Pepe Escobar: The mother of all cockfights
On one side, the most powerful man on Earth, who happens to carry a Muslim middle name. On the other, the largest tribal nation in the world, which happens to be Muslim. Welcome to the mother of all cockfights.
As it was leaked by government sources to the Pakistani daily The News, the success rate of the Barack Obama administration's "hell from above" Predator drone war over the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) is a mere 6%. Of "60 Predator strikes between January 14, 2006, and April 8, 2009, only 10 hit their targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders" but most of all "killing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians". All of them Pashtuns.
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Islamabad controls most of Pakistan - Sindh and Punjab provinces - with an iron fist. Pakistani police and army control most of NWFP. In "separatist" Balochistan there's only 5% of the total population. For Washington to believe that a small, rural, Pashtun tribal agglomeration of bands of a maximum of 30 fighters, with no air force, no heavy artillery and no tanks, could take over a Pakistan with a 650,000-strong well-trained army is an absolutely ridiculous notion. And for Washington to believe - as Holbrooke implied - that a few Pashtun tribals and a few expat jihadis can take on Western civilization as a whole is also an absolutely ridiculous notion.
As for the Pakistan military, whenever they see the activities of the Balochistan Liberation Front or a road being built from Nimruz province in Afghanistan to the Iranian port of Chabahar, they see the hand of New Delhi. Hardcore paranoia as it may be, even senior Pakistan army officers believe in a concerted US-India plot to destabilize FATA and the country as a whole and then confiscate Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Obama's war on Pashtuns will only exacerbate this already volatile mix.
As it was leaked by government sources to the Pakistani daily The News, the success rate of the Barack Obama administration's "hell from above" Predator drone war over the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) is a mere 6%. Of "60 Predator strikes between January 14, 2006, and April 8, 2009, only 10 hit their targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders" but most of all "killing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians". All of them Pashtuns.
***
Islamabad controls most of Pakistan - Sindh and Punjab provinces - with an iron fist. Pakistani police and army control most of NWFP. In "separatist" Balochistan there's only 5% of the total population. For Washington to believe that a small, rural, Pashtun tribal agglomeration of bands of a maximum of 30 fighters, with no air force, no heavy artillery and no tanks, could take over a Pakistan with a 650,000-strong well-trained army is an absolutely ridiculous notion. And for Washington to believe - as Holbrooke implied - that a few Pashtun tribals and a few expat jihadis can take on Western civilization as a whole is also an absolutely ridiculous notion.
As for the Pakistan military, whenever they see the activities of the Balochistan Liberation Front or a road being built from Nimruz province in Afghanistan to the Iranian port of Chabahar, they see the hand of New Delhi. Hardcore paranoia as it may be, even senior Pakistan army officers believe in a concerted US-India plot to destabilize FATA and the country as a whole and then confiscate Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Obama's war on Pashtuns will only exacerbate this already volatile mix.
posted by temporal at 4/17/2009
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