The mainstream media catches up



60 Minutes recently did a show on the situation in Afghanistan, which several people who have been there recently have said is a very good overview of what's going on there.

My book, Leopards Kill, is set a little further into the badlands you see in the video. The situation has gotten even worse than I thought it would - and I was far from an optimist.

Inattention kills - wars as well as soldiers.

The situation in Pakistan

Militants have launched six such attacks [rocket-propelled assaults on NATO depots and staging areas] in Peshawar since the beginning of December, destroying some 300 Humvees and other military vehicles as well as supplies worth millions of dollars. While these raids have obvious consequences for international troops in Afghanistan, they also mark a new level of insecurity for Peshawar, a city of universities, kebab stands, and carpet dealers that has always had an edgy border-town vibe but that now seems increasingly vulnerable to a Taliban takeover.

Article in Slate detailing what's going on in Peshawar, on the border with Afghanistan. You can judge the government's seriousness by the pay gap between what it pays officers and what the Taliban pays its fighters.

The story mentions the possibility of residents forming a vigilante militia to take matters into their own hands, something I'd never heard of before.

Finally, we start to get serious . . .

I won't go into a big tirade about Afghanistan/Al Qaeda, since the few people who might actually read it already know pretty much what's going on. But the administration finally seems to have gotten serious, or almost serious, or almost-almost serious, about dealing with Al Qaeda there - and in Pakistan.

At least they've finally formally said it's OK to operate there.

Actually, they're just belatedly recognizing (part of) the reality. In truth, parts of the Pakistan army have been at war with America for several years. They've been firing on Americans for quite a while now.

Here's a story that actually has the balls to say what's going on there - first thing I've seen in the MSM that acknowledges that Pakistanis are attacking Americans:

Right at the Edge

By DEXTER FILKINS

Published: September 7, 2008

The Taliban and Al Qaeda have established a haven in Pakistan’s tribal areas along the Afghan border. This is where the war on terror will be fought – and possibly lost.

Click here to read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07pakistan-t.html?ex=1378526400&en=d7b4e7009f1bf45c&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Filkins' article will seem pretty pessimistic. There are a lot of people who will tell you he's not pessimistic enough.

It's funny: when I first started working on Leopards Kill - which was about two, maybe three years before it came out - I thought it would be old news by the time it was published, because surely we'd have woken up . . . more and more, it looks like a dark prophecy.

Laugh or cry?

Seriously, no one knew this??? . . .

China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo

" . . . Some methods were used against a small number of prisoners at Guantánamo before 2005, when Congress banned the use of coercion by the military. The C.I.A. is still authorized by President Bush to use a number of secret “alternative” interrogation methods.

Several Guantánamo documents, including the chart outlining coercive methods, were made public at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing June 17 that examined how such tactics came to be employed.

But committee investigators were not aware of the chart’s source in the half-century-old journal article, a connection pointed out to The New York Times by an independent expert on interrogation who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The chart and article were from an analysis of Communist Chinese torture - um, interrogation methods - used during the Korean War to extract (false) confessions, which at least some of the commies apparently believed were truthful. (Well sure, because it's what they believed to begin with, the schmucks.)

Supposedly, the Guantánamo interrogators took the methods without knowing where they'd come from... and by implication, whether they'd work or not.

I mean, duh, even I saw the parallel. Doesn't anyone study - or even read - history any more?

Come on. I'm thinking there's more to the story, but then I'm an optimist ...

Click here for Times story

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html?ex=1372737600&en=727ea9eaf9d71aa3&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

WTF

They have nukes, we have ... what exactly?

Pakistan is a country of great beauty and industrious people, but at the moment it is spinning out of control. The situation there is even more confused and dangerous than what you’re seeing on TV or reading in the newspaper.

The country’s dictator, General Musharraf, is at the center of vortex of forces pulling Pakistan in different directions. One of those forces is democracy, though the recently returned (at our urging) former Prime Minister Benzair Bhutto is far from the ideal leader of a democratic movement. Nor is her party, as large as it is, the only one in the country. To give you an idea of how fractured Pakistani politics are, the CIA counts 21 separate political parties active in the country. And that doesn’t include the most potent force: the army.

We get news stories in the West about radical Islamists and the havoc they’re causing in Pakistan, but the tribal and ethnic conflicts are arguably even more important. The Kite Runner revealed to many Westerners the enmity between different ethnic groups in Afghanistan; Pakistan has essentially the same problem. While much of the conflict occurs in the northern tribal areas of the country – the name indicates who’s really in control there – the conflicts exist throughout Pakistan.

Why is all this turmoil important for the rest of the world?

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are being guarded by an army that has had its ass kicked in the northern provinces over the past year in what amounts to an undeclared civil war. And yes, the Taliban is part of that war. And no, they still don’t like us.

So let me ask . . . am I just nuts, or does Bhutto’s return seem a little like Khomeini’s to Iran during the 1970s?

One thing that's clear - Condi's as clueless as anyone in the Carter administration ever was.

Eggheads in Afghanistan

Usual kidding aside, the idea is a good one. I can't speak for the execution . . .

Army Enlists Anthropology in War Zones

By DAVID ROHDE

Published: October 5, 2007

In an experimental program, anthropologists are paired with American combat units in Afghanistan and Iraq...

Most of the story involves Afghanistan, and includes part of the province where much of Leopards Kill is set.

The full URL . . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/05/world/asia/05afghan.html?ex=1349323200&en=a13ee15e97920f0f&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink