This is “Upgrade Your Electric” week for the Obama Administration. First, the President announced a $3.4 billion upgrade for the US electric power grid. Then yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the State Department had decided to help Pakistan upgrade its electricity to prevent the frequent outages. These electricity problems, according to the […]
Following on the heels of the Indo-US joint military exercise, Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony said that there is no possibility of Indian military involvement in Afghanistan. Though the joint military exercise was aimed at the study of counter-terrorism efforts and peace-keeping operations, the Indian Defense Minister categorically denied any intention of sending troops to […]
Iranians have once again taken to the streets in Tehran. But this time, instead of hearing slogans fulminating against the government, you hear people mourning the deaths of their loved ones in Sunday’s suicide attack in southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan. Here is an Al-Jazeera report on how Iranians are coping with the suicide attack that killed at […]
Finally, the operation in Wazristan is under way, thank God. Pakistan is doing a good job of clearing every place that was a safe heaven for the nuts in and around Pakistan. Now, policy makers in Pakistan should not focus on achieving short term military objective. This war is not going to be easy and […]
The terrorist attacked that killed more than 42 people, including 11 commanders of Iran’s elite Islamic Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, is being blamed on Pakistan. Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accused Pakistan of having links to the bombers who carried out a suicide attack. President Ahmadinejad is quoted as saying that he knew “some security agents […]
A BBC article documents Pakistani citizens who support a military offensive to take out terrorists. Citizens of Pakistan increasingly suffer the brunt of terrorism since 9/11 as a spillover of militants from Afghanistan found their way to the northern areas. In addition to our strategic interests, America should take into account the grave human element of suffering that our allies face in cooperating with our efforts in the War on Terror.
This is smart analysis. The obsession with the idea of an Afghan surge just doesn’t make sense to me. Why are we focusing on the major urban areas in Afghanistan, when 3/4 of the population lives in rural areas? Safe haven myths aside, wouldn’t an ‘urban’-centric COIN policy leave basically the vast majority of Aghanistan […]
As I hinted at in my last post, the spate of violence in Pakistan can actually be seen as a good thing (the wanton death and destruction aside). This piece in today’s New York Times demonstrates that Pakistan is facing the prospect that “the Taliban, Al Qaeda and militant groups once nurtured by the government […]
For the last eight years, Pakistan has been playing a double-game. Despite considerable US pressure, Pakistan declined to totally give up Al-Qaeda and allied Taliban militants, who had been long supported and used by the Pakistani Army and intelligence services as regional proxies against India. As long as the militants stayed out of the business […]
A recent Facebook video has documented prisoner abuse by the Pakistani Army. This, needless to say, will not help Pakistan’s efforts to stem its Taliban insurgency in the Northwest Frontier Province, nor will it help America’s mission in the region. Regardless of the morality of torturing and abusing prisoners of war (and, to put it […]
This article by David Axe, Malou Innocent, and Jason Reich at Foreign Policy is pretty much* spot on. The Taliban, either Afghan or Pakistani, are not a security threat to America on their own—they have neither the capacity nor the will to strike at American interests. But al-Qaeda has proven itself capable of accomplishing horrific […]
It is no secret that India believes the Pakistani Intelligence Agency (ISI) sponsors terrorists against Jammu &Kashmir (J&K) in the long drawn border dispute between the two countries. But according to a media report the ISI is planning to use captured Taliban militants to infiltrate and fight the ‘jihad’ against India in J&K. “In a […]
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