A Quote by Noam Chomsky
There is Pakistan's relationship with Afghanistan which will also be a very tricky issue in the coming years. Then there is a large part of Pakistan which is being torn apart from American drone attacks. The country is being invaded constantly by a terrorist superpower. Again, this is not a small problem.
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Some Pakistanis fought for the Taliban. Pakistani extremist groups provided infrastructural support to Al Qaeda. There was a coming and going of Al Qaeda militants and leaders between Afghanistan and Pakistan for several years. All that has really happened is that Al Qaeda has escaped from Afghanistan come into Pakistan, got in touch with their contacts and friends in these extremist groups, which then provided them with safe houses, cars, and not just in the border areas but also in the cities. Rooting out Al Qaeda in Pakistan now is where the main battle is being fought.
Thousands of civilians have lost their lives to terrorist attacks inside Pakistan, and thousands more will - because, unlike the Pakistani government, which has no coherent policy to deal with the radicals, the Taliban have one to deal with Pakistan and its citizens.
Pakistan always seems to have a lot of political complexities and political challenges. But Pakistan is important for a number of reasons. Primarily, it is a nuclear power. And if, in fact, al Qaeda and Taliban, which are in Pakistan and causing a lot of tragedies and deaths in Pakistan - if they would ever somehow have real influence and control of that government, then we [world] really have a problem.
The real concern is that Iran would do what Pakistan did. Pakistan wanted nuclear weapons, like Iran, purely for defensive reasons - to defend itself against India. The problem was that once Pakistan acquired the weapons, it allowed the country to be more aggressive. So they stepped up their support for the Kashmiri terrorists, and it led very quickly to the Kargil crisis in 2000, which almost sparked a nuclear war between India and Pakistan.
I've said for a long time, clearly the - a, a critical key to success in the region is going to be Pakistan and our relationship with Pakistan, which was one that was broken in the late '80s and which we've worked hard to restore.
Pakistan now is like a horror film franchise. You know, it's 'Friday the 13th, Episode 63: The Terrorist from Pakistan.' And each time we hear of Pakistan it's in that context.
Pakistan is alarmed by the rising Indian influence in Afghanistan, and fears that an Afghanistan cleansed of the Taliban would be an Indian client state, thus sandwiching Pakistan between two hostile countries. The paranoia of Pakistan about India's supposed dark machinations should never be underestimated.
Obviously Pakistan and the U.S. are very different countries, but we have common geopolitical interests in preventing communist take over in Afghanistan and hence, now that Pakistan has a government that we can cooperate with, even though it is a military government, we are working together with them in order to promote our common interests. But obviously we also differ with Pakistan on a number of issues.
We invaded Afghanistan to find bin Laden. We found him in Pakistan, and we're still in Afghanistan. We need better GPS.
As far as Afghanistan is concerned, I'm not sure whether the United States and Pakistan have the same objectives. Pakistan would like Afghanistan to be under its control.
Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?
I believed Afghanistan was always going to be hard. It's the fifth poorest country in the world. And when you fly over it, you realize that there's not much there. And, of course, it has the problem, too, of being on that border with Pakistan in basically an ungoverned region that has given the terrorists a staging ground. So it's a very difficult place. But I do believe that the mission there can succeed if success is defined as helping the Afghans to prevent the Taliban from being an existential threat to the Afghan government.
In military terms, if you're not winning, sometimes you are losing. We've seen the Taliban and associated terrorist organizations make gains in recent years. It's time to stop those gains and roll them back. There's a lot of different techniques to do so, but we cannot allow Afghanistan to once again become an ungoverned country from which terrorist organizations can launch attacks against the United States and our citizens.
America always thought it was helping Pakistan. But if it hadn't helped Pakistan, Pakistan would have been a stronger country.
Sanctions on Pakistan have been part of the troubled U.S.-Pakistan relationship in the past and should not be considered as an option in the future.
The problem with the United States is that it is making an increased use of drones/Predators [which are] particularly prominently used now in relation to Pakistan and Afghanistan...My concern is that drones/Predators are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law.
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