My understanding is that around 2:00 or 2:30 p.m. today, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) are going to introduce their bill providing aid to the civilian components of the Pakistani government. Recall that last week, Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy said the bill’s House counterpart is “More…
For more on the prospect or non-prospect of a Pakistani military coup, I asked a former U.S. official who’s deeply experienced with Pakistan whether such a thing seemed like it was in the offing. Here’s what I got back: The signal that something is about to happen would More…
Building on that last point about micromanaging Pakistan, take a look at Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai is looking like he’ll win reelection. Following on Erin Simpson’s concerns, I worried in March that the Obama administration was repeating a mistake of the Bush administration’s from the opposite More…
The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung reports that after a tense week, the Obama administration believes “neither a Taliban takeover nor a military coup” is in the offing in Pakistan. The Pakistanis, meanwhile, are feeling dictated to. A quote given to DeYoung speaks to a point raised in my More…
As the Zardari government in Pakistan has an increasingly precarious hold on power, one option for the Obama administration is to turn to Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani to foment a coup, as an ex-intel official tells Laura Rozen:
“Look at [Secretary of State Hilary Clinton]‘s comments over the last
The NEFA Foundation has gotten ahold of an English-language video interview given by a Swat Valley spokesman for the Tehrik-e-Taliban — think of them as a big tent of Taliban factions — apparently recorded on April 27. You can hear Haji Muslim Khan expand on the finer points of More…
With a new Pakistani military response to Taliban advances underway, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy goes before the House Armed Services Committee this afternoon to discuss what military training and aid in counterinsurgency the United States is offering that the Pakistanis will accept. Working with a More…
“Enough is enough. We have decided to flush them out,” the senior adviser in the [Pakistani] Interior Ministry, Rehman Malik, told the independent television channel Geo.
“The peace accord was linked to peace. When there is no peace, there is no use for that accord,” Mr.
Sadly, I’m working on other things, but I’m listening to the livestream of an extremely powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing featuring Afghanistan veterans criticizing the continued war in Afghanistan. Marine Cpl. Rick Reyes denounced the “occupation” of Afghanistan, a policy that he said “forced [me] to become a tyrant,” More…
I swear, I thought this week I’d be writing about U.S. efforts to train Pakistani forces in counterinsurgency. Really I did. You can ask my editors. I pitched the piece and everything. Made calls for it. Then all this torture stuff happened. Will I come back to the More…
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