Two reports on the Taliban, one with an Afghanistan, one with a Pakistan focus are found here by Graeme Smith and here by Owen Bennet-Jones.

David Rhode reviews My Life with the Taliban and Decoding the New Taliban and points to the earliest opinionators on this country for the US.

The new studies of Afghanistan are vastly more knowledgeable than the writing that angered Poullada, but they grapple with the same contradictions.

Bellaigue looks at Barfield’s Afghanistan but more so at political possibilities today and wrong judgment based on what Rhode describes.

Bergen did some quantitative asessment on Gitmo detainees who were released and returned to the battlefield or not so.

Linshoten and Kuehn look at how to keep Taliban and alQaeda apart.

Variation of the Frequency of Fatal Quarrels With Magnitude by Lewis F. Richardson in 1984.

Abductive Inference for Combat: Using SCARE-S2 to Find High-Value Targets in Afghanistan by Paulo Shakarian et.al. 2011.

History should be a better guide than maths in this respect … Conflict History.

[Article/Video] Pakistan Rock against the West by Adam B. Ellick

In my opinion he chose examples that underlined his idea, and completely left out other representatives of the rock scene who wouldn’t fit his article.

[Article/Video/Audio] An American Accent to Pakistani Rock by Robert Mackey

The reasonable of the three articles.

[Article] Never mind the Taliban by Declan Welsh

“Wannabe rock stars have it tough in Pakistan. Last month a new band, Poor Rich Boy (and the toothless winos), took to the stage of a cramped Islamabad cafe for their breakthrough gig. On the first night, one person turned up.”

Let us satisfy our readers by providing them information the expect: In Pakistan it’s dangerous to make music! Come on Mr. Walsh, you can do better than such cheap stuff.

He is talking about alternatives to the current war that were never considered, a Bonn agreement that was leading into the wrong direction looking for the wrong approach to a solution, and why the West needs to rethink its idea of “security” and how to keep it.

Personally his comment on the last point – that the problem the West has with the Muslim world is a “breach of trust” and thus a solution with arms is in no way leading to a solution, just leading to more distrust – is the most valuable. That “trust” is a vital component if you want to e.g. make business with a carpet dealer in Pakistan, if you want to travel from Urumqi to Kashgar with a truck driver or if you want to build a school in Kashmir with a mistri you hardly know. That trust is different from what we understand under the same term when dealing with other people in e.g. Europe. And that difference needs to be understood and felt (unfortunately I am a poor creator with words and thus won’t attempt an explanation here, Nicolas Bouvier in his L’Usage de Monde does give some insight for all those who can’t experience it themselves), can be learnt on the small scale (carpet dealer, truck driver, mistri) and may then be applied on the large scale (international cooperation, trade, nation building).

He does endorse McChrystal’s assessment, but criticizes him for not presenting a strategy to meet the goal (“people centered approach”).

Kilcullen also has a lecture on “Small Wars”, I haven’t listened to it yet.

[Database] Helmand Archives by Richard B. Scott (USAID) – Afghanistan

Material on Helmand from 1974 till today, by a ret. USAID officer.

[Database] South Asian Idea Weblog - India/Pakistan