South Asia

President Obama received 12 stitches for a busted lip after being elbowed on the basketball court Friday. In other news, the Pentagon has been dressing up the Afghanistan debacle as best they can. © Juan Cole. May be used with a link back.

Most of the results of the disputed parliamentary election in Afghanistan were announced on Wednesday. Altogether 24 candidates were disqualified from parliament because the Independent Electoral Commission found them guilty of fraud. Some 1.3 million of the 5.6 million votes were tossed out as invalid. The southern Pashtun ethnic group appears to have lost its […]

The announcement by the New York Times that one of the supposedly prominent Taliban with whom the Karzai government has been negotiating turns out to be an impostor is only the latest depressing indication that the whole Afghanistan boondoggle is shot through with flimflammery. The US gave a man claiming to be Mullah Akhtar Muhammad […]

The Afghan Pajhwok News Agency reports a seeming discrepancy between statements of NATO and US officials with regard to when the Afghanistan mission will wind up. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen foresaw the beginning of a withdrawal in 2011 and a certain end to those troops’ combat missions by the end if 2014. In contrast […]

An opinion survey carried out in Helmand and Kandahar provinces showed that 92% of the Afghan respondents (1000 men) had never heard of 9/11. Most Americans are ambivalent about the Afghanistan War precisely because it is hard to dismiss the argument that the September 11 attacks were planned out there in some of 40 terrorist […]

At the NATO summit in Lisbon, it is expected to be announced that although 2014 is the target date by which NATO and US troops would withdraw, in fact a NATO contingent will be in the country thereafter in some capacity. Although this prospect is said to mollify Afghan elites around Karzai who fear being […]

Los Angeles Times, November 17, 2010: “As NATO leaders meet in Lisbon this weekend, the U.S. is expected to endorse a plan for slow withdrawal and gradually handing over security responsibility by 2014.“: “At a summit in Lisbon this weekend, Obama and other NATO leaders will endorse a plan to gradually turn combat responsibility over […]