Ouch

Juan Cole:

Gates went to Pakistan to emphasize to Islamabad that the US was not again going to abandon it and Afghanistan, as it had in the past. Pakistan, he wanted to say, is now a very long-term ally of Washington. He hoped for cooperation against the Haqqani, Taliban and Hizb-i Islami guerrillas. He wanted to allay conspiracy theories about US mercenary armies crawling over Pakistan, occasionally blowing things up (and then blaming the explosions on Pakistanis) in order to destabilize the country and manipulate its policies.

The message his mission inadvertently sent was that the US is now increasingly tilting to India and wants to put it in charge of Afghanistan security; that Pakistan is isolated; that he is pressuring Pakistan to take on further counter-insurgency operations against Taliban in the Northwest, which the country flatly lacks the resources to do; and that Pakistani conspiracy theories about Blackwater were perfectly correct and he had admitted it.

Oof.

In, uh, less significant good news, I've written 18 pages of thesis!

Some quick hits

The situation for Afghani women isn't getting any better. There's not much new in the report, which could be fortunate or unfortunate depending on how you look at it, I guess; just a tragic sameness. I've posted about this topic before, and I wrote a paper that was about half on this subject. I don't really want to go over it again right now--it's too sad.

I'm getting to this way late, but Switzerland banned minarets a couple of weeks ago. In protest, a Swiss businessman built a minaret on top of his business in protest. Awesome.

Morand said he viewed the ban was all the more "scandalous" given that Switzerland actively encourages Arabs to "visit the country and to spend their money here."

The minaret, which has been in place since Tuesday, has "generated a lot of interest," he said, adding that he will wait and see before deciding if further action was needed to push his point.

I vote further action.

Andrew Sullivan flagged a video a while ago where a suicide bomber was interviewed on "All Things Pakistan." He titled the post "Interviewing Evil," which I object to--I think largely because I don't believe in evil. I'm not interested in this interview for purposes of staring into the underbelly of moral absolutes; I want to know what the suicide bomber thinks, that's all. Here's the video:



As always, there's more, but I'm too tired right now.

Tough all over

This is an interesting blog post from what appears to be a Pakistani journalist at Thinking Out of the Box.

It's interesting because he's arguing that the Pakistani media is irresponsibly demonizing the government and military and in so doing is helping the terrorists. It reminded me of some of the American blogosphere's complaints about our own dear MSM. (On the left, at least.) I'm not at all savvy to what goes on in the Pakistani media, so I can't nod sagely in agreement nor argue that he's wrong, but it's still interesting to me to see this kind of discontent arising over there.

This is why I keep Global Voices on Google Reader. Even though the vast majority of their seemingly endless posts are not interesting to me, and sometimes I feel like I'm getting clogged up or overwhelmed with it, I consistently find things through GV that I would never have seen anywhere else. Plus their omnibus compendia of various posts on the same subject can be invaluable, and they're a good source for cool uses of new or newish media.

Like, oh, this: Global Health: Mobile Phones to Boost Healthcare. I haven't even read it yet, but I want to know about that, don't you?

School is killing me, which is why I haven't been posting. It's pretty sad that that's the case, given that neither midterms nor finals are currently happening, but I guess that's third year for you. Ugh, back to Arabic worksheets.

The stimulus as it stands, and some news from Afghanistan

Marc Ambinder has "the latest summary from the House Appropriations Committee" of the stimulus bill.

The New York times informs me that Congress has (publicly) learned what we already knew: Karzai not working out so good. For some details on Afghanistan, see here, and here, and on the spreading of extreme Islamism around Pakistan outside of FATA (that's the semi-autonomous tribal region bordering Afghanistan that we're always fretting about), see here.

I could very easily go find like fifty more links to throw up here, but I feel rather ill and am going to go lie down with The Culture of Sectarianism. So there.

Link dump

Hillary arrives at Foggy Bottom to a very warm welcome:



A thoroughly depressing report on an area of Pakistan that has spent the last ten years descending into Wahhabism and violence, plus some thoughts on girls' education.

From Abu Muqawama ("a blog dedicated to following issues related to contemporary insurgencies as well as counterinsurgency tactics and strategy"; a new discovery that I owe to Andrew Sullivan), a dead-on take on the current struggle between Hamas and Fatah over who gets to rescue the starving Gazans:

So this is the fight to watch next. Pay close attention to who rebuilds Gaza -- and how Hamas will seek to get credit for every bit of aid that is delivered to the people. That fight will help determine the long-term strategic effects of this latest spasm of violence.

Glenn Greenwald is pleased with Obama's first few days, and I have to say, when Greenwald lays it all out like that, so am I.

One of Andrew Sullivan's ever-astute readers wrote in about another reason to close Gitmo and a reframing of the question "but then what do we do with the prisoners?" It's a useful perspective I haven't seen before. In the same vein, Chris Brodenner wrote at Sullivan's place that while politicians may be adopting a NIMBY stance toward relocating Gitmo detainees to U.S. soil, the actual consitutents who live on that soil don't seem to feel that way.

Just to be clear, stopping the military tribunals at Guantánamo is one of the things Greenwald (me, too!) is happy about. More positive moves by Obama here. In a last bit of Yay Habeas Corpus fawning, dday writes:

Obama is really setting a bad precedent of keeping campaign promises and abiding by the rule of law. It's like the oath of office reboot, setting the horrible precedent of acknowledging mistakes and seeking to rectify them. Who does this guy think he is?

When it rains, it pours

There was a car bomb in Peshawar. (Peshawar being the capital of the FATA, or the tribal areas that are causing the U.S. so much trouble right now.)

So far 21 dead, 90+ injured. The electricity also went out and there were fires that destroyed a number of shops and warehouses due to an explosion in a nearby gas line.

Of course, everybody thinks this is India or Indians getting back at Pakistan for Mumbai, even though nobody actually knows whether Pakistan is responsible in the first place.

I would not be too surprised if this were the same group making sure they get what they want, which is conflict between India and Pakistan; or if it were unrelated (after all, this is the FATA, and there have been a lot of bombings and violence around there lately) and it's impossible for people not to construe it as a part of this narrative. After all, Peshawar is hardly analogous to Mumbai. While it is a center of arts and culture, something it shares with Mumbai, it's not the financial or economic center of Pakistan the way Mumbai is of India. It doesn't strike at the same pressure point.

A bomb in Peshawar makes much more sense in the context of the American war on terror than it does in the context of whatever chess game someone is playing with India, Pakistan, and Kashmir. (Unless, of course, we count this chess game as part of a larger one that has to do with Afghanistan, which seems eminently possible to me, although its similarity to a 24 plot makes me suspicious. Then again I continue to be no kind of expert or authority.)

More on Mumbai

Glenn Greenwald makes an important point about revisionism, 9/11, the Mumbai attacks, and cycles of violence.

It turns out Pakistan was going to send its Director General or whatever of the intelligence forces to help investigate the Mumbai attacks, but now he's not going--they're sending a "representative."

Is the ISI trying to piss off India? I was hearing theories before this even happened that the ISI and/or army had essentially gone rogue (since it was assumed that no remotely sane Pakistani government could have any interest in starting something like this) and were behind the attacks. This is the kind of thing that is either a ridiculously bush league political/diplomatic mistake--which is not really what comes to mind when I think "ISI"--or a deliberate snub to India. Why would you do that?

Shocking as it may seem, clearly there are some things I'm missing here.


Finally, it seems that two of the terrorists may have been British-born Pakistanis. If this were a novel I would probably be clutching my skull at the sheer symbolic recursiveness of it all, but IT'S (potentially) REAL. WTF. Past not dead, not even over, amen.

Secrets, secrets are no fun

Secret Order Lets U.S. Raid Al Qaeda in Many Countries

Doesn't sound too bad till you read this:

"The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials.

"These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized by a classified order that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed in the spring of 2004 with the approval of President Bush, the officials said. The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States."

Since 2004 they had this. They were already bombing Pakistan in 2006. I'm amazed Musharraf held on as long as he did.

Some odds and ends

1. Bob Herbert defends liberals. I think Obama should too. You want a strong argument for voting for "the most liberal Senator in Congress"?

Liberals have been so cowed by the pummeling they’ve taken from the right that they’ve tried to shed their own identity, calling themselves everything but liberal and hoping to pass conservative muster by presenting themselves as hyper-religious and lifelong lovers of rifles, handguns, whatever.

[...]

Why liberals don’t stand up to this garbage, I don’t know. Without the extraordinary contribution of liberals — from the mightiest presidents to the most unheralded protesters and organizers — the United States would be a much, much worse place than it is today.

[...]

It would take volumes to adequately cover the enhancements to the quality of American lives and the greatness of American society that have been wrought by people whose politics were unabashedly liberal. It is a track record that deserves to be celebrated, not ridiculed or scorned.

Self-hatred is a terrible thing. [...]

Liberals need to get over it.

2. David Brooks has some campaign advice: Surprise Me Most. Weirdest takes all.

3. Finally, FiveThirtyEight (Polling Done Right) has some PR suggestions.

I think they're all correct. Which matters oh so much.


Finally, we've been so pathetic about waging any kind of sensible War On Terror that many in the Arab world don't believe we're really doing it. Instead, conventional wisdom holds that the U.S. and Israelis planned it as an excuse to invade Iraq for oil or wage a general war on all Muslims. NOW can we all agree that the efforts, prejudices, and rhetoric have been COMPLETELY MISDIRECTED? I mean, fuck. Whatever happened to hearts and minds?

ETA: Thank god for Robert Gates. We're not going to go poke Russia in the eye and run away giggling.

Past not dead, not even over

Damn. Somebody tried to assassinate Pakistan's prime minister (Gilani).

Again. (Again for the office, not the man--as far as I know). This is the part where Ozair would tell me yet again that they've never had anyone democratically elected complete a term in all of 61 years and I would politely pretend he hasn't told me that eight times already.

Sigh. Conflict traps indeed.