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Things in Pakistan – the sole Islamic state armed with nuclear weapons – could be getting very interesting: Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani fired his defense secretary, a retired general and confidant of Pakistan’s army chief, on Wednesday as the civilian government appeared headed for a collision with the country’s powerful military leadership. Mr. [...]  Predictable consequences: A nearly two-month lull in American drone strikes in Pakistan has helped embolden Al Qaeda and several Pakistani militant factions to regroup, increase attacks against Pakistani security forces and threaten intensified strikes against allied forces in Afghanistan, American and Pakistani officials say. The insurgents are increasingly taking advantage of tensions raised by [...] As if live wasn’t hard enough on the Hindu Kush, innocent villagers are being accused as spies and murdered by a Pakistani death squad known as the Khorasan Mujahedin: Pulling up in caravans of Toyota Corolla hatchbacks, dozens of them seal off mud-hut villages near the border with Afghanistan, then scour markets and homes [...] Yesterday I theorized that the airstrike on a Pakistani border station that killed 26 could have had been the result of three possible circumstances; 1) Hanlon’s Razor, 2) front-line forces so accustomed to think of the Pakistanis as their enemy that due diligence is neglected, or 3) the path of least strategic resistance to [...] It’s living up to its reputation, apparently: The U.S. is poised to concede for the first time that it bears significant responsibility for last month’s American airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani troops, U.S. officials said, an admission that is expected to embarrass the American military but points to a way out of the deepening [...] Pakistan’s interior minister thanked his disaffected Taliban brothers for not killing any Shiites on their festival day: Speaking to reporters in the capital, Islamabad, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said he had appealed to the Taliban to “respect” the Shiite observances and “I want to thank them for doing that.” It was unclear whether Malik, [...] Henry Mortimer Durand takes a lot of hits in modern days. The line he negotiated between the government of Afghan Amir Abdur Rahman Khan and the British Raj in India split the Pashtun people in two, leaving one ungovernable half in Pakistan, and their equally tempestuous cousins in Afghanistan. Pashtuns here, and Pashtuns there, [...] That’s the optimistic take from the WSJ on the latest deadly clash on Pakistan’s border: The investigation may clear up what happened but it won’t address the root of the problem. Pakistan continues to play both sides in this conflict. The military accepts billions of dollars in U.S. aid and fights some terror groups.Since [...] But those weren’t chickens coming home, they were Apache attack helicopters. And the roost wasn’t their own, it was the Taliban’s. Unfortunately for members of the Pakistani Frontier Corps, that roost was also at one of their outposts: NATO helicopters and fighter jets attacked two military outposts in northwest Pakistan near the Afghan border [...] Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ruffled Western feathers by referring to his government’s Taliban adversaries as “brothers”. Farewell to fond thinking: Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his top aides said they are abandoning efforts at peace talks with the Taliban after concluding that the Pakistan-based insurgent leaders aren’t serious about negotiations. “The peace process [...] |
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