public opinion
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
"A
decade of war is now ending," the president
announced in his inaugural address Monday, even as soldiers
continue to prepare for nine-month deployments to destinations including
Uruzgan and Kandahar.
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An Abysmal Agency
Candace Rondeaux
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Close observers of Afghanistan are
not likely to be surprised by recent allegations contained in a United
Nations report that the Afghan National Security Directorate, the CIA's
leading counterterrorism partner in South Asia, used whips and electric shocks
to squeeze confessions out of suspected insurgent detainees. There are many ways
to describe the directorate, or NDS as it is locally known, but a model of
modern intelligence gathering and investigative efficiency is not one of them.
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Religion in Pakistan
Knox Thames
Friday, January 18, 2013
Just after Christmas, the Pakistani Taliban (Tehreek-e-Taliban
Pakistan or TTP) offered a peace deal of sorts to the Pakistani government. In exchange for a cessation of TTP violence, they
demanded Pakistan's constitution be brought into conformity with their version
of Islamic law and the government break ties with the United States. In response, a senior Pakistani government
official reportedly called the offer "preposterous."
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Afghanistan post-2014
Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik, Jeffrey Dressler
Friday, January 18, 2013
Denying al Qaeda's re-emergence in
Afghanistan requires ensuring that Afghanistan can be sufficiently stable and
capable of defending itself, as President Barack Obama explained during the surge
announcement at West Point on Dec. 1, 2009. Al Qaeda is not present in large numbers (perhaps less than 1,000) in
Afghanistan now, but Secretary Leon Panetta stated
in November 2012 that "intelligence continues to indicate that they are
looking for some kind of capability to be able to go into Afghanistan as well." The U.S. and NATO cannot allow war weariness
and economic conditions to obscure the realities and requirements they face. The recently announced accelerated shift to a
"support role" in Afghanistan could become a guise to withdraw if "support"
means just a few thousand counterterrorism forces and trainers.
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The Brief
Jennifer Rowland
Friday, January 18, 2013
Media Advisory for Dubai-based Journalists: The New
America Foundation is pleased to announce the South Asia 2020 Conference, to be
held in Dubai from January 18-20. For more information about covering the
event, please contact Peter Bergen at bergenpeter@aol.com or
Taufiq Rahim at taufiq@globesight.com
(NAF).
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Pakistani Politics
Shamila N. Chaudhary
Thursday, January 17, 2013
It has been a complicated week for the Pakistan People's Party (PPP)
government. Out of the blue, Tahir ul Qadri, a retired politician and
Canada-based preacher led thousands of people on a long march from Lahore to
Islamabad demanding immediate regime change. If that wasn't enough, the Supreme
Court ordered Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf arrested on corruption charges.
All of this after the PPP dismissed the provincial government in Balochistan over
a militant attack that killed 100 Shi'a Muslims.
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The Brief
Jennifer Rowland
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Media Advisory for Dubai-based
Journalists: The New America Foundation is pleased to announce the South Asia
2020 Conference, to be held in Dubai from January 18-20. For more information
about covering the event, please contact Peter Bergen at bergenpeter@aol.com or Taufiq Rahim at taufiq@globesight.com.
Read More »
The Brief
Jennifer Rowland
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Coordinated attack
Suicide bombers in minivans packed with explosives attacked
the headquarters of the Afghanistan's intelligence agency, the National
Directorate of Security (NDS) on Wednesday (NYT,
Reuters).
Initial reports on the death toll indicate the explosion killed at least two
NDS guards and wounded 22 others.
Afghan Defense Minister Bismullah Khan Mohammadi said
Tuesday that he believes the United States "will not leave Afghanistan alone,"
and will remain invested in Afghanistan's security, not making the same mistake
made in the 1980s, "in which they forgot Afghanistan" (AP).
Mohammadi had accompanied President Hamid Karzai on his recent trip to
Washington for talks with U.S. officials on the future of cooperation between
their two nations.
Violence continues
Pakistan accused Indian soldiers of firing across the Line
of Control in the divided Kashmir region on Tuesday and killing a Pakistani
soldier, marking the fifth deadly clash between the armed forces of the two
countries in the region in a week (BBC, NYT).
Just hours before that purported attack, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
had said there cannot be "business as usual" with Pakistan after the skirmishes
(which each country has blamed on the other). And speaking from New York,
Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar accused India "warmongering" (AJE).
A new visa policy that would allow elderly Pakistanis to
receive visas to India upon arrival at the border has been shut down, and nine Pakistani
hockey players who were supposed to play in a private league in India have been
sent back to Pakistan (Reuters,
AP).
An estimated 3,000 people gathered in front of the home of
the governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province in Peshawar on Wednesday to protest
the killing of 18 villagers in an overnight raid they say was conducted by
Pakistani security forces (AP).
But one Pakistani security official in the area said the villagers had been
killed by militants.
-- Jennifer Rowland
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Post-2014 Afghanistan
Hamid Arsalan and Hodei Sultan
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
While Washington phases out its combat mission and withdraws
troops from Afghanistan this year, the Taliban continues to increase its use of
violence and refuses to negotiate with the Afghan government towards a
political settlement. With no military victory over the Taliban in sight, the
White House needs to make peace talks with the Taliban a centerpiece of its
exit strategy in order to ensure that Afghanistan will not lapse back into
civil war after most of the U.S. troops leave by 2014.
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A primer on the epicenter of global terrorism.
