Malala Yusufzai’s Nobel Prize has got the westoxicated Pakistani elite into a tizzy. Suffering from acute inferiority complex, they find solace in acceptance by the west.
Outgoing Afghan President Hamid Karzai took a swipe at the US and Pakistani accusing both of not wanting peace in Afghanistan. Installed by the US following the ouster of Taliban from power, Karzai presided over massive corruption in the country. He had also spend nearly a decade in refugee camps in Pakistan. Ashraf Ghani will be sworn in as president on September 29.
How can the Taliban carry out such a brazen attack at Karachi airport especially when they have carried out previous attacks in the city and elsewhere? They had attacked the Mehran Naval base two years ago destroying several aircraft. In 2009, they attacked the Military Headquarters in Rawalpindi. What is going on in Pakistan and why do the intelligence and security personnel appear so clueless?
There appears to be little seriousness about achieving lasting peace as the Pakistani government and Taliban-appointed committees go through the motions of negotiations.
The Americans are faced with fighting on two fronts in Afghanistan now: against the Taliban and Hamid Karzai's government. They have intensified their campaign of destabilization in Pakistan.
Bilawal Zardari is a spoiled brat. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, spent most of his time in the nightclubs of London but now he wants to lead the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. He made his debut by condemning the Taliban and called the Islamic Sharia a throwback to the Stone Ages.
President Hamid Karzai has added one more condition—start of peace talks with the Taliban—before he would agree to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement with the US giving US officials serious heart burn.
Is Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif serious about peace talks with the Taliban or is he just playing games? The next few weeks will tell.
There are scores of groups operating under the name “Taliban.” True, there are genuine Taliban but there are also many that are on the payroll of the US, India and other unsavoury players. Even common criminals have take on the name of Taliban and are terrorising ordinary people, especially in Pakistan.
Together with Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International released a 62-page report today about US drone strikes in Pakistan. We give below extract of two cases. Eight-year-old Nabeela (in photo), saw her 68-year-old grandmother blown to pieces by two US drone Hellfire missiles on October 24, 2012. US drone strikes had also killed 18 labourers about to have dinner in Miran Shah, North Waziristan.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is a man in a hurry. He knows his time is running out and with it his chances of survival. He is desperate to make a deal with the Taliban but they are unwilling because they see him as an American puppet.
With the opening of the Taliban office in Doha, Qatar, Hamid Karzai feels he will be left to hang high and dry if the Americans strike a deal with the resistance group. He has hit his now-familiar tantrum to be noticed. Will he get anywhere with it?
The December 20 and 21 meeting in a hotel outside Paris between representatives of the Taliban, the Karzai government and members of the Northern Alliance as well as Gulbuddin Hikmatyar’s Hizb-e Islami shows that the Taliban are now firmly in control of the future agenda in Afghanistan.
Malala Yousufzai has been turned into a poster child for a nefarious agenda.
The self-proclaimed superpower is clutching at straws about “peace talks” following the Taliban’s convincing defeat of US-NATO armies in Afghanistan. While talk about talks has gone on for years with American officials — civilian and military — making bold pronouncements about commencement of “secret talks”, only to discover that some goat herder or a petty bicycle shop owner had taken the “smart” Americans for a long ride, the latter have not given up.
Is the US endgame in Afghanistan real? If so, it appears to have entered a crucial phase under the cover of a series of international conferences to facilitate US troop withdrawal from the war-torn country. Some observers, however, believe America is playing a double game trying to give the impression of preparing to leave while working behind the scenes to establish permanent military bases in the country.
For his May 18 speech on the Muslim East, US President Barack Obama gave his latest performance in the production titled (Steadily Weakening) Empire Strikes Back. His flowery words have long since lost their perfume and his grammatically complex sentences, such a heady delight after the linguistically-challenged Bush, now seem to fall as flat as an out-of-tune piano.
Talk about desperation; the Americans are falling over themselves to talk to the Taliban but the Afghans are in no hurry to meet, even if offered lamb kebab and rice as inducement. Carefully planted rumors in the media by American officials have been circulating for years. “Taliban representatives have secretly met US officials in Saudi Arabia;” according to one of such report. Others have claimed meetings have taken place in Turkey, Qatar or even Germany. The Taliban have vehemently denied all such reports. One is inclined to accept the Taliban version because past US claims have come to naught.
It is a safe bet that the Taliban have never heard of much less read Barack Obama’s book, Audacity of Hope yet they have shown plenty of it in what they did in Qandahar on April 25. Digging a tunnel some 360 meters long (some reports have suggested it was 1,000 meters long) under the Qandahar-Herat highway, they reached the Sarpoza prison and rescued 487 prisoners, many of them Taliban fighters while the guards were asleep.
The chest thumping at the NATO Lisbon conference (November 19-20) did not impress the Taliban much. Instead, they were chuckling at how easily the Americans can be duped into believing they are negotiating with the Taliban.
