We (the NGO I work for as a program manager for Pakistan projects) currently run an ambulance in the vicinity of the Shamshattoo Refugee camp. How that camp, and it’s surrounding areas, is linked to the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan I won’t get back to – Ron Moreau has recently written an interesting story on how Hekmatyar is recruiting his fighters from the camp and trains them in Afghanistan just to send them back where they wait for their call. There is little government control of the area, the population is extremely poor, health issues mainly circulate around malnutrition and diseases that stem from the lack of clean drinking water and hygiene problems. Even after serious injuries, people can often not afford to go to Peshawar for treatment. Afghanis not being treated in government hospitals and Pakistanis not being treated in NGO Hospitals in the Camp increases their dire situation. Malnutrition leads to serious physical problems of children. More than 90% of the women are married before they turn 20, nearly half of them already by their mid teens – by the time they are 30, they have often reached the average family size, just above 9. Female literacy is somehwhere around 2%, male literacy just below 20%. Pretty much all people work in the brick trade and associated jobs. Patients here are both, Afghani and Pakistani.

The Afghanis sometimes bring their family members from back home for treatment. So far so good, these are no big numbers. What’s surprising though, is that we expect the number of Afghani Refugee patients to plummet during the hottest summer months. Many of them return to their high pastures in Afghanistan during summer. For one, that ridicules our understanding of a refugee (who I would expect to only be in the host country, because it’s really impossible for him, for whatever reason, to live where his home is). Considering the fact that the area in Afghanistan where they come from (the border provinces) is now probably a lot more prone to fighting than during winter, the non-fighting season, they obviously do not just stay in Pakistan because their Afghani home is deemed unsafe(r). Anyhow, it shows how big the numbers crossing the borders each year may well be (there are somewhat 1 lakh refugees in Shamshattoo alone, of which enough move that we feel the consequences in an ambulance that is outside the camp – and there are a few more such camps in the area). Differentiating between a young man who crosses the border to tend to his cattle and one who crosses it to tend to his bomb-making-update-course is impossible. Probably these two intents often also inhabit one and the same person – who will then rightly claim that he is just a farmer, if he is controlled at all.

It’s a simple observation, contrary to Moreau I have not done any further researching into that. I would be interested in opinions from people with experiences in the area.

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*That accusation is hurled against Pakistan authorities. Who that would be, or which of those (civil, army, secret service) feels like that accusation is meant for the respective I am not sure – I am pretty sure though, that the West/the US is not sure either.

**Just like not being sure who to blame, no one is clear on who those extremists are. I know Afghanis who are fighting as seasonal labor. When there is no call from their leader they sell carpets or drive tractors in Kashmir, in Punjab, in Mazar. Once they are needed they move to Waziristan from where they are shipped to wherever their skills are sought. They don’t call themselves Taliban, they are just fighting for their respective leader one up in command. The term “Taliban” they know from CNN or GEO, whatever is running in their chaikhana.

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.

Thomas H. Johnson’s and M. Chris Mason’s article on Pashtun’s and the FATA may be just another bickering over issues outsiders mostly have the less an understanding of the more they are convinced they finally get it but they do provide some good points.

The 2007 plan to provide U.S. training and assistance to the tribal paramilitary Frontier Corps is misguided, however. Since their inception a century ago, those units have always been poachers-turned-wardens, with well-recognized limits on their reliability; and today they are more deeply infiltrated and compromised by divided loyalties than ever before. The Frontier Corps’ problems have little to do with weapons and training, and U.S. troops recruited largely from the inner cities and trained for conventional warfare have little to teach rugged Pashtun hillmen about fighting in their own mountains in any case.

Kimberly Marten contests some of their views rather poorly. It’s really just like to residents of Parachinar discussing why Westerners watch Hannah Montana and call themselves devout believers. Discussing issues we don’t get, that in the end is also an essential criticism Johnson and Mason make.

The issues they adress concerning tribeshelp to understand those who were all WTF over the recent suicide attack in Bajaur were apparently the Salarzai tribe was attacked for being openly anti-Taliban with their Lashkar.

They have written earlier about the Taliban.

Numerous Bloggers and Scholars have taken that result as a proof for what they see as an increased unpopularity of the Taliban and thus an argument for continued presence in the region and apparent accordance on the goals of the current war. But the question was not “Do you support the actions/ideology of the Taliban?” or “Do you favor the Taliban over your civilian government?”. The presence of the Taliban is of course unpopular – with all it’s consequences including the presence of Western forces on their soil. But that doen’t mean that the questioned people favor the West’s interference in the region over the Taliban’s presence.

We keep asking questions in a way we already know what to expect as a pleasing answer. Justifying our actions in retrospect with flawed polls is not going to help us ahead.

[Article] Flipping the Taliban. Fotini Christia and Michael Semple, July/August 2009, Foreign Affairs Volume 88, Number 4.

“For many Taliban fighters, insurgency has nothing to do with Islamic zealotry; it is a way of life.”

[Article] Know Thine Enemy – Why the Taliban Cannot Be Flipped. Barbara Elias, November 2 2009, Foreign Affairs (online).

“And there is little reason not to expect flipped Taliban to flip back when it suits their purposes.”

[Video] Transition to What?. Talk at the Halifax Forum, November 21 2009.

“Stick with it brothers, and we’ll topple the government.”

[Blog] A Study of Martyrs. Blog Thread by Mari Saurgo on www.makingsenseofjihad.com

In January 2008, Al-Fajr Media Center, an al-Qaida affiliated media group, released an extensive issue in its series, “Biographies of the Martyrs in the Land of Khorasan.”

*[Book] My Life with the Taliban. Abdul Salam Zaeef/Alex Strick van Linschoten/Felix Kuehn, to be published on January 31 2010.

“…presents a unique insight into the worldview of the Taliban.”