FATA

Everyone’s going to be focusing on President Obama’s remarks on the economy at his first White House press conference, but CNN’s Ed Henry got in a question trying to suss out Obama’s forthcoming strategy for Afghanist — sorry, for ‘Af-Pak’ (as we’re now supposed to call Afghanistan/Pakistan in order to remind ourselves of their inextricability). [...]

Christine Fair of RAND runs through some of the reasons why militancy has grown in Pakistan despite something like $10 billion in mostly military aid coming from the U.S. since 9/11.
She makes a Prince joke (!) about the “terrorist formerly known as Beitullah Mehsud,” head of the Pakistani Taliban. Mehsud is launching “absolutely unprecedented” attacks [...]