Registan.net

The David Ignatius follow-up to his first government press release disguised as a newspaper column:
JALALABAD, Afghanistan — The most interesting discovery during a visit to this city where Osama bin Laden planted his flag in 1996 is that al-Qaeda seems to have all but disappeared. The group is on the run, too, in Iraq, and […]

First off, here are two excellent segments from Al Jazeera English on the issues facing the NWFP and FATA in Pakistan.

Oh look, there’s Bill Roggio arguing with Pakistanis about the issues facing the tribal areas. It is interesting to hear Jalil Afridi, the editor of the Frontier Post, lend his perspective. He cops to being […]

Richard Boucher, Assistant SecState for Central and South Asia, is making funny noises:
“They (Iran) interfere in a variety of different ways, perhaps not as violently as they do sometimes in Iraq,” Richard Boucher, assistant secretary of state for south and central Asia, told reporters at a press conference.
“But what we see is Iranian interference politically, […]

The Marines are talking sense:
The Taliban, whose fighters are exchanging daily fire with the Marines in Garmser [Helmand], derives up to $100 million a year from the poppy harvest by taxing farmers and charging safe passage fees — money that will buy weapons for use against U.S., NATO and Afghan troops.
Yet the Marines are not […]

Posted without comment.
India not to take up new road projects in Afghanistan
New Delhi, May 6 (IANS) After the latest killings of its personnel by Taliban militants in Afghanistan, India’s Border Roads Organisation (BRO) Tuesday said it is unlikely to take up any more projects in the insurgency-plagued country. “In Afghanistan, we unfortunately had casualties. We […]

There is a great deal of western unease about the potential cease-fire between some Taliban and tribal militant groups in the NWFP and FATA of Pakistan and the new civilian government. Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of Tehrik-i Taliban and primary suspect in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and sworn enemy of this month’s U.S. friend-of-convenience […]

There is a good reason to think that the concept of “paved roads equal improved security” is a coordinated multi-agency media campaign by the Army. Seemingly out of nowhere, the message began popping up in the accounts of brief embeds by mostly American reporters, from State Department employees at Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Kunar to […]

Remember David Ignatius’ pathetic excuse for reporting on Afghanistan? After a whole week in a few provinces in RC-East, he was making pronouncements about how the country was faring. Barnett Rubin properly called him out on this crap, but it’s worth looking at his ludicrous column and seeing if it might tell us anything.
Aside […]

This PBS Newshour debate between David Ignatius of the Washington Post and Barnett Rubin is a perfect example of why you should never listen to newspaper columnists when they write about wars or countries they’ve never studied. As Rubin himself notes:
I thought that after all the scandals about journalists misleading the public by repeating government […]

Thirteen months ago, I noted the problems caused by the U.S. State Department having dramatically different divisions than the military COCOMs.
The DoD considers Pakistan part of the Central Command, or CENTCOM (which includes the Middle East and Central Asia), but places India in the Pacific Command, PACOM. Meanwhile, the State Department places all of […]