Ahmed Rashid
Hitchens on Pakistan – on the frontier of poor polemics
It’s important to note, since Hitchens, in his to date last article on the issue, uses Rushdies’ Shame and the narrative concept of his Midnight’s Children, to transfer the appaling misconceptions he has so far introduced for the rather impersonal country (with it’s elite as a concept, not so much a Pakistani person) to the Pakistani as a person, or in a wider sense as a society.
Descent into Information Chaos
Focusing on the geographical core of the problem, the Afghanistan- Pakistan region itself, unfortunately most of the material available comes from American sources – which is problematic in two aspects. Firstly, most of the US writers on AfPak focus foremost on the impact of the conflict on their homecountry, judging from Washington, often calling themselves „National Security Experts“ and often missing the gerater picture when imminent threats to the US are not given. Secondly when staying in the area itself the foreigners one meets in public space are non-American. Americans are mostly barred from moving around freely or don’t even come in the first place.
Ahmed Rashid on the flood disaster in Pakistan
summary: Because the pakistani government has lost ground in flood hit provinces KP and Balochistan, and the international relief response has not yet met minimum requirements, it is likely that extremism will increase rapidly in the area. That will not only affect the war in Afghanistan, as the Pakistan Army is not capable of defending [...]
Rethinking interests
Raul R. Pillar is probably right with his theory , that terrorists (foremost al-Qaeda) do not necessarily need Afghanistan as a safe haven to attack the US in future and that the presence of US troops in the area should not be justified with just this target – to eradicate such breeding places.
reason vs. polemics – how Pakistani intellectuals face the looming US approach on their country
Qalandar Bux Memon has recently published an article commenting on Hillary Clinton’s visit and her statements in Pakistan. Read it here at the Samosa, but it was also published in DAWN and referred to by Yasir here. I recieved emails from Pakistani Leftist Political Activists who praised the article and I guess it was cheered [...]
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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