Mediaboss Marketing

A Pakistani politician said Pakistans wrong policies towards Afghanistan divided the people of the two neighboring countries.

On the second day of the 4th Afghanistan-Central Asia Dialogue conference in Bamiyan, Bushra Gohar, the senior vice-president of Pakistans Awami National Party, said that insurgency would harm Pakistan if Islamabad did not change its negative policies towards Afghanistan.

She said Pakistan has always vowed to help secure peace and stability in Afghanistan, but added that Islamabad has not delivered on its promises in this respect.

According to her, Pakistans wrong policy is the main reason which divides Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Same as (a Pakistani leader Khan Abdul) Wali Khan says if we throw stones to other houses we will not receive flowers in return. If we let our soil to be used by insurgent groups among whom there is no good (terrorists) and bad (terrorists), they will use our soil (for their own interests), she said.

She said peace with the Taliban would mean giving legitimacy to the group.

They (Taliban) do not deserve to be talked to; they are those whose hands are red with the blood of innocent people. They (the Taliban) must be isolated, she said in a response to question by TOLOnews reporter about talks with the Taliban.

At the same event, an advisor to Iran Foreign Ministry Sayed Rasul Musavi rejected Tehrans support to insurgents saying that insecurity in Afghanistan is not in favor of his country.

He also rejected Irans interference in Afghanistans affairs.

Our problems have increased whenever we had a negative situation in Afghanistan either migrants problems or border problems between Iran and Afghanistan, he said.

A member of the High Peace Council meanwhile labeled lack of rule of law and drugs mafia influence in government as the main reasons behind insecurity and instability in the country.

Those who have weapons they will have more power, those who have money they will have extra power. Unfortunately, the international community is involved in unjust distribution of money, the HPC deputy chief Habiba Sarabi said.

Representatives of at least 10 countries attended the two-day Afghanistan-Central Asia Dialogue conference in Bamiyan where they discussed ways to create coordination in the region in order to cope with the challenges on the ground, namely terrorism.

Read this article:
Islamabad Asked To Change Its 'Wrong Policies' Toward Afghanistan - TOLOnews

By Deborah Avant By Deborah Avant July 12

The New York Times reported July 10on meetings between President Trump, his top advisers and private military and security company (PMSC) magnates, Erik Prince (founder of Blackwater) and Stephen A. Feinberg (owner of DynCorp International) to discuss plans for having contractors take over U.S. operations in Afghanistan. The plans are said to hew closely to the Wall Street Journal op-ed Erik Prince published in June proposing a MacArthur solution to Afghanistan. Like the historical analogy it borrows from, the plan proposes a U.S. viceroy, but unlike MacArthur, the viceroy would carry out his plans with the help of a private army.

Could such a plan actually improve counterinsurgency, leading to the success that has thus eluded the U.S. (and NATO)? In a word: no. And the plan is much more than a different strategy; it reformulates (one might say privatizes) U.S. goals.

General studies of PMSCs (though not focused on counterinsurgency, per se) begin to shed light on their overall impact on war. Looking at civil wars in Africa, only when there is competition among companies do PMSCs working for government and rebels have a positive effect on civil war termination. This suggests that we may not want the unified effort Prince envisions.

Data from Iraq show that competition is not enough. Only when there is competition joined by contracts with particular performance incentives do PMSCs reduce violence in an area. And using the Private Security Database (PSD) to focus on contracts between governments and PMSCs in failed or failing states notably applicable for Afghanistan is shown to increase conflict severity.

More detailed studies show that PMSCs work differently than military forces and should increase our skepticism of their counterinsurgency value. Different recruitment, motivation, rules, training and flexibility all contribute to a number of well-known concerns over misbehavior by individuals, PMSCs and the governments (and other clients) that contract with them. The International Code of Conduct (ICoC), Private Security Standardsand other transnational regulatory efforts the U.S. has supported all limit PMSC behavior in ways that address these concerns by drawing PMSCs closer to common rules for public forces. (It is worth mentioning that a PMSC could not do some of what Prince calls for, like fighting alongside Afghan forces, without violating these regulations and the regulations are now required for private security providers working for the Pentagon in contingency operations abroad.)

Beyond all of this, evaluating Princes plan as an attempt to improve counterinsurgency has three significant difficulties. First, it would not solve the thorniest problem: working with the Afghan government. Just as U.S. and NATO leaders do, the viceroy would have to work closely with the Afghan government. My guess is that the Afghan government might not react warmly to this new viceroy what then?

Second, everything we know about successful counterinsurgency tells us that it requires close integration between political goals and forces. It is the tethering of force to common and shared concerns that begin to build its legitimacy and thus the political buy-in on which stable governance is built. But with PMSCs you often trade integration away. This has been particularly true with U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Third, though Prince is right that hiring locals might be cheaper and also provide contextual knowledge, which can be critical to successful counterinsurgency when local knowledge is used to satisfy the concerns of external or private patrons rather than common concerns, it contributes to warlordism. Warlordism is the worst form of rentier state, neither stable nor legitimate. A viceroy, working to secure Afghanistans resources, threatens to do just this. (By the way, the East India Company that Prince touts as a model also generally yielded warlords and to the extent that it achieved the stability Prince claims, it was only due to continual intervention by British forces.)

These shortcomings are why many similar plans that Prince has touted over the past 10 years such as those for private forces to replace NATOor the U.N.(Prince actually visited me at my George Washington University office to pitch the latter), respond to the genocide in Darfurand more have been politely refused by previous U.S. administrations. They also explain why Gens. MacMaster and Mattis are reportedly less than supportive.

But the plan Prince describes is not just unlikely to improve the United States ability to conduct counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, it reflect entirely different of U.S. goals. Instead of an albeit flawed policy aimed at building a legitimate government willing to be part of the international community, this plan aims only to secure resources (and it is not even clear for whom).

On that count, it is strikingly similar to news this month that the Kremlin is now rewarding PMSCs that seize oil and mining facilities from the Islamic State in Syria with profits from those same facilities. Princes MacArthur strategy aims not to help Afghanistan reach its potential, but to protect its resources. Had the U.S. had such goals in post-World War II Japan, its unlikely that we would remember the MacArthur strategy with the same reverence.

Deborah Avant is a professor and director of the Si Chou-Kang Center for International Security and Diplomacy at the University of Denvers Josef Korbel School of International Studies.

More here:
Private military contractors aren't going to do a better job in ... - Washington Post

The manicured emerald pitch at Lords in London, where Afghanistan played for the first time ever Tuesday, is a world away from the border refugee camps where the country found its love for cricket.

In dusty Pakistani camps like Khurasan, young barefoot cricketers have no pitch, no kit, no wickets, no helmets, no gloves and no shade -- only the hunger that helped catapult Afghanistan into the elite group of Test nations last month.

Millions of Afghans fleeing war have sought refuge for nearly 40 years in camps outside Pakistans border city of Peshawar, where they have been exposed to the cricketing fever that has gripped their neighbouring nation since Britain colonised the sub-continent centuries ago.

We learned cricket here and we took this cricket with us to Afghanistan, and now Afghanistan has a team which plays on a world level and the entire world has recognised it, 35-year-old Abdul Wahid, a refugee from Kunar province, tells AFP.

He and a generation of Afghans spent years cheering for the Pakistani team before daring to dream of more.

Wahid, who missed out on a spot in the national team but now coaches refugees, says his contemporaries in the camps learned to play with tennis balls. The best of them would go on to join academies in Peshawar, where they encountered the hard cricket ball for the first time.

Faridullah Shah, a coach with the Pakistan Cricket Board, remembers the fierce determination of the Afghan players who reached the academies.

They used to work as labourers until the afternoon and were later playing cricket here... The team of Afghan players was named the Team of Chickens as many were trying to survive by supplying poultry in Peshawar, he says.

They worried about how to afford kit but played every day, Shah recalls. They had extreme eagerness -- more than our players -- and that was the reason for their success.

Surviving on biscuits

At the Islamia Cricket Academy, selector Qazi Shafiq, a former first class player, agrees.

Afghans are quick learners -- if you pinpoint a mistake, he understands ... then he will work hard on that, Shafiq says.

I will not mention his name but one Afghan national player told me that he had to borrow money to reach here... and then he could only afford a 10-rupee (10-cent) packet of biscuits a day on which to survive.

Afghanistan cricket team have achieved great success in the international stage, having recently drawn an ODI series in the West Indies. (Getty Images)

Asghar Khan, a coach and twice the president of the Peshawar district cricket association, remembers Afghan players as the beauty of tournaments here.

He rattles off a list of names, from Mohammad Nabi -- whom Khan praises for his long, long sixes -- up to Asghar Stanikzai, captain of the Afghan cricket team. All learned in Peshawar, Khan says, with many like Shapoor Zadran beginning in the refugee camps.

A picture of Afghan cricket star Muhammad Shahzad from his days as a club player in Peshawar is still on display in Gymkhana, the biggest of the citys cricket academies -- testament to his entertaining playing style even as he faces an ICC suspension for failing a drug test.

Fans in the Taliban

Today, the number of Afghan cricketers training in the Peshawar academies is dwindling, officials say.

Pakistan launched a controversial bid to drive refugees back into Afghanistan last year which has seen hundreds of thousands of people flow back over the porous border, while new restrictions imposed by both Islamabad and Kabul are also affecting the players.

Rashid Khan has created several records for Afghanistan and he has been the key behind the teams success. (AFP)

Whether the changes will stall the countrys meteoric rise remains to be seen.

Cricket in Afghanistan struggled under the hardline Islamist Taliban, which viewed sports as a distraction from religious duties.

But now even members of the Taliban -- whose regime was toppled 16 years ago but is now surging again, dealing stinging blows to Afghan forces -- have caught the cricketing bug, one insurgent commander tells AFP.

Now, not only do they listen to cricket on radio, but they even play it when they have spare time, the commander says.

The ecstasy with which Afghans greeted the news they had been granted Test status, and the enthusiasm with which fans watched the Lords match -- even though it was rained out, leaving the players without a result -- suggests a brighter future for cricket players, even as insecurity spirals once more.

Arshad Khan, a 17-year-old left arm spin bowler from eastern Nangarhar province who now trains at the Islamia academy, says he has made a commitment to himself that one day he will play for Afghanistan.

I am hopeful that I will be selected, the young refugee says.

The rest is here:
Afghanistan cricket team's meteoric rise: From refugee camps to Lord's - Hindustan Times

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran on Saturday blamed what it called Donald Trump's "arbitrary and conflicting policies" for global security threats, rejecting the U.S. president's description of Tehran as a rogue state.

Tensions between Iran and the United States have heightened since the election of Trump, who has often singled out Tehran as a key backer of militant groups.

"(Trump) ought to seek the reason for subversion and rebellion in his own arbitrary and conflicting policies and actions, as well as those of his arrogant, aggressive and occupying allies in the region," said foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi, quoted by Iran's state news agency IRNA.

President Trump said on Thursday that new threats were emerging from "rogue regimes like North Korea, Iran and Syria and the governments that finance and support them".

Senior Iranian officials have blamed U.S-allied Saudi Arabia, Iran's Sunni Muslim regional rival, for instability and attacks in the Middle East, including last month's assaults that killed 18 people in Tehran.

Saudi Arabia has denied involvement in the attacks which were claimed by Islamic state.

While Trump has kept up his criticism of Tehran, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday that the president was "very likely" to state that Iran is adhering to its nuclear agreement with world powers although he continues to have reservations about it.

Reporting by Dubai newsroom; Editing by Stephen Powell

See original here:
Iran blames Trump for instability, rejects 'rogue' label - Reuters

When ten American sailors found themselves captives of Irans Revolutionary Guards Corps in the Persian Gulf last year, then-Secretary John Kerry secured their freedom in less than sixteen hours. He used a remarkable instrument to score this stunning victory: A telephone.

Within hours of their capture, Kerry had his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, on the line. They spoke five times that evening, but they already had a deal by the second call. The subsequent conversations served to handle logistical issues and resolve problems and misunderstandings that arose along the way.

For instance, at one point U.S. Navy ships and helicopters were approaching the Iranian island where the sailors were kept. Please tell your navy not to get close, Zarif told Kerry, his tone revealing the urgency of the matter. We dont want a military confrontation. But if your planes get close, we will have serious trouble. Kerry immediately hung up and called General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to urge him to pull back. Were risking potential escalation here, Kerry told the general. They were giving us positive indications that they are gonna release these guys, so we should back off the helicopters for now and test if this is real. Dunford complied, and a dangerous confrontation was avoided. To prove that the sailors were safe, Zarif emailed a picture of them from his Gmail account to Kerrys State Department email.

It had taken two years of intense discussions and negotiations for Kerry and Zarif to build the rapport that enabled them to so quickly resolve unforeseen crises such as that of the U.S. sailors. But once the channel of communications and the rapport had been established, its utility and efficiency was unquestionable. Indeed, the sailors incident could have ended up as another prolonged hostage crisis. Instead, most Americans have not even heard of their mishap.

Today, there are many unforeseen crises that risk bringing the U.S. and Iranindeed, the entire Middle Eastinto direct confrontation. The U.S. and Iran have a shared interest in defeating ISIS in Iraq, but after the fall of Mosul, the balance of their interest may lead them in a more confrontational direction. A similar dynamic is playing out in Syria, where the U.S. already has shot down Iranian drones and bombed Iranian-sponsored groups. Moreover, tensions in the Persian Gulf are rising as Saudi Arabia appears to have received a green light from the Trump administration to double down on confrontation and bullying.

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had no illusions about the end goal of the Saudis. The Saudis always want to fight the Iranians to the last American, he told his French counterpart in 2010. Since then, the Saudi appetite for a U.S.-Iran war has only grown.

Despite these hotspots, the Trump administration and Secretary Rex Tillerson have allowed the hotline with Tehran to go cold. Despite the significant risk of war, not a single phone call has taken place between Tillerson and Zarif. Not a single attempt at resolving the tensions diplomatically has been made.

When asked about diplomacy with Iran during his visit to the Saudi kingdom, Tillerson said that he had no plans to reach out to Iran, although he didnt rule it out in the future.

That is simply not good enough. It is the foremost responsibility of the President and his administration to keep America safe and to only put American servicemen and women in harms way once all other options have been exhausted.

On both of these counts, the Trump administration doesnt just fail, they fail abysmally because they havent even tried. The United States is about to sleepwalk into yet another devastating war in the Middle East without a debate as to whether such an escalation lies in the U.S.s national interest, and without the Trump administration even giving lip service to diplomacy. Other potential foes in the world observe this behavior as they consider the payoff of peaceful engagement with the U.S. versus conflict. Do we want to send those actors the message that the U.S. shoots first and asks questions later?

The George W. Bush administration at least had the decency to lie to the American public when it sold the electorate the Iraq War. And however skewed and faulty, the Iraq War was preceded by a debate and a vote in Congress. Though President Bush eschewed diplomacy, he nevertheless presented a deeply flawed case as to why diplomacy no longer was an option. Trump and Tillerson simply dont even bother.

The Trump administrations recklessness is endangering America and putting American servicemen and women at risk. If Tillerson was supposed to be the adult in the room steering Trump in the right direction, he needs to start to act the part.

Before the escalation with Iran reaches a point of no return, diplomacy must be given a chance. That responsibility falls on Mr. Tillerson. The former Exxonmobil CEO has Zarifs number. Its time he places a call.

Trita Parsi is the author of Losing an Enemy Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy. He is the president of the National Iranian American Council.

Read this article:
Secretary Tillerson, It's Time to Phone Iran - The American Conservative