Afghanistan Agrees to Add Pakistan's Top Security Officials to Peace Commission
19 April 2011
The Pakistani military is scrambling to shore up ties with Afghanistan to ensure a central role in a negotiated settlement of the conflict as the beginning of a U.S. military withdrawal draws closer. Uneasy neighbors Pakistan and Afghanistan took an important step last weekend, agreeing to include Pakistani military and intelligence officials in a commission seeking peace with the Taliban, giving Pakistan's security establishment a formal role in...
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Kabul’s Long Shadows: Historical Perspectives
19 April 2011
This paper addresses a number of deeper historical, political, and social issues involved in the current long-lasting Afghan conflict: 1. The tribal culture of warlike poverty and parasitic economic dependence on outside imperial powers that came to predominate in the region ever since the decay of Central Asia’s trade routes and commercial stagnation in the seventeenth century; 2. The durable strategic concerns of successive imperial powers...
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NATO Warns Taliban Planning "Spectacular Attacks", Targeted Assassinations
19 April 2011
[...] The Taliban are likely to use "large-scale, spectacular attacks" to try to destabilise the transition process in Afghanistan once the fighting season begins this summer, British military commanders have warned. They are expecting a change of tactics as insurgents try to regain ground lost to coalition and Afghan forces over the past six months. [...] However, commanders believe the Taliban's strength has been so degraded that its fighters...
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