Invasion of Cambodia ... and relation to Pakistan ? | World Defense

Invasion of Cambodia ... and relation to Pakistan ?

Hithchiker

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https://vietnamawbb.weebly.com/invasion-of-cambodia.html
On April 30th of 1970, President Richard Nixon declared to a television audience that the American military troops, accompanied by the South Vietnamese People's Army, were to invade Cambodia. The invasion was under the pretext of disrupting the North Vietnamese supply lines. They also invaded in order to bomb and destroy the Viet Cong base camps, that were backing up the other operations in South Vietnam. Although Nixon officially declared the invasion in April, there had been air raids in Cambodia for the past year, without the American Citizens' knowledge. Basically, Nixon had been ordering bombings Cambodia for months before actually declaring an Invasion.
Nixon believed North Vietnam was transporting troops and supplies through neighboring Cambodia into South Vietnam.

Now replace Vietnam with Afghanistan and Cambodia with Pakistan with views of current regime and predecessors about safe havens in Pakistan.
Pakistan must stop providing safe havens to terrorist groups: Pence
"For too long Pakistan has provided safe haven to the Taliban and many terrorist organizations, but those days are over.


Is there something to be worried about ? Can US make Pakistan a scapegoat should they wishes to leave Afghanistan ?
 

Indus Falcon

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The US has failed in Afghanistan, they have to blame someone. Pakistani civil leadership is a joke, so it is the most convenient scapegoat.
 

Hithchiker

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The US has failed in Afghanistan, they have to blame someone. Pakistani civil leadership is a joke, so it is the most convenient scapegoat.
Actually yes civilian is joked but i am thinking of Military and there future response, if any of misadventure in settled areas like of Abattabad or Salala the possibility of same is very high given the conditions and modus operandi of US ...They attacked Cambodia for defeat in Vietnam this time we might be at receiving end of defeat in Afghanistan.
 

Nilgiri

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Actually yes civilian is joked but i am thinking of Military and there future response, if any of misadventure in settled areas like of Abattabad or Salala the possibility of same is very high given the conditions and modus operandi of US ...They attacked Cambodia for defeat in Vietnam this time we might be at receiving end of defeat in Afghanistan.

Pakistan (today) is much more capable country compared to Cambodia (then).

Cambodia at that time had no nuclear weapons, no real military to speak of and there was a massive civil war within it (and the Khmer Rouge would soon to come to power because of it, and we all know what they did in just few years time, I would hate to apply that to Pakistan population scale).

I feel the comparison is somewhat flawed, the US probably has judged how much give there is in Pakistan's spine, and the specific capability deficiencies and operate in that buffer at most....whereas such discerning did not really factor in at all w.r.t Cambodia and Laos (Laos was nearly totally destroyed by the US because of ho chi minh trail targetting.....except for its capital city and a cpl small towns hugging Thai border....few ppl know or remember this).

The scale of this bombing being done on Vietnam western flank by the US is also magnitudes larger than Pakistan faced from the quite specific border drone strikes. It would be equivalent of major (more interior, supply/logistic important as US perceives) Pakistan town and cities getting carpet bombed for say 3 or 4 years by B-52s, I don't think Pakistan would have let such situation exist tbh.

But yes Pakistan also must be more pragmatic and not over-ride everything feeling its safe by the capabilities it has developed. Too much feel good leads to bad wake up calls.
 

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Pakistan is in far worst situation than Cambodia.
In case of Pakistan, US has advantage of support from Pakistan's hostile neighboring states, such support was missing in case of Cambodia.
US has spent much more to stay in Afghanistan, as compare to its entire war in Cambodia. This only hints destruction of Pakistan is far more important to US than Cambodia.
Only advantage Pakistan enjoy over US is the supply route, alternate of this perhaps is Chabahar, Iran, operated by Indian navy.
 

Nilgiri

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, such support was missing in case of Cambodia.

Cambodia at the time was surrounded by hostile South Vietnam (+ARVN who already did massive repeated inrustions and even atrocities in Cambodia border towns) and also Thailand to the west which was major US ally and the "old enemy" of the Khmer people (along with Vietnamese + Cham). Thailand at that time basically followed the instruction of the US as to which groups to host in its border area for the greater Vietnam war effort.

Cambodia govt (Sihanouk and the western pawns) were not in control of its country (why it got to that is bit longer story)....much much worse than AFG govt in AFG today....all kind of communist and anti-communist guerillas and all kind of other warlords (who switched sides frequently) controlled everything outside Phnom Penh...and even within that capital lot of the time. Thats why when Khmer rouge got the all clear from the Chinese and US (and the support and intel on how to merge the various factions), they took over in no time flat. Cambodia govt and military was just not there in capacity that mattered.....reminds me somewhat of Lebanon in some ways in mid east conflicts over last few decades.

I don't see same situation in Pakistan tbh, it would like take situation in FATA and make it 10 times worse and extend to large populated areas of Pakistan in Punjab etc....and reduce pak military to a small fraction of current strength.
 

Hithchiker

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Pakistan (today) is much more capable country compared to Cambodia (then).

Cambodia at that time had no nuclear weapons, no real military to speak of and there was a massive civil war within it (and the Khmer Rouge would soon to come to power because of it, and we all know what they did in just few years time, I would hate to apply that to Pakistan population scale).

I feel the comparison is somewhat flawed, the US probably has judged how much give there is in Pakistan's spine, and the specific capability deficiencies and operate in that buffer at most....whereas such discerning did not really factor in at all w.r.t Cambodia and Laos (Laos was nearly totally destroyed by the US because of ho chi minh trail targetting.....except for its capital city and a cpl small towns hugging Thai border....few ppl know or remember this).

The scale of this bombing being done on Vietnam western flank by the US is also magnitudes larger than Pakistan faced from the quite specific border drone strikes. It would be equivalent of major (more interior, supply/logistic important as US perceives) Pakistan town and cities getting carpet bombed for say 3 or 4 years by B-52s, I don't think Pakistan would have let such situation exist tbh.

But yes Pakistan also must be more pragmatic and not over-ride everything feeling its safe by the capabilities it has developed. Too much feel good leads to bad wake up calls.
Just find this article today
What Peace in Colombia Teaches Us About War in Afghanistan

A successful reconciliation process after three decades of excruciating false starts offers some not-so-encouraging lessons for Afghanistan.

By Jamie Shenk and Michael Kugelman
December 23, 2017







Last month, Colombia marked the first anniversary of the peace deal that ended a 52-year-war with the Armed Revolutionary Forces in Colombia, or FARC.
The long but ultimately successful negotiations that ended the war offer some useful lessons for another seemingly endless conflict — the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, in its 17th year and the longest foreign war in American history.
Unfortunately, there’s reason to fear that what helped propel Colombia to peace is missing in Afghanistan.
Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month.
An Unlikely but Apt Analogy
At first glance, Colombia and Afghanistan may appear wildly dissimilar. Colombia is a middle-income country with generally well-functioning public institutions. Afghanistan, by contrast, is one of the poorest countries in the world, and the writ of the state barely extends outside of Kabul, the federal capital. Compared to Afghanistan’s volatile Pakistani and Central Asian neighbors, Colombia’s neighborhood is fairly stable, notwithstanding Venezuela’s recent economic collapse. Also, Colombia has not been a battleground for great power politics, while Afghanistan has long been of great geopolitical interest to America, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, and, increasingly, China.
And yet, when examined more closely, striking similarities between the conflicts that have convulsed these two countries come into sharp relief.
First, both the FARC and the Taliban have benefited from cross-border sanctuaries. Much like the Taliban uses Pakistan as a base, the FARC took advantage of Colombia’s unpatrolled borders with Venezuela and Ecuador. Documents seized from a FARC camp on the Ecuadorian side of the border in 2008 indicate that the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez provided tacit approval for the FARC’s use of the border region, viewing the guerrillas as a strategic ally against the United States and Colombia. Similarly, Pakistan views the Taliban as a strategic asset to push back against the presence of its Indian rival in Afghanistan and to undercut Afghanistan’s pro-India government.
Second, the FARC and the Taliban have both been deeply enmeshed in the narcotics trade. While the Taliban is involved in poppy cultivation and traffics in opiates, the FARC was associated with protecting and fostering coca cultivation and the cocaine trade. Profits from illegal narcotics have been central to the ability of both the FARC and the Taliban to expand operations and to remain a viable fighting force even when suffering battlefield losses.
Third, the United States has played a fundamental, albeit very different, role in both conflicts. U.S. involvement in Colombia entailed training and assistance through Plan Colombia, a $10 billion package of military and development assistance. This support, more so than U.S. training efforts in Afghanistan (where the lack of strong security institutions ensures America faces much deeper challenges than in Colombia), helped boost the Colombian military’s capacity to fight the insurgency.
Colombia’s Long Road to Peace
Colombia’s long history of failed negotiations with the FARC made the 2016 peace deal all the more remarkable. Starting in the 1980s, Colombia attempted three major peace efforts with the FARC before finally attaining success last year. The first attempt in 1984 collapsed into chaos after right-wing paramilitary groups assassinated members of the FARC’s newly formed political party, the Unión Patriótica, when they tried to participate in democratic elections.
After another failed attempt at peace in 1991, the FARC and the government returned to negotiations in 1999. The FARC enjoyed a position of power during these talks, which contributed to their failure. Indeed, to facilitate negotiations, the government initially withdrew its troops from a 42,000-square-kilometer zone in the FARC’s heartland in southern Colombia. As the talks dragged on for three years, the FARC was accused of using the demilitarized zone to regroup and consolidate its power in the cocaine trade to fund future attacks. The Colombian army reentered the demilitarized zone in 2002.
By the time President Juan Manuel Santos took office in 2010, an aggressive, U.S.-backed military campaign by his predecessor had flipped the power dynamic of the armed conflict. Military strikes decimated the FARC’s leadership, killing 53 of the group’s commanders. The FARC’s membership plummeted during the same time period from more than 20,000 in 2002 to around 7,000 by 2016. The FARC refused to fully concede, even with its weakened force, but agreed to initial peace talks with the Santos government. Formal negotiations for Colombia’s fourth attempt at peace began in Havana in 2012. Four years later, peace was finally achieved.
Sobering Lessons for Afghanistan
A successful reconciliation process after three decades of excruciating false starts offers three not-so-encouraging lessons for Afghanistan.
First, negotiations won’t work with an insurgency in a position of military strength. While controversial for its links to human rights abuses and its questionable effectiveness against the drug trade, some experts see the Colombian military’s campaign against the FARC as a key component leading to the successful negotiation in 2016. After being crippled militarily, the FARC recognized that a negotiated outcome was the best way to achieve some of its goals.
This suggests the Trump administration’s Afghanistan strategy, with its focus on ramping up military operations against the Taliban to compel it to agree to peace negotiations, is on the right track. However, Washington must reckon with a more capacity-constrained partner in Afghanistan than it had in Colombia. Afghan security forces, even after a nearly two-decade-long U.S.-led training mission, still struggle to carry out fundamental battlefield functions such as providing air cover and gathering intelligence. Their ability to team up with U.S. forces to deliver a body blow to the Taliban is far from assured. More broadly, given that more than 100,000 American troops were unable to defeat the Taliban — much less turn the tide in the war — during the height of the surge in 2010 and 2011, prospects for military success today with fewer than 15,000 troops are decidedly dim.
Second, regional patrons of the insurgency must play a successful role in encouraging negotiations. Chávez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro both pressured the FARC to abandon their armed struggle and enter negotiations. This pressure, combined with Castro’s hosting of the negotiations in Havana, likely made the guerrillas more open to discussions with the Colombian government. President Santos acknowledged Castro’s role in the peace process, saying, “Fidel Castro recognized at the end of his life that the armed struggle was not the right path. In doing so he contributed to the end of the armed conflict.”
It follows, then, that for there to be a successful negotiation process with the Taliban, the Pakistanis must play a major role in bringing the Taliban to the table. Islamabad, however, claims its influence over the Taliban has declined. Indeed, Pakistan’s relationship with the Taliban is not as symbiotic as the ones between Venezuela and Cuba and the FARC. Some Taliban members, including some senior leaders, say they mistrust Pakistan and, as Afghans, resent how Pakistan interferes in their country. U.S. officials have even accused Pakistan of pressuring the Taliban to reject negotiations. We shouldn’t overstate the ability of Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table.
Third, while international support is critical, negotiations must be protected from foreign meddling. International buy-in was critical in bringing the FARC and Bogota to the negotiating table and keeping negotiations on track. Delegations from Cuba and Norway acted as guarantors to ensure that the 2016 accord faithfully reflected what was discussed during the negotiations. However, the understanding was that they could not dictate the substance of negotiations, thereby preventing foreign meddling in what both sides viewed as a peace “for Colombians, by Colombians.”
Once again, this lesson bodes ill for Afghanistan. The good news is that the idea of a negotiated outcome to the war commands considerable international support. The United States, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China have held several meetings to discuss how to launch a peace process. However, Pakistan’s history of meddling in Afghanistan through its support to Taliban and Haqqani Network operations there suggests that a completely hands-off Pakistani role in a formal dialogue is by no means assured—despite Islamabad’s frequent assurancesthat it supports an “Afghan-led, Afghan-owned” peace process. Attempts by the Pakistanis — or, for that matter, by the United States, China, Iran, Russia, and other states with a strong stake in an eventual endgame in Afghanistan — to influence the negotiations can’t be ruled out either.
In effect, key factors that helped facilitate peace in Colombia are absent or unlikely to be present in Afghanistan anytime soon. These factors include a militarily weakened insurgency, the ability of the insurgents’ external patrons to apply successful pressure, and controlled negotiations without outside meddling.
Accordingly, the skeptic will conclude that Afghanistan is doomed to many more years of war. The optimist will counter that Afghanistan just needs more time for the right conditions to materialize. For the long-suffering people of Afghanistan, where civilian deaths from the war reached record-breaking highs this year, neither outlook brings any solace.
Jamie Shenk is a researcher with the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. Michael Kugelman is deputy director for the Asia Program and senior associate for South Asia at the Wilson Center.

@I.R.A @khafee @Joe Shearer @Indus Falcon
 

Nilgiri

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Just find this article today
What Peace in Colombia Teaches Us About War in Afghanistan

A successful reconciliation process after three decades of excruciating false starts offers some not-so-encouraging lessons for Afghanistan.

By Jamie Shenk and Michael Kugelman
December 23, 2017







Last month, Colombia marked the first anniversary of the peace deal that ended a 52-year-war with the Armed Revolutionary Forces in Colombia, or FARC.
The long but ultimately successful negotiations that ended the war offer some useful lessons for another seemingly endless conflict — the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, in its 17th year and the longest foreign war in American history.
Unfortunately, there’s reason to fear that what helped propel Colombia to peace is missing in Afghanistan.
Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month.
An Unlikely but Apt Analogy
At first glance, Colombia and Afghanistan may appear wildly dissimilar. Colombia is a middle-income country with generally well-functioning public institutions. Afghanistan, by contrast, is one of the poorest countries in the world, and the writ of the state barely extends outside of Kabul, the federal capital. Compared to Afghanistan’s volatile Pakistani and Central Asian neighbors, Colombia’s neighborhood is fairly stable, notwithstanding Venezuela’s recent economic collapse. Also, Colombia has not been a battleground for great power politics, while Afghanistan has long been of great geopolitical interest to America, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, and, increasingly, China.
And yet, when examined more closely, striking similarities between the conflicts that have convulsed these two countries come into sharp relief.
First, both the FARC and the Taliban have benefited from cross-border sanctuaries. Much like the Taliban uses Pakistan as a base, the FARC took advantage of Colombia’s unpatrolled borders with Venezuela and Ecuador. Documents seized from a FARC camp on the Ecuadorian side of the border in 2008 indicate that the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez provided tacit approval for the FARC’s use of the border region, viewing the guerrillas as a strategic ally against the United States and Colombia. Similarly, Pakistan views the Taliban as a strategic asset to push back against the presence of its Indian rival in Afghanistan and to undercut Afghanistan’s pro-India government.
Second, the FARC and the Taliban have both been deeply enmeshed in the narcotics trade. While the Taliban is involved in poppy cultivation and traffics in opiates, the FARC was associated with protecting and fostering coca cultivation and the cocaine trade. Profits from illegal narcotics have been central to the ability of both the FARC and the Taliban to expand operations and to remain a viable fighting force even when suffering battlefield losses.
Third, the United States has played a fundamental, albeit very different, role in both conflicts. U.S. involvement in Colombia entailed training and assistance through Plan Colombia, a $10 billion package of military and development assistance. This support, more so than U.S. training efforts in Afghanistan (where the lack of strong security institutions ensures America faces much deeper challenges than in Colombia), helped boost the Colombian military’s capacity to fight the insurgency.
Colombia’s Long Road to Peace
Colombia’s long history of failed negotiations with the FARC made the 2016 peace deal all the more remarkable. Starting in the 1980s, Colombia attempted three major peace efforts with the FARC before finally attaining success last year. The first attempt in 1984 collapsed into chaos after right-wing paramilitary groups assassinated members of the FARC’s newly formed political party, the Unión Patriótica, when they tried to participate in democratic elections.
After another failed attempt at peace in 1991, the FARC and the government returned to negotiations in 1999. The FARC enjoyed a position of power during these talks, which contributed to their failure. Indeed, to facilitate negotiations, the government initially withdrew its troops from a 42,000-square-kilometer zone in the FARC’s heartland in southern Colombia. As the talks dragged on for three years, the FARC was accused of using the demilitarized zone to regroup and consolidate its power in the cocaine trade to fund future attacks. The Colombian army reentered the demilitarized zone in 2002.
By the time President Juan Manuel Santos took office in 2010, an aggressive, U.S.-backed military campaign by his predecessor had flipped the power dynamic of the armed conflict. Military strikes decimated the FARC’s leadership, killing 53 of the group’s commanders. The FARC’s membership plummeted during the same time period from more than 20,000 in 2002 to around 7,000 by 2016. The FARC refused to fully concede, even with its weakened force, but agreed to initial peace talks with the Santos government. Formal negotiations for Colombia’s fourth attempt at peace began in Havana in 2012. Four years later, peace was finally achieved.
Sobering Lessons for Afghanistan
A successful reconciliation process after three decades of excruciating false starts offers three not-so-encouraging lessons for Afghanistan.
First, negotiations won’t work with an insurgency in a position of military strength. While controversial for its links to human rights abuses and its questionable effectiveness against the drug trade, some experts see the Colombian military’s campaign against the FARC as a key component leading to the successful negotiation in 2016. After being crippled militarily, the FARCrecognized that a negotiated outcome was the best way to achieve some of its goals.
This suggests the Trump administration’s Afghanistan strategy, with its focus on ramping up military operations against the Taliban to compel it to agree to peace negotiations, is on the right track. However, Washington must reckon with a more capacity-constrained partner in Afghanistan than it had in Colombia. Afghan security forces, even after a nearly two-decade-long U.S.-led training mission, still struggle to carry out fundamental battlefield functions such as providing air cover and gathering intelligence. Their ability to team up with U.S. forces to deliver a body blow to the Taliban is far from assured. More broadly, given that more than 100,000 American troops were unable to defeat the Taliban — much less turn the tide in the war — during the height of the surge in 2010 and 2011, prospects for military success today with fewer than 15,000 troops are decidedly dim.
Second, regional patrons of the insurgency must play a successful role in encouraging negotiations. Chávez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro both pressured the FARC to abandon their armed struggle and enter negotiations. This pressure, combined with Castro’s hosting of the negotiations in Havana, likely made the guerrillas more open to discussions with the Colombian government. President Santos acknowledged Castro’s role in the peace process, saying, “Fidel Castro recognized at the end of his life that the armed struggle was not the right path. In doing so he contributed to the end of the armed conflict.”
It follows, then, that for there to be a successful negotiation process with the Taliban, the Pakistanis must play a major role in bringing the Taliban to the table. Islamabad, however, claims its influence over the Taliban has declined. Indeed, Pakistan’s relationship with the Taliban is not as symbiotic as the ones between Venezuela and Cuba and the FARC. Some Taliban members, including some senior leaders, say they mistrust Pakistan and, as Afghans, resent how Pakistan interferes in their country. U.S. officials have even accused Pakistan of pressuring the Taliban to reject negotiations. We shouldn’t overstate the ability of Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table.
Third, while international support is critical, negotiations must be protected from foreign meddling. International buy-in was critical in bringing the FARC and Bogota to the negotiating table and keeping negotiations on track. Delegations from Cuba and Norway acted as guarantors to ensure that the 2016 accord faithfully reflected what was discussed during the negotiations. However, the understanding was that they could not dictate the substance of negotiations, thereby preventing foreign meddling in what both sides viewed as a peace “for Colombians, by Colombians.”
Once again, this lesson bodes ill for Afghanistan. The good news is that the idea of a negotiated outcome to the war commands considerable international support. The United States, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China have held several meetings to discuss how to launch a peace process. However, Pakistan’s history of meddling in Afghanistan through its support to Taliban and Haqqani Network operations there suggests that a completely hands-off Pakistani role in a formal dialogue is by no means assured—despite Islamabad’s frequent assurancesthat it supports an “Afghan-led, Afghan-owned” peace process. Attempts by the Pakistanis — or, for that matter, by the United States, China, Iran, Russia, and other states with a strong stake in an eventual endgame in Afghanistan — to influence the negotiations can’t be ruled out either.
In effect, key factors that helped facilitate peace in Colombia are absent or unlikely to be present in Afghanistan anytime soon. These factors include a militarily weakened insurgency, the ability of the insurgents’ external patrons to apply successful pressure, and controlled negotiations without outside meddling.
Accordingly, the skeptic will conclude that Afghanistan is doomed to many more years of war. The optimist will counter that Afghanistan just needs more time for the right conditions to materialize. For the long-suffering people of Afghanistan, where civilian deaths from the war reached record-breaking highs this year, neither outlook brings any solace.
Jamie Shenk is a researcher with the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. Michael Kugelman is deputy director for the Asia Program and senior associate for South Asia at the Wilson Center.

@I.R.A @khafee @Joe Shearer @Indus Falcon

The interesting thing about FARC was there was a referendum (one of those institutions article mentions) put to the Colombian people by its govt in 2016, as to whether to accept the peace deal, and the slight majority of its people actually rejected it. FARC after all took a heavy toll on the society. But the govt ignored the referendum and signed the peace deal anyway.

How the country handles re-integration (esp given that referendum) of a well armed, combat seasoned far left militia (and all its larger cadre and support base) is to be seen....it has basically led to only instance in the world I have seen of pretty far right govt staying in power in Colombia for decades now. Shows the polarisation that was achieved....if you let it fester and manifest long enough (i.e traditional left, centre and right all basically support the right/far-right simply for survival/ basic national cohesion over time). There are lessons for the currents of polarisation we see in all shape and form today worldwide.

The article is good, drawing the basic parallels but also the key differences. Thanks for posting.

I am not optimistic about Afghanistan following the route of Colombia, Ireland, Peru etc.... count me as skeptic....in fact more likely to mirror the Somalia situation long term (after that terrible unnecessary war with Ethiopia in the late 70s and the long term decline afterwards)....but of course with its particular local variance with some buffer of hope.

The differences in AFG case are quite key ones from Colombia as authors pointed out. Just like many people were all hopeful and optimistic about Korean Reunification after seeing it happen in Germany in the 1988 - 1992 time period. Never happened, because as many parallels are there, the chasms of key differences are also there.
 

I.R.A

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Is there something to be worried about ? Can US make Pakistan a scapegoat should they wishes to leave Afghanistan ?


I don't think US wants or wanted to leave Afghanistan (now) ......... they didn't come there for leaving before their planned time of exit (its really a long term plan), our problem is our incompetence to connect the dots and study the key events (including the unnoticed ones) .... one thing with US is that they don't just one day attack or invade ..... they afford you a plenty of time before they start bombing your infrastructure. And seriously I don't know why people think that US would always follow the same strategy for every other country, they are very good planners. Trump is just another person to continue a different phase of their strategy and plans. Pakistani strategy makers with their current thinking and complexes won't be able to outmatch US .... never.

Afghanistan is totally a different game, that country and its situation is incomparable, there is no other conflict that can help understand Afghanistan, I think its the only region that has its second / third generation born to a continuous conflict / war, war and destruction for them is nothing new ...... they don't have anything to lose, millions of their population is deprived of being born to Afghan nationality ...... so for them the conflict can continue for another century ..... they won't care and they don't care. They are not held back by economic restrictions, they have a people who have only seen war and destruction. And after all Afghanistan is the biggest source of illegal money making .... and illegal activities.

Pakistan doesn't need invading ........ it just needs continuous monitoring and occasional interference. A leaderless Pakistan is all that is needed. And in current situation there are plenty available to achieve the desired results. Though an additional matter that may now need to be considered in plans is how to make Pakistan expensive for Chinese ..... to the point that one day they quit ...... its an ongoing thing Pakistan being the pawn for the time being. And sadly this is the only country which had the number of opportunities to go global and make a strong appearance at world stage with little costs of its own involved ...... but as I said it remains leaderless deprived of vision and thinking big.

Iran remains dubious ........ in this world of false propaganda and fake conflicts no one knows exactly whats happening behind the scenes. The Ex Taliban leader being targeted in Pakistan while coming from Iran is a big question mark.

India ...... an opportunist ........ it got lucky, but like Pakistan its people would remain second class no matter what. Like Pakistan as long as they serve the intended goals their ego can be satisfied, without improving the situation of people drastically.
 
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