The following are the “Conclusions and recommendations” of the report on Afghanistan published by the United Kingdom’s parliamentary defence select committee on April 10, 2013
The following are the “Conclusions and recommendations” of the report on Afghanistan published by the United Kingdom’s parliamentary defence select committee on April 10, 2013
Published in the Express Tribune
That militancy is the biggest near term threat Pakistan faces is obvious. What may not be obvious is that the roots of militancy go deeper than just Pakistan’s links with the Afghan Talibans or its support of various other militant groups. Read more »
The Stratfor ( a private US intelligence service) just released this report under the above title which is quite meaningful. Read more »
One day in late November, an unmanned aerial vehicle lifted off from Shindand Air Base in western Afghanistan, heading 75 miles toward the border with Iran. Read more »
We are pleased to publish copy of a classified internal document prepared by a special operations team of the US/NATO forces in Afghanistan.
April 5 (Bloomberg) — An Indian security guard, cradling a Kalashnikov assault rifle, shadowed two Indian engineers as they inspected the concrete shell of the parliament building they are constructing — in the Afghan capital of Kabul. Read more »
By Bhashyam Kasturi
Any study that seeks to understand the dynamics of India’s “presence” in Afghanistan with the application of soft power must realise that it is a carefully crafted piece of diplomacy—one that is riding high in the presence of the U.S. and the NATO forces in the region. Read more »
The Telegraph
By Dean Nelson, South Asia Editor and Javed Siddiq in Islamabad
US forces are massing on the Pakistan border in eastern Afghanistan amid reports of an imminent drone missile offensive against fighters from the feared Haqqani Network, a Taliban faction which operates from safe havens in Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency, Pakistan Army sources have confirmed. Read more »
From New Statesman, U.K.
by Mehdi Hasan – 07 October 2011
…here are ten things you should know.
Today is the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan by the United States and its allies – including the UK – in the aftermath of the horrific attacks on 9/11.
It is a time to reflect and deliberate. Read more »
Published Business Recorder, Oct. 1, 2011
The government and the Army think they can make up for decades of blunders of an adventurous foreign policy by convening an All-Parties Conference. Imran Khan thinks we can tell America to mind its own business. Liberals think all the faults lie with Pakistani establishment. We thrive on half-truths and wishful thinking but we cannot formulate a serious strategy like that. Read more »
From Daniel Serwer
The timeline for U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is now clear: 10,000 troops out by the end of this year and 23,000 more out by the end of next summer. That will leave 67,000 troops, who, if all goes according to plan, will be withdrawn before the end of 2014, with a possible residual assistance force of unspecified size thereafter. That solves the military equation. But what about the political formula? Read more »
Peter Chamberlin
In the complicated calculus of the men who would plan our destinies for us, if we would only let them, it is often hard to fathom which line of reasoning represents their dominant thinking on any strategic subject. In Afghanistan and in Pakistan, it is getting harder Read more »
By Michael Cohen
For the first time in ten years, the light at the end of the tunnel of the U.S. war in Afghanistan is suddenly visible. To understand the implications of President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan this evening, perhaps the best place to start is not with what he said tonight in public, but what he allegedly said in private 18 months ago. Read more »
It overshadowed a shake-up of Barack Obama’s top security team and the mowing down of nine American servicemen at Kabul airport by an irate Afghan. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday Read more »
Introductory Comment
The following book review published by the Economist is a must read for all educated Pakistanis particulary for those sections of the ruling elites or the liberals who continue to deny that the dramatic escalation in extremism and the rapidly growing radicalization in the last few years has a lot to do with the war on terror. Read more »
By Karin Brulliard and Karen DeYoung
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN – Countless U.S. officials in recent years have lectured and listened to Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the man many view as the most powerful in Pakistan. They have drunk tea and played golf with him, feted him and flown with him in helicopters. Read more »
By Max Hastings
From the Financial Times
President Barack Obama’s year-end review of the Afghan war asserted cautiously that General David Petraeus’s operations are going quite well so far, which caused cynics to say that this is a 20-storey building, and we still have 10 to fall. All parties to the conflict save the Taliban perceive themselves as prisoners of an unhappy predicament. The only issue is whether some outcome can be contrived which is “just good enough”, to borrow one of the military’s favourite clichés. Read more »
The following cable by former Ambassador Anne Patterson is a serious indictment of the US policy on Pakistan and confirms the view that it is the Pentagon and CIA, and not the State department diplomats, who call the shots. It is therefore hardly surprising that Anne Patterson wasn’t aware of the weight thrown in by them in favour of Kayani’s selection as Army Chief. Something, Sir Simon Jenkins of Guardian wrote as far back as January 2008. Read more »
By: MARTHA RADDATZ and KIRIT RADIA
U.S. forces in Afghanistan have allowed a Taliban member to travel to Kabul from Pakistan to attend peace talks with the Afghan government within the past two weeks, a senior U.S. official told ABC News. Read more »
The latest column of Eric Margolis is a must read:
Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Times of London, the Gulf Times, the Khaleej Times and other news sites in Asia. He is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post, Lew Rockwell and Big Eye. Read more »
By Greg Miller
Washington Post Staff Writer
The CIA is using an expanded arsenal of armed drones and other equipment provided by the U.S. military to secretly escalate its operations in Pakistan by striking targets beyond the reach of American forces based in Afghanistan, U.S. officials said. Read more »
Pentagon Diverts Drones From Afghanistan to Bolster U.S. Campaign Next Door
![[DRONEjp]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/WO-AC773_DRONEj_G_20101001181301.jpg "[DRONEjp]")
Reuters
Onlookers in Pakistan’s Sindh province after suspected militants set fire to tankers Friday carrying fuel for NATO troops in Afghanistan. Read more »
The following article by Bob Woodward was published today in the Washington Post. It is a combination of insights into Obama administration’s thinking, carefully- fed selected information and spin by the top U.S. officials. Read more »
The Express Tribune published an edited version on Sept. 29, 2010
Dr. Aafia Siddiqui may or may not have lost her sanity due to torture but is there an end to the madness of American military misadventures that have destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes of innocent civilians?
Think about this….
More than one trillion dollars and nine years later the alleged and self-confessed master mind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has not been convicted.Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zahwari, and Mullah Omar have not been caught, dead or alive; Read more »
KABUL—Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s recent attempts to placate the Taliban haven’t made him many new friends among the insurgents. But they have definitely alienated some crucial old friends: the country’s ethnic minorities, who have been a linchpin of Mr. Karzai’s American-backed government. Read more »
August 24, 2010
As prospects for an early U.S.-NATO military victory in Afghanistan fade and pressures for the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces grow, the debate over U.S. policy in Afghanistan focuses increasingly on one key issue: Is it possible to negotiate terms for disengagement that would not constitute a strategic defeat? Read more »
JULY 20, 2010
WASHINGTON—U.S. Special Operations Forces have begun venturing out with Pakistani forces on aid projects, deepening the American role in the effort to defeat Islamist militants in Pakistani territory that has been off limits to U.S. ground troops. Read more »
By David S. Cloud, Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Geneva
The campaign of CIA drone strikes against suspected militants in Pakistan has made the United States “the most prolific user of targeted killings” in the world, said a United Nations official, who urged that responsibility for the program be taken from the spy agency. Read more »
Is this true or a conspiracy theory invented by the Sunday Times and London School of Economics? If it is a conspiracy theory, it is a matter of perverse pleasure that we Pakistanis alone cannot be blamed. If it is true then both sections of the media, right and liberal, do not come out well for they have missed, deliberately or naively, the central plot. The Sunday Times too has missed it. If this is the policy at the highest level of Pakistani government, it could not have been going on without the tacit if not active support at the highest level of the US government. Do we get it? It is the great game, stupid!
From
June 13, 2010
Some of the trucks carried smuggled goods — DVD players, car stereos, television sets, generators, children’s toys. But the load smuggled by Taliban fighter Qari Rasoul, a thickset Pashtun from Afghanistan’s Wardak province, was altogether more sinister. Read more »
Saturday, Jun. 12, 2010
Pictures from 1960s
Afghanistan was once a peaceful and liberal country that was destroyed by the Americans who promoted ‘Jihad’ and the Pakistani Generals who supported them by creating ‘Mujahideens’ and later ‘Talibans”
”Kabul University students changing classes.”
“Biology class, Kabul University.”
“Hundreds of Afghan youngsters take active part in Scout programs.”
“Mothers and children at a city playground.”
Courtesy: Foreign Policy Magazine
By Yousuf Nazar
Another big news to hit the European press in the recent days was the sudden resignation of Germany’s president Horst Köhler (a former head of the IMF) over his remarks made during a trip to Afghanistan. Read more »
From Antiwar.com, San Francisco
By Justin Raimondo
While most Americans were sitting out on their decks barbecuing over the Memorial Day weekend, our leaders were planning to barbecue a few Pakistanis, as the Washington Post reported:
“The U.S. military is reviewing options for a unilateral strike in Pakistan in the event that a successful attack on American soil is traced to the country’s tribal areas, according to senior military officials.”
Hey, wait a minute: I thought Attorney General Eric Holder has supposedly already established that the Pakistani Taliban were directly involved in the Times Square bombing attempt – which, although not successful, did succeed in generating shockwaves from Washington to Islamabad. Read more »
How explosives have ignited insurgencies and superpowers
Failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad says he was driven by anger over dozens of unmanned drone attacks that he witnessed during his most recent five-month visit to his home in Pakistan. That seems a plausible enough motive, particularly since he joins a growing list of homegrown U.S. terror suspects who have cited the escalation of U.S. military operations on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in general, or in the drone attacks in particular. They include U.S. resident Najibullah Zazi, the Afghan immigrant who pleaded guilty in a plot to bomb the New York subway system; Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S.-born army psychiatrist, charged with fatally shooting 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, last year; and the five American Muslims from Virginia, accused of plotting attacks against targets in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Read more »
Intellectuals and respected Afghan professionals are convinced the west is prolonging conflict to maintain influence in the region
Daniella Peled {Note: This article has special significance given that Daniella is a Jewish journalist and a former editor of the Jewish Chronicle} Read more »
By David Ignatius
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Obama is not seeking a military victory over Taliban
How do wars end in the tribal society of Afghanistan? That’s one of the interesting questions that was highlighted by President Hamid Karzai’s visit to Washington last week. Read more »
