WaPo’s Jeff Stein reports the Pakistani intelligence service has rushed Mullah Omar, spiritual leader of the Afghan Taliban insurgency, to a hospital for heart surgery.
Now why would Pakistan, an ostensible U.S. ally on the proverbial “war on terror,” provide health care for the one-eyed Taliban leader who is wanted for acts of terrorism? Continue reading »
That’s the scary message sent by the assassination of Salman Taseer, businessman politician, who dared cross the country’s religious fanatics, I mean, mainstream Muslim organizations, who applauded his murder. Supportive of the pardon of a Christian woman convicted of blaspheming Islam, Taseer was assassinated by a bodyguard offended by his liberalism.
Taseer’s death deprives Pakistan of a colourful politician with unusual reserves of pluck. More significantly, it signals a worrying reduction in the public space for public figures, who cannot even count on their own police to protect them. The country’s liberals have not felt so isolated since the dark years of the Zia dictatorship in the 1980s.
via The Hindu.
So says Analysis Intelligence, a Web site published by Recorded Future, a data mining startup that is jointly funded by Google and the Central Intelligence Agency.
we can say that the White House was successful in changing the story of their midterm defeat, but the success was temporary. The world still writes about the President much more positively than negatively, and the President received better coverage in our biggest rivals’ blogs than in their mainstream media sources.
If we don’t negotiate with the Taliban, he will. So says Ahmed Rashiid in FT.com with a bottom line policy recommendation that the wounded White House won’t like:
If Mr Karzai and most Afghans really do want peace talks with the Taliban then that should be Nato’s focus.
With President Obama’s ongoing escalation of the drone war in Pakistan, the question is which is hurt more by the aerial attacks: al-Qaeda’s leadership or the United States’ standing in Pakistan? As former ambassador Tayyab Siddiqui, a columnist for the News, one of Pakistan’s leading newspapers, notes the answer is obvious, at least in Pakistan.
….last year, there were 44 drone attacks, killing only five key Al Qaeda targets but the civilian casualties exceeded 700 Pakistanis. Passionate appeals have been made to all the visitors from the US – Congressmen, officials, military brass and others that these attacks must stop. Pakistan is absolutely critical for US strategy in the region and its war against terror is solely dependent on Pakistanis’ cooperation. Pakistan must spell out to the Obama Administration that any more cooperation with the US would be subject to US meeting Pakistanis’ concerns.
There’s no evidence that is going to happen. From the point of view of U.S. policymakers, this isn’t a dilemma. In Washington, the answer is equally obvious, though diametrically opposed, to Pakistan’s: the battlefield advantages outweigh the political costs. In the short run, that is surely true. In the long run, it depends on ignoring Pakistani democracy.
It won’t: because of India–So says a pundit for The Nation in Pakistan. Taliban “moderates” will balk at dealing with India.
That’s not the only problem with talking to the Taliban but it is true that the world’s biggest secular democracy is a forgotten factor in Afpak politics.
Readers of Dawn.com in Pakistan report on two suicide attacks that killed 25 people yesterday.
