As I’ve discussed previously on numerous occasions, one of the oddest arguments for escalating/perpetuating our military presence in Afghanistan is the stated fear that our withdrawal would destabilize Pakistan. Implicit in this formulation is the presumption that our ongoing military occupation of Afghanistan (and concomitant military/political activity in Pakistan) is having a stabilizing effect in Pakistan itself. This nostrum [...]
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Guest Post by Philip Korsnes The Afghanistan debate often feels like a bizarre Mad Lib composed of scraps of historical analogy and far-flung case-studies. Every discussion of the way forward seems inevitably to turn on some other location or historical event. Some advocate policy prescriptions borrowed from the Iraq War; others warn of the [...] Johann Hari has a fascinating piece in The Independent (h/t bf) that recounts his interviews with several British nationals that have made the journey from active participantsin jihadi/terrorist causes and back. Hari’s quest to find out how and why certain people join terrorist groups, or espouse and propagate radical Islamist ideology, had been frustrated by the reticence and dissembling of persons active in those circles. [...] Greetings from the 2009 annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, where I’ve had the pleasure of attending four panels so far, all of which were interesting. One which probably has some interest for readers was Islamist Parties and the Political Process, which examined Islamist political movements in Morocco, Kuwait, and Algeria with [...] Colonel Gian Gentile, the antidote to the epidemic of irrational exuberance invested in the ability of counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN) to solve any insoluble military/political conundrum, offers yet another reality check: History shows that occupation by foreign armies with the intent of changing occupied societies does not work and ends up costing considerable blood and treasure. The notion [...] Last week, the Washington Post published a story detailing some of the tensions between the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as recently discussed on this site. According to the Post story, the Taliban is increasingly assuming a dominant role (or returning to a dominant role after the down period that occurred post-US invasion): As violence rises in Afghanistan, the power balance between insurgent [...] In the November/December 2009 issue of the Boston Review, Nir Rosen has a piece called “An Ugly Peace.” In it, Rosen writes about the new status quo in Iraq that was created by the end of the sectarian war and the U.S. Surge, something that he was reluctant to talk about in previous articles. [...] |
Blake Hounshell (aka praktike), our co-founder and main man, is managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine. He's now reporting on the Egyptian Revolution from Cairo. 
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