Peshawar, Swat

Pawns in a fatal game
Pakistan’s people are trapped between their own leaders and radicals in a bloody civil war
By Adnan R. Khan - Macleans

The eerie silence along the narrow laneway of Karim Pura Bazaar, in Peshawar’s old city, is deafening. Something is missing, and the absence weighs on the few shopkeepers brave enough to open for business. On any other Friday, after the obligatory afternoon prayers, the rows of tailor shops here would be doing a brisk business. But not today. A few laneways over, in Kabari Bazaar, one of dozens of electronics districts in the capital of Pakistan’s restive North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), the charred and mangled remains of shops offer a glimpse into what has happened: a day earlier, two bombs hidden in motorcycles exploded there, killing five and injuring dozens more. In the aftermath, much of the old city’s famous bazaar district has remained closed.

On the front line in Pakistan
Foreign correspondent Adnan Khan on stability in Pakistan, Western misconceptions, and the challenges of covering a civil war
By Philippe Gohier - Macleans

.... Peshawar has been my regular home base. Most of my local contacts live here. But also for some of the intangibles like cultural understanding. What a lot of people in the West don’t fully understand is the strong ethnic component of the war in Pakistan and, by corollary, the war in Afghanistan. These are wars pitting Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Pashtuns against, well, just about everyone else. The Taliban’s religious beliefs are a mixture of Islam and Pashtun tribal customs. So being in Peshawar puts me in Pakistan’s Pashtun heartland, close to the people I’m covering.

.... Geographically, Swat is quite literally separated from the rest of Pakistan by mountain ranges. Historically, it’s been a princely state, with the geography providing a natural border. In fact, Swat didn’t officially join Pakistan until 1969, 22 years after Pakistan was created. Politically, Swat has never completely accepted the legal and constitutional norms that took effect after 1969. That has been one of the prime motivators of the Sharia movement in the region. The legal system, particularly, was never embraced by the people in Swat.

.... The main valley in Swat, the one that runs through Mingora, up through Madyan and Bahrain and on to the picturesque Kalam, is what is being referred to when people talk about Swat in its touristic guise. But that is not all of Swat, and certainly not all of the Malakand Division which the Taliban took over. There are hundreds of towns and villages in this region, many of them in what’s known as the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA). These areas are very similar to their federal versions in that they are largely self-governed and extremely under-developed. The Swat Taliban come from these areas and this is also where their support base is.

Idea of Pakistan, Peasant Army, Hearts & Minds

The Pakistan Puzzle
Recent tomes on Pakistan overlook ordinary citizens' conflicting motivations, says our man on the ground.
By Anatol Lieven - TAP

.... The spread of Taliban control remains restricted to only some of the Pashtun areas of the country. Those Taliban regions account for less than 5 percent of Pakistan's total population, and unlike the rest of the country, they have old traditions of religiously inspired revolt. Elsewhere, the real threat is not active, mass support for the Taliban but rather bitter opposition to the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and the whole U.S. "war on terror. Both the elites and general public see the Afghan Taliban as fighting a legitimate jihad against the United States. The Pakistani Taliban, as their allies and defenders, therefore receive a measure of sympathy even from people who would never accept Taliban rule over Pakistan as a whole -- unless, God forbid, the United States were to invade Pakistan.

For Pakistanis, a Fight Against Their Own
Confronting Taliban Tests Bonds of Faith And National Heritage
By Griff Witte - WP

.... Unlike in past wars against its archenemy, India, Pakistan is engulfed in a conflict that pits Pakistanis against Pakistanis, Muslims against Muslims. It is a confrontation the army long resisted, and it features an enemy that many Pakistanis would prefer to believe does not exist. For the soldiers who fight, and for the growing number of families forced to bury their sons, the struggle seems to go against their very DNA.

.... Here in Pakistan's "martial belt," a crescent of northern Punjab province that has consistently been the military's most fertile recruiting ground, army families are grappling with the idea that Pakistan's gravest threat lies within, not beyond the eastern border.

.... "It remains a peasant army," said Amir, who grew up in the nearby city of Chakwal and represents this area in Parliament. "Americans should congratulate yourselves on the cheapest cannon fodder you can buy."

Hearts on The Line in Pakistan
By Ahmed Rashid - WP

.... Yet for all the concern about terrorism, the world has been stunningly indifferent to the plight of the more than 2.4 million people who have fled the Swat Valley, where the Pakistani army is for the first time seriously attacking the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

.... Strategically, much is at stake. The fighting in Swat is not just against extremism but for the hearts and minds of future generations. "Pakistani public support for the campaign against the Taliban and help to the [internally displaced] could dissipate fast if international aid is not forthcoming," a senior U.N. official told me. "Moreover, dissatisfied [displaced civilians] could become targets for recruitment by the Taliban and al-Qaeda."

Inner Asian Great Game - Kyrgyzstan, Arunachal Pradesh

Russians Outfox U.S. in Latest Great Game
By Alan Cullison - WSJ

.... Times are changing in Kyrgyzstan, a mountainous Central Asian republic that not long ago was a hoped-for springboard for Western-style democracy in the former Soviet Union.

The president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, has steered Kyrgyzstan sharply back into the orbit of Moscow. In January, Mr. Bakiyev jolted Washington by announcing he was evicting the U.S. from an air base that has been crucial to the supply of troops fighting in Afghanistan.

.... In the West, hopes were high that the global financial crisis would rein in Vladimir Putin's assertive foreign policy. But here, as in other parts of the former Soviet Union, hard times have had the opposite effect: The Russians are coming back.

A Revival of Sino-Indian Tensions
By Stratfor

Tensions between China and India have intensified in recent days, with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang on Thursday rejecting recent Indian claims concerning increased border incursions from China. He called for Indian officials and media to temper their language and work toward cooperative relations.

Miscellaneous

Rory Stewart, I presume
He's an adventurer of the old school. An Eton and Oxford military man who is as much at home in Highgrove as in Harvard or a Kabul slum. Here, Rory Stewart explains why he and Prince Charles are working to safeguard traditional skills in Afghanistan.
By Jason Burke - The Observer

.... A century and a half ago there would have been nothing unusual about Rory Stewart. The empire was full of Eton and Oxford-educated sons of Scottish civil servants who spoke several exotic foreign languages, knew how to eat rice with their fingers, could talk for hours about local architecture or crops or religious practices, and ask questions such as, "Do you think Sher Mohammed Akhunzada or Gul Agha Sherzai did a better job as governor of Kandahar?" But Britain, indeed the west, does not do people like Rory Stewart very much these days.

India's parliamentary elections had near-metaphysical significance
By Kishore Mahbubani - Daily Star

.... But the growing conviction that tomorrow will be better will keep India's polity stable. This may well be the most important result of the Indian election: five more years of political stability and economic reform will create an irreversible and virtuous cycle of economic growth and political moderation.

The Indian middle class will grow rapidly, providing the country with valuable ballast that will keep it on an even keel in the next few decades.

.... India could take a leaf from China's success in handling the Taiwan problem. At the height of tensions, when China found the governments of Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian intolerable, it never ceased its policy of embracing the Taiwanese people and Taiwanese businessmen. Over time, this created a rich web of economic interdependence, which promotes stability.

It would be equally easy for India's people to embrace Pakistan's people. They are the same people. As an ethnic Sindhi, I feel an affinity to both. When I attend international gatherings, I am amazed how easily and naturally Indians and Pakistanis gravitate toward each other. The political divisions are artificial. The cultural unity is natural.

Afghanistan - Haqqani, Colonel Imam

The most deadly US foe in Afghanistan
The Haqqani network, born of the Russian war and nurtured by the CIA, is behind many spectacular assaults in Afghanistan.
By Anand Gopal - CSM

.... The Haqqani network is considered the most sophisticated of Afghanistan's insurgent groups. The group is alleged to be behind many high-profile assaults, including a raid on a luxury hotel in Kabul in January 2008 and a massive car bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul that left 41 people dead in July 2008.

The group is active in Afghanistan's southeastern provinces – Paktia, Paktika, Khost, Logar, and Ghazni. In parts of Paktika, Khost, and Paktia, they have established parallel governments and control the countryside of many districts. "In Khost, government officials need letters from Haqqani just to move about on the roads in the districts," says Hanif Shah Husseini, a parliamentarian from Khost.


The Taliban: if you’re not beating them, you’re losing
By Sean McLain - The National

.... That the Obama administration will pay close attention to the recommendations of CNAS is without doubt. Two of the report’s authors, David Kilcullen and Nathaniel Fick, helped General David Petraeus to write the US army’s new counterinsurgency field manual, as did the group’s president, John Nagl. The report, entitled Triage: The next twelve months in Afghanistan and Pakistan, paints a dire picture of the state of the war.

.... The report’s authors observe: “In counterinsurgency campaigns, if you are not winning, then you are losing.” By all possible measures, the US and its allies are most certainly not winning.

The Taliban will ‘never be defeated’
‘Colonel Imam’, the Pakistani agent who trained Mullah Omar and the warlords to fight the Soviets, says the US must negotiate with its enemies
By Christina Lamb - Times

The Pakistani intelligence agent who trained Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, to fight has warned that Nato forces will never overpower their enemies in Afghanistan and should talk to them rather than sacrifice more lives.

“You can never win the war in Afghanistan,” said so-called “Colonel Imam”, who ran a training programme for the Afghan resistance to the Soviet Union’s occupation from 1979 to 1989, then helped to form the Taliban.

“I have worked with these people since the 1970s and I tell you they will never be defeated. Anyone who has come here has got stuck. The more you kill, the more they will expand.”

Afghanistan - Regional dimensions: Central Asia, Russia

Beyond 'Af-Pak'
The United States cannot win in Afghanistan while ignoring Central Asia.
By Jeffrey Mankoff - Foreign Policy

.... Although post-Soviet Central Asia has seen little terrorism in recent years, the attacks are a reminder that the conflicts underway in Afghanistan and Pakistan have a regional dimension -- and that the stepped-up U.S. involvement in the region carries the risk that instability will spread to other countries. While the fight against Islamist extremism may already seem dauntingly wide-ranging and complex, the Obama administration's thinking is not complicated enough. It's time to stop ignoring the Central Asian dimension of this conflict.

Don't Put Afghanistan in "Reset" with Russia
By Nicklas Norling - RealClearWorld

The new U.S. Administration seeks a fresh start regarding Russia. Part of the "reset" approach to Russia is to get its support for U.S. activities in Afghanistan. Whatever the merits of the initiative in other areas, in this one it poses at least as many risks as possibilities and may be a non-starter. Bluntly, Russia, with its "zero sum" thinking regarding the U.S., has not wished us well in Afghanistan and shows no sign of doing so now.

Af-Pak - Research, Analysis

Dismantle the Moghul Darbar!
By Bharat Verma - Indian Defence Review

Elders continue to glibly state that Pakistan being our neighbor, we cannot wish it away. Therefore, we have to learn to live with it. For the size and the resources of India, the fact is that Pakistan has a powerful neighbor in India and that it is time Pakistan learnt to live with us! New Delhi insists that it will not bend against terrorism and promptly succumbs - instead of sending a powerful signal that India will crush terrorism in its entirety through interventionist policy.

Triage: The Next Twelve Months in Afghanistan and Pakistan
By Andrew M. Exum, Nathaniel C. Fick, Ahmed A. Humayun, David J. Kilcullen - CNAS

Eight years into the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, the situation is as perilous as ever and continuing to worsen. The campaign has been further complicated by a rapidly deteriorating security situation in Pakistan, where the center of gravity of the insurgency has now shifted. In counterinsurgency campaigns, momentum matters. Over the next 12 months, the United States and its allies must demonstrate they have seized back the initiative from the Taliban and other hostile actors.

Whither Pakistan? A five-year forecast
By Pervez Hoodboy - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

First, the bottom line: Pakistan will not break up; there will not be another military coup; the Taliban will not seize the presidency; Pakistan's nuclear weapons will not go astray; and the Islamic sharia will not become the law of the land.

That's the good news. It conflicts with opinions in the mainstream U.S. press, as well as with some in the Obama administration. For example, in March, David Kilcullen, a top adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, declared that state collapse could occur within six months. This is highly improbable.

Now, the bad news: The clouds hanging over the future of Pakistan's state and society are getting darker. Collapse isn't impending, but there is a slow-burning fuse. While timescales cannot be mathematically forecast, the speed of societal decline has surprised many who have long warned that religious extremism is devouring Pakistan.

Pakistan - Anarchy, State Power

Pakistan’s Passing Grade
By Anatol Lieven - The National Interest

.... Karachi demonstrates as well as anywhere else the fact that while Pakistan is a troubled state, it is as yet very far from being a failed one. Only in its northwestern fringe has state power collapsed—and state power there wasn’t always very real anyway. Calling Pakistan a failed state is a bit like saying that Russia has failed as a state because it has lost control of parts of the northern Caucasus. Anyone who, like me, has lived and worked in truly failed states will know the difference immediately.

Pakistan on the Brink
By Ahmed Rashid - NYRB

.... Pakistan is close to the brink, perhaps not to a meltdown of the government, but to a permanent state of anarchy, as the Islamist revolutionaries led by the Taliban and their many allies take more territory, and state power shrinks. There will be no mass revolutionary uprising like in Iran in 1979 or storming of the citadels of power as in Vietnam and Cambodia; rather we can expect a slow, insidious, long-burning fuse of fear, terror, and paralysis that the Taliban have lit and that the state is unable, and partly unwilling, to douse.

Why the Taliban won't take over Pakistan
For reasons of geography, ethnicity, military inferiority, and ancient rivalries, they represent neither the immediate threat that is often portrayed nor the inevitable victors that the West fears.
By Ben Arnoldy - CSM

.... The worldview of the Taliban comes from West of the Indus. For them, the plains represent exposure. "The Taliban have been able to operate in certain [mountainous areas] because of the terrain and the sympathy factor," says Rifaat Hussain, a military expert at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. "But the moment they begin to move out of the hideouts, they are exposed. If you have 100 truckloads of Taliban on the Peshawar Highway, all you need is two helicopter gunships" to wipe them out.

Coming down from the hills also would expose the Taliban to a more secular, urban world that views their way of life as something on the cover of National Geographic. Or, as a colleague of Professor Hussain puts it: "They are a bunch of mountain barbarians."

Pakistan - Sharif, Anti-Americanism

Back Pak
Can we really trust Nawaz Sharif?
By Nicholas Schmidle - TNR

.... Ever since the United States allied with Pakistan after September 11, the thought of Sharif returning to power has filled American leaders with discomfort. He is often described as being chummy with--and sympathetic to--the Islamists, and he firmly opposed the Bush administration's war on terrorism. Which is why it's curious that, at a time when the Pakistani Taliban are exhibiting considerable strength, American officials have begun to court Sharif, believing that he might be able to combat the militants more effectively than Zardari.

Swat: America Keep Out
By Graham Usher - Le Monde Diplomatique

.... Anti-Americanism is at a zenith in Pakistan, stoked by US drone attacks in the tribal areas that in the last three years have killed 14 al-Qaida commanders and 700 Pakistanis. Islamabad is also bracing for the fall-out later this summer of Obama’s “surge” of 21,000 new troops into Afghanistan: the fear is so far from turning the tide in America’s losing war in Afghanistan it will turn a tide of Afghan Taliban into the tribal areas.


Al Qaeda's Critical Message to Pakistan
By Stratfor

.... He accused the United States, Israel and India of conspiring against Pakistan, and he claimed that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani are fighting against Islam instead of against Pakistan's true enemies -- namely, India.

.... Bin Laden also compared the refugees affected by the Swat conflict to the Palestinian refugees and 9/11 operatives, who he said had been pushed into action by their oppression at the hands of Western forces and under Western-friendly regimes. This discussion underscored worries that some of the 3 million Swat refugees might go on to join jihadist groups and wage more attacks against the state.

Pakistan - Religion, Nationality, Constitution

For Pakistan, or for Islam?
For Pakistan to haul itself out of crisis, the ultimate goal must be for its people to put their nationality before their religion
By Rakesh Mani and Zehra Ahmed - Guardian

As Pakistan wastes away in its existential crisis, a fundamental question about the nature of the country is coming to the fore: are its citizens Pakistanis who happen to be Muslims, or are they Muslims who happen to be Pakistanis? Which comes first, flag or faith?

Pakistan is Already an Islamic State
By Ali Eteraz - Dissent Magazine

.... The essential problem in Pakistan is its flawed constitutional framework, which forces every citizen to refer to their idiosyncratic and personal views on life through the lens of “Islam.” Such a state of affairs has the effect of concealing every political, material and economic demand behind theological verbiage, and that situation ultimately favors religious hard-liners and militants who are willing to use violence.

Pakistan will not be rid of such religion-based conflict until it addresses the problem of its 1973 Constitution. That document’s constitutional Islamization engenders a cultural competition over who controls Islam—a conflict which, thanks to the Soviet war in Afghanistan and then 9/11, has become politicized, militarized, and weaponized.

Pakistan - Exodus

Pashtun hospitality for 19 adults, 25 children, and four camels
Why Pakistanis open their homes to refugees from the fighting in Swat Valley and Buner.
By Ben Arnoldi - CSM

....Strangers are opening doors to strangers all across the Pakistani communities that lie in walking distance from Swat and Buner, easing the burden on the crowded official refugee camps. Residents say their hospitality traces back to an ancient Islamic practice known as muakhat, as well as pashtunwali, the ethnic code of behavior that in different circumstances has led some Pashtuns to shelter fleeing Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Pakistan's war refugees losing patience
Some say they don't mind being uprooted for now – if the Taliban are ousted for good. The Army says it should clear militants from major towns within days, though rooting them out from rural areas may take months.
By Daud Khattak - CSM

As Pakistan's military operation to clear the Taliban from Swat Valley enters a decisive phase, it's won support from an unlikely group: the residents who had to flee the fighting and whose homes and business may be destroyed when they return.
But that backing is on the decline, as internally displaced persons (IDPs) taking shelter in camps, community centers, and other people's homes, wait in vain for the news of key Taliban leaders being killed or arrested – and as temperatures top 110 degrees F.

In Pakistan, an exodus that is beyond biblical
Locals sell all they have to help millions displaced by battles with the Taliban
By Andrew Buncombe - Independent

The language was already biblical; now the scale of what is happening matches it. The exodus of people forced from their homes in Pakistan's Swat Valley and elsewhere in the country's north-west may be as high as 2.4 million, aid officials say. Around the world, only a handful of war-spoiled countries – Sudan, Iraq, Colombia – have larger numbers of internal refugees. The speed of the displacement at its height – up to 85,000 people a day – was matched only during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. This is now one of the biggest sudden refugee crises the world has ever seen.

Winning the hearts and minds of Pakistan’s displaced
The military must be made to understand the importance of protecting non-combatants.
By Samina Ahmed - Global Post

Winning hearts and minds is decisive in any counter-insurgency operation. As hundreds of thousands of displaced persons flee fighting in Swat, Buner and Dir districts in Pakistan, this single truth should drive the response by the Pakistani state and the international community. In short, how those people are treated will decide if the insurgency-hit zones are saved or lost to the Taliban.

Pakistani Villagers Come to the Aid of Refugees
But Pashtun Code Of Hospitality Also Strains Resources
By Griff Witte - WP

When Khalil ul-Rahman's houseguests arrived in this northwestern Pakistani village, they brought with them the clothes on their backs, two cows and little else.
That was a month ago. Since then, Rahman, a 43-year-old donkey-cart driver, has been solely responsible for sheltering and feeding the 22 distant relatives who have chosen his home as their haven from the fighting that rages between the army and the Taliban in their native district of Dir.

Living like a refugee
For those displaced by Pakistan’s fighting, the camps are a cauldron of despair, corruption, and extremist recruiting.
By Adnan R. Khan - Macleans

.... The situation has reached a critical point. But even as the hundreds of thousands still trapped in Swat beg the army and the Taliban for an opportunity to escape, the estimated 2.4 million who have managed to reach havens like Sheik Yasin are struggling in their own way to survive. This is where the real tragedy of Pakistan is playing out: a tsunami of men, women and children driven from their homes, the largest movement of humanity Pakistan has seen since the turbulence of partition in 1947....

Afghanistan - Civilians, Missionaries

Interview: Khaled Hosseini, Kabul's Splendid Son
By Michael Mechanic - Mother Jones

.... Now a full-time writer and goodwill envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, he is skeptical that sending more US troops can bring his homeland back from the brink. "We're not going to win this war with bullets and guns," he says. "There has to be a broader plan."

.... The coalition is not perceived as a hostile occupying force, but there's growing anger thanks to a series of catastrophic military air attacks that have killed civilians, consisting on more than one occasion of mostly women and children. The danger of the military surge is that it will escalate the conflict. If civilian casualties continue to mount, it will create this confrontational dynamic, which only helps the insurgency and their recruiting efforts. The scale of the conflict has changed, and the job has become a whole lot more difficult.

Afghan civilian deaths: Who is to blame?
By Laura King - LAT

.... "We blame America," he said. "With all their technology, they don't determine who is a fighter and who is an innocent. Now my house is gone. My wife is dead. My children are burned." But the other father, Malham, was angrier at the Taliban."I say this to them," he said in a low voice, glancing over to make sure he was not frightening his daughter with the vehemence of his tone. "May God bring their houses down on their heads."

.... Roshan, along with some others, complained that the governor, Rohul Amin, initially downplayed the extent of the disaster because he has close ties to the Americans. By late afternoon, angry villagers showed up outside the governor's compound with two truckloads of bodies, about three dozen in all. Two days later, hundreds of angry demonstrators besieged the governor's compound, shouting anti-American slogans.

Afghanistan: Bible Blitzkrieg
A fundamentalist Christian movement within the US military seeks to convert locals to the detriment of US strategy in Afghanistan.
By Jody Ray Bennett - ISN Security Watch

.... The Pentagon has stated that the stacks of Bibles that were translated into local Pashto and Dari languages and were intended for public distribution in Afghanistan by the organization have been confiscated and destroyed.

.... representatives of the US military who are already largely seen by opposing sides as a part of a neo-Christian crusade.

.... “The British imperial army was often preceded by Christian missionaries in its African conquests […] The US has evolved a more efficient system integrating the missionary function into the military itself.”

.... these sorts of movements within the US military are not a fringe phenomenon, but rather ubiquitous: “There are so many para-church organizations [within the US military]: the Worldwide Military Baptist Missions, the Soldiers Bible Ministry, the Campus Crusades Military Ministry. You can’t count them all. This is how bad it is.

Pakistan - Pessimism, Obsession, Footprint

The Pakistan quagmire
A tangled web of regional challenges
By Moammar Gadhafi - Washington Times

.... Pakistan is a Muslim country. In fact, Islam is the very foundation for the existence of Pakistan. Except for religion, there really are no other factors that unite Pakistanis. This explains why the Pakistanis are fanatic about religion. It is the essence of their nationhood. Islam is for the Pakistanis as Judaism is for the Israelis, a matter of existence.

.... Pakistan is unique. There can be no Pakistan without Islam, as Islam was the basis for its separation from India and its raison d'etre as a state. Truly, the Pakistani nuclear bomb is a Muslim bomb. Islam for the Pakistanis is not a question of faith only but also a question of identity.

What's At Stake In Pakistan?
It must abandon its support for radicalism in pursuit of peace.
By Sadanand Dhume - Forbes

.... Along with the revolutionary regime in Iran and Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, Pakistan is one of three countries whose significance to radical Islam can scarcely be overstated. Though they differ in important ways--Iran is Shia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia Sunni--all three derive their identity and purpose almost exclusively from their faith. Not surprisingly, Tehran, Riyadh and Islamabad have done more to spread terrorism as a tactic and radical Islam as an ideology than the rest of the Muslim world combined.

An Alphabet Soup Of Terror
Why did the Taliban attack the ISI?
By Bahukutumbi Raman - Forbes

.... While analyzing the Lahore attack, one has to keep in mind certain ground realities: The first is that there are Talibans and Talibans, and within each Taliban there are mini-Talibans. There are virtually as many Talibans in the Pashtun belt as there are tribal sirdars (leaders).

.... The various tribal sirdars, who are supporting the TTP, repeatedly make the following points: First, they did not want to fight against the Pakistan army; it was the army which forced them to take up arms against it by raiding the Lal Masjid and killing their children. Second, their real enemy is the U.S.-led NATO force in Afghanistan, not the Pakistan army.

Pakistan's Struggle for Modernity
The country's voters have never endorsed religious extremism.
By Fouad Ajami - WSJ

.... Say what you will about the ways of Pakistan, its people have never voted for the darkness that descended on Swat and its surroundings. In the national elections of 2008 the secular and regional parties had carried the day; the fundamentalists were trounced at the polls.

.... In truth, the U.S. can't alter the balance of power between India and Pakistan. For six decades now, Pakistan has lived in the shadow of India's success. This has tormented Pakistanis and helped radicalize their politics. The obsession with the unfinished business of partition (Kashmir) has been no small factor in the descent of Pakistan into religious and political extremism.

Iraq redux? Obama seeks funds for Pakistan super-embassy
By Saeed Shah and Warren P. Strobel - McClatchy Newspapers

The U.S. is embarking on a $1 billion crash program to expand its diplomatic presence in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan, another sign that the Obama administration is making a costly, long-term commitment to war-torn South Asia, U.S.

.... The scale of the projects rivals the giant U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which was completed last year after construction delays at a cost of $740 million.

India - Laloo, Lucknow, Israel

The Indian Railway King
By Graeme Wood - The American

In his boyhood, long before Lalu Yadav became India’s most unlikely management guru, he sometimes strayed from his cows and scampered barefoot to the railroad tracks. Dodging crowds and porters, he made his way to the first-class cars and, for a few glorious moments, basked in the air conditioning that blasted from the open door. Then the police would spot him and shoo him away, into the moist trackside cowflap where he belonged.

Megacities Threaten to Choke India
By Patrick Barsha and Krishna Pokharel - WSJ

.... This capital of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh was once an orderly place known for its baroque monuments and lush gardens. Today, Lucknow has more than 780 slums, overflowing sewage pipes and streets choked by gridlock. Its population of 2.7 million, nearly triple the number in the 1980s, is adding as many as 150,000 new residents a year.

Purification rites
By Pankaj Mishra - The National

With nationalist demagogues rising to power in both India and Israel, Pankaj Mishra examines the parallel histories of violent partition, ethnic cleansing and militant patriotism that have led both countries into a moral wilderness.

.... This simultaneous veneration of Hitler and Israel may appear a monstrous moral contradiction to Europeans or Americans who see Israel as the homeland of Jewish victims of Nazi crimes. However, such distinctions are lost on the Hindu nationalists, who esteem Nazi Germany and Israel for their patriotic effort to cleanse their states of alien and potentially disloyal elements, and for their militaristic ethos.

Pashtun Culture, Pashtun Refugees

Pakistan's mystics in sights of Taliban
By Chris Brummit - AP

Worshippers still flock to the grave of Rahman Baba, a Muslim mystic revered by millions in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

.... Scholars say it is hard to overestimate the affection felt by the Pashtun ethnic group of northwest Pakistan and southern Afghanistan for Baba, who lived 300 years ago.

.... "His grave is the center of Pashtun culture," said Dr. Raj Wali Khattak, from the Peshawar University's Pashtun literature department. "While there is some dispute over who the greatest Pashtun poet is, no one disagrees that he is the most popular."





Letter From Mardan - The Fight for Control of the Swat Valley and the Future of Pakistan
By William Wheeler - Foreign Affairs

.... The government seems to have done little to prepare for such a crisis, creating a growing danger of instability from an operation that was supposed to achieve the exact opposite. Although the scale of the crisis may have been hard to predict, the army's lack of planning for the war's humanitarian implications was destined to alienate many of those whom the Pakistani government most needs to convince it can protect.


Refugee Crisis Inflames Ethnic Strife in Pakistan
Influx of Pashtuns to Karachi Sparks Clashes With Majority Muhajirs; Fears of a 'Growing Talibanization' of City
By Yaroslav Trofimov - WSJ

.... "We are not considered Pakistani citizens here," Umar Habib told his brother. "There is discrimination against Pashtuns in Karachi."
The refugee influx to Karachi has inflamed murderous ethnic rivalries that have simmered in Pakistan's biggest city for years. Clashes between the rapidly growing Pashtun population and Karachi's majority community killed dozens of people in recent weeks.

Geopolitics in the Indian Ocean and in Inner Asia

The Revenge of Geography
By Robert D. Kaplan - Foreign Policy

People and ideas influence events, but geography largely determines them, now more than ever. To understand the coming struggles, it’s time to dust off the Victorian thinkers who knew the physical world best.




Center Stage for the 21st Century - Power Plays in the Indian Ocean
By Robert D. Kaplan - Foreign Affairs

.... Already the world’s preeminent energy and trade interstate seaway, the Indian Ocean will matter even more as India and China enter into a dynamic great-power rivalry in these waters.

.... The Indian Ocean -- the world's third-largest body of water -- already forms center stage for the challenges of the twenty-first century.

.... The greater Indian Ocean region encompasses the entire arc of Islam, from the Sahara Desert to the Indonesian archipelago.

From Beijing to Bahrain - Who is missing out on 'global rebalancing'?
By Rick Carew - WSJ

Ben Simpfendorfer, author of "The New Silk Road," still believes the world is witnessing "early tremors of a historic global rebalancing." Mr. Simpfendorfer, the Royal Bank of Scotland's China economist, bases his thesis on research on the links between China's booming manufacturing and a Middle East enriched by high oil prices. He's well-placed to do the work: He speaks Mandarin Chinese and Arabic and spent three years living in the Middle East and eight years in Hong Kong.

The New Silk Road: How a Rising Arab World Is Turning Away from the West and Rediscovering China, by Ben Simpfendorfer

China’s final frontier
By Parag Khanna - Prospect

The remote, rebellious western provinces of Tibet and Xinjiang are China’s poorest, but they hold vast natural wealth which Beijing is determined to control. On a 3,000-mile trek I saw how far the government is bending the whole central Asian region to its will.

.... And China is poised to win the 21st-century version of the great game in central Asia. Many people focus on China’s neo-mercantilist quest for energy and influence in Africa, the middle east and even South America, but every superpower abroad is an empire at home. And China’s internal consolidation is the story of a multi-ethnic empire being reborn using strategies familiar from America’s westward expansion—combined with the more postmodern extension of the EU.