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With Afghanistan high on agenda, Gen Raheel flies to US

By Kamran Yousaf in The Express Tribune, November 16th, 2015.
ISLAMABAD: Army chief General Raheel Sharif departed for Washing­ton, DC, on Sunday to kick off a five-day visit that has generated a lot of interest in both Pakistan and the United States.

This is the second time Gen Raheel has visited the US this year and comes just a month after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited Washington where he met US President Barack Obama. He is scheduled to meet senior military officials, as well as US Vice President Joe Biden, in the American capital, according to officials.

Gen Raheel in his talks with US civil and military authorities will discuss the current security situation in the region, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General (DG) Lt-Gen Asim Salim Bajwa, who is also in Washington, told The Express Tribune by telephone.

“The situation in Afghanistan will also figure during the talks,” the chief military spokesman said.

Talking to The Express Tribune, security officials in Islamabad said the army chief’s visit was planned three months ago and was aimed at interacting with US military authorities following recent changes there.

They said the army chief will share Pakistan’s perspective on key regional issues, including Afghanistan, with his US interlocutors. The focus will be on reviving the stalled peace process, the officials added.

Speaking at a news conference in Washington, the ISPR DG said Pakistan was still committed to facilitating an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace process in the war-torn country.

Officials in Islamabad are hoping for a breakthrough which will pave the way for the resumption of peace talks following Gen Raheel’s talks with US authorities.

Talking about Pakistan’s ongoing fight against terrorism, Bajwa said that Operation Zarb-e-Azb had eliminated terror infrastructure from the tribal region.

He said some militants might have fled to Afghanistan due to the sustained campaign by the Pakistani security forces along the border. However, he regretted that Afghanistan had done little to deal with the fleeing militants.

His statement came amid fresh incident of rocket fire at the Pak-Afghan border.

The Pakistani Army said that rockets were fired from Afghan side at Angor Adda in South Waziristan Agency. Five rockets were landed near the vicinity of Pak-Afghan gate inside the Pakistan territory, said the ISPR in a statement.

“Pakistanis also fired in the direction from which rockets were fired. No loss reported,” the statement added.

The latest border incident suggested that there was little headway in normalization of ties between the two neighbors despite efforts by Pakistan calling for re-engaging with Afghanistan.

The army chief’s visit also comes at a time when the world is outraged at the recent coordinated terrorist attacks in French capital France. There have been calls for more concerted efforts against the self-styled Islamic State, which has claimed the responsibility of the Paris attacks.

Officials said the emerging threat posed by IS would also be discussed during the army chief’s visit to the US.

Pakistan is adamant that IS has no footprints on its soil, although the group is reportedly established its foothold in neighbouring Afghanistan.http://tribune.com.pk/story/992225/five-day-visit-with-afghanistan-high-on-agenda-gen-raheel-flies-to-us/

Army chief’s US visit: EDITORIAL in Dawn, November 16th, 2015
AS the itinerary of Gen Raheel Sharif’s visit to the US, makes clear, this will be no ordinary visit. From a democratic perspective, this is discouraging. While Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s White House visit weeks ago yielded a meeting with President Obama and Maryam Nawaz joined US First Lady Michelle Obama to unveil a female education initiative in Pakistan, there was a sense the more meaningful discussions on national security and foreign policy would occur during Gen Sharif’s visit.Now, with the army chief set to meet virtually every senior security and military official in the US barring perhaps President Obama himself, there is clearly much serious business to be discussed.While the military leadership has clearly grabbed a great deal of space for itself domestically, the government of Mr Sharif must be faulted too for this unhappy democratic state of affairs.Have, for example, the prime minister and his senior aides really demonstrated much enthusiasm for tackling the complex problem that is Afghanistan or offered an alternative vision to the security establishment-led policy on Afghanistan?
While the domestic civil-military imbalance is worrying, there are also serious national security issues to be addressed.The Paris attacks have shocked the world and made clear that the self-styled Islamic State’s goal is to wage a global jihad on a scale that dwarfs anything Al Qaeda attempted.Given the precarious security situation in Afghanistan and the widely acknowledged vulnerabilities that the Afghanistan-Pakistan region has to the IS ideology, there is an urgent need for stabilising political actions and greater cooperation in the fight against militancy.In Afghanistan, that would mean first and foremost reviving the stalled dialogue process between the government and the Taliban.While Pakistani officials have publicly suggested that the environment is not conducive for the immediate resumption of talks, surely the meetings in Washington this week can go some way to creating the conditions for a quick return to the negotiating table.As the Afghan, US and Pakistani — and even the Chinese — states appear to have realised over the last year or two, there is a convergence of interests when it comes to keeping IS out of this region.It will not be easy, however. As background statements by senior security officials indicate, the military establishment also wants to emphasise the challenges that India is posing to regional stability. Be it the so-called India dossiers or talk of a possible civil-nuclear deal with the US or concerns about the size and scope of the Pakistani nuclear deterrent, the military leadership appears keen to emphasise its India concerns.
While India does have the potential to destabilise the region by making unwise choices, it is also the case that the military leadership here appears to be largely in a complaining mode rather than seeking ways to keep tensions in check. A dose of positivity and pragmatism could go a long way.http://www.dawn.com/news/1219936/army-chiefs-us-visit

COAS in US : edit in daily times, Nov 16, 2015
Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif has embarked on a five-day long visit to the US to continue a trend of the military conspicuously dominating Pakistan’s foreign and security policy. The urgent significance that holding these talks has for Pakistan’s top brass can be ascertained by the fact that General Raheel invited himself to the US merely weeks after Pakistan’s Prime Minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif toured the superpower and held a meeting with President Barack Obama. The COAS is set to hold a series of high-level meetings with his counterparts in the US defence infrastructure including Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Joseph Dunford and Director CIA John Brennan as well as with Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry. One of the most pressing matters that will be discussed this week is the Afghanistan situation and the prospects of resuming peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government and the role Pakistan has to play in the process. The other matter of contention is the growing concerns of the US and other world powers about Pakistan’s rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal and the development of short-range tactical nuclear missiles. Speculations of this nature dominated during the visit of Nawaz Sharif and it is likely that Pakistan’s nuclear programme will feature heavily in the COAS’s discussions. Finally, it can be gleaned that the military is unhappy with the way the PM and his staff handled their ‘carefully crafted’ dossiers allegedly indicting India in terrorist activity in Pakistan. Thus the COAS will most likely present these findings to the US officials himself in a manner the military deems more appropriate.

This will be the COAS’s second visit to the country in this calendar year and just before this visit the chief of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) General Rizwan Akhter was in the US. These developments point to the glaringly obvious fact that the military top brass is marching to the beat of its own drum in pursuing foreign policy targets. Furthermore, the eagerness with which the US administration has responded to the General’s call further cements the perception that when it comes to Pakistan’s all important security policies, the COAS manifestly wields the deciding influence. The manner in which the military is imposing itself on the constitutional domain of the civilian government is alarming but not surprising. The Nawaz government is itself to be blamed: not only does it have a malfunctioning, headless foreign ministry with no apparent plan, the government is all too happy to cede space to the military. The PM is so overcome with fear of imperilling his seat of power that he has all but given up on holding actual power. This state of affairs is a disaster waiting to happen for Pakistan’s democracy and the past informs us that we cannot have a country functional for too long with the military so dominant.http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/16-Nov-2015/coas-in-us

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