It's the monsoon season in this portion of SWA; I believe the travel guides employ the understatement "hot and wet" to describe it. However, there *are* exceptions: just north of Shangri-La, it's hot and it floods; just to the west, it's hot and it floods; just to the south, it's *really* hot and it floods; just to the east is the biggest %$#@ing desert on the subcontinent, and Shangri-La's perched on an arm of it.
The temps here have been running in the mid-forties (okay, that’s Celsius, but it *feels* cooler saying it that way -- and it's a bit chillier than the low-fifties of the last two weeks) and the grass -- in those spots where it *does* grow -- is doing fine, thenkew veddy much, unlike the fescue fringing the Castle. Zero rain, but the humidity runs about 78%, so it (and the mold) gets all the moisture it needs right from the air.
Ummmm, leastways, I *think* it’s grass -- it could be a species of exceptionally thin, nano-saguaro…
Results from Talking the Talk: I’m not sure what the coverage has been in MSM-Land, but the four-day Afghani-Pak jirga produced some interesting results. The closest suitable English translation I can conjure for jirga is “a summit conference incorporating national and trans-national entities” -- the trans-national entities being seven hundred Pashtun tribal delegates. And every tribe was *not* represented.
Next time you want to get a glazed look from your confreres in the conference room, ask them, “Did you know that there are sixty distinct Pashtun tribes in Pakistan?”
The jirga began with the usual Inter-Stan “You’re the reason we have the Taliban problem because you can’t control your own borders” cross-accusations, progressed to the Intra-Stan “We’re never going to be able to control our joint border unless we both cooperate” and finished with the Trans-Stan “None of us will tolerate terrorist sanctuaries or training centers in our territories.” Now it’s time to see how the pro-Talib tribes -- who boycotted the jirga because the Taliban was *not* invited -- will react. The jirga closed on Sunday after
1. establishing a fifty-member joint council to promote Afghani-Pak GWOT cooperation,
2. issuing a statement calling for a push to “reconcile the opposition (i.e., clansmen with Taliban relatives who support them solely because of family ties) with the rule of law” and
3. calling for both governments to “wage an all-out war” on the “nexus between narcotics and terrorism.”
Left undetermined: who will enforce the decisions and who will monitor the effectiveness of the enforcement.
Results from Walking the Walk: Pak Army Air and Frontier Forces have been lumping those members of the opposition who have previously (and vehemently) declined to reconcile with the rule of law – and every couple of days, a few Cobra crews return here to change boots and grab fresh note pads. NAI for the Cobras last week were several valleys near Datta Khel, where “militants tied to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban” have arms caches, training camps and staging areas. The “militants” have been taking casualties and losing turf and responded by murdering several tribesmen and two Afghans they accused of being “American spies.” Earlier this year, they killed three Chinese engineers on a border survey in Kashmir and claimed that they, too, had been American spies.
Ground actions included a VBIED which killed four villagers in Swat and an assault on a security post in Tanai, in South Waziristan, which left the troops unscathed and four attackers deceased. Firefights erupted in Darghai, Mana and along the Bannu-Miranshah Road -- no Army or paramilitary scout casualties; the attackers retreated. The spate of activity in Tanai and Darghai may be an indication that the terrs are being pressured from the Afghan side; most of the "opposition" in that area are Uzbeks -- they're AQ, not Taliban, and when the Pak Army cleaned their clocks in a series of fights earlier, they retreated across the border.
Note to the DNC: there are now 90,000 Pak troops deployed and fighting religious extremists on their own turf and neither the media nor the political opposition are squeaking "sectarian strife" or "civil war" because they know they'd be pilloried as fools. What they *do* call it is -- GWOT...
Meanwhile, the fire blazing in one of India’s largest ammo depots continues into its third day, with debris from explosions – including live rounds – impacting two klicks away. Two dead, thirty injured and 20,000 people evacuated from the villages surrounding Khandroo, in Indian Kashmir. Two separate Kashmiri “liberation” groups immediately claimed responsibility for the fire, but Indian authorities state “the cause is still under investigation.”
One of the customs India and Pakistan observe during their respective Independence Day celebrations is a prisoner exchange. Both sides routinely patrol (and sometimes probe) along the ill-defined Cease-Fire Line splitting Kashmir, and sometimes those patrols are discovered in the wrong place at the wrong time. When the troops know they'll be spending less than a year behind wire if they're captured, they're less likely to resist-by-fire, which helps keep the tension up there at Moderate-Extreme High rather than Critical-Extreme High.
Among those released yesterday were one hundred Indian and forty-eight Pakistani fishermen who are going to have a rough time explaining where they’ve been to their wives…
2 Comments