Afghanistan
Flawed Questions, Missed Alternatives, Rethinking Causes – lecture by Nazif Shahrani
Christian Bleuer on Ghosts of Alexander has provided some excellent material on AfPak – a lecture at ANU by Nazif Shahrani, which can be accessed here as an mp3. 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 [...]
Afghan Alliance Building
When US troops entered Afghanistan, there prime target was to find Osama Bin Laden. Finding a base in hostile Taliban land made the US choose their allies with two eyes closed. As long as the warlords of the Northern Alliance were fighting against the Taliban, US troops would turn away from drug trafficing, smuggeling and human rights abuse.
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.
The Team
Richard Holbrooke has been appointed by the Obama administration as the special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has subsequently assembled a team of experts under his wings that (according to George Packer in his New Yorker article) numbers around 30 people. Since this team is essential for the further progress of the conflicts in the area, the counter insurgency going on and possible prospects of rebuilding the Afghan economy and keeping Pakistan stable, I want to investigate the team’s members further and provide some information about them and their work to date.
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