FeedBurner Blues

So, I’ve had it up to … wher­ever with feedburner.com. It con­stantly sus­pends its ser­vice and thus stops updat­ing my feed, so you, dear read­ers, have no idea there’s a new post avail­able. So I’m dump­ing them like a sack of moldy pota­toes.
How­ever, this means you’ll have to update your feeds. I’m sorry about that. But at […]

Pakistan Claims 700 Taliban Dead? Yeah, right.

Color me skep­ti­cal, but Pak­istani Inte­rior Min­is­ter Rehman Malik is claim­ing Pakistan’s offen­sive in the NWFP has killed 700 Tal­iban fight­ers.
“More than 700 mil­i­tants have been killed dur­ing the last four days. Fifty-two Tal­iban fight­ers were killed in Swat in the last 24 hours,” he said. He said the oper­a­tion would con­tinue till the last Taliban […]

Mullen: Afghanistan is New Strategic Focus

Afghanistan has been an ‘economy-of-force’ oper­a­tion for far too long,” Adm. Mike Mullen said. “The Tal­iban, aided by al-Qaida and other extrem­ists and safe havens across the bor­der, are recruit­ing through intim­i­da­tion, con­trol­ling through fear and advanc­ing an unwel­come ide­ol­ogy through thuggery.”

Obama and Pakistan's Nukes

I’ve been try­ing to digest the news of Pakistan’s offen­sive against the Tal­iban and come up with some­thing smart to say, but I’m left with more ques­tions than answers on why the Pak­istani Army finally got off the couch and decided to do some­thing about the rowdy kids in its front yard. Why now? Will […]

Taliban Surge in Pakistan

I’ve been feel­ing a bit on the unin­spired side of things over the past two days, espe­cially after I wrote about the Tal­iban push into Buner. The mag­ni­tude of the prob­lems fac­ing Pak­istan and the dan­ger it causes to the world are enough to make any­one a bit moody. But then it seemed the mil­i­tants were pulling back […]

Zardari Surrenders in the Swat Valley

Pak­istani Pres­i­dent Asif Ali Zardari signed into law a peace deal with mil­i­tants in the Swat Val­ley that would enshrine Islamic law in the for­mer Alpine tourist resort just 100 miles from Islam­abad. The above video shows what can be expected under the Pak­istani Taliban’s rule.
Zardari is weak. He was being pres­sured by the U.S. and human […]

Slouching Towards Oblivion

There can be no ques­tion the Pak­istani state is com­ing under increas­ing strain from mil­i­tants, its polit­i­cal sys­tem and its inter­na­tional rela­tions. The ques­tion is, Where is its break­ing point and what can be done to pre­vent it? And if it comes, then what?
Mil­i­tant pres­sures
A largely tak­firi and Pash­tun insur­gency has been spread­ing out of the tribal […]

Defending Everything?

The core goal of the new strat­egy is to “dis­rupt, dis­man­tle and defeat al Qaeda and its safe havens in Pak­istan, and to pre­vent their return to Pak­istan or Afghanistan.” This is a clean break with Bush’s goal of a demo­c­ra­tic Afghanistan. Nation-building is not the pri­mary goal. Instead, nation-building will be a com­po­nent of the strat­egy to defeat al Qaeda.

From the Department of No Kidding...

This seems obvi­ous, but per­haps the New York Times is being used to send a mes­sage to Pak­istan… WASH­ING­TON — The Taliban’s widen­ing cam­paign in south­ern Afghanistan is made pos­si­ble in part by direct sup­port from oper­a­tives in Pakistan’s mil­i­tary intel­li­gence agency, despite Pak­istani gov­ern­ment promises to sever ties to mil­i­tant groups fight­ing in Afghanistan, accord­ing to Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment officials.

Is Pakistan Coming Unglued?

The var­i­ous Pak­istani news wires are abuzz with rumors of cri­sis and brinkman­ship in Pak­istan. Some quick hits:

The gov­ern­ment threat­ened to pros­e­cute oppo­si­tion leader Nawaz Sharif for “sedi­tion” if protests planned for later this week turn vio­lent. “Sharif and other polit­i­cal oppo­nents are set to join lawyers demand­ing the restora­tion of a for­mer chief jus­tice of Supreme […]

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