More evidence that Pakistan, the USA’s closest ally in the region, is ironically serving as a staging ground for the destabilization of US-occupied Afghanistan. First this, from The Guardian, Sept. 19: A chain of suicide bombings killed 19 people, including… Read moreAfghanistan: “Mullah Dadullah” pledges more terror
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Afghan army troops killed 92 Taliban fighters in the southern province of Kandahar, NATO said in statement Sept. 11. The statement said the figure was separate from the 94 insurgents reported as killed in… Read moreAfghanistan: NATO occupation reaps terror, opium
While highly dubious supposed terror plots in the US and UK continue to dominate the headlines, the Real McCoy in Afghanistan generates barely a flick of interest these days. This was buried in the inner pages of the New York… Read moreAfghan terror escalates —with media invisibility
From the New York Times, July 4: WASHINGTON, July 3 — The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday. The… Read moreCIA closes bin Laden unit
A taped message purported to be from fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar was broadcast on Geo TV, a commercial station in Pakistan June 25. The voice on the tape issued a challenge to the Afghan government and foreign troops fighting… Read moreMullah Omar speaks —again
Remember all those wacky conspiracy theorists who said that “liberating” Afghanistan from the Taliban was really about building an oil pipeline through the country? From India’s Rediff.com, May 19: India joins Afghanistan gas pipeline project The Cabinet on Thursday approved… Read moreAfghanistan pipeline project advances
From The Jurist, May 8: Afghan parliament descends into chaos as lawmakers attack female legislator The floor of the Afghan parliament has witnessed its first outbreak of violence, with lawmakers physically and verbally assaulting a controversial female legislator who called… Read moreAfghanistan: woman legislator physically attacked on parliament floor
From AP, March 22: KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Authorities launched a probe today into the killings by Afghan security forces of at least 15 people, who an Afghan army commander claimed were Taliban rebels but locals said were tribesmen wanting to… Read moreAfghanistan: threats, violence meet Nowruz
A March 13 report from Pakistan’s Daily Times on the army-occupied town of Miranshah in North Waziristan: PESHAWAR: Authorities in Miranshah further eased an eight-day-old curfew on Sunday after soldiers killed dozens of militants in an operation last week. The… Read morePakistan: army occupies Waziristan villages
As a war of words breaks out between Hamid Karzai and Pervez Musharraf over accusations of Afghan insurgents using Pakistani territory as a staging ground, Islamabad broaches actually fencing off the border the way Pat Buchanan wants to fence off… Read morePakistan threatens to fence off Afghan border
Great, just what we need—military incursions to provoke a general uprising in Pakistan’s increasingly restive Tribal Areas. Just to give the teetering edifice of Musharraf’s dictatorship a healthy shove towards the abyss. Then we can have a nuclear-armed Taliban in… Read moreWar in Waziristan?
This brief analysis of the challenges facing the expanded NATO mandate in Afghanistan sheds light on the real politics of the “cartoon jihad”—obviously, the Danish cartoons have been seized upon as a symbol and crystalization of a much wider set… Read moreAfghanistan: violence inaugurates NATO expansion
