From the category archives:

Afghanistan

Operation Kandahar is go

by Dafydd

According to Dawn Operation Omaid to clear Taliban from Kandahar has already begun.
Well sort of.
“US General Stanley McChrystal, said the offensive had begun with initial military and political efforts, including operations to secure key roads and districts.”
Alternatively:-
“We have been making preparation and plans concerning Operation Omaid,”said General Sher Mohammad Zazai, Afghan army commander in the country’s
south.
“We’re [...]

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Counterinsurgency Is Not Just Talibans

by Joshua Foust

Bing West—with an apparently unlimited travel budget?—has a report up about Operation Moshtarak, asking if we can learn any lessons from it. While the obvious answer is, “yes,” there are some things to consider.
First, nowhere in the first four pages does West mention even tangentially the needs or concerns of the local population. Since the [...]

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Possible Proof of Iranian Support for the Taliban

Thumbnail image for Possible Proof of Iranian Support for the Taliban by Joshua Foust

For several years, U.S. officials have alleged that “Iranian weapons” were being supplied to Taliban militants, mostly in Farah and Herat but also elsewhere in the country. Most often, the official would make the charge in the passive voice, leaving it open to interpretation whether the arms shipments—assuming they were even identified correctly—were official Iranian [...]

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Registan.Net does the Alyona Show (again)

by Joshua Foust

Ms. Alyona Minkovski was kind enough to have me back on her show to discuss what’s going on with the bizarre Michael Furlong/AfPax/NY Times “private spies for hire” thing.

Yes, that was over Skype, yes it was a terrible connection, yes that is medical tape barely holding my glasses together, and yes I need to buy [...]

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Life Under Marjah

by Joshua Foust

Anand Gopal has an excellent piece on Marjeh before Moshtarak:
Many Marjah residents say that the two years of Taliban rule were better than the six years of Afghan government rule that preceded it. The Taliban ruling apparatus was not sophisticated, but for the rugged, simple town of Marjah it met the bare-minimum requirements. This was [...]

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Handling Marjeh’s Poppy & Other Concerns

by Joshua Foust

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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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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