Pashtun Dream-Glance

About 40 million ethnic Pashtuns live in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they form the core of the Taliban movement.

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On October 27, the Washington Post reported the resignation of Matthew Hoh, a top U.S. civilian official in Afghanistan, in protest of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

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Before firing me last week from my post as his deputy special representative in Afghanistan, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon conveyed one last instruction: Do not talk to the press. In effect, I was being told to remain a team player after being thrown off the team.

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The Viper in the Bosom

The US Ambassador in Pakistan has been uncharacteristically blunt in her talk with the Washington Post.

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Running Afghanistan has always been all about getting the tribes to get along. That isn't happening now because several back the Taliban (which draw their manpower from all over the south), and several more back drug lords (and the enormous wealth that goes with that).

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Flawed Policies

In her marvelous book—The March of Folly—Barbara Tuchman talks of the 25 long years for which the US persisted with a flawed and disastrous policy in Viet-Nam. The torture and killings ended with a defeat for the US.

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President Obama has already dispatched an additional 21,000 American troops to Afghanistan and soon will decide whether to send thousands more.

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Let me say at the beginning that I do not think that the existing mess in Afghanistan at present is the fault of the Obama administration.

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pakistan has been shelling Pashtuns in an attempt to misguide the world about its war against taliban.

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The early returns from Afghanistan's presidential election had the smell of a decorous massage job. With 10% of districts reporting, the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, and his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, the former Foreign Minister, were tied, with about 40% each.

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The United States and its allies have been lauding last week's presidential elections in Afghanistan as both a sign of growing support for Hamid Karzai's Western-backed government and a triumphant exercise in democracy.

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TARAKAI, Afghanistan - A group of Taliban fighters made their announcement in the bazaar of a nearby village a few days ago, and the word spread fast: anyone caught voting in the presidential election will have his finger - the one inked for the ballot - cut off.

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The Afghan Taliban have started implementing their threat to disrupt Afghanistan's second presidential election scheduled for August 20.

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The general consensus is that the Americans won't hack it in Afghanistan longer than another two to three years. And whether they have to be evacuated by helicopter atop the American embassy in Kabul, like in Saigon, or in a phased manner, as in Iraq, win or lose, they will go.

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We are accustomed to seeing Afghans through bars, or smeared windows, or the sight of a rifle: turbaned men carrying rockets, praying in unison, or lying in pools of blood; boys squabbling in an empty swimming-pool; women in burn wards, or begging in burqas.

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In a rare admission, President Asif Ali Zardari conceded that Pakistan -- without naming the country's omnipotent military -- created terrorists for a number of short-term goals.

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Sunday's victory in the final of the second Twenty-20 World Cup cricket tournament at Lord's has sent Pakistan reeling with incredulous joy. In the cities, youths were out parading the streets late at night with national flags fluttering in the wind.

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Last month Richard Holbrooke, the US state department's special representative, met students from Pakistan's north-west tribal ­areas.

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The erosion of human rights in war-torn Afghanistan spurred Denver U.S. Rep.

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Pakistan: withering away of an Islamic state

Can imperialists create artificial states? Looking at the history of British Imperialism in South Asia, one can say sure, they can, but such states won't last for long.

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All one has to do is read the headlines to realize that the war in Afghanistan is not going well. Just last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that he had requested the resignation of the top American general there.

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Not a single official from the Pakistani political leadership visiting Washington last week dared say a word about it.

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Recently an AIRRA (Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy - an Islamabad-based research organisation) investigation team went to some parts of Swat that had been under army attacks.

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American Empire-backed war rages in the North-West Frontier of Pakistan and the poor are embracing the Taliban because they at least fix roads, provide schools (albeit for boys only) and discipline criminals.

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U.S President Barack Obama on Wednesday held a trilateral summit with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai to try to come up with a joint strategy for combating a powerful Taliban insurgency that is now raging in the Pashtun-dominated areas on bo …

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