a stable afghanistan is not essential; a stable pakistan is essential,” holbrooke wrote in the...

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“A stable Afghanistan is not essential; a stable Pakistan is essential,” Holbrooke

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After Death, What Holbrooke Really

Thought Revealed Friends to the late special envoy want his true opinions known

By Mark Russell, Newser Staff

Posted May 15, 2011 11:44 AM CDT

(Newser) – In life, Richard Holbrooke was loyal to the Obama administration, but since his December death, his widow and friends have decided that it isimportant people know the true opinions of this special envoy to the Af-Pak

region, writes Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times—including what Holbrooke saw "as missteps of the Obama administration that he served." And they're especially worth hearing at this moment, writes Kristof, as we examine our relationships with Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“Reconciliation—that was what hewas working toward in Afghanistan,

and building up the civilian and political side that had been swamped by the military,” says his widow. “Thewhole policy was off-kilter, way too

militarized. Richard never thought

that this war could be won on the battlefield.” Kristof believes that Holbrooke would have wanted to use the momentum created from killing Osama bin Laden to step up diplomacy and sign a peace deal with the Taliban. “He understood from his experience that

every conflict has to end at the negotiating table," says a colleague. But Holbrooke told Kristof that Afghanistan paled in importance to Pakistan, which is much larger and has nuclear weapons.

“A stable Afghanistan is not essential; a stable Pakistan isessential,” Holbrooke wrote in the papers he left behind.





A Headache and a Heart AcheWednesday, 15 December 2010 14:31 -

The sudden and unexpected death of veteran diplomat, Richard Holbrooke, has come as a shock to many around the world. A career diplomat, Richard Holbrooke gained wide acclaim after the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995. Infamous for his brash style, he was nicknamed “the Bulldozer” and widely admired by western political observers. In

January 2009 US President Obama appointed Richard Holbrooke as special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The essential question is that, why was he appointed to that position and what wasexpected of him? Richard Holbrooke was

primarily a negotiator, famous for achieving diplomatic breakthroughs in conflict zones.The appointment of Holbrooke was a clear

signal that the US regime realized that the warin Afghanistan had become unsustainable

and a political solution had to be sought. The public and private rhetoric of the time (as revealed by the wikileak cables) would

suggest that the special envoy was expected to negotiate with the Mujahideen forces, sow dissention into their ranks, convince the Mujahideen to accept the current Afghan constitution, and effectively give up their resistance to the foreign occupation of their country. In other words, he was chosen to achievewith negotiations, what the occupying countries had failed to achieve with force.

Such an objective, especially in Afghanistan,is a colossal asking from any person.

Richard Holbrooke’s intensive visits into the

region, especially over the last 12 months, convinced him beyond all doubt that the US and its allies could not succeed in Afghanistan. Despite his reputation, Holbrooke failed to bring the Mujahideen to the negotiating table, and his abrasive approach distanced even his closest allies. Clutching on to straws, Richard Holbrooke was unwittingly duped by a meager shop keeper from Quetta that he





was the Taliban’s “special representative” to negotiate with the foreign powers.The task set for him proved too cumbersome for the man and on 13 December

2010, he died from a tear in his aorta – the largest artery which carries oxygenated blood from the heart. To use the Afghan term, “his heart exploded”.

The fate of Holbrooke symbolizes the fate of the US strategy in Afghanistan, and the fate of the entire war in Afghanistan. A conflict in Afghanistan is not just a headache for its enemies; it is also a heart ache that not even the bravest and strongest can bear for long. Earlier this year, US General David Petreaus also fell unconscious during a congressional hearing into the war in Afghanistan.The men in charge of conducting the war in Afghanistan seem to be suffering

from the same symptoms as the men responsible for directing Soviet strategy in Afghanistan two decades earlier. During that war, three Soviet premiers suffered death during their tenure while a fourth committed political suicide (and caused the break-up of USSR). The only reason the previous and current US Presidents seem to be immune from this fate is that they are blissfully ignorant of their course in Afghanistan.

To the seasoned diplomats and generals directing the US-led occupation of Afghanistan, it has become visible that the US’s continued occupation of Afghanistan achieve no long-term strategic objectives for the United States and that it would be best advised to exit this quagmire with any face-saving opportunity that it can find. Opportunities, however, are fleeting moments in time, which if not seized then and there, might never be seen again. And when

you are fighting a losing a war, these so-called “opportunities” are even rarer than they would otherwise be.

Richard Holbrooke realized this fact and in his deathbed. When he had almost seen the other side, summoned all his energies and

spoke the wisest words of his life:“You have got to stop this war in Afghanistan”. America and its allies would be wise to heed these words.





American Colonialist AgendaMonday, 19 April 2010 09:52 administrator

The current war in Afghanistan is in all its shapes and manifestations aliberation struggle by indigenous people against foreign invaders and theirinternal surrogates. The Afghans have proved their mettle as a free and independent people throughout their history by never bowing to foreign

aggressions. Though America paints this war as a fight against terrorism but in fact it is a colonialist slogan by Washington, aimed at extending its own tentacle over Asia and, by extension, all over the world. In 1992, when the former Afghan president Najibulla’s regime fell, the Americans embarked on a colonialist policy, indirectly encouraging domestic war in Afghanistan. On the one hand, they stopped the annual assistance the Afghans in the shape of humanitarian

relief and weapons to the tune of $600 million which they used to give to the Afghan Mujahideen and refugees but on the other hand they insisted oninclusion of the remains of the former communists of Halq and Parcham in the

new dispensation . They called it a broad-based set-up. Washington also did notinsist on dissolution of some notorious militia groups of the Najibulla regimelike Dostum militia, General Momin, Babajan and Naderi militias. These

militias had key role in turning Afghanistan into bloodbath and perpetrating atrocities, killing and looting innocent people and committing crimes that wereunprecedented in the Afghan history. They should have helped to bring these

criminal to justice but instead of supporting a clean, independent , efficient government in Kabul, Washington indirectly ignited the flames of war. Pentagon strategist wanted to discredit the Mujahideen, weaken their manpower as a result of a war of attrition and get rid of the weapons that had amassed from the previous years. They began to call Mujahideen as warlords while previously they preferred to call them as freedom fighters. They provoked someunscrupulous elements inside the former Mujahideen groups to commit some

heinous crimes against their own people because Washington believed it would end people’s enchantment with an Islamic government in Afghanistan. In1994, the Taliban Islamic Movement emerged to foil the American conspiracy

and establish an Islamic government in the country. But Washington tended from day one to oppose the young Islamic government, until in October 2001when America attacked Afghanistan under the spurious pretext of fighting

terrorism.

Now we are in the ninth year of the war. Washington is still repeating the same hackneyed clichés of fighting terrorism, though it has lost its initial splendor.Throughout this period, Americans committed the worst kind of human rights





violations in Bagram, Kandahar and Abu Gharib jails. They have tortured and killed many innocent prisoners in various secret cells of interrogations inside their military bases in Afghanistan which are run by CIA and special operation forces, bulldozing the dead bodies under the ground.

Now after almost one decade, many observers in the world have come round to believe that the American war in Afghanistan is not aimed at fighting terrorism as they claims but rather they want to:

1. Use Afghanistan as an outpost to destabilize and carry out a regime change in the neighboring countries.

2 To control central Asian natural resources by bringing to power pro-westernelements in these countries of the former Soviet republics.

3. To change the regime in Iran by supporting anti-government forces in Iran, financially politically and militarily. To spark off racial and sectarians violencein that country.

2. To disintegrate and destabilize Pakistan.

3. 5. To pave the way and ignite vast demonstrations in China through Faulong movement to destabilize that country; to monitor China internal politics and

military arsenal by installing electronic equipment in Minhas base in Kyrgyzstan and in Marja Helmand province, Afghanistan to monitor Iran’s nuclear program.

4. To make alliance with the so-called big democracy i.e. India againstChina and Pakistan. American has already given green signal to New

Delhi to ramp up its activities in Baluchistan by working closely with Baluchistan Liberation Army.

5. To create utopian fear among the establishment echelon in Islamabad bylaunching the Talibanization propaganda, encouraging them to support the so-

called war on terror. However, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has made it clear time and against that it will not interfere in the internal affairs of any country and believe in the peaceful co-existence of countries with different social systems. . Until and unless Washington achieves those goals, it will always say itis not right time to withdraw from Afghanistan peacefully or seek peace talkswith Taliban. Future developments will unravel this.

a stable afghanistan is not essential; a stable pakistan is essential,” holbrooke wrote in the...

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