Experts on AfPak sprout out of the ground like mushrooms – everyone gets his go at what it’s all really about and what should have been done in the first place or what the future will definitely look like. While one would expect, that having so many smart people around who all know so much about this place that noone really seems to understand, the picture would become more clear, the floods of opinions and predictions on the topic just make the situation worse.

Think Tanks like the Foreign Policy AfPak channel, a source I generally trust generates news on the area faster than the truth can run. Tiedemann writes that the FATA is a “lawless region” – just because it doesn’t obey American law doesn’t mean its without any of it. The way many experts shape our image of this area is dangerous – the wrong perception we get leads us inevitably to wrong decisions.

Information that we is just as disheartening but at least not manipulated by opinion-shapers are the newest opinion polls of the Pakistani public by IRI.

An interesting discussion highlighting what the people in Pakistan think of it all is currently raging at LUMS, already discussed in the national media. As far as I understand the issue, these discussions are on the one side reason for optimism (ultimately these people (Pakistanis and Afghanis, Central Asians) will find a solution to the whole mess of the area, not the “experts” around the US and Europe), on the other side, they do still point in an ideologic direction which I find worrisome.

[originally posted on 1/10/2009 at here-ware]