The Asia Foundation recently released a massive report on the views of the Afghan people. The report titled ‘Afghanistan in 2010: A Survey of the Afghan People‘ is over 200 pages and features Afghan replies to numerous questions about the state of their country and lives. Below is a chart of the overall national temperature […]
Big news out of Georgia (which is where I am until 17 November), where thirteen men were arrested on charges of spying for Russia, Georgia’s nemesis. Most of the men were arrested in October, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs made the announcement on 5 November, perhaps due to Reuters breaking the story a week […]
The New York Times’ journalism on Afghanistan is nothing short of a heroic record. Consider Dexter Filkin’s investigative journalism and then, think no more. But today, the series of photographs and story it published on the endemic incidence of self-immolation among women in Afghanistan is something beyond note, and approbation. It is revelatory and within […]
I was honoured to have had my Khodorkovsky = Kurils post savaged by no less a man than Anatoly Karlin at Sublime Oblivion, and no snark intended! While Anatoly may be a more incisive and high profile blogger than I, we both come from the broadly defined ‘left’ with a desire to correct the various […]
One is a telegenic billionaire turned dissident, and the other is a bunch of fog-sodden volcanic rocks at the edge of the earth. But the Khodorkovsky case and the Kuril islands dispute have more in common than meets the eye. The Kuril islands, like Yukos, were strategic assets seized by an emboldened Russian state from […]
I’d written earlier with some thoughts on how to cut apart the Taliban in Afghanistan from their Al Qaeda counterparts. Broadly, I’d argued that one needed to separate out the incentives and motivations (en bloc) of the Taliban from their foreign, multi-national, globalist counterparts. Separated out– as hanafis (nationalist jihadis) and salafis (globalist jihadis)– NATO […]
It was obvious a year ago that the 2010 midterms were going to be about domestic issues, specifically the economy, jobs, and health care. But it was hard to predict just how little foreign policy, the Afghanistan war included, would play in this political season. The war in Afghanistan has to be considered the top […]
My colleagues Pat Frost and Rob Grace ( over at the Law and Security Strategy blog) and I have written extensively on why the situation in Afghanistan looks grim. The war there is a long haul; the Karzai government is corrupt, a two-timing, untrustworthy thing; viable solutions to the conflict in Afghanistan require negotiated international […]
The story of US/Karzai government negotiations with members of the Taliban have already taken so many twists (mostly rhetorical rather than substantive) that one should not feel ashamed to be confused as to what exactly is going on between the two warring parties. One second the Obama administration admits (Gates) to ongoing negotiations and the […]
Well now. This isn’t good. The Karzai Administration is taking in more than $1 million a year off the books from Iran’s government to pay for presidential expenses. The Chief of Staff is taking in the cash, no doubt helping Mr. Karzai pay for his lavishly, handsomely decorated, pain-stakingly made shawls. Some of it goes […]
Who played whom in the overlapping battles over the mayor of Moscow, the Khimki forest road, and the presidential race of 2012? This question is not (just) a convenient platform to shamelessly promote my new article about The New Civic Activism in Russia, out in the latest edition of The Nation (still, why not check […]
My hometown paper, the San Diego Union Tribune, has been running a series of reports about the US war effort in Afghanistan that have provided a real service to our community. The weekly reports may not be groundbreaking, but they have provided its readers with a more in depth view of the situation, especially in […]
NATO’s Afghanistan force ISAF has been strategically bombing rushedly discovered Taliban and Al Qaeda locations for some time now. This scaled up move is designed to get the Taliban leadership to the negotiating table. No doubt, apart from major disruptive turns away from the chosen path, the strategy is understood to be working. ISAF is […]
The War in Afghanistan has fallen off the American’s people’s radar. It raises the question: was it ever on the people’s radar–that is after the hooooohaaahhh of ramped up, spoon fed nationalism faded to the recyclable detritus of our ill-appreciated commuter lives. Yes. From 2001 until 2007, one might do well to vaguely recall the […]
Ata-Jurt leader Kamchybek Tashiev Yesterday, on October 10, Kyrgyz voters cast their ballots for a new parliament. Overall, there were not a lot of new faces chosen, casting doubt on a fresh start after June’s riots and killings, when over 400 people reportedly died and more than 400,000 were forced out of their homes. On the other […]