26 10 / 2011

Pakistan’s Afghan policy: is that depth strategic or senseless?


At a conference earlier this year, someone made an argument, convincingly I thought, against the use of the expression ”the end-game in Afghanistan”.  Afghanistan as a country and the people in it will not come to an end when western forces leave, and nor is their future a game.  I was reminded of that comment reading a report published at the end of last month called “Pakistan, the United States , and the End Game in Afghanistan; Perceptions of Pakistan’s Foreign Policy Elite.”  The report, produced jointly by the Jinnah Institute and the United States Institute of Peace, summarises in one place what has until now been largely the subject of background briefings about what Pakistan wants in Afghanistan. The report’s authors, who have also written a shorter summary of its findings, identify three main objectives which the “elite” considered necessary in Afghanistan: “A degree of stability in Afghanistan: Project participants felt that Pakistan’s interests are best served by a relatively stable government in Kabul that is not hostile towards Pakistan. There was across the board realization among the participants that persistent instability in Afghanistan will have numerous and predictable consequences for Pakistan that it is ill-prepared to tackle. “An inclusive government in Kabul: Pakistan prefers a negotiated configuration with adequate Pashtun representation that is recognized by all ethnic and political stakeholders in Afghanistan. Some of the opinion makers insisted that given the current situation, a sustainable arrangement would necessarily require the main Taliban factions – particularly Mullah Omar’s “Quetta Shura” Taliban and the Haqqani network – to be part of the new political arrangement. “Limiting Indian presence to development activities: Pakistani foreign policy elite accept that India has a role to play in Afghanistan’s economic progress and prosperity. However, many participants perceived the present Indian engagement to be going beyond strictly development. They wish to see greater transparency on Indian actions and objectives.” None of that is particularly new — arguably it has a slightly dated quality since much of the work on the report was done before U.S. forces found and killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad on May 2, souring relations and curbing Pakistan’s ability to influence the United States on its approach to Afghanistan. But it merits reading in full for its detailed description of Pakistan’s view of what it wants in Afghanistan – a view, the report’s critics say, heavily influenced by the Pakistan army. It has also served the unintended purpose of renewing a debate in the Pakistani media about Pakistan’s policies on Afghanistan. To what extent does Pakistan need to try (unsuccessfully so far) to impose a Pakistan-friendly government in Kabul in order to secure its own interests? How far does it have the right to do so? And how far are its interests secured in any case through what some see as meddling in Afghanistan? In Dawn newspaper, columnist Kamran Shafi condemned the report  as an arrogant rehash of old policies which have led to nothing but trouble for Pakistan – it has traditionally tried to assert its influence in Afghanistan by backing Islamist groups whose militant ideology and violence have since spilled into Pakistan itself.  “How pray will these opinion makers (and foreign policy elites, let us never forget) make sure that their friends will find place in the new arrangement? Will there be elections so that the Afghans will freely choose the new ‘arrangement’? If so, what if these people are not elected? What then? Will it then be ‘arranged’ to get them on to the ‘new political arrangement’ by force of arms, and further terrorism? Will we never learn our lessons?” Blogger Ahsan Butt asked how Pakistan felt about foreign countries meddling in its own domestic policies.  “Here’s what gets me: this same ‘foreign policy elite’ gets its khaki knickers in a twist if and when other countries seek to meddle in our affairs. But when we do it, it’s normal and natural. It’s as if we want to be Bismarck in a world of Kofi Annans.” The answer is usually that Pakistan has good reason to fear instability in Afghanistan. It has played host to three million Afghan refugees since the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and without either a recognised or sealable border between the two would be the first to suffer the spillover of intensifying civil war. It also argues that its own Pashtun population has been fired up by the fighting in Afghanistan, helping to create the conditions which produced the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)  or Pakistani Taliban. And with its worries about India on one side, the  army has traditionally argued it needed a friendly Afghanistan on the other to give it what was once labelled as “strategic depth” against its much bigger neighbour. The reports critics have responded by saying that Pakistan needs to deal with its own Pashtun population better rather than trying to impose a solution in Afghanistan that takes care of Afghan Pashtuns. Pakistan’s traditional approach in dealing with Pashtun nationalism has been to stress Islamic identity over ethnic identity (hence its backing for the Taliban when they were in power from 1996 to 2001) to prevent any breakaway movements among its own Pashtun population. A better option, argued Shahid Ilyas in the Daily Times, would be to give the Pashtuns living in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) full political rights and incorporate the area into Pakistan-proper so that it no longer feared they might break away.  “Suspicion of Pashtun intentions vis-à-vis their willingness to stay part of the Pakistani state became one of the most important elements of the policy of the security state. This suspicion necessitated the use of every means in order to keep Pashtun nationalism down. It also necessitated measures towards placing friendly governments in Afghanistan — a government that did not question the legitimacy of the Durand Line,”  he wrote. In another column in the Daily Times, Farhat Taj, who has been a trenchant critic of the Pakistan army, complained that the report made a false equivalence between the Afghan Pashtun and the Taliban. ”Basically, the report is aimed at justifying the establishment’s long-standing Afghan policy, the strategic depth policy that has brought nothing but destruction to the Pakhtun and has created religious bigotry in Pakistan. The elite is using the notion of the ‘not antagonistic to Pakistan’ government in Afghanistan to camouflage the notion of strategic depth in Afghanistan. They are using the name of the Pakhtun nation to camouflage the Taliban terrorists. The report is basically a ‘liberal’ cover-up of an essentially fundamentalist policy of the Pakistani state. Since the elite do not want to repeatedly talk of empowering the Taliban — this is not correct political discourse in the post 9/11 world — so they talk of including the ‘Pakhtun’ in the Afghan power structure. It unmistakably looks as if the elite is implying that the Taliban are representative of the Pakhtun.” And, again in the same newspaper, Mohammad Taqi echoed that theme, saying of the report that, “the imaginary Pashtun ‘resentment’ is being used as a sandbag to project what merely is Rawalpindi’s (the army’s)  wish list vis-à-vis Afghanistan.” It is unlikely those arguments will make much difference to Pakistan’s policies in Afghanistan. The narrative is deeply ingrained that Pakistan’s problems began with the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and can only be ended with a settlement in Afghanistan that suits Pakistan’s interests.  But is it correct? An alternative narrative could be constructed by asking where Pakistan would be now had there been no Sept. 11 attacks and had the Taliban remained in power in Kabul.  Would the Islamist militants who have terrorised Pakistan with suicide bombings and fedayeen attacks have remained quiescent?  The Taliban themselves had little liking for their Pakistani backers, refusing to recognise the border with Pakistan when they were in power. Former Taliban ambassador to Islamabad Abdul Salam Zaeef also suggested in his memoirs that the Taliban might have tried to export their own ideology to Pakistan, noting that Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar wrote to then President Pervez Musharraf at the beginning of 2001 calling on him to implement sharia law . And what of Pakistan’s own religious parties, who according to their critics, have encouraged a rise in sectarianism and intolerance? How would they have fared had there been no war in Afghanistan?  Has the war in Afghanistan only exacerbated, or even coincided with, problems that would have arisen anyway, rather than caused them? Obviously, we can’t possibly know for sure the answer to those those questions.  They are rarely asked in a national narrative which has focused largely on Pakistan’s need to resist U.S. pressure to “do more” to tackle militants, rather than on what Pakistan needs for itself. But the report on Pakistan’s policies in Afghanistan, and the media debate it spurred, got me asking them.  Whether you agree with its findings or not, it provides a solid base for discussion. All that said, I’d like to put in a plea to kill off the expression “The Afghanistan End Game” and bury it in the same graveyard as the hopelessly reductive label “AfPak”.

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18 10 / 2011

UPDATE 1-WW Grainger posts higher Q3 profit


Grainger, which sells everything from abrasives and pumps to padlocks and wrenches, posted a net profit of $182.1 million, or $2.51 a share, up from $150.4 million, or $2.06, a year earlier.Revenue rose to $2.1 billion from $1.9 billion.

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18 10 / 2011

Asia Naphtha-Taiwan Formosa restarts No. 3 cracker


“They should have sufficient naphtha inventories for now,” said a trader.Other traders said Formosa had recently bought a large volume of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). LPG can be used to replace up to 15 percent of naphtha needed in its crackers.It operates three naphtha crackers with a total ethylene capacity of 2.93 million tpy.

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13 10 / 2011

Analysis: Hog, poultry firms to extend use of feed wheat


What initially began as a summer fling with an unprecedented premium for corn prices over wheat has turned into an enduring trend as livestock producers lock in longer-term wheat deals — many of which can’t be quickly undone even as the corn price premium finally recedes.Some livestock producers initially resisted the switch, fearing it would slow weight gain of their animals, or disrupt the eating habits. Now they have embraced its financial benefits, injecting a new dynamic into grain markets.”We are going to continue feeding (wheat) so we can stretch the corn crop through the whole season. I think (corn) availability is going to be an issue this coming year as well,” says Tim Thomas, an independent pig producer in Timberlake, North Carolina, who has been using a 50-50 mix.”Some groups of hogs won’t like the flavor as well as they will straight corn, but normally we can blend up to 50-50 and don’t have any problems getting them to eat it,” he said.In most years, wheat feeding is a short-term phenomenon that occurs in June, July and August, after the U.S. winter wheat harvest. But some U.S. chicken and hog producers are looking to extend their use of feed wheat throughout the year.The implications run deep into the corn market, which has slumped 12 percent since September 1 on signs that “demand rationing” — essentially consumers being priced out of the market — is far more widespread than believed.In April, wheat futures on the Chicago Board of Trade dipped below corn for the first time in nearly 15 years. Since June, CBOT wheat has been trading at an average of 10 cents below corn, the longest such inversion since at least the early 1970s. Cash prices were at times even more favorable for wheat buyers.Wheat prices have periodically rallied back above corn, including as recently as this week, but the change in feed habits should stick.”We hear of wheat feeding being booked all the way through the spring in the southeast markets,” said Rich Feltes, vice president for research with R.J. O’Brien in Chicago.A DIFFERENT MIXThe changing feed mix follows a summer in which U.S. corn stocks threatened to shrink to near their tightest since World War II. Corn prices surged to a record above $8 a bushel, while swelling global wheat supplies depressed prices.In the United States, plentiful supplies of wheat — especially soft red winter wheat grown in the southern Midwest — provided a welcome alternative for livestock feeders in the Southeast.Nutritionally, wheat offers more protein than corn but less energy from fat, so most operations have to recalibrate rations to accommodate wheat as a substitute ingredient.Wheat feeding has been less common this year in the big cattle feedlots of the southern U.S. Plains because a drought slashed production of the region’s hard red winter wheat crop.Some cattle feeders were able to book a four-month supply of hard red winter wheat this past summer as local cash corn prices surged, but wheat has become less competitive since then, said Joe Christopher, a grain merchandiser with Crossroads Co-op in Sidney, Nebraska.Elaine Johnson, analyst with CattleHedging.com, said cattle producers try to ensure they have enough supply to stay switched for six months to a year. Booking large quantities enables them to blend new ingredients into and out of their feed rations slowly, over several weeks.”They do not want to feed wheat and then a month later go back to the other mixture. It is not something they like to do on a short-run basis,” Johnson said.The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday lowered its estimate of the amount of U.S. wheat used for animal feed in the 2011/12 marketing year to 160 million bushels, or 8 percent of all wheat production — but still the highest share in three years.PRODUCERS FIND IT PALATABLEWheat has found favor among large-scale poultry producers.”We are steadily increasing its usage,” said Margaret McDonald, director of communications at Pilgrim’s Pride, the No. 2 chicken producer in the United States.”As long as prices make sense, we will keep maximizing its usage,” she added.Tyson Foods Inc, the biggest U.S. chicken company, has also been using wheat in its feed rations.”We continue to use small amounts of wheat in some of our poultry complexes,” Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson said.With U.S. corn stocks expected to remain scarce through 2011/12, setting the stage for another year of high cash corn prices, price signals telling feeders to use wheat could strengthen.”For the foreseeable future, we are going to have high-priced input costs, and grain is going to be expensive, and the industry is going to have to adjust, which I think it’s doing,” said Mike Cockrell, chief financial officer for Sanderson Farms Inc, the No. 4 U.S. chicken producer.Sanderson is not currently using wheat in its poultry rations but has not ruled out adding it in the future.”There is no doubt that at least for the next crop year, we’ve got high-priced corn. Until these supplies rebuild and the balance sheets improve,” Cockrell said, “that’s just a fact of life.”

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12 10 / 2011

Flyers edge Canucks in thrilling shootout to keep perfect start


Philadelphia goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov, acquired through a trade in the off-season as part of the team’s major roster changes, made 36 saves to edge Vancouver netminder Roberto Luongo, though it was the scoring that stole the show.Claude Giroux netted his third goal in as many games in the first period, as team mates Chris Pronger and James van Riemsdyk added a goal each to put the Flyers ahead 3-1.The Western Conference defending champion Canucks (1-1-1) answered with goals from Henrik Sedin and Chris Higgins in the second to pull within 4-3 before Daniel Sedin tied the contest at 3:39 in the third.Luongo finished with 22 saves but lost his second start of the season.

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12 10 / 2011

No merit to report of Akamai-Google deal: source


A source familiar with the matter told Reuters that the report of a deal was baseless.Representatives from Google and Akamai said the companies do not comment on rumors.Shares of Akamai, which are off more than 50 percent from their 52-week high of $54.65, gave up most of their after-hours gains later on Wednesday, and were trading up 2.9 percent at$24.04.Akamai, whose service improves the performance of websites, is a long-running subject of takeover rumors. Last week, there were reports that the company could be acquired by Verizon Communications or International Business Machines Corp, said Mark Kelleher, an analyst with Dougherty & Co.”Ever since I can remember there’s been theories of who could come in” and acquire Akamai, he said.

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12 10 / 2011

Iranians charged in U.S. over assassination plot


U.S. authorities said they had broken up a plot by two men linked to Iran’s security agencies to assassinate Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir. One was arrested last month while the other was believed to be in Iran.Iran denied the charges. But President Barack Obama called the plot a “flagrant violation of U.S. and international law” and Saudi Arabia said it was “despicable.”Revelation of the alleged plot, and the apparent direct ties to the Tehran government, had the potential to further inflame tensions in the Middle East, and the United States said Tehran must be held top account.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a Reuters interview, expressed hope that countries that have hesitated to enforce existing sanctions on Iran would now “go the extra mile.”At a news conference, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the convoluted plot, involving monitored international calls, Mexican drug money and an attempt to blow up the ambassador in a Washington restaurant, could have been straight from a Hollywood movie.U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder alleged that the plot was the work of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is the guardian of Iran’s 32-year-old revolution, and the Quds force, its covert, operational arm.”High-up officials in those (Iranian) agencies, which is an integral part of the Iranian government, were responsible for this plot,” Holder told the news conference.”I think one has to be concerned about the chilling nature of what the Iranian government attempted to do here,” he said.QUDS FORCE CONNECTIONThe primary evidence linking the Iranian government to the planned attempt on al-Jubeir’s life are the words of one of the alleged plotters, who told U.S. law enforcement agents after his arrest that he had been recruited and directed by men he understood were senior Quds Force officials.The Quds Force has not previously been known to focus on targets in the United States.Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, was said she was briefed on intelligence about the plot, said “it looks like it’s the Quds Force, the IRGC.”“We do not know that it went up above the IRGC” to higher levels of the Iranian government, Feinstein told reporters. “I just don’t see how this could be done any other way, that even the Quds force would go out and do something on their own to assassinate somebody who represented a country, not even in that country but in a third country.There are no formal diplomatic ties between the Islamic republic and Washington, which accuses Tehran of backing terrorism and pursuing nuclear arms, a charge Iran has denied.Iran already faces a raft of tough economic and political sanctions and Washington slapped further economic sanctions on five Iranians including four senior members of Quds.Iran and Saudi Arabia have likewise long been at odds. The Saudis, who see themselves as the center of the Sunni sect of Islam, have been alarmed by what they see as expansionist tendencies by majority Shi’ite Iran, whose people are primarily Persian rather than Arab.U.S. officials said there had also been initial discussions about other alleged plots, including attacking the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington, however no charges for that were revealed on Tuesday.Rejection the allegations, Iran’s state English language Press TV said: “The Islamic Republic of Iran has rejected U.S. accusations of the country plotting to assassinate the Saudi envoy to Washington as a prefabricated scenario.”Last month hopes were raised of improved ties when Iran released two U.S. hikers accused of spying when they were arrested on the Iran-Iraq border in 2009. Holder said there was no link between the hikers’s case and the alleged plot.U.S. SAYS AMBASSADOR NEVER IN DANGERU.S. officials identified the two alleged plotters as Gholam Shakuri, who is a member of the Quds force, and Manssor Arbabsiar, who was arrested on September 29 when he arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport from Mexico.Arbabsiar, 56, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen and holds an Iranian passport, initially cooperated with authorities after being arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on September 29.He made calls to Shakuri after being arrested and acted as if the plot was still a go, court documents said.Arbabsiar made a brief appearance in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday where he was ordered detained and assigned a public defender. He appeared in blue jeans and a dress shirt, thinning gray hair and a scar on the left side of his face.Officials said that the Saudi ambassador, Al-Jubeir, who is close to King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz and has been in his post since 2007, was never in danger. President Barack Obama was briefed in June about the alleged plot and through a spokesman expressed gratitude for it being disrupted.The assassination plot began to unfold in May 2011 when Arbabsiar approached an individual in Mexico to help, but that individual turned out to be an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.The confidential source, who was a paid informant but not identified, immediately tipped law enforcement agents, according to the criminal complaint. Arbabsiar paid $100,000 to the informant in July and August for the plot, a down payment on the $1.5 million requested.LIKE A “HOLLYWOOD MOVIE”Shakuri approved the plan to kill the ambassador during telephone conversations with Arbabsiar, the complaint said.As part of the plot, the informant talked to Arbabsiar about trying to kill the ambassador at a Washington, D.C. restaurant he frequented, but warned him that could lead to dozens of others being killed, including U.S. lawmakers.The criminal complaint said that Arbabsiar responded “no problem” and “no big deal”.After Arbabsiar was arrested in New York, he allegedly confessed and provided U.S. authorities with more details about the Iranian government’s alleged involvement, Holder said.Court papers say in a monitored phone call Shakuri allegedly confirmed to Arbabsiar the plot should move forward as quickly as possible, stating “just do it quickly, it’s late.”Mueller said in this case “individuals from one country sought to conspire with a drug trafficking cartel in another country to assassinate a foreign official on United States soil.”He added: “Though it reads like the pages of a Hollywood script, the impact would have been very real and many lives would have been lost,” he said.The men are charged with one count of conspiracy to murder a foreign official, two counts of foreign travel and use of interstate and foreign commerce facilities in the commission of murder for hire and one count each of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism.Authorities said no explosives were acquired for the plot and the weapon of mass destruction charge can range from a simple improvised device to a more significant weapon. They face up to life in prison if convicted.

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