Breaking news: CNN is reporting that President Obama has decided to take 30,000 troops out of Afghanistan over the next year eighteen months, including 10,000 by the end of this year. Military commanders had requested that he limit this first draw down to as little as 5,000, so this step was unexpected. There are 100,000 […]
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South Asia
Gates: Winding down the Wars
Outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was on CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley on Sunday, and he sees a diminished American superpower on the horizon. Gates foresaw the winding down of the Afghanistan War, a slow grinding ultimate victory for NATO in Libya, fairly deep cuts in the war department budget on […]
Pakistan Arrests CIA Informants in Bin Laden Case
The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence has arrested five Pakistani informants who gave the CIA information leading to the raid on Usamah Bin Laden’s compound at Abbotabad, according to the NYT. The arrests appear to have happened some time ago, and were part of the recent consultations of Leon Panetta, who is transitioning from CIA chief to […]
Time to Begin Leaving Afghanistan
Memorial Day, in my view, should be a time of reflection not only on the sacrifices made for the nation in war but on whether our wars are necessary and whether they are being fought in the right way. The Iraqi people and the parliament want the US out of Iraq, and the US public […]
Congress: Yankee Come Home; Iraq, Pakistan: Yankee Go Home
Between 70,000 and 100,000 members of the Sadrist Shiite political bloc rallied in Baghdad on Thursday, demanding that the some 47,000 US troops still in Iraq leave altogether. Sadrist leader Muqtada al-Sadr says that if the troops remain, he will reactivate his Mahdi Army militia. It is a powerful threat. But in some ways, his […]
Pakistan’s Chinese Gambit
Pakistan’s relations with the United States are troubled, and Islamabad may be turning to China as a result. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani just ended a 4-day visit to Beijing, which turned into a love fest. The visit commemorated 60 years of Sino-Pakistan relations. (China has been a key Pakistan ally in the latter’s struggle […]
12 Killed in Big Anti-NATO Demonstration in Afghanistan
The LAT reports that a night-time raid by NATO forces that left 4 dead provoked a big demonstration in Taloqan in northern Afghanistan, the repression of which killed 12 and wounded 70. Taloqan is the capital of Takhar Province, population about 200,000 and people of Uzbek ethnicity are the single largest group. The area was […]
Pakistani Parliament Reacts against US Incursions
Pakistan’s elected parliament held a 10-hour session on Friday and decided at the end of it that US incursions, including drone strikes, into Pakistan must cease. The American drone strikes in the northwest, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas have long been unpopular in parliament and with the general public (though in some of the […]
Secret Pakistani Deal with US on Bin Laden
It turns out that when President Obama ordered the Navy SEALs to get Usama Bin Laden in Abbotabad, he did not infringe against Pakistani sovereignty after all. Rather, he was acting in accordance with a longstanding secret agreement between Washington and Islamabad, according to The Guardian. The agreement even stipulated that the Pakistani government would […]