This has become a major dispute between Pakistan and its neighbors, and the United States.
The anti-Maoist campaign in eastern India is not going well. The Maoists are putting up stiff resistance, and continuing their attacks on the businesses (especially the mining industries) and government (especially the schools). The Maoists are also running their own mining operations, while still extorting large sums of money from businesses. The Maoists seek to replace the government in many thinly populated areas, and this is where the anti-Maoist campaign is concentrated. In the last year, Maoist violence killed 50 percent more people than did the Islamic terrorism in Kashmir. India has got the upper hand in Kashmir, and is more concerned with growing Islamic terrorism operations elsewhere in India, and the support these terrorists are receiving from Pakistan.
The Maoists have established operations in Western Bangladesh, where three policemen there were recently killed by the communist rebels.
In the Pakistani tribal territories (Bajur), a Taliban commander and one of his men were killed when the bomb they were building went off. Unlike Iraq, where there were thousands of trained explosives experts (courtesy of Saddams training programs), there is a severe shortage among the Taliban, and accidents like this are increasingly common.
Pakistan continues to suffer bouts of religious violence throughout the country. These involve Islamic factions (usually Sunni and Shia) and attacks against Christian and Hindu minorities. Sometimes entire families are murdered, but more often it's just attacks against individuals. The increased operations against the Taliban in the last few years has spread the police thin, and allowed Islamic radicals throughout Pakistan to grow unhindered. Many of the radical mosques and religious schools in non-tribal Pakistan are not associated with the Taliban or al Qaeda, but with local Islamic radical groups.
While neatly 100,000 Afghan refugees have gone back to Afghanistan from Pakistan in the past year, there are still 1.7 million of these Afghans in Pakistan, and they are a major source of support for the Taliban, and Islamic terrorism in general. Most of these Afghans have been in Pakistan since the Russian war in Afghanistan during the 1980s. A disproportionate number of the refugees are involved with criminal gangs. Just trying to keep track of these Afghans is a chore, because most of them are Pushtuns, who can easily blend in with the millions of Pushtuns in Pakistan."
strategypage.com |
