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$I Anonymous 11/07/14(Fri)16:01:42 No.23508207 =>>23508234 >>23508291 Also, I guess this is more of a /pol/ question, but can someone explain what the f--- the deal with Pakistan is? >has F-16s >raids Russians in Afgha >houses terrorists What's even going on in that country? For someone who posses a threat to India (one of top 10 militaries in the world), I don't know s--- about it. Bunch of Pakis running around doing p--- s---. I Anonymous 11/07/14(Fri)16:09:13 No.23508291=>>23508367 >>23508417 >>23512583 >>23513532 >>23508207 Sit down, this is going to be a long one. When the UK left the Indian subcontinent, they left behind a Muslim and Hindu population that didn't much like each other. In a series of extreme communal bloodbaths that killed perhaps half a million people, the Muslim and Hindu sections of the subcontinent were partitioned into India and Pakistan. India and Pakistan fought constant wars, and when Pakistani corruption and mismanagement led to East Pakistan, which was occupied by Bengals, to revolt, the Pakistanis reacted with one of the most systematic mass killings since the days of the Third Reich. This led to 12 million East Pakistani refugees flooding into India, which in turn led to one of the most massive conventional wars since WW2. India won, and Pakistan was totally shocked by this due to the extent that their government had lied to them. This led to East Pakistan becoming the independent country of Bangladesh, and Pakistan losing like 50% of its territory and population, seemingly overnight. Pakistan became paranoid and isolated, and vowed never to let this happen again. The military strongman in charge of Pakistan, Zia Al-Huq, also began supporting Islamist political parties to shore up his domestic support. In between 1970 and 1990, the number of madrassas in Pakistan increased from a small minority to one of the most important sources of education for the Pakistani lower class. Part 1/whatever I Anonymous 11/07/14(Fri)16:17:08 No.23508417 =E>>23508476 >>23508482 >>23508524 >>23508589 >>23508740 >>23512583 >>23513869 >>23508291 Pakistan's idea of "never again" didn't involve dealing with the corrupt military strongmen or their fundamentally broken system of government or any s--- like that. It involved creating strategic depth for Pakistan by establishing a friendly government in nearby Afghanistan, where the Pakistanis could base their operations. It also meant a Pakistani nuclear program, which the US really didn't want. The Americans tried with sanctions (namely the Pressler amendment) to prevent the Pakis from getting the bomb. Then of course, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and Zia al-Hug and his ISI (the main P--- intelligence service) offered to be the main source of support for the Mujihadeen. Pakistani intelligence managed to gain a huge amount of control over the ensuing campaign, being able to starve warlords they disagreed with of arms, while making sure that Islamists such as Sayyaf and Hekmatyar remained swimming in dough and guns. Sayyaf, a leader of foreign Arab volunteers in the country, had a young protege from a wealthy Arab family who liked writing big checks and seemed to be a good fit. His name was Osama Bin Ladin. Fast forward a few years and the Soviets have left Afghanistan, and the US simply doesn't care about the country any more. The Pakistanis are free to continue supplying whoever they like, and they begin to arm Islamists to take over the country on their behalf, thus granting their long term foreign policy goal of a friendly government in Afghanistan. These Islamists are known as the Taliban, or "students." 2/who the f--- even knows I Anonymous 11/07/14(Fri)16:28:14 No.23508589 =>>23508716 >>23512583 >>23508417 Meanwhile, our friend Osama has gotten kicked out of another Islamist pariah state, Sudan, and come to live with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The situation with India has continued to simmer, and in 1998/1999 it nearly turned into a nuclear war. The Islamist movement in Pakistan has gone from a fringe political group that the military uses to support its own control of the country to a powerful force in Pakistani politics. The ISI itself, as well as the Pakistan military and government at large, have been infiltrated heavily by Islamist extremists. The US remains a steadfast ally of Pakistan, because it's a pretty easy country to buy support from, and because India had fallen into the Soviet sphere of influence during the Cold War and things kind of continued from there. When 9/11 hits, Pakistan is under the control of another strongman named Musharraf, who is as pro-American as a Pakistani leader can be at this point and still be alive. Pakistan, ever since the 1971 war, has become paranoid and blames India and the US for all of its problems. The US enlists Pakistan as an ally in its "War on Terror," an effort to deal with the trans-national Sunni radicalism that is sweeping the Muslim world. Unfortunately, Pakistan isn't interested in losing its vassal state, and is terrified that an independent Afghan government would fall under the sway of India. The US campaign in Afghanistan looks amazingly successful at first, but when the Iraq War takes attention off of it, and particularly around the time of the Surge, when US combat troops became very rare, the Taliban manages to pull an amazing rebound from a sclerotic dictatorship to a successful insurgency, rooted in the Pashtun tribal culture of the region and taking advantage of the lack of law and order to provide an effective legal system and security where the government can provide none. 3/War and Peace I Anonymous 11/07/14(Fri)16:38:26 No.23508740 =>>23508779 >>23508837 >>23512583 >>23508417 By 2006, it's clear that the Taliban are beginning to come back, and increasingly clear that our Pakistani allies are funding, arming and training them. In 2007, Benazir Bhutto, the prime minister of Pakistan, is killed by Islamist bombers, probably with the complicity of elements of the Pakistani government. The war against the Pakistani Taliban is raging, even as the Pakistani government attempts to bribe them with supplies to fight the US, and elements of Pakistan's government support Taliban in both countries.\ The Pakistan government is officially invested in the war in terror and drone strikes are ongoing. The Northwest Frontier province has never, at any point in Pakistan's history, been under any real control by the central government, and fighting the Taliban there proves hard, especially with half the government on their side. In between 2000 and 2010, more than 35,000 Pakistanis are killed by terrorism, and an estimated quarter trillion dollars in economic damage is wrought by the war. The US is in a pickle, since Pakistan is nuclear armed and near failed state status. There's a very real danger that if US aid to Pakistan is cut, the government will have trouble holding onto power, and at any rate would take a cessation of aid as proof of the American vendetta against their innocent country. On the other hand, US troops are getting killed by the proxies of an American ally, and Pakistani state sponsored terror also exists in India, and probably elsewhere (Xianjang and Chechnya look particularly suspicious.) The situation comes to a head as US troops withdraw from a now stable Iraq, right as the Taliban grows to new heights of power. This is also the unstable, divided country that DEVGRU enters in specially designed Blackhawks to go kill Osama. 4/lf you're reading this, you have more attention span than 90% of 4chan users. I Anonymous 11/07/14(Fri)16:45:20 No.23508837 =>>23508877 >>23508904 >>23512583 >>23512903 >>23508740 The Pakistanis freak the f--- out at Osama being killed. For a while, Pakistanis have been bemoaning the effect of the US on their sovereignty. Drone strikes are errywhere and about 9% of the Pakistani populace thinks that the US is a good ally in the War on Terror. The immediate reaction by the Pakistanis is to call the head of their nuclear forces and make sure that Pakistan's nukes are safe from an American Special Operations raid. A lot of analysts have said that Pakistan is stable, for the time being, but all trends are negative. Islamism is too deeply ingrained in every aspect of Pakistani society to be rooted out. Ongoing conflicts with India are combined with the Taliban insurgency, the Baloch Insurgence, and the War in Kashmir. Worse than any of this, Pakistan is one of the most corrupt societies on the planet, and the economic trends are nowhere near enough to support one of the fastest growing populations on earth. Pakistan has never had a stable government with a wide electoral mandate, and they haven't had free elections since like 1970. China has tried to pull them into their sphere of influence but even China doesn't want to deal with this crazy basket case. TL;DR Pakistan is crazy$

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