As the 2014 date for the withdrawal of most foreign troops from Afghanistan approaches, the country faces two starkly different futures. One is a return to the civil war conditions of the 1990s that brought disaster and disunity. In this scenario Afghanistan is abandoned by the international community before falling prey to the machinations of […]
2012 was a year of success on the battlefield for the US/ NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Afghanistan National Security Forces (ANSF), with significant militant retreat. There was decrease in Taliban activities in the hotbed of insurgency in the south — Helmand, Zabul and Kandahar provinces. We saw calm in the region as […]
History has made it all too clear that there is no easy way to assess progress in counterinsurgency, or to distinguish victory from defeat until the outcome of a conflict is final. Time and again, “defeated” insurgent movements have emerged as the victors in spite of repeated tactical defeats. The Chinese Communist victory over the Kuomintang, the […]
Persistent efforts by multiple western players finally paid off. The Taliban and the Kabul government met officially in Chantilly, a suburb of Paris, on December 20 and 21 under the aegis of a French think tank called the Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique. The Taliban was represented by senior leaders Shahabuddin Dilawar, former Taliban ambassador […]
As the war in Afghanistan winds down, with the withdrawal of American combat troops scheduled to be completed by the end of 2014, there’s a modest ratcheting up of movement towards a reconciliation with the Taliban. Though many analysts are skeptical a deal can be reached within the limited amount of time before the withdrawal, and though […]
THE bomb was hidden on a motorcycle parked outside a milk shop in the narrow lanes of Abbas Town, a middle-class, mainly Shia district of Karachi. Ali Mudassar remembers sitting across the road from the milk-seller on the evening of November 18th, chatting to friends. The force of the explosion hurled him backwards into the […]
Anyone seeking to understand Afghanistan in general, the flaws in the United States’ effort there, or life on the ground as a political advisor in the midst of a counterinsurgency, should read The Valley‘s Edge by Daniel Green. The book is a detailed, first-hand account of how a team of U.S. soldiers and civilians, focused on improving […]
When Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari ventured out in the past week to personally visit two localities across the populous Punjab province, his journey was immediately surrounded by unanswered questions. Since his unexpected political rise to becoming Pakistan’s head of state in 2008, following the assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, Zardari has adopted an […]
One of the most powerful mujahedeen commanders in Afghanistan, Ismail Khan, is calling on his followers to reorganise and defend the country against the Taliban as Western militaries withdraw, in a public demonstration of faltering confidence in the national government and the Western-built Afghan National Army. Mr. Khan is one of the strongest of a […]
President Hamid Karzai’s visit to India comes at a time when his nation’s future, more than at any point since 9/11, is shrouded in a fog of fear. This weekend, shells fired by his troops were reported to have killed five civilians in Pakistan’s South Waziristan agency, the latest in a series of cross-border skirmishes. […]
looking beyond borders 