Thread: NATO Pulls Pakistan Into Its Global Network

NATO Pulls Pakistan Into Its Global Network

July 23, 2010
Rick Rozoff

In four months the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will hold a summit in Lisbon, Portugal. The host country was one of the 12 nations that founded the United States-dominated military bloc 61 years ago.

The rival grouping that was created six years after NATO’s formation and its expansion into Turkey and Greece in 1952 and the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955, the Warsaw Treaty Organization (Warsaw Pact), formally dissolved itself almost twenty years ago.

In the interim since its formation, having grown to 16 members by 1982 with the incorporation of Spain, NATO expanded from 12 to 28 members and absorbed 12 nations in Eastern Europe over the past 11 years. The last dozen were, except for two former Yugoslav federal republics (Croatia and Slovenia), earlier part of the Warsaw Pact and in three instances (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) also of the Soviet Union.

The North Atlantic military bloc’s sole right to maintain its name is that its major powers do largely have coastlines on the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean. The majority of its members do not. Since the Warsaw Pact’s demise and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO has subordinated all of Europe through full membership and the Partnership for Peace and more advanced programs.

The newest members of NATO graduated through successive stages of integration from the Partnership for Peace to Individual Partnership Action Plans and Membership Action Plans to full membership. All supplied troops for the occupation of Iraq and now have forces serving under NATO in the Afghan war zone.

Current members of the Partnership for Peace program in Europe are: Austria, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Finland, Ireland, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland and Ukraine. Bosnia, Moldova and Montenegro now have Individual Partnership Action Plans and Ukraine was recently granted a special Annual National Program. Russia was a member of the Partnership for Peace from 1992-1999, but suspended participation in that program and the Permanent Joint Council with NATO over the Alliance’s 78-day bombing war against Yugoslavia in 1999. However, in 2002 the NATO-Russia Council was inaugurated and though in abeyance after the 2008 Georgia-Russia war is functioning again.

All three former Soviet South Caucasus states – Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia – are Partnership for Peace members. The first two also have Individual Partnership Action Plans and Georgia its own Annual National Program, which NATO awarded it shortly after its five-day war with Russia in 2008.

In Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are in the Partnership for Peace. Kazakhstan is the first country outside of Europe (inclusive of the Caucasus) to receive an Individual Partnership Action Plan.

In the Middle East and Northern and Western Africa, the following countries are NATO Mediterranean Dialogue partners: Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. Israel and Egypt each have an Individual Cooperation Program with NATO introduced in the last three years under enhanced Mediterranean Dialogue provisions. Egypt and Jordan have small troop contingents in Afghanistan.

Under the auspices of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative of 2004, NATO has strengthened military ties with the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. All but Oman and Saudi Arabia have formalized military cooperation arrangements with NATO. The United Arab Emirates is one of 46 official Troop Contributing Nations for NATO’s war in Afghanistan and there are also Bahraini soldiers in the war theater.

The Brussels-based military bloc also has a category of military cooperation called Contact Countries, which to date include Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea. All four have assisted the war in Afghanistan in various capacities and all but Japan have provided NATO with troops. Other Asia-Pacific states have deployed troops to serve under NATO in Afghanistan and as such are arguably already Alliance partners. Those countries include Singapore, Mongolia and Malaysia.

NATO has initiated a Tripartite Commission consisting of its International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the armed forces of Afghanistan and Pakistan. A complement to the U.S.-Afghanistan-Pakistan Tripartite Commission, in 2008 former Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Karl Inderfurth referred to it as the Trilateral Afghanistan-Pakistan-NATO Military Commission, which is a more accurate, if not its formal, title.

A tally of 28 full NATO members and the partners mentioned above produces a list of at least 70 of the 192 members of the United Nations which are linked to the Western military bloc in some manner.

Of all those nations, Pakistan is the second largest, its population of 170,000,000 only surpassed by that of the U.S. It is also one of only seven nations that acknowledge possessing nuclear weapons.

NATO’s grip on Pakistan was increased in 2005 when the military bloc became involved in an earthquake relief operation in the country, NATO’s second mission in Asia.

After that Pakistani military officers attended training courses at the NATO School in Oberammergau, Germany for the first time in 2006. The Pakistani Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, General Ehsan ul Haq, visited NATO Headquarters in Brussels in the same year.

In 2007 Jaap de Hoop Scheffer became the first NATO secretary general to travel to Pakistan. In the same year Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz visited NATO Headquarters.

The next year President Pervez Musharraf made the same trip, followed by his Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, ten months afterward.

In January of 2009 NATO chief Scheffer visited Pakistan to meet with newly installed President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and army chief General Kayani.

Returning the favor, Kayani paid a visit to NATO Headquarters in May, and the next month President Zardari, nine months after assuming his post, traveled to NATO Headquarters for a meeting with the bloc’s top governing body, the North Atlantic Council, being the first elected president of Pakistan to do so. In October of last year NATO conducted an international seminar on Pakistan in Brussels which included the ambassadors of all 28 of the bloc’s member states. In December NATO launched an Individual Tailored Cooperation Package to consolidate the integration of Pakistan.

This year Pakistani Foreign Minister Qureshi was at NATO Headquarters in February to meet with the new secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and to address the North Atlantic Council, and last month Prime Minister Gilani led a large government delegation to the same location, where he also met with Rasmussen and addressed the North Atlantic Council.

On either end of the International Conference on Afghanistan held in Kabul on July 20, NATO Secretary General Rasmussen visited Tajikistan, where French NATO forces have been stationed since 2002 and where recent reports detail plans for the U.S. to open a training center [1], and Pakistan.

On July 19 Rasmussen met with Tajik Defense Minister Sherali Khairulloyev and Security Council Secretary Amirkul Azimov to coordinate a common Afghan strategy.

He arrived in Pakistan on July 21, six days after a twenty-member Pakistani parliamentary delegation completed a four-day trip to NATO Headquarters in Belgium “to share information about the Alliance’s policies and activities and to strengthen political dialogue between NATO and elected representatives of Pakistan.â€

A general tightens his grip on power in Pakistan

By Omar Waraich
Saturday, 24 July 2010

As was once said of Prussia, Pakistan is not so much a country with an army but an army with a country. That fact was made clear when Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced that the army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, has been given an extension for another three years.

The move was not a great surprise. A weak and unpopular civilian government is in no position to resist a powerful army chief's sense of his own indispensability. But what made many gasp was the length of the extension: General Kayani, who was due to retire in November, will remain in his post until 2013, establishing him as the most powerful man in the country.

The extension was necessary, Mr Gilani said on Thursday, in light of the critical fight against Islamist militancy. General Kayani's leadership has been instrumental in securing impressive successes against the Pakistani Taliban in Swat, South Waziristan and elsewhere in the north-west.

Washington and other Western allies will probably champion the move. Given the delicate state of Afghanistan, where US and Nato forces are struggling, General Kayani's cooperation will be key.

In recent weeks, he has opened up a direct line of communication with the Afghan President Hamid Karzai and has offered to lure elements of the Afghan Taliban to the negotiating table.

But many here also question the move. "It augurs badly for democracy in this country," said Kamran Shafi, a respected commentator and former soldier. "The last time a civilian government gave a military chief an extension, it was General Ayub Khan. Later, he took over and ruled the country as a dictator for a decade, in the first of four military dictatorships. It's been downhill ever since."

There is also speculation about the impact of the move on Pakistan's army. By favouring an individual over an institution – and blocking promotion opportunities for senior generals – there is likely to be quiet discontent.

The extension also underscores the army's enduring clout. Since assuming power in March 2008, the civilian government has been steadily ceding prerogatives that are taken for granted in established democracies.

Early attempts to forge an independent foreign policy by improving relations with Delhi, Kabul and Tehran foundered. Now, as analyst Najam Sethi says, "When it comes to policy in regards to the US, Afghanistan and India, it is General Kayani who is calling the shots."

Last week's failed peace talks between India and Pakistan is being seen as a stubborn refusal by hawkish elements within both countries' establishments to dim their hostility.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 34068.html