Counterterrorism in South Asia
Zmarak Yousefzai
Monday, October 15, 2012
The biggest debate surrounding the Afghanistan-Pakistan region
today concerns the U.S. drone program in Pakistan's tribal regions, which
target the militants who terrorize and kill local residents, and who attack
American soldiers inside Afghanistan. Ironically, the anti-war group CODEPINK
-- members of which visited Pakistan last week to protest drone strikes --
along with much of the American left, the Pakistani establishment, and the
Taliban are all on the same side in their opposition to drone strikes. While
silent on the many more targeted killings of innocent civilians by Taliban
militants in the tribal areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Pakistani
establishment and the American left both loudly criticize U.S. drone strikes,
albeit for different reasons.
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War in Afghanistan
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
Friday, October 12, 2012
In a remarkable act of 'pin the war on
your opponent' Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday evening worked to portray
Paul Ryan as the candidate most in favor of continuing the unpopular fight in Afghanistan,
a conflict President Barack Obama once called the "war
that has to be won" and to which he added 33,000 American soldiers.
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Militant recruitment strategies
Hussain Nadim
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
In
recent personal interviews with three would-be suicide bombers aged 15-19, who
were caught in April 2010 by security forces in Pakistan, I was told a
strikingly different story than one might expect of a Pakistani youth's journey
towards militancy. These young men from North Waziristan were not religious,
nor motivated by supposedly Islamic ideas, and had no substantial animosity
toward the United States or the Pakistan Army - in fact they knew very little
about the world outside their small tribe. How, then, were they recruited to
carry out something as violent and psychologically traumatic as suicide
bombing?
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Transition Strategy
William Byrd
Monday, October 1, 2012
Afghanistan provides
all too many examples of the wisdom of Winston Churchill's saying "those that
fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it." Great Britain forgot the hard-learned lessons
from the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-42) and got caught in the misadventure of
the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-80).
The Afghan Communist government that took power in a military coup in
1978 did not appear to have learned from the failed westernization and reform
experiment of King Amanullah (1919-29); it imposed radical changes and engaged
in brutal repression, quickly stirring up a violent reaction that threatened
the new regime. The Soviet Union
optimistically viewed its military intervention in Afghanistan at the end of
1979 as a limited action with a short time horizon-assumptions that proved
unfounded and whose lack of realism would have been apparent from a review of
Afghan history. And it does not seem
that the United States and its NATO allies reflected on lessons from the Soviet
occupation when they initiated the international military intervention in
Afghanistan after 9/11, even though, as Bruce Riedel noted: "A
country rarely fights the same war twice in one generation, especially from
opposite sides. Yet that in many ways describes the U.S. role in Afghanistan
today."
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Political Reform
Omar Samad
Monday, September 24, 2012
A
significant step was taken on Sunday by 20 Afghan political groupings and
factions in Kabul to sign a Democratic Charter and announce the
formation of a cooperation
and coordination council as a prelude to the political transition and
presidential elections expected to be held in 2014. This initiative, in the
works for weeks, aims to forge a consensus to strengthen democratic governance,
assure free and fair elections and act as a pressure point on President Hamid
Karzai to commit to electoral reforms and a legitimate process for a peaceful
transfer of power when his term ends in less than two years.
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War in Afghanistan
Roger D. Carstens
Friday, September 21, 2012
Partnership is an essential
aspect of our counterinsurgency strategy. It is also an indispensible element
of the transition of responsibility to Afghans.
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Protests for the Prophet
Saba Imtiaz
Friday, September 21, 2012
When people began pouring out onto the
streets in Pakistan to
protest on Friday, there was little chance that the government would take any
action against them. After all, it was a declared public holiday to mark love
for Prophet Mohammad, and religious and political groups had taken the
government's move as a sign that the protests were sanctioned by the state.
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Religious tolerance in Pakistan
Rabail Baig
Friday, September 14, 2012
A month ago today, Rimsha Masih was unknown to the world.
A month later - probably the worst of her life - the 14-year-old Christian girl
from a slum near the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, has stirred up a storm not
only at home but the world over, putting Pakistan's notorious blasphemy
laws in the spotlight like never before.
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Afghan Security
David H. Young
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
[Below is Part Two of David H. Young's analysis of the
summer uprisings in eastern Afghanistan.
Read Part One here]
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Afghan Security
David H. Young
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Revolt is a loaded word, conjuring up images of the Free
Syrian Army, the Anbar Awakening, and the Libyan civil war. In small pockets across eastern Afghanistan,
however, farmers, shopkeepers and others are taking the fight to the Taliban
over the group's abusive tendencies.
Though entirely isolated from one another, instances of violent
resistance to harsh Taliban rules have spiked this past summer-brought on by school
closings in Ghazni, music bans in Nuristan, beheadings
in Paktia and murders
in Laghman, among other causes. While a small number of Afghans admire the
Taliban, most who support it do so because they are coerced, or believe that
the group is less predatory than the government, though that's hardly an
endorsement. So what precisely does it
take for Afghans to stand up to the Taliban, and what are their options?
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POST
Chris Rogers
Friday, September 7, 2012
On Sunday, there will be a
"splendid ceremony" marking the handover of the United States'
Bagram prison. Yet despite the pomp, the handover hides the real story - the
Afghans wanted this to mark the end of U.S. detention power in Afghanistan,
while the U.S. has other ideas.
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The Karzai Government
Waliullah Rahmani
Thursday, September 6, 2012
On Wednesday
August 29, the dismissal of Afghan intelligence chief, Rahmatullah Nabil was officially
confirmed. The news, which first
began circulating some 48 hours earlier on BBC Persian, was met with shock by many Afghans
in the capital city of Kabul.
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