Cartel-on-cartel violence may offer Felipe Calderon and Barack Obama the political solution they need in Mexico, and give international stakeholders in the Mexican drug industry the break they need to get back to ‘business as usual’–generating billions in drug dollars, cash that, as it ‘gets cleaner,’ is transformed into capital by ‘legitimate’ investors who create billions more.
Regardless of the immediate outcome of December’s review process, governments in South Asia are behaving as if a visibly reduced U.S. involvement in Afghanistan in the coming year is a foregone conclusion. This perception, which will only be reinforced if the Democratic Party suffers major setbacks next month, will color not only how New Delhi approaches Mr. Obama’s state visit but how it weighs the prospects for U.S.-India relations.
Bug Out Now, says Obama…
All of this follows on the heels of revelations–more ‘leaks’– from Woodward’s soon to be published best-seller, “Obama’s Wars,” especially a specific and ‘bizarre,’ as Woodward calls it, statement by the President about the nation’s ability to ‘absorb’ another 9/11 type attack, and by inference, the inability of the US government (or any government for that matter) to safequard its citizens from the bombs, bullets, and bacteria that are terrorism’s stock-in-trade.
Former foreign secretary of India, Shyam Saran has an excellent piece in Business Standard where he argues that staying back in Afghanistan and strengthening its presence there is the right strategy for India. He examines the ‘exit strategy’ from Afghanistan for the U.S. put forth by Henry Kissinger at a recent conference in Geneva. According […]
The world is watching in shock as Pakistan grapples with one of the worst floods in history. This week the UN estimated that the floods in southern Pakistan have displaced about a million people in a matter of two days. The massive floods began almost a month ago and have since displaced about 20 million […]
Much has been made over WikiLeaks’s recent document leak on Afghanistan. Some of the most interesting commentary can be found from journalists. The Columbia Journalism Review says in an article called “The Story Behind the Publication of WikiLeaks’s Afghanistan Log” that the most interesting part of the story is what happened behind the scenes before […]
Last week’s visit to New Delhi by the U.S. national security advisor offered a preview of some of the deliverables that will come out of President’s Obama upcoming visit but also illuminated areas of discord that could forcefully intrude upon the proceedings.
Photographer Steve McCurry, perhaps best known for his National Geographic cover photo of an Afghan woman with haunting eyes, talked with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty recently about how Afghanistan has changed in the past 30 years. A woman in Paris looks at a poster of the famous photograph of Sharbat Gula. July 06, 2010 Steve […]
Matt Waldman in a recently published Paper, “The Sun is in the Sky: the Relationship between Pakistan’s ISI and Afghan Insurgents” explores the extent of the ISI’s links and support to the problem of Afghan insurgency. Though Matt accepts that several endogenous factors are responsible for the emergence and sustenance of the Taliban, his interviews with […]
If there is only one film you see this summer, make it ‘Restrepo.’ Awarded the 2010 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for a Documentary, it follows the lives of one U.S. platoon of soldiers in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley during their entire 15 month deployment. The valley is considered one of the U.S. military’s most […]
After all the pretty words, is the Obama Administration actually willing to walk the talk with some concrete policy choices when it comes to India?
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