South Asia

I heard Sarah Chayes at the Michigan Theater on Thursday afternoon, speaking on Afghanistan. She is a long time expatriate in Qandahar, where she arrived late in 2001 as a reporter. She has gone on to be an entrepreneur of the Peace Corps kind, and a consultant to the ISAF forces…. …[Text removed at speaker’s […]

Afghanistan style (Taliban version): American style (Tea Party version): For more on woman-stomper Tim Profitt and Rand Paul see HuffPo. The episode puts Paul’s youthful opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment for women in a whole new light. Lauren Valle of MoveOn.org suffered a concussion and a sprained arm. It is not known what injuries […]

The revelation that Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai receives millions in influence peddling payments from Iran is full of ironies. It demonstrates that the US and Iran are de facto allies in Afghanistan (in fact both of them are deeply opposed to the Taliban and their backers among hard line cells of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence). […]

The wikileaks document dump from the Iraq War may well derail the formation of a government by implicating caretaker prime minister Nuri al-Maliki in running death squads. We are in our seventh month since the March 7 elections, but no new prime minister has been named because no party or coalition has the 163 seats […]

Insurgents in Afghanistan bombed a mosque in Taloqan, Takhar Province, on Friday, killing 20 persons and wounded 33. Among the dead was Mohammad Omar, governor of the nearby Qunduz Province, who ironically had been warning of the increasing strength of the Taliban in the north and the need for better security precautions. Unlike many northern […]