Hakimullah Mehsud also dead?

Now this is just weird. A Pak­istan News is report­ing that newly named leader of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pak­istan (TTP) is also dead, and that an inter­view given to BBC ear­lier was actu­ally his brother. The report goes on to sug­gest that Hakimul­lah was killed in in the infight­ing after the death of Bait­ul­lah Mehsud in early August. […]

Baitullah Mehsud May Be Dead

ISLAM­ABAD — If con­firmed, this would be a huge vic­tory in the fight against tak­firi mil­i­tants in Pak­istan: U.S. and Pak­istani author­i­ties were inves­ti­gat­ing whether Pak­istani Tal­iban chief Bait­ul­lah Mehsud, who has led a vio­lent cam­paign of sui­cide attacks and assas­si­na­tions against Pakistan’s gov­ern­ment, was killed in a CIA mis­sile strike. A Pak­istani offi­cial said Fri­day that reports of […]

"It was always a bad year to get out of Vietnam"

Com­pare and con­trast: Obama’s Viet­nam: “Viet­nam analo­gies can be tire­some. To crit­ics, espe­cially those on the left, all Amer­i­can inter­ven­tions after Viet­nam have been poten­tial “quag­mires.” But some­times clichés come true, and, espe­cially lately, it seems that the war in Afghanistan is shap­ing up in all-too-familiar ways. The par­al­lels are dis­turb­ing: the pres­i­dent, eager to […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]