How Will Pakistan Implement New Security Policy?
Earlier in the week, I wondered whether John Brennan had helped to shape the new counterterrorism policy that Pakistan is rolling out and whether it might be a ploy by Pakistan to capture some of the...
View ArticleImran Khan, Samuil Haq State US Does Not Want Peace Negotiations in Pakistan
As Pakistan traverses a difficult path, trying to negotiate peace with militant groups under a shaky ceasefire, provocative statements have come out this week from leading figures in the process...
View ArticleUS Strike Kills Five Afghan Soldiers in Charkh District
In what is virtually certain to be a new example of why he continues not to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is expected to react with anger toward the US strike...
View ArticlePause in Afghan Presidential Campaign With Death of Vice President; Taliban...
Afghanistan’s Vice President Muhammad Qasim Fahim died yesterday, in what the New York Times described as a heart attack. Fahim was a warlord with a checkered past and had ties, through a brother, to...
View ArticlePakistan Suddenly Receives Mysterious $1.5 Billion
Back in January, I mused on whether Pakistan was making a play for counterterrorism funds that were being freed up by the US cutting back on its funding plans for Afghanistan. It now appears that...
View ArticleSASC Hearing: Dunford Advocates for Forever War in Afghanistan
I was only able to monitor portions of yesterday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in which Joseph Dunford provided an update on the situation in Afghanistan. Most of the hearing was the usual...
View ArticleConspiracy Stories Surrounding Nils Horner Murder Hard to Dismiss Due to US...
Today’s New York Times has a fascinating update on the investigation into the killing of Swedish reporter Nils Horner on March 11. Although there have been systematic attacks on journalists in the...
View ArticleCarlotta Gall: ISI Sheltered Bin Laden in Pakistan
The New York Times has just released an excerpt from Carlotta Gall’s upcoming book “The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014″. Recall that Gall lived in Afghanistan and covered Afghanistan...
View ArticleHas Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security Infiltrated the Taliban?
As we get into the final days before voting begins on Saturday for Afghanistan’s presidential election, the biggest question aside from the issue of who will win is whether the Taliban will succeed in...
View ArticleAfghanistan Staggers Toward Election
Saturday will mark the first time Afghanistan has gone to the polls to choose a new president since the US overthrew the Taliban and put Hamid Karzai in charge. This will hardly be an accomplishment to...
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Afghan Policeman Kills AP Photographer Niedringhaus, Wounds Reporter Gannon
This photo of Niedringhaus accompanies the AP story on her death. Yesterday, in noting the large deployment of Afghan security personnel for Saturday’s presidential election, I wondered in an aside how...
View ArticleHigh Urban Turnout, No Major Violence, But How Successful Was Afghan Election?
With no catastrophic attacks taking place and reports of over 7 million people voting, on first impressions it would appear that Afghanistan’s presidential election on Saturday was a resounding...
View ArticleBritish Captain Resigns from Military to Publish Book on Helmand Failures
Today marks the launch in London of a book titled “An Intimate War: An Oral History of the Helmand Conflict, 1978-2012″. The book’s author is Dr. Mike Martin. Until Monday, he was known as Captain Mike...
View ArticleWho Nabbed Mutasim Agha Jan in Dubai?
While the mainstream press finally catches up to the fact that there were indeed hundreds of violent attacks on election day in Afghanistan (even though hippies could find the data over a week ago),...
View ArticleDetention of Mutasim Agha Jan by UAE Now Confirmed, Basis Unknown
On Tuesday, I noted that Mutasim Agha Jan had gone missing in Dubai while attempting to work toward negotiations between the Afghan Taliban and Afghanistan’s High Peace Council. Multiple outlets now...
View ArticleWas Kabul Hospital Shooting Triggered by Proselytizing?
Yesterday, Dr. Jerry Umanos and two still unidentified US visitors whom he was greeting were killed outside the Cure International Hospital in Kabul, Dr. Umanos has spent most of each of the last nine...
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Torture for US, Retire With Impunity
Gulalai’s face, as seen in photo accompanying Washington Post story on his comfortable life in Southern California. Torturing on behalf of the United States appears to be a career move that results in...
View ArticleUS, UK Just Can’t Stop Hiding Prisoners in Afghanistan
It is a tradition that goes back to the very start of the Great War on Terror. Secret detention of prisoners has been both a central feature of the US approach to its response to terrorism and a...
View ArticleAfter Delaying Runoff, Afghan Taliban Announce Start Date of Fighting Season,...
One of the most enduring formulas throughout the nearly 13 year US quagmire in Afghanistan has been the persistent claims by our military and their fans that we are making tremendous progress and that...
View ArticleAs Taliban Launch Offensive in Afghanistan, More Data Pierce Narrative of...
As noted last week, the Afghan Taliban brazenly stated the day and hour at which their 2014 offensive would launch while also characterizing the targets they would attack. It appears that the attacks...
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