Pakistan reaching a mini-civil war state
I was struck by the photo of the Peshawar five-star hotel bombing in the print edition of today's New York Times, it looked very similar to the results of Tim McVeigh's work in Oklahoma City. It appears there isn't the exact same photo available with the online version of the story--this one comes close, but is more cropped and fuzzy, doesn't give the same impact.
The accompanying report,
Militants Strike Five-Star Hotel in Pakistan, Killing 11, by Ismail Khan and Salman Masood from Peshawar,
pretty much makes it clear how huge the bomb was and that greater human damage was only avoided by the parking lot barriers:
The blast, powerful enough to leave a crater 6 feet deep and 15 feet wide, collapsed the western wing of the hotel...The bombing Tuesday was the seventh in Peshawar since the military operation began.
It was by far the largest -- using an estimated 1,000 pounds of explosives, the police said -- making it the most spectacular against a Western target in Pakistan since the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in the capital, Islamabad, last September, which left more than 50 dead.
The Pearl Continental is set back from a main road that is also the location of the Provincial Assembly and the High Court, and its parking lot is a gauntlet of zigzagging barriers to prevent just such an attack.
But the attackers employed tactics similar to those used in the assault on May 27 against the headquarters of the Pakistani intelligence service in Lahore, which fell short of its intended target but killed 26 people at a nearby emergency-response unit.
The last paragraph is quite striking:
"We are the front line," said Farahnaz Ispahani, the media advisor to President Asif Ali Zardari. "This is really a fight for our way of life. This is a fight for Pakistan."
The Times has summarized some very interesting updates to the story in its news blog this morning--
Report: U.S. Planned to Buy Bombed Peshawar Hotel, by Robert Mackey:
As a colleague here at The Times points out, the Pearl Continental hotel in Peshawar, Pakistan, which was partly destroyed on Tuesday by a massive car bomb, is well known locally as a meeting point for not just wealthy Pakistanis, foreign aid workers and journalists but also intelligence agents...
Given that reputation, the hotel was an obvious target for militants -- even before a report surfaced two weeks ago that the United States was planning to buy the hotel as part of a plan to greatly expand its diplomatic presence in the city. As the Press Trust of India reported on Tuesday, the Pearl Continental is currently owned by Sadruddin Hashwani, who also owns the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, which was bombed last September, resulting in more than 50 deaths.
According to a report by Saeed Shah and Warren P. Strobel of McClatchy Newspapers, the hotel was apparently at the center of an American plan to establish a long-term presence in Peshawar...
Also of serious note is this second report in today's print version--
Villagers Take on Taliban After Bombing in Pakistan,
by Sabrina Tavernise and Irfan Ashraf in Peshawar:
....More than a thousand villagers from the district of Dir have been fighting Taliban militants since Friday, when a Taliban suicide bomber detonated his payload during prayer time at a mosque, killing at least 30 villagers....
The uprising is not the first time that Pakistanis have formed their own militias to stand up to the Taliban, and previous efforts have often collapsed largely because the government and military did not come to their aid.
But the latest attempt is significant, revealing the determination of the people of Dir to keep out both the Taliban and the military and to prevent their area from turning into another war zone, like the nearby Swat Valley, where millions have fled fighting.
The rebellion, locals said, gives the government a chance to demonstrate to the Pakistani people that it is serious in supporting them this time....
Fayaz Ahmad Khan Toru, an official with the government of North-West Frontier Province, said that officials knew that the government response was being closely watched, and that they were working with local people. "Failure is not an option," he said.
Syed Muhammad, 30, a civil servant from the village of Mian Dog in the valley, said that without the military's help, the uprising would fail. The militants were dug in too deep for the local militia to dislodge them on its own with just guns.
But he expressed cautious optimism that the local people would not be ignored, as they had been in most other operations, and that the military, now pressing ahead with its campaign against the Taliban, might be learning.
"I think that the military has now realized that the locals should be involved in these operations," he said. "Without the support of the local people they cannot wipe out the militants."
Meanwhile, Defense Sec. Gates was reporting to the U.S. Senate on Aghanistan "more hopeful than he had been in a long time," noting that the price for wheat there was almost the same as for opium, and Adm. Mike Mullen expressed a U.S. priority to reduce civilian casulaties.
Interesting side note from the NYT article --
"As the Press Trust of India reported on Tuesday, the Pearl Continental is currently owned by Sadruddin Hashwani, who also owns the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, which was bombed last September, resulting in more than 50 deaths."
Could just be coincidence (how many hotel-owning "tycoons" are there in Pak?).
June 10, 2009 2:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
good post.
June 10, 2009 6:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Whipple has been predicting trouble in Pakistan for quite a while.
http://www.fcnp.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3301:the-peak-oil-crisis-the-blackouts-spread
June 10, 2009 6:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, it is quite interesting to see the story put in the economic context that way rather than the standard geopolitical one. From the day I saw Bush's "pre-emptive doctrine" announced (in fall, cause you don't sell new ideas in summer, as I recall) as a headline in the New York Times, I have always wondered the "what if,", what if a President Gore had done another kind of pre-emptive, pumping the once-outrageous sounding cost of an Iraq invasion (remember when we all freaked at the $60 billion budget for it or whatever it was? Hah, a pittance) into revving Pakistan's education situation and business economy at the same time. I remember thinking at the time, that is what we should be doing, that that had the best bet of working against Al Qaeda et. al...If a lowly citizen news reader like me had figured out that the ultimate source of the problem was there in 2003, others surely did as well. Instead they wandered off into this fantasy about somehow a Shia and Kurd Iraq of happy democratic capitalists was going to make the naughty Sunni contingent so jealous they would get to work trying to compete and behave, or something......
June 11, 2009 12:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
See also reply downthread a little, on Holbrooke on refugees and reconstruction, put in wrong place.
June 11, 2009 12:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
The last quoted article re the revolt against the Taliban is a perfect opportunity for those practicing/advocating COIN to do their thing except for the fact that Pakistan would have to invite our participation.
June 10, 2009 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Who says they aren't? (Remember Charlie Wilson. Just because everyone official says they couldn't, wouldn't, not possible, the players wouldn't allow it without WWIII being started or whatever, doesn't mean much.) I recall seeing "administration officials" anonymice back a month or two implying they had just about had it with Zardari dilly dallying. A few months before that, they had just about had it with Karzai dilly dallying, but then all of a sudden it seemed they no longer were. Certainly the government of Pakistan is virtually never transparent about what is really going on, sometimes it seems it's almost like non-transparency is a specialty there, honed to a fine skill, you've got to be good at it just to be a low-level bureaucrat there...
June 11, 2009 12:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Speaking of Pakistan's economic and social situation:
June 11, 2009 12:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oops, the above was supposed to be a reply to Donal @ June 10, 2009 6:21.
June 11, 2009 12:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Lally, also see
It's that famous "vital interest to our national security" line that can cover a lot of various and sundry activities.
This Obma letter story also suggests some tit-for-tat talk going on. That presumes they are thinking they might have some tit for some tat. I.E., if you've got the Pakistani government finally fed up enough with jihadis that they don't want their help on the Kashmir front, either. Or, something along the lines of, if you'll just be patient, India, we're pretty sure that....
June 11, 2009 1:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
aa.
In my (very) limited understanding, COIN ops are usually highly visible as the practicioners go through highly ritualized meetings with the appropriate elders, etc. Could we be funneling arms to the villagers? Sure, but COIN depends on building trust with the locals and visibility is a part of the process....the hearts and minds stuff.
Tactically, COIN isn't Charlie Wilson's War by another name. That was low profile and COIN (the way we did it in Iraq) was high-profile; the thought being that as one group was seen as gaining benefits by their association with US, others in the region would be more inclined to cooperate, too.
On second thought, perhaps the Dir situation is still too volatile and raw for COIN to work at this point in time. Another factor mitigating against employing that strategy is that the locals would have no reason to embrace the representatives of the American Entity, either.
Nevermind.
(By the time COIN was being implemented in Iraq, the locals had plenty of familiarity with US and the Brits. My impression is that implementing COIN in Afghanistan has been really problematic due to the nature of the place; in terms of it's fractious factional history, remoteness, terrain etc.)
Just in case you missed it, here's another possible/probable consequence of the Peshawar bombing:
"First a bit of background. When the Pakistani government began its offensive against Taliban militants in the Swat Valley last month, it warned civilians to get out of the way. And it's not hard to see why. The military has used heavy artillery, air fire, and other military tactics to "flush out" the bad guys. It's unclear if they've gotten any of the Taliban's top leadership, but what they have gotten is a homegrown refugee crisis. "After Rwanda, this is the largest movement of people [in the world]," International Crisis Group analyst Samina Ahmed told me.
What's unique about this refugee crisis is that 80 to 90 percent are not living in the camps the UNHCR is desperately trying to erect. They're living in the homes of strangers. Ahmed, who was recently in the area, recounts 30 to 40 people staying in a single room. These hosts have opened their homes for now, but their resources won't last forever. Ahmed believes that it will be at least a full year -- after the winter passes -- that the displaced will be able to return home. So, the hosts are going to need a lot of help caring for their unexpected guests.
Here's where the Peshawar bombing comes into play. The Pearl Continental housed many U.N. agencies -- including UNHCR. And just as the Islamabad bombings shut down the capital city this year, the Peshawar blast risks the same. If international staffs (understandably) go on high alert, they won't be going out to the displaced camps and host family homes. They won't be overseeing an aid operation on the scale that the situation demands -- or at best, they will have to do so indirectly."
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/06/09/an_other_consequence_of_the_peshawar_bombing
I guess it all comes down to who helps the locals with what they need and aside from the Pakistan government, Iran is more likely to be able to play that role as they have a history of knowing how to function effectively in the region and even beyond as the Lebanon example illustrates.
BTW, US knuckleheaded antipathy to Iran caused US to refuse to ally with the Lion of Pansir, Ahmed Shah Masood, who was the only man with a prayer of defeating the Taliban and uniting Afghanistan. He was a renowned warrior leader and a small "d" democrat but his links to Iran caused US to shun him.
June 11, 2009 3:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Kurds and Pashtuns: Kurdistan and Pashtunistan
How should we characterize conflicts/struggles/insurgencies where the ethnic grouping has been denied nation status by long-dead, pen-wielding, map-drawing European diplomats whose interests were none of theirs?
June 10, 2009 8:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Or to ask the question differently: Who says these Pashtuns are Pakistanis? And why would the average Urdu-speaking Pakistani care one whit for what goes on in the Tribal Areas or the Northwest Frontier?
N.B. A few million Pashtuns are hardly going to overrun 150+ million Pakistanis.
June 10, 2009 8:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
150+ million Pakistanis
How did these Baluchs, Kashmiris, Punjabis, etc. suddenly forge a national identity, to go along with their country, the ancient homeland of the fiercely conhesive P(unjabi)A(fghan)K(ashmiri) people, Pakistan, land of the Paks. Visit while it still exists...
June 12, 2009 11:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now that's something to meditate on
What a mess.
If borders were removed, what would happen?
June 10, 2009 8:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, except I often get the feeling that an awful lot of Pakistanis have bought into Pakistani nationalism hook, link and sinker. It's too late, too many fell in love the idea too much? The majority aren't especially crowing proud of their NW provinces backwoods hicks, but they are "their" backwoods hicks. Though I myself have sometimes pushed the equivalence, I've got to admit I don't think this is really the same thing as with the Kurds, there are too many Pashtuns who don't want to be Pashtunistanis but would rather be Afghanis or Pakistanis. Maybe it has to do with competing with India, which really has become strong nation-state-wise, I dunno?
June 11, 2009 12:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
AA,to really make it unfathomable, don't forget that Pakistan has been a narco-state at least since 1990 - I've read that heroin processing and trafficking may account for thirty or forty percent of Pakistan's national economy. This makes analysis very difficult since it is all "off the books." Political analysis perhaps even more difficult, since motive might on the surface appear to be political, but beneath may be competition between various drug organizations.
The best source I've found on this is the South Asia Analyst Group in India:
http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/
Type in "Pakistan heroin" on their search page. You should probably start with the oldest year, 1998.
June 11, 2009 1:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's an honor to have tempted you to comment, nb. :-) Thanks for the recommend.
June 11, 2009 2:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Art appraisers always tempt me - I might get over my block and start painting again. I've been too quite in the cafe because the newer formats baffle me. I get totally lost trying to chase down comments and responses. I yearn for the good old days.
June 11, 2009 4:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
New York Times's Thursday report is up
Bombing Challenges Aid to Pakistan Refugees, by Tavernise and Masood, with added input from 3 other reporters,
they quote the UN that (contrary to previous reports) they have not abandoned aid efforts even though workers were temporarily pulled out of Peshawar to Islamabad because so many aid people were victims.
Also Richard Holbrooke confirmed that the State Dept. was looking into buying the hotel.
The picture with this article shows the extent of the damage better than the one that is in my original post.
Note there are two Pakistani anonymice at work in the article:
June 11, 2009 1:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sigh, I screw up link code again. Here it is:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/world/asia/11pstan.html
June 11, 2009 2:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
more hopeful than he had been in a long time," noting that the price for wheat there was almost the same as for opium
Yessiree, nothing says progress like the price of food pushing an addictive substance...
The shots of Pakistan look like the shots of Havana in Godfather II, when they're carving up the cake inside and Fidel is carving up the Guardia Civilia outside...
June 11, 2009 2:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
You so funny. I see the analogy, but who is playing what role is not clear, who are the ones who are still thinking they have power but are in the process of losing it? At least to me--if you know, Richard Holbrooke mebbe wants to talk with you! (If that's the case, you shouldn't bother with such underlings, demand that if you are going to talk, the lowest you'll settle for is Hillary.)
June 11, 2009 2:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
the ones who are still thinking they have power but are in the process of losing it?
I don't know their names (but they end a lot in Sayed, Khan, and Shah); lots of them went to school either in England or the anglophone schools that go back to the days of the Raj.-
June 11, 2009 2:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
the lowest you'll settle for is Hillary
True fact. When I went to Afghanistan, Idries Shah sent me to Karzai's (uncle, I think? Sheikh Abd'ul Ahad)--anyway, the bandits on the Kandahar road, the bedbugs in the Hotel Jami (Herat) and the stomach bug my (then) wife caught intervened.
So, I'm holding out for Wali Karzai--I hear he has the primo dope hookup.
June 11, 2009 3:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
June 13, 2009 4:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
June 13, 2009 4:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Obama adminstration was apparently bothered so much by how this New York Times Friday front page story turned out:
that they responded with clarifications from anonmymice and others almost immediately via
Voice of America, June 12:
June 13, 2009 4:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
and last but not least, a tidbit of "teh Pakistani nationalism" :-)
June 13, 2009 4:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
June 13, 2009 11:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Lahore blast and Taliban ideology;
Dr. Naeemi's death shifts the fight against militancy to ideological battlegrounds.
by Huma Yusuf @ Dawn.com's blog, June 12
Excerpt, my highlighting:
June 13, 2009 11:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
As per Obama's preference, apparently,
This would indicate to me that he has chosen to prioritize helping with the current situation in Pakistan over his interest in intel about nuclear proliferation, unless the administration feels that Khan is of no further value as far as that is concerned.
Meanwhile, Richard Holbrooke was doing some interesting complaining last week:
June 14, 2009 12:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
aa.
Here's another source for your Pakistan archives. Andrew Exum aka "Abu Muqawama" is a go-to COIN guy who frequently posts on and links to articles related to the military aspects of dealing with the place.
This is his latest:
"For a moment there, I was excited by the possibility that the Pakistani Army might consolidate its gains in the Swat Valley and try a little of the "hold" and "build" phases of counterinsurgency. It now seems, though, as if the Pakistani Army is going to push into southern Waziristan in an effort to capture or kill Baitullah Mehsud, the rebel Islamist leader. This following sentence was, actually, the scariest thing I read all yesterday:
Baitullah is the root cause of all the problems. He is the axis of evil," [Provincial Gov. Owais] Ghani told reporters.
Now why does that scare me? Well, first off, convincing one's self that your only problem is with this one guy -- and that once you kill him, everything will be alright -- has been proven to be a losing strategy time and time again in struggles against violent non-state actors. Whether one is talking about Israeli targeted assassinations of Hamas leaders or U.S. efforts to capture or kill Saddam Hussein and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, we have seen that killing key leadership might only have a negligible effect on the environment. How many days of peace did we get in Iraq when we killed Zarqawi? 18, I think?
The Pakistani Army, though, is nonetheless preparing to move into South Waziristan this summer against the advice of Nicholas Schmidle and others and is in for a tough fight. We wish them all the best of luck, because they are going to need it:
Fighters loyal to Baitullah Mehsud have been moving into the area from elsewhere in Pakistan to fortify it. Commanders are dividing responsibilities, designating fighters for bomb making and remote detonation, said a fighter who spoke by telephone from the area.
“There’s a high level of preparation going on in all of South Waziristan,” he said. Even in Wana, a town outside Mr. Mehsud’s area, the roads were so heavily mined that many preferred to walk.
The fighters said the Taliban recently shut down courts they operated in the area, telling those who needed disputes resolved to come back in two months, because those who staffed them were now focused on fighting.
An associate of Mr. Mehsud said that the Taliban had the advantage of geography. “We are up,” he said, chopping the air above his head with the side of his hand, “and they are down.”
Well, good luck with that, General Kayani. One of the additional problems with this strategy, of course, is that by personalizing the conflict, it at once makes Baitullah Mehsud into a kind of resistance hero while not actually addressing the root causes of the rise of Islamist militancy in the tribal areas. The end of this article in today's New York Times talks sense:
Even if the military prevails, that will be only the beginning. The area is one of the country’s poorest, a condition that has made it ripe for militancy. A more lasting solution would require economic opportunity and government support, including an adequate police force.
In Bajaur, part of the tribal areas, the military cleared out militants last year, at great cost to civilians, but the militants have reasserted control. The reason, said Mr. Masood, the military analyst, is that a local government was never properly established.
That held a lesson.
“Militancy is like a monster,” said Habibullah Khan, a top bureaucrat for the tribal areas. “Even if only the tail is left, it will grow again from there.”
Again, my new BFF, General David Petraeus, made a claim at CNASapalooza '09 last week that the Pakistani Army "gets" clear-hold-build. I'll believe that when I see the "hold" and "build" phases of COIN. Specifically, I want to know what steps the Pakistani government is taking to address the problem of internally displaced persons from Swat. Show me a coherent plan for dealing with IDPs and re-establishing governance in the Swat Valley and I'll show you fresh confidence in your efforts on my end.
Just so I can end on a positive note, though, it is certainly heartening to see the way in which the Pakistani urban classes are united against the challenge posed by Mehsud and his ilk. That's a nice development to witness. And Lord knows, I don't think killing terrorists and their leaders is a bad thing. I highly recommend the activity as a job, in fact, for any young men out there possessing a reasonable amount of athleticism and intelligence. But let's be honest about what's really going to solve the problems currently facing the government of Pakistan. Killing some long-haired dude in a cave somewhere will no more solve Pakistan's problems than killing Osama bin Laden will ours."
http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama/2009/06/fata-follies.html
June 16, 2009 5:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
David Rohde escapes from his Taliban kidnappers!
Times Reporter Held by Taliban Escapes
By THE NEW YORK TIMES 38 minutes ago
New York Times reporter David Rohde who was kidnapped by the Taliban has escaped and made his way to freedom after more than seven months of captivity in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/world/asia/21talibancnd.html
I did not even know he had been kidnapped, I thought he must have quit the Times. I thought his reports from Pakistan/Afghanistan in previous years were the best, they really helped my understanding of what was going on there, I always made it a habit to read if I saw his byline. If hopefully he's managed to get through this with pysche intact, I so look forward to reading what he has learned from this experience.
June 20, 2009 12:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow! great news!
Thanks for the tip
June 20, 2009 12:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Welcome. Here's hoping he's okay and not soured on going back to the same kind of work; we've got so few old style "foreign correspondents" left that aren't interested in being celebs, they're rare birds (no chicken reference intended.)
June 21, 2009 2:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
the story of Ludin & Rohde's escape:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/world/asia/22tahir.html
June 22, 2009 1:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Three rockets hit Bagram air base -- a rare strike inside the vast, heavily fortified compound; kills 2 U.S. troops, wounds 6 Americans. The Taliban claims responsibility for the attack.
Los Angeles Times by David Zucchino:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan-rockets22-2009jun22,0,5629373.story
A rare attack on Bagram Air Field
Christian Science Monitor
by Mark Sappenfield
...Attacks on Bagram are rare. Its location north of Kabul puts it out of the Taliban’s historic reach...
http://features.csmonitor.com/globalnews/2009/06/21/a-rare-attack-on-bagram-air-field
June 22, 2009 1:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
ANALYSIS: Swat to South Waziristan —Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi
Daily Times - Jun 20, 2009
It seems that the army is currently blocking exit points from South Waziristan into other tribal areas and the NWFP so that the Taliban do not easily slip ...
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009%5C06%5C21%5Cstory_21-6-2009_pg3_2
High intensity' fight will end in 10 days: Gen Ghani
Daily Times - Jun 20, 2009
CHUPRIAL: Pakistan could wrap up the main phase of its anti-Taliban offensive in the Swat valley within 10 days, a senior commander said on Saturday....
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009%5C06%5C21%5Cstory_21-6-2009_pg1_3
June 22, 2009 2:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Fighter jets bomb South Waziristan
Daily Times - Jun 19, 2009
PESHAWAR: Fighter jets bombed Taliban hideouts in South Waziristan on Friday, targeting two compounds, three madrassas and a suspected training camp under....
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009%5C06%5C20%5Cstory_20-6-2009_pg1_1
Life returns to Buner
Daily Times - Jun 19, 2009
DAGGAR: Life in the scenic valley of Buner – a stronghold of the Taliban for the past three months – has slowly started returning to normal as a government....
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009%5C06%5C20%5Cstory_20-6-2009_pg7_3
June 22, 2009 2:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
June 22, 2009 2:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
U.S. Drone Strike Said to Kill 60 in Pakistan
By PIR ZUBAIR SHAH and SALMAN MASOOD
If confirmed, a drone strike at a funeral might be the deadliest by unmanned U.S. aircraft in Pakistan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/world/asia/24pstan.html
June 24, 2009 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am wondering how loud it really was, and whether for real or for Pakistani public consumption. Was there was a congenial photo op of the General and the Prime Minister after their talk? That would give a strong clue.
June 25, 2009 8:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yup, apparently what's really going on is that they are trying to pressure us to give them Predators to play with themselves. And that we don't attack in their airspace without their (secret) permission. So crying about what we are doing publicly is disingenously using public pressure about sovereignity issues in order to get us to give them Predators not to mention to cover their asses with their own public:
In years of following Pakistan news off and on, I have found that you really can't trust public statements by bureaucrats and politicians, they play with spin in very complicated ways, much more than ours do in the U.S., especially on anything related to Islamist terrorism.
June 26, 2009 4:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
August 12, 2009 1:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for flagging the nuclear site story, well all of them really, but I had wondered about that for awhile.
I did not know this:
Not very comforting if this remains the case.
August 12, 2009 2:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
August 12, 2009 1:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Taliban in Pakistan Confirm That Their Leader Is Dead
By SALMAN MASOOD
New York Times, August 25, 2009
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani Taliban leaders acknowledged for the first time on Tuesday that their leader, Baitullah Mehsud, was dead, confirming claims of American and Pakistani officials....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/world/asia/26pstan.html
August 26, 2009 5:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
September 23, 2009 8:04 PM | Reply | Permalink