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Blackwater's Secret War in Pakistan

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Nation - By Jeremy Scahill - Dec. 07 (News Report) - Inside sources reveal that the firm works with the US military inKarachi to plan targeted assassinations and drone bombings, among other sensitive counterterrorism operations.

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Escaping Taliban May Widen War as Pakistan Pays Cost

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Bloomberg - By James Rupert - Nov. 23 (News Report) - Taliban fleeing a Pakistani offensive are regrouping in the country’s northwest, threatening to spread and prolong a conflict that has strained the nation’s economy and may hamper efforts to attract foreign investment.

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Kerry: Afghan handoff may take 4-5 years

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

USA Today - Nov. 18 (Interview) - In the past year Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., has become a more prominent force in Washington. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry offers a critical voice at a time when the United States is engaged in two wars abroad while facing myriad challenges on the international front. The Vietnam War veteran, who was his party's presidential candidate in 2004, recently has warned that though the cost of failure in Afghanistan would be substantial, Afghans must do the heavy lifting. He is pushing an initiative on climate change, tying it directly to national security. Kerry discussed these and other issues Tuesday with USA TODAY's editorial board. The following Q&A is adapted from that session and edited for length and clarity.

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TALIBAN = 9/11?? Afghanistan by Hypnosis

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Greg Palast - By Greg Palast - Nov. 15 (Opinion) - On September 11, 2001, my office building, the World Trade Center, was attacked by al Qaeda, a murder cult of Saudi Arabians, funded by Saudi Arabians. And so, in response to the Saudis' attack, America invaded ... Afghanistan. Like, HUH? And here we go again. New York Times headline last Friday: "Pakistani Army, In Its Campaign In Taliban Stronghold, Finds A Hint Of 9/11."

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CIA says it gets its money's worth from Pakistani spy agency

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Greg Miller - Nov. 15 (News Report) - The CIA has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Pakistan's intelligence service since the Sept. 11 attacks, accounting for as much as one-third of the foreign spy agency's annual budget, current and former U.S. officials say.

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Why Hillary Clinton babies Indonesia and bullies Pakistan

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Christian Science Monitor - By John Hughes - Nov. 14 (Opinion) - When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Indonesia earlier this year, she said: "If you want to know whether Islam, democracy, modernity, and women's rights can coexist, go to Indonesia." When she visited Pakistan recently, she was polite but much more critical in her words, basically accusing some government officials of sheltering Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists.

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How the US Funds the Taliban

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Nation - By Aram Roston - Nov. 12 (Special Report) - With Pentagon cash, contractors bribe insurgents not to attack supply lines for US troops

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In an unstable Pakistan, can nuclear warheads be kept safe?

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New Yorker - By Seymour M. Hersh - Nov. 08 (Special Report) - In the tumultuous days leading up to the Pakistan Army’s ground offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, which began on October 17th, the Pakistani Taliban attacked what should have been some of the country’s best-guarded targets. In the most

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Kipling Haunts Obama's Afghan War

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Ray McGovern - Nov. 01 (Editorial) - The White Man's Burden, a phrase immortalized by English poet Rudyard Kipling as an excuse for European-American imperialism, was front and center Thursday morning (October 29) at a RAND-sponsored discussion of Afghanistan in the Russell Senate Office Building.???? The agenda was top-heavy with RAND speakers, and the thinking was decidedly "inside the box" - so much so, that I found myself repeating a verse from Kipling, who recognized the dangers of imperialism, to remind me of the real world: It is not wise for the Christian white To hustle the Asian brown; For the Christian riles And the Asian smiles And weareth the Christian down. At the end of the fight Lies a tombstone white With the name of the late deceased; And the epitaph drear, A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East. With a few notable exceptions, the RAND event offered conventional wisdom to a fare-thee-well.

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Week in review: Afghanistan and Pakistan

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Worldfocus - Oct. 31 (Interview) - David Andelman, editor of the World Policy Journal and a former foreign correspondent, and Chrystia Freeland, U.S. managing editor of Britain’s Financial Times, join David Brancaccio to review the week’s events in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They discuss troop levels in Afghanistan and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s controversial remarks in Pakistan.

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Pakistan at War

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Global Pulse - By Erin Coker - Oct. 28 (News Analysis) - It has been a bloody month for Pakistan. The army has launched an offensive in South Waziristan aided by US drones, and the Taliban are fighting back with suicide bombs in major cities. With hundreds dying, what do the Pakistani people think?

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Obama's foreign policy report card

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Juan Cole - Oct. 27 (Opinion) - Why can't the administration of President Barack Obama get the word out about its policy successes? President Obama campaigned on an ambitious platform of withdrawing from Iraq, engaging Iran on its nuclear program and persuading the Pakistani government to take on the Taliban and al-Qaida. Despite the charge by critics from both the right and the left in the wake of his winning the Nobel Peace Prize that he has accomplished little so far, in fact he has already set in motion significant change on several of these fronts -- despite the enormous domestic tasks that have inevitably preoccupied his administration. Yet you'd never hear about these successes from the mainstream media.

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Official resigns over Afghan war

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Karen DeYoung - Oct. 27 (Special Report) - Foreign Service officer leaves in protest of war he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency.

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Phase 2 of Waziristan Campaign; Pakistan Closes Schools; Mahsud Civilians Barred from Roads

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Oct. 24 (News Analysis) - akistan's military began "Phase 2" of its campaign in South Waziristan on Thursday, with a siege of Kotkai, the home town of Hakimullah Mahsud, the leader of the Taliban Movement of Pakistan. So far the army claims to have killed 100 militants, and 300 homes are said to have been damaged. Locals maintain that some of those killed are actually innocent civilians, and most of the houses were unconnected to the Taliban. Even if they were accurate, these numbers suggest that the Taliban have not stood and fought, but rather have melted away, since they only have light arms and would have been killed in large numbers by the Pakistani army, which has artillery and fighter jets.

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Caught in the crossfire of war against the Taliban

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - Oct. 23 (News Report) - Gul Hassan is incandescent with rage. As the Pakistan military mounted its most ambitious anti-Taliban offensive yet, the farmer and his family were not ready. "Bombs were falling all around us," he recalls, gesturing animatedly. "We were very scared. We didn't know what was going to happen to us."

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The Washington Post Creates Its Own Facts to Support Afghan Nation-Building

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Melvin A. Goodman - Oct. 22 (Opinion) - The Washington Post is creating its own facts in order to support its argument for US nation-building in Afghanistan. In its lead editorial on Saturday, the Post asserted that the United States is capable of building a strong government in Afghanistan at the national and local levels. The Post claimed that Afghanistan had had a "working national government through most of the 1970s and 1980s." This is simply not so.read more

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Islamabad dismayed by 'dithering' US

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Asia Times - By Zahid U Kramet - Oct. 22 (News Analysis) - As White House officials continue to debate the call of the United States' military chief in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, for an additional force of 40,000 to win the war against Taliban insurgents in the Afghanistan-Pakistan war theater, the overall impression in Pakistan is that rather than any decisive victory, the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are now looking for a face-saving exit to leave Pakistan to face the brunt of the fallout - once again.

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Now, a Cheney surge: Blasts Obama for Afghan 'dithering,' delays and indecision

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:10:20 -0700

Los Angeles Times - Oct. 22 -

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‘You Have Atomic Bombs, but We Have Suicide Bombers.’

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By David Rohde - Oct. 20 (Special Report) - The Taliban fighters who kidnapped David Rohde, a Times reporter, and two Afghans were guided by a strident belief that the U.S. was waging a war against Islam. The third installment in Mr. Rohde’s account of his captivity.

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Refugee flood reveals human cost of South Waziristan's invisible war | World news

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Declan Walsh - Oct. 20 (News Report) - • Pakistani forces accused of hitting civilians • Up to 260,000 people may flee battle against Taliban. The war in South Waziristan started early for Ghufran. As Pakistani warplanes pounded the Taliban stronghold of Ladha last week, in preparation for the ground offensive now under way, the 11-year-old boy and his family scrambled to safety across a range of jagged mountains. They left behind a broken home, destroyed by the air force, but also something much more precious. Ghufran said his father stayed on to guard the family's worldly wealth: four goats, three sheep and a donkey. "I miss him already. I wish he came with us," the schoolboy said, a shadow falling across his face. As fighting raged for a third day in South Waziristan ...

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US, Pakistan agree to disagree on Waziristan offensive

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - By Issam Ahmed - Oct. 19 (News Analysis) - "As the Pakistani Army continues its massive offensive against the Taliban's base in South Waziristan, top US officials including CENTCOM chief David Petraeus and Sen. John Kerry (D) of Massachusetts, are meeting with military and civilian leaders here. While the Army's action is in line with US encouragement to rout out the militants, key differences appear to remain between the US and Pakistan on how to tackle the insurgency".

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Inside the troubled and dangerous Pakistan

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Boston Globe - By Chuck Leddy - Oct. 19 (Other) - "Pakistan, the deeply troubled US ally bordering both Iran and Afghanistan, may be the next crisis facing US foreign policymakers. The country’s mountainous northwest region is increasingly controlled by the Taliban (Muslim extremists) and is the suspected hiding place of Osama bin Laden. American journalist Nicholas Schmidle spent two years in this troubled country, watching Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf attempt to hold on to his military dictatorship amid challenges from both secular, pro-democracy reformers and pro-Taliban Islamic extremists".

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No Afghanistan ‘Checkposts’ Abandoned While Pak Military Offensive Proceeds ?

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Independent - By Spencer Ackerman - Oct. 19 (News Analysis) - "A piece in the Pakistan paper the News accused the U.S. military of taking the inexplicable step of abandoning “checkposts” on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border while the Pakistani military offensive in nearby Waziristan intensifies. According to Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s staff, it’s just not true".

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Pakistan launches risky offensive into Taliban-Al Qaeda stronghold

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Alex Rodriguez - Oct. 18 (News Report) - The military will face unforgiving terrain along the Afghan border that has long been viewed as a possible hide-out for Osama bin Laden, as well as a battle-hardened enemy likely to respond by stepping up bloody attacks across the country. The government believes that more than 80% of the terrorism inflicted on Pakistan originates in the region.

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Pakistan offensive sparks civilian exodus

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - By Imran Khan - Oct. 18 (News Report) - After months of Taliban attacks on civilians and government targets, Pakistan's military has launched a fresh offensive against the group's fighters in South Waziristan. The offensive includes 28,000 troops whose aim is to target the heartland of the Pakistani Taliban, the territory in South Waziristan ruled by Hakimullah Mehsud, the group's leader. But the campaign has also sparked a mass exodus of civilians, with estimates of around 150,000 people fleeing the volatile zone to seek refuge elsewhere.

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