Fast, Cheap and Out of Control?

Step­ping away from insur­gen­cies and kid­napped reporters for a moment, the Open Source Cen­ter has a trans­la­tion of an Aug. 31 inter­view between Pakistan’s nuclear Fu Manchu, A.Q. Khan, and Nadeem Malik of Aaj News Tele­vi­sion out of Karachi. In it, Khan reveals details of the panic in Pak­istan in the mid-1970s after India tested a bomb, spark­ing a crash […]

The Iraqi Endgame: A Podcast

So the other day I did a pod­cast inter­view with the Inter­na­tional Rela­tions and Secu­rity Net­work, based in Zurich. The very nice inter­viewer, Kaisa Schreck, asked some pointed ques­tions and I hope I was able to draw upon my expe­ri­ence in Iraq to give some insight­ful answers. I’ll let you be the judge, how­ever. You can lis­ten to the […]

Interview with the Taliban

The New York Times has a fas­ci­nat­ing story today. It’s an inter­view with a Tal­iban logis­tics tac­ti­cian the Times has been work­ing on for six months. He finally spills the beans on the Tal­iban plans for Pak­istan and Afghanistan, the strate­gies they will use and what they fear. He was clued into the Petraeus doc­trine, used to good […]

Interview with Siraj Haqqani

My friend, Eason Jor­dan, who’s launch­ing AfPax later this year, scores an exclu­sive inter­view with Siraj Haqqani, one of the Taliban’s top com­man­ders. Siraj is the son of Jalalud­din Haqqani, head of the al Qaeda-affiliated net­work that bears his name. Unlike the Bait­ul­lah Mehsud group, the Haqqani net­work doesn’t usu­ally tar­get the Pak­istani state, preferring […]

Mullah Nazeer Confirms Taliban Alliance, Threatens Islamabad

On Tues­day, the media arm of al Qaeda, as-Sahab Media, released an almost hour-long video fea­tur­ing an inter­view with Mul­lah Nazzer Ahmad, aka Maulvi Nazir, who is the emir of South Waziris­tan. This is his first appear­ance in an as-Sahab video, accord­ing to Intel­Cen­ter, and is sig­nif­i­cant in that it ties the Pak­istani Tal­iban leader […]

"The Lion of Herat"

Al Jazeera Eng­lish has a decent fea­ture on Ismail Khan, known as the “Lion of Herat” and one of the Taliban’s most implaca­ble foes. In the 1990s, as the mil­i­tant group was start­ing its march from the south, Khan held onto Herat in the west and set up schools (with par­ity for girls) and helped Herat […]

Jumping the Indus

Nicholas Schmi­dle, author of the upcom­ing book, “To Live or to Per­ish For­ever: Two Tumul­tuous Years in Pak­istan” spoke with the New Repub­lic about the attacks in Lahore and the claim of respon­si­bil­ity by Bait­ul­lah Mehsud. He makes some of the same points I did, in that the expan­sion of the Pash­tun insur­gency into Pun­jabi lands […]

Update on American 'Jihadist' in Somalia

Australia’s The Age has a report on Abu Man­soor al-Amriki incor­po­rat­ing some of the video I posted on yes­ter­day. The ambush he speaks of has not yet been verified.

An Interview with David Kilcullen

The Wash­ing­ton Post has a good inter­view with COIN the­o­rist and author David Kil­cullen. His new book, “The Acci­den­tal Guer­rilla: Fight­ing Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One,” is get­ting a lot of atten­tion among those fol­low­ing and think­ing about the Af-Pak the­ater and this lat­est inter­view is def­i­nitely food for thought. His com­ments on Pak­istan, par­tic­u­larly should be a wake-up call for any­one still asleep.

Dinner with Ahmed

I had the plea­sure and priv­i­lege of hav­ing din­ner with Ahmed Rashid tonight and Azim Nanji. Rashid is the go-to jour­nal­ist and author on all things Tal­iban, hav­ing authored two best-selling books on the sub­ject: Tal­iban: Mil­i­tant Islam, Oil and Fun­da­men­tal­ism in Cen­tral Asia, and Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Fail­ure of Nation Building […]