Returning from Islamabad on board his E-4B plane, Robert Gates, in shirt sleeves and faded jeans, was finally able to relax. His motto these days, he quipped, was the Danny Glover catchphrase from Lethal Weapon: "I'm getting too old for this ----." After a gruelling five-day trip to India and Pakistan, the 66-year-old Pentagon chief could be forgiven for having a feeling of "been there, done that". He first travelled to New Delhi as a White House official some 32 years ago.
In October 1986, while deputy director of the CIA, he flew secretly to Islamabad and was taken to a Mujahideen training camp close to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. There, he saw Afghan fighters firing rocket-propelled grenades with lethal accuracy and greeting each successful shot with cries of "Allahu akbar" – God is great.
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The only United States defence secretary to be asked to remain in post by an incoming president, Gates has a unique place in the Obama administration. A Republican (though of the realist, rather than neo-conservative, variety), he was brought into the P
By Toby Harnden Published: 6:32AM GMT 25 Jan 2010
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Returning from Islamabad on board his E-4B plane, Robert Gates, in shirt sleeves and faded jeans, was finally able to relax. His motto these days, he quipped, was the Danny Glover catchphrase from Lethal Weapon: "I'm getting too old for this ----." After a gruelling five-day trip to India and Pakistan, the 66-year-old Pentagon chief could be forgiven for having a feeling of "been there, done that". He first travelled to New Delhi as a White House official some 32 years ago.
In October 1986, while deputy director of the CIA, he flew secretly to Islamabad and was taken to a Mujahideen training camp close to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. There, he saw Afghan fighters firing rocket-propelled grenades with lethal accuracy and greeting each successful shot with cries of "Allahu akbar" – God is great.
The only United States defence secretary to be asked to remain in post by an incoming president, Gates has a unique place in the Obama administration. A Republican (though of the realist, rather than neo-conservative, variety), he was brought into the Pentagon by George W. Bush. After advocating, and then overseeing, the Iraq surge that Obama opposed at the time, he has become a trusted, even pivotal, figure in the new administration. An old Cold War hawk, Gates was central to the decision to commit an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan.
Having campaigned on a platform of withdrawing forces from Iraq, Obama has found himself in the uncomfortable position of becoming a war president assailed from the Left for escalating hostilities in Afghanistan. With his domestic policy in tatters and a failed terrorist attack on America on Christmas Day, for which responsibility was claimed by al-Qaeda yesterday in a tape-recording said to have been made by Osama bin Laden, Obama is likely to be increasingly preoccupied by foreign policy, bringing Gates to centre stage.
Gates does not have the international profile of his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld. At the Taj Mahal last week, a tourist asked about the VIP visitor: "Bob Gates? Is that Bill Gates's brother?" But despite his low-key demeanour, Gates is an accomplished Washington operator who has fewer enemies than most people who have spent the best part of three decades in government.
He is also ruthless. In three years at the Pentagon, he has fired an Army Secretary, and Air Force Secretary, the chief of the US Air Force and the senior American general in Afghanistan. In addition, he forced the cancellation of the F-22 jet, designed to counter the Soviet threat but a pet favourite of powerful figures on Capitol Hill, and pushed for increased production of armoured vehicles to protect troops from improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan.
Perhaps the principal ally Gates has found within the Obama administration is Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State. The double act – they have even appeared on Sunday talk shows together – is all the more remarkable because under many of the seven presidents Gates has served, the Pentagon chief and Secretary of State have barely been on speaking terms.
Gates is better placed than any American official to help salvage the relationship with what is probably the country that can help or hinder what used to be called the "war on terror" – Pakistan. His position in Washington is assured and he also has the credibility of being the only CIA director to have risen to the top from entry level after beginning his career as a trainee spy.
Few have been dealing with the Pakistanis and the Afghans for as long. Among his most prized possessions is a 9mm Makarov semi-automatic pistol given to him by Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Northern Alliance commander assassinated two days before the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Massoud had personally pried it from the fingers of a dead Soviet colonel after a battle in the Panjshir valley.
Among the 10 or so Bush administration "holdovers" at the Pentagon who have remained under Obama is Mike Vickers, a former CIA paramilitary officer who masterminded aid to the Mujahideen in the 1980s. In the 2007 film Charlie Wilson's War, Vickers is portrayed as a CIA whizz kid who says at one point: "Let's get some Russians." Now rejoicing in the title of "Assistant Secretary of Defence for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict and Interdependent Capabilities", he was at Gates's side in Islamabad last week.
Some of the fighters Gates observed in 1986 could well be among the Taliban in 2010. As he acknowledged in Islamabad on Thursday, "we all had links with various groups that are now a problem for us today, and some have maintained those links longer than others".
The second part of that statement, of course, was an allusion to the fact that elements of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency – whose chief, Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, met Gates last week – still have connections with the Taliban and other Islamist groups.
With the Pakistani population virulently anti-American, Gates was in Islamabad with the difficult brief of encouraging President Asif Ali Zardari's government to act against al‑Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban in North Waziristan, where bin Laden is believed to be hiding.
Admitting a "grave mistake" in US policy in abandoning Afghanistan and cutting defence ties with Pakistan in the 1990s, Gates promised that America was in for the long haul this time. He also lavished praise on Islamabad for their operations against the Pakistani Taliban in Swat and South Waziristan over the past year. What America really wants Pakistan to do, however, is to confront the Afghan Taliban as well. With this is mind, Gates repeatedly made the case that "al-Qaeda, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Tehrik-e-Taliban in Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Haqqani network – this is a syndicate of terrorists that work together".
At times, he overstated the case, arguing in New Delhi that al-Qaeda was "orchestrating attacks" using these different groups. In Islamabad, he conceded that "they don't operationally co-ordinate their activities, as best I can tell".
Pakistan grudgingly allows America to conduct drone attacks from Afghanistan inside its borders while publicly condemning them. These fuel anger against the States but Gates and other US officials are left in the invidious position of being unable even to admit that they are taking place, never mind with the assistance of Pakistani forces.
Despite being a recipient of massive amounts of American aid – $15 billion since 2001 with another $7.5 billion having just been pledged over the next five years – Pakistan's co-operation with the States has been limited and ambivalent. Last week, Maj Gen Athar Abbas, the army's chief spokesman, gave us a briefing in which he pooh-poohed Gates's notion of a terrorist "syndicate" in South Asia. American military aid to Pakistan, he said, was "too little, too late".
Later the same day, a senior American officer revealed that Pakistan gave the States no advance warning of any of its military operations, even though co-ordination on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border would be all but essential in rooting out al-Qaeda.
The American message to them, he added, was: "We're here to help you on your terms." Public demands from Gates would be counter-productive and there are signs that his emollient, gently cajoling approach is helping to yield some dividends. Some 20 per cent of Pakistan's forces are now fighting on its western border with Afghanistan, something that would have been unthinkable a year ago.
And while a comment by Gen Abbas that operations in North Waziristan would not take place for at least six months was interpreted in the American press as a snub to Gates, the Pentagon believes the delay is due to current overstretch while South Waziristan is being pacified. "They very clearly have the will," said a senior official.
Back on his E-4B plane, Gates watched the 1964 film Seven Days in May, about a US Air Force general who plans a coup to overthrow the President. Life is calmer at the Pentagon under Gates. But with America engaged in two wars and led by a novice commander-in-chief whose political fortunes are flagging, he finds himself playing a central role in the very stuff of history.
Comments: 5
It is interesting that Harnden twice references the E-4B as Gates' hardened transport / command centre - an aircraft type he personally ensured was not retired beginning 2009. The meat in this piece is near the end. Ambivalence in Islamabad is not new. The regime is in bed with the US for hard cash aid - but openly makes negative comment against American interests for domestic consumption in Pakistan. There is nothing worse than an unwilling, bought client. There is no goodwill, no trust - and should there be an alternative financier, no loyalty. Is Washington paying Islamabad to be a friend in the end cheaper than treating Pakistan as hostile and just getting stuck in to the whole Afghanistan/Iran/Pakistan region? The answer is surely yes - and more importantly the appetite for a regional war is simply not there on the part of the West. The irritating attacks orchestrated by the likes of al-Qa'eda have little to do with such conventional wars - as the hint of a new wave with women of western appearance on passenger aircraft or against other targets is about to illustrate. One suspects it is the likes of Gates' *former* employers (is that term ever meaningful?) the CIA, who have more impact than the overt forces of the US, the West, against enemies of our way of life.
The actual military rulers in Pakistan and Afghanistan are using the native Taliban to chantage Washington. They say: “ Give us money to fight against native Taliban and don’t bother about genuine democracy. Because our alternative is Sharia” They are fighting against Taliban halfheartedly. As long as Washington is in the war, the money taps will be open. Therefore I dont believe in military mission. Nor I have faith in reconstruction. Afghanistan is nothing more than a mountainous, failing state. It is a political and military quagmire. In such a country with 25 million people, reconstruction needs decades. In Kosovo, which is located in Europe, Defense troops, diplomats and development agencies are trying to rebuild this country since ten years now. And they are involved in all kinds of problems. The population of Kosovo, which is better educated, is only 10% of Afghanistan and the world public opinion is still waiting to hear their success.
regardless of the above comments he seems to have a better grasp of the needs of the armed forces than our useless government. ...cancellation of the F-22 jet,.. increased production of armoured vehicles to protect troops from improvised explosive devices.
"The American message to them, he added, was: "We're here to help you on your terms." " Are you people for real???? Gates just let the cat out of the bag that Xe International AKA BLACKWATER has been operating in Pakistan. http://rawstory.com/2010/01/gates-admits-blackwater-pakistan/ Pentagon backtracks after Gates ‘admits’ Blackwater operating in Pakistan Friday, January 22nd, 2010 http://www.thenews.com.pk/updates.asp?id=96766 Uproar in Senate over presence of Blackwater Updated at: 1910 PST, Friday, January 22, 2010 ISLAMABAD: The situation took a chaotic turn in the Upper House on Friday when the issue of presence of Blackwater in Pakistan was raised.
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