July 24, 2008
We are the opium eaters; we are the consumers of the 6,500 tons of opium produced in Afghanistan and Pakistan with an export value, according to the United Nations, of about $3.1 billion. While we fought the war against terror and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, against the Taliban, the war ag...
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Interview with Barack Obama from AfghanistanExclusive Interview: Obama in Afghanistan: Face the Nation...
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Whoever wins in November, the US, and Australia will be in Afghanistan for a very long time. Certainly longer than the Soviet Union. The only question seems to be whether Bush or his successor has the first surge. Their optimism about Iraq may prove to be illusionary, either in the short term or the...
go to article »July 21, 2008
“A US judge has ruled that the first war crimes trial at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre, involving Osama Bin Laden’s former driver, can go ahead. Judge James Robertson dismissed a claim from lawyers for Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni, that it should be stopped while he challenged the proces...
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The past week has seen the American Army suffering losses in Afghanistan and a series of bomb blasts in Pakistan. Meanwhile, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff has again highlighted the problem of Taliban fighters based in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Ahmed Rashid’s new book, “De...
go to article »July 17, 2008
Nicholas Kristof writes in Sunday's NY Times: Each Tomahawk missile that the United States fires in Afghanistan costs at least $500,000. That’s enough for local aid groups to build more than 20 schools, and in the long run those schools probably do more to destroy the Taliban.My own take on this.....
go to article »July 9, 2008
One of the views that has been bandied about over the last months as we swing this way and that about the nuclear deal is that signing it will mean that the government would have sold itself as an American stooge and vassal. That is what the leftists are saying. Since then I have been ruminating on ...
go to article »June 27, 2008
A long-term consequence of the Iraq war is the production of a new generation of young paramilitaries with combat experience in urban environments against the world's best equipped army (see "Afghanistan in an amorphous war", 19 June 2008). Even if the conflict in Iraq does ease in ...
go to article »June 18, 2008
Tariq Ali is one of the most articulate leftist and secularist thinkers to have come out of Pakistan and has been living in exile in London since the 1960s when he began to speak out against the country’s first military dictators. Nearly fifty years later, he has lost none of his fire and has ...
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