Report
US “presence” in Pakistan
Financial support to Pakistan by the US is extensive, discussions about the security of the state’s personel there ongoing (here and here) but all the foreigners I see on the ground are non-US citizens. In 4 years in Lahore, Kashmir, the Northern Areas, the Tribal Areas and Peshawar I have met 4 American Nationals. I do not count my visits to horrible expat paries in Isloo with tipsy girls and tough guys or my encounter with well-built guys on the airport, who had a special escort past the queue and were obviously not here to taste Daal or learn a foreign language but to look grim and foster a clicheed, conspirational Xe-image, US citizens based in Pakistan nowadays have.
Mathematics of War
Some truely interesting material circles around a recent research paper published in Nature that got some criticism around – maths and conflict. I am fascinated by it since these are tools we commonly use in our field (especially for Hydrology) and I really wouldn’t have thought about applying it in conflict studies. So basically I have no clue about joining these two topics and am myself just about to dive into the topic.
Pani ki kahani – Running on Empty
Where all the players, which in recent months were used by Pakistanis as scapegoats for all their sorrows come together – a report on Pakistan’s water crisis. It includes Kerry-Lugar, the sugar industry, WAPDA, Kalabagh and India – and brings it all together to give a meaningful insight of what goes wrong and what right. [...]
The Life of two foreigners in Kandahar
Most interesting article of two western foreigners living in Kandahar, the heart of Taliban resistance. They report about he boredom of sitting in their flat, because leaving would be too dangerous, but also about the thrill living so close to the “faltline” of history.
The McChrystal Report – a link collection
The report by General Stanley McChrystal, date 30th of August. These three articles in the Economist ask whether to “surge” or to go “surgical”, thereby presenting the two opposing parties when it comes to the future strategy in Afghanistan. While the one side, represented by Vice President Joe Biden, Obama’s security adviser James Jones and [...]
The McChrystal Report – a summary
40.000 – from Kabul to Washington this number achieved media attention a number gets not that often (except maybe the Down Jones: 10.000 break through). 40.000 this is the speculated number of troops the new ISAF Commander General McChrystal wants to finally win the war in Afghanistan. McChrystal’s report on the situation in Afghanistan is [...]
Asia Society Task Force Report
In April this year the Asia Society published a Task Force report (led by Barnett Rubin and Thomas Pickering, the team including Ahmed Rashid and Peter Bergen among others) on the strategy the US administration should take on AfPak. It can be downloaded here. The presentation of the report was recorded on video and included [...]
The Bonn Conference – History and Impact
From a review by Ahmed Rashid (“Afghanistan: On the Brink” in the New York Review of Books) I turned towards another assessment by Barnett Rubin – his pragmatic comments on the targets set by the US and during the Bonn conference, written in 2006 but already addressing many points some pundits pretend to have invented only recently.
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