Handling Marjeh’s Poppy & Other Concerns

by Joshua Foust on 3/17/2010 · 3 comments

Two weeks ago, I wrote in the New York Times:
Good government will matter little, though, if the local economy is in a shambles. Marja’s agricultural base relies primarily on opium, and any new counternarcotics policies will wreak havoc; arresting or killing the drug traffickers will ultimately be the same as attacking local farmers. The timing [...]

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Economic purge in Uzbekistan

by Dafydd on 3/16/2010 · 14 comments

A report in Asia times implies Uzbekistan has gone Mugabe-esque.
Seems that Karimov has ordered the arrest of a whole slew of Uzbekistan’s richest.
And what do you know -
“Uzbek officials are portraying this campaign as a sort of anticorruption drive”
Alternative theories are – “the crackdown could be connected to the president’s daughters. Such reports say Gulnara [...]

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Antonio Maria Costa on “Sinister Affairs”

by Asher Kohn

Today I had the opportunity to hear Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) give a short talk on what he does and what he is trying to do. He had lots of interesting things to say (as someone who went to University of Turin, Moscow State, [...]

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Holbrooke, Foot, Mouth

by Joshua Foust

Richard Holbrooke, everyone’s favorite envoy they love to hate to love, has an almost Biden-esque talent for saying things that make people angry. His most recent comment, that “Taliban is woven into the fabric of Pashtun society on both sides of the border with Pakistan and almost every Pashtun family has someone involved with the [...]

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AfPax Insider Is Death

by Joshua Foust

In 2008, I mocked Robert Young Pelton. I know, right? Shocking! But read why:
I believe he is saying there is something dishonorable, or unnatural, about people getting paid to participate in a war. This, along with the baseless assertion that “mercenaries” (a general, pejorative, and somewhat meaningless term) are “above the law,” forms the basis [...]

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America the Unreliable

by Joshua Foust

The next time some American official mentions they want to engage in negotiations with the Taliban, please: laugh really hard.
The Afghan government was holding secret talks with the Taliban’s No. 2 when he was captured in Pakistan, and the arrest infuriated President Hamid Karzai, according to one of Karzai’s advisers.
The detention of Mullah Abdul Ghani [...]

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Uzbeks Are Scary

by Joshua Foust

Previously:
Does the IJU Even Exist?
Oh, Actual Terrorists
Talking the IMU in Northern Afghanistan
There’s a pretty interesting essay at SWJ on the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in Afghanistan. Most of it is fine—I’d seriously question relying on Ahmed Rashid for meaningful information about Uzbeks, for example. There are some bits that are pretty questionable, however, and it [...]

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Wonks vs. Nerds

by Joshua Foust

Back in January, Drew Conway, Thomas Zeitzoff, and I co-wrote a response to a high-profile study on ecologies of conflict. Our primary complaint wasn’t that quantitative study per se was wrong—after all, Thomas and Drew are primarily quantitative in their work—but that it requires a lot of context and understanding to give the numbers meaning [...]

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Book Review: The KGB’s Fascination With Potions

by Joshua Foust

Originally posted to Steve LeVine’s excellent Oil and Glory blog.
It can be difficult to stand out in the somewhat crowded field of Russian scare-books. Whether arguing for the resumption of a “new cold war” or whatever conspiracy happens to be topical, recent years have seen an avalanche of books arguing that Russia is not the [...]

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Oh, the Shinwari

by Joshua Foust

It’s almost like no one could have seen this coming.
JALALABAD, Afghanistan — Six weeks ago, elders of the Shinwari tribe, which dominates a large area in southeastern Afghanistan, pledged that they would set aside internal differences to focus on fighting the Taliban.
This week, that commitment seemed less important as two Shinwari subtribes took up [...]

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