In a secret NATO report recently leaked to the British media, Taliban insurgents told their interrogators that they are increasingly confident that the Taliban will retake power once NATO forces depart Afghanistan, and that Pakistan is positioning itself for such an outcome. NATO officials have sought to downplay the report’s contents, emphasizing that it represents uncorroborated pieces of information, not an overall analysis of the military situation. Still, the contents of the report should give pause to those who are pushing for a negotiated settlement with the Taliban. There are …
President Obama publicly admitted Monday for the first time that the U.S. is conducting an aggressive drone missile campaign against terrorists predominantly located in Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. U.S. officials in the past have been tight-lipped about drones, partly out of deference to Pakistani officials, who are sensitive about U.S. attacks on its sovereign territory, and partly to avoid addressing international questions about the legality of remotely controlled attacks. So why has President Obama chosen to speak openly about the drones at this juncture? U.S.-Pakistan relations remain deeply troubled, …
In listening to the State of the Union, you would never know that the U.S. still has close to 100,000 troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. While President Obama highlighted U.S. gains against al-Qaeda and the significance of the raid that eliminated Osama bin Laden last May, he downplayed the challenges that remain in Afghanistan. President Obama merely said he was “winding down the war,” giving the false impression that the U.S. can depart Afghanistan on an arbitrary timetable without any costs to its national security. This paints a misleading …
Ever since Sri Lanka ended a two-and-a-half-decade civil war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) in 2009, the government has faced questions about alleged violations of human rights and the killing of thousands of civilians during the war. Despite the Sri Lankan government’s initial resistance to exploring these issues, it took a notable stride forward last November when it released the findings and recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC). In May 2010, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa created the LLRC to begin an inquiry into …
The Bangladeshi army revealed today that it had foiled a coup attempt linked to Islamist extremists last month. Army officials said they uncovered a plot by 16 serving and retired military officials who conspired to overthrow the elected Sheikh Hasina government in order to establish an Islamist regime. While Bangladesh has a history of military coups, this is the first known attempt by Islamist extremists within the military to overthrow the government. The coup attempt has been linked to the Hizbut Tahrir (HUT), an international organization that seeks to establish …
The British newspaper The Guardian has reported that the U.S. has agreed in principle to release high-ranking Taliban officials from Guantanamo Bay in return for the Afghan insurgents’ agreement to open a political office in Qatar. If true, this would demonstrate that the Obama Administration is dangerously naïve about the reality of the threat the Taliban continues to pose in the region. It also could reveal that the Administration has no real strategy for achieving U.S. counterterrorism objectives in the region and is desperate to strike a deal with the …
A NATO airstrike along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border on Saturday that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers has once again inflamed U.S.–Pakistan tensions and called into question the future of the partnership. The circumstances surrounding the strike are still unclear, and both NATO and U.S. Central Command have vowed to investigate the incident. Afghan and Western officials have said the airstrike was launched in response to firing from the vicinity of two Pakistani border posts. Pakistani military officials have denied those claims and said the NATO attack was unprovoked. Islamabad responded swiftly to …
The Pakistani media are having a feeding frenzy over an op-ed written more than a month ago in the London-based Financial Times by Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz. In his op-ed, Ijaz asserts that the Zardari government—through a senior Pakistani diplomat he later identified as Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S. Husain Haqqani—asked him to deliver a memo to former U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, requesting his intervention to prevent a military coup in Pakistan in the wake of the Osama bin Laden raid. Ijaz claims …
In a November 15 op-ed in The Age, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced that she would push her Labor Party to overturn its ban on selling uranium to India when the party meets next month. The unexpected announcement is a testament to the growing importance that Australia attaches to ties with India and should lead to a significant deepening of their bilateral partnership. In 2008, Australia’s Labor Party government reversed a decision by its predecessor to end the ban on export of uranium to India on the grounds that …
The assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was in charge of the High Peace Council pursuing reconciliation talks with the Taliban, is a clarifying moment for Afghans who had hoped Rabbani’s efforts would bring peace to the war-ravaged country. The assassination is a body blow to the political reconciliation process and will reinforce resistance among the country’s ethnic minority leaders to the very idea of seeking political accommodation with the Taliban. Rabbani’s assassination on Tuesday is eerily similar to that of Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Massoud 10 …
