Pull Out – Balance Offshore

Since some time we have planned to put down arguments for whether to stay or pull out of AfPak was the right decision – I won’t get into lengthy writing, nothing substantially new would come of it. Over the last year’s readings (the last being My Life with the Taliban by Zaeef), my first National Security lecture at the ETH CSS and the recent work in Pakistan especially toward the Afghanistan border I have moved from “Stay put”, to “Undecided, but in any case the western presence is extremely ill-informed and hence dangerous”, to “Pull Out”.

John Mearsheimer puts that last point into perspective. He comes around to the pre 9/11 dogma to focus on China but ends his article with a focus on inside the US.

Events, dear boy! Events.

As part of my National Security Lecture I just finished a very good paper by Jolyon Howorth (published in Christopher Hill & Michael Smith (eds.), The International Relations of the European Union, Oxford University Press, 2004) on the EU’s defence and security outlook. While Germany is struggling with it’s deployment of troops in Afghanistan, Austria is buying planes while not knowing what to use them for and discussing a new law adressed for Austrians who trained in terror camps one wonders where the plans of the EU about it’s multilateral national security looks like.

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.

The capture of Jundullah leader Abdolmalek Rigi

Abdolmalek Rigi, the leader of Jundallah militant group, was nabbed in Iran on 23rd Feb in a dramatic fashion. His post-arrest statement and a photo allegedly showing him at a US base in Afghanistan just 24 hours before his arrest has sparked an interest debate on US role with Jundallah under Obama’s administration. Although Pentagon [...]

You’re a terrorist. And you’re not.

US authorities have confirmed that Joseph Andrew Stack who crashed a plane in government office in Austin, TX is not a terrorist. Austin’s Chief of Police, Art Acevedo, stated, “I consider this a criminal attack by a lone individual.” They testified this after proclaiming that it was indeed a suicide attack. Indeed, an ‘interesting’ definition. A [...]

The Guantanamo “Suicides” – The other front forgotten

Not everyone who is involved in this matter views it from a political perspective, of course. General Al-Zahrani grieves for his son, but at the end of a lengthy interview he paused and his thoughts turned elsewhere. “The truth is what matters,” he said. “They practiced every form of torture on my son and on many others as well. What was the result? What facts did they find? They found nothing. They learned nothing. They accomplished nothing.”

Forgotten Promise – Pankaj Mishra on Kashmir

Pankaj Mishra writes about the neglect of the Kashmir issue on the wide political scale, especially in light of increased focus on the AfPak area from the West that always seems to mention the Kashmir issue as a basis to the problem but never addresses it directly (similarly to the Nuclear Arms threat that Seymour [...]

Dog in the well

In Punjabi folklore there is story of a dog that fell into the village well and died. People asked a wise-man what they should do so that the water doesn’t get infected and people suffer from the diseases because of the dead dog. The wise-man asked them to take out 100 bucket loads of water from well so the [...]

Pakistan’s “Other-People’s-Money” Problem

Mosharraf Zaidi’s second part of commentary on Kerry-Lugar Bill from the prevalent perspective amongst Pakistani people: http://www.mosharrafzaidi.com/2009/10/10/pakistans-%E2%80%9Cother-peoples-money%E2%80%9D-problem/

Kerry-Lugar Bill: The Fruitation of 62 years

An excellent analysis of Kerry Lugar Bill by Mosharraf Zaidi: http://www.mosharrafzaidi.com/2009/09/30/kerry-lugar-bill-the-fruition-of-62-years/