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A broad sweep of the history of Pak-Afghan relations since 1947 reveals that at its core, Pakistans policy is dictated by its insecurity vis--vis the Durand Line. Right from 1947, Pakistan was faced with a western border that was disputed by its neighbour just as, in its perceptions, India in the east too was seeking to undo Partition.

Afghanistan was the only country that opposed Pakistans membership to the United Nations on September 30, 1947 on the grounds that treaties with Britain lapsed when a new state, Pakistan, was created. As such, for Afghanistan, the Durand Line that demarcated the border between Afghanistan and British India after the Second Afghan War ceased to exist.

In any case, the Afghans considered the 1878 Treaty of Gandamak and the Durand Agreement of 1893 as unjust agreements imposed on them by Britain, which they were forced to accept after a military defeat. Every Afghan government has hoped to re-annex the territories east of the border, extending up to the River Indus.

For its part, Pakistan treats the Durand Line as a settled fact, especially after King Amanullah Khan confirmed it in 1919 following his defeat by the British. However, Pakistan has always been insecure about the lack of its acceptance by Afghanistan.The insecurity is real given the common Pakhtun population straddling both sides of the Durand Line and about 2025 per cent of Pakistans territory being vulnerable to any Afghan revanchist designs.

Pakistans policies towards Afghanistan are, therefore, geared to get an Afghan government accept the sanctity of the Durand Line as the international border so that no ambiguity is left as far as its western borders are concerned.

According to the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan Mullah Abdul Salam Zaif, Pakistan tried three times to formalise the border during the Taliban rule in Afghanistan but it repeatedly received a negative response. The first time was when Mullah Abdul Raziq was appointed as the interior minister; the second time during thevisit of Pakistans interior minister Moinuddin Haider to Kabul and Kandahar; and the third time during the presidency of General Pervez Musharaf.

The policy of securing the border has two objectives. One, a strong government in Afghanistan would be dangerous as it could try and recover Pakhtun territories lost to the Sikhs and inherited by Pakistan via the British. Therefore, Pakistans policy had to ensure a weak government in Kabul that was dependent on Pakistan. This would be the best guarantee against any revanchist posture.

The second objective is based on Pakistans perception about India. Pakistan views its relations with Afghanistan not merely in a bilateral context but in a South Asian context too, coupled with the perceived relationship that the US has with India and Pakistan.

A nightmare scenario for Pakistan would be for India to encourage the revanchist claims of a strong and friendly (towards India) Afghanistan. This Indo-Afghan alliance would catch Pakistanin a vice-like grip with a hostile India on the east and a hostile Afghanistan on the west.

For this reason, Pakistan has determined that India must not be allowed any space in Afghanistan. Only a proxy government in Kabul, or a weak and dependent Afghan government that toes Pakistans line can ensure this.

Pakistans deep involvement in Afghanistan has intermittently given it a seat on the high table for a while, and as a front-line state brought it financial assistance. Has it brought it more security? In reality, the blowback from Afghanistan has had major adverse consequences for Pakistan.

The grievous miscalculation that Pakistan is making is to envision that a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan will toe its line. If there has been one lesson from Afghan history, it is that no outsider has been able to dominate it for long. This is what the British learnt in the 19th century, the Soviets in the 20th and the US in the 21st.

Pakistan is no different but it will not stop trying due to its obsessive desire to control and install a weak and dependent government in Kabul. In the process, given the cost that it has borne for its Afghan policy, Pakistan is fast becoming the next victim of this "graveyard of empires".

Tactically, a weak and dependent Afghanistan may help temporarily to calm the insecurities of Pakistans military. However, over the long-term, it has brought in its wake refugees, drugs, "Kalashnikov culture", and heightened the religious identity of the Pakhtuns even as the concept of "strategic depth" itself has become redundant given the fact that both India and Pakistan are nuclear weapon states.

It is only when the army accepts Afghanistan as a sovereign country entitled to have its own policies that best serves its own interests, and realises that the Afghans are first and foremost Afghans, that a dent will be made in Pak-Afghan relations. Till then, the blowback from Afghanistan will continue to push Pakistan towards the abyss.

(Re-printed with publisher's permission.)

Also read: How Afghanistan and Taliban have turned against Pakistan

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Pakistan pushing itself towards the abyss with its Afghanistan obsession - DailyO

Peace activist to discuss Afghanistan, drone war Republican Eagle She has spent many weeks in Afghanistan observing the effects of the United States war in Afghanistan. She also will speak on the effects of the U.S. drone war in the Middle East. Her talk is free and open to all. ---. Website: http ...

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Peace activist to discuss Afghanistan, drone war - Republican Eagle

Updated January 19, 2017 09:14:28

Two married clowns who met while performing and teaching children in an Afghanistan circus are now capturing the imagination of families in Melbourne with their latest project about growing up.

New York-based couple Seth Bloom and Christina Gelsone met in Kabul while performing and setting up a circus project to train Afghan adults and children in the art of clown skills and comedy.

"Two clowns meet in Afghanistan - it sounds like a joke," Bloom said.

"You hope in a country that has so much struggle that such a project can succeed and continue, so I went back on and off for about three months every year to train Afghans and then they took over and it's still running."

The couple also worked in other conflict-ravaged areas around the world.

The pair initially trained adult performers to use comedy to spread awareness about important social issues like land mine dangers and malaria prevention.

Gelsone said because she was female, she was able to teach acrobatics and circus skills to girls, who were not usually permitted to use the gyms.

Bloom said he was inspired by the children's determination.

"My favourite part of working there is that ... five years into it the children who were learning circus skills and performing in schools around Kabul came and said, 'Hey, we don't want to just do juggling and acrobatics, we want to do educational shows for other school kids," he said.

"The best part about circus and arts is that it lets you dream, it lets kids have a childhood.

"A man I worked with said, 'sometimes laughter is more important than food' and by the last year I was working there, I understood why kids might not eat but come to the circus.

"Because they want to have fun and dream of a better Afghanistan."

The pair is currently in Australia performing their show Air Play at Melbourne's Arts Centre.

They use giant balloons, billowing plumes of silk, confetti and umbrellas to weave a story of young siblings growing up.

"We call it a visual poem of childhood," Gelsone said.

"The audience is so participatory that the story that they see is also a little bit of them."

Bloom added that it was about a brother and sister, or two friends, growing up together and leaving - a rite of passage within real families.

"But our story is open to interpretation: someone came to our show and said, 'It's so contemporary, you're bringing everything with you in your suitcases, it's about immigration!' so that was her story," he said.

"We like the audience to come and sit and meet us half way with their imagination."

Topics: community-and-society, melbourne-3000, vic, afghanistan

First posted January 19, 2017 06:33:17

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After clowning around in Afghanistan, Social Circus performers bring latest Air Play show to Melbourne - ABC Online

Abdulgadir Masharipov, the main suspect in the Istanbul nightclub attack on New Years Eve, was arrested on Monday night. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

A man suspected of shooting dead 39 people in a New Years Eve attack on a nightclub in Istanbul is an Uzbek national who trained in Afghanistan, Turkish officials have said.

Abdulkadir Masharipov was captured late on Monday in a raid by security forces on a house in Esenyurt, a residential district of Istanbul, 25 miles from where the attack took place.

In the last two weeks dozens of people across Turkey have been detained and questioned in connection with the assault at the Reina nightclub, which was claimed by Islamic State in revenge for Turkish military involvement in Syria.

Istanbuls governor, Vasip ahin, said Masharipov was well educated, spoke four languages and had operated under the alias Ebu Muhammed Horasani. He said the suspect had trained in Afghanistan, entered Turkey in January 2016 and clearly carried out the attack in the name of Isis.

On the night of the attack the gunman arrived by taxi at the nightclub in the Ortaky district and shot dead a 21-year-old police officer, Burak Yldz, and Ayhan Ark, a 47-year-old travel agent who had been walking past the entrance.

He then went inside and started spraying the club with bullets. The attacker repeatedly reloaded his weapon to shoot the wounded as they lay on the ground. Citizens of Israel, France, Tunisia, Lebanon, India, Belgium, Jordan and Saudi Arabia were among the victims, and 70 people were injured.

A Turkish counter-terrorism official told the Guardian the security officers who located Masharipov had worked on finding individuals connected with the suspect after identifying him and confirming who he was thanks to a foreign intelligence agency.

Officers then worked to trace his movements in recent days, deploying all the resources at the disposal of the security services. There were raids or checks on about 150 addresses associated with Masharipov, detentions of a few dozen individuals possibly linked with him, and a review of approximately 7,200 hours of surveillance footage. They did a good job of connecting the dots, the official said.

The official said the investigation would now focus on Masharipovs accomplices who are other members of his cell, who gave him instructions and picked the target, who provided him with weapons, and are they are planning other attacks in the country.

This is obviously a network of people, and theyre trying to establish what that network is about, the official said, indicating that initial assessments favoured the theory that Masharipov had received instructions rather than acted alone. We havent fully assessed the target selection. Was he advised by someone? Who did the target selection? He didnt do it opportunistically.

The official said the fact that Masharipov, born in Fergana, Uzbekistan, was not on an Interpol watchlist and did not come from Syria highlighted the need for better intelligence sharing.

When you think about how did it happen, its a classic soft-target attack and the best prevention is intelligence, particularly since hes not a Turkish citizen, the official said. This guy, although he was known to have terrorist ties, wasnt on Interpol, and anybody who knew him didnt report him to us either.

The militant group he trained with in Afghanistan has yet to be identified.

Few Isis militants who have carried out attacks in the Europe or the US have been interrogated in the aftermath, most engaging in a suicidal effort, and there have been fewer still whose interrogations could yield information on attacks in the planning stages.

The official said another piece of the puzzle in Masharipovs case was identifying his motivation for staying alive. He had money and family. Hes not a suicide fighter so there are questions about motivation and ideology, the official said.

ahin said Masharipov had confessed to carrying out the massacre and that his fingerprints matched those of the attacker. He can be held for up to 30 days under Turkeys state of emergency, which was introduced after a failed coup attempt in July, before he is charged and formally arrested.

Four people were arrested with Masharipov, ahin said. An Iraqi man was detained as well as three women from various countries from Egypt and from Africa. There is a high chance that they may be connected [to Isis] because they were staying in the same house.

After fleeing the scene of the massacre, it is believed the gunman initially hid in a safehouse, where he was joined by his wife and children.

The newspaper Hrriyet said on Tuesday that the suspects wife and one-year-old daughter were caught in a police operation in Zeytinburnu, a working-class district of Istanbul, on 12 January.

The Turkish television channel NTV said the suspects son had been taken into protective custody. It said police had established the gunmans whereabouts four or five days ago but delayed the raid so they could monitor his movements and contacts.

The Turkish counter-terrorism official said Masharipov tried to resist his arrest during the raid, but didnt have the chance to fetch the weapons he had stashed in the house when he was captured, so officers were able to subdue him without a gunfight.

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Istanbul nightclub attack: suspected gunman 'had training in Afghanistan' - The Guardian

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WHITEMAN AIR FORCE BASE, Mo. -- Liberty often comes at a steep cost.

One military family from the metro wants to remind everyone of that, while taking to the streets of Washington during Friday's presidential inauguration.

Freedom isn't free. That's a lesson Linda Ambard wants the world to recognize. She's reminded of that day, April 27, 2011, when her husband, U.S. Air Force Maj. Phillip Ambard, was killed during a mass shooting at his military installation near Kabul, Afghanistan.

Ambard says she didn't ask for notoriety, pointing out she was a stay-at-home mother before her husband's untimely death. She now works in a civilian role at Whiteman Air Force Base. Ambard says when her husband was killed in that attack, she says her world fell apart, and she moved to Germany to escape an atmosphere that no longer claimed her.

"You lose where you lived, your support system, and your support network. People don't treat you the same. You become a visible reminder of what can happen to their husbands," Ambard told FOX 4 News on Wednesday.

Ambard's younger brother, U.S. Air Force Chap. Maj. David Leonard, helped conduct his brother-in-law's funeral. Services were held at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado, where Maj. Ambard served as a professor.

"I think it's important that we, as a nation, don't forget the cost of our freedom and that we support those who have had to pay those prices," Chap. Maj. Leonard said.

Linda Ambard says a non-profit group called TAPS helped her in a time of desperate need. TAPS provides counseling, retreats and educational options to those who are left behind.

"Very few people understand what a Gold Star Family is," Ambard said. "(TAPS) was a place for me to feel normal. You come together and you share your stories, your laugh or your tears."

This Friday, Ambard will march during the Presidential Inaugural Parade, bringing exposure to TAPS, an agency that she said helped her live again.

"I think it's important that we, as a nation, don't forget the cost of our freedom and that we support those who have had to pay those prices," Ambard said.

Ambard says she's thankful to her late husband for her life, for their 23-and-a-half year marriage, and for his sacrifice. She's hopeful her demonstration in D.C. will help every American feel that same gratitude.

Ambard will leave for Washington D.C. on Thursday morning. She's a mother of five children, four of whom have served in the United States Armed Forces.

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Metro military mom, wife who lost husband in Afghanistan to march in inaugural parade - fox4kc.com