This NYT story is an example, I think, of the way one’s mental models control one’s perception. The report deals with a proposed U.S. policy of providing the Frontier Corps, the paramilitary police of the North-West Frontier Province, with aid directly rather than via the Pakistani military. This is one thing. It is not an…
Read More Pakistan, NOIA, and a rebel data centreWhat to blog about? In the face of work like this or this? Why not Pakistan? The fix is in, as they say – Musharraf safely re-elected by crook more than by hook, pesky corruption charges disposed of, Nawaz Sharif shouldered out of the way, time for the great heroine’s return. The enemy, of course,…
Read More Trimming to the TalibanSo, there’s this new Kyrgyz airline called Galaxy Air; started by people from TAPOAvia in 2006. It’s been on the EU blacklist since March, 2007, and it ain’t coming off any time soon. On the 29th of August, its Ilyushin-18 EX-786 was seized by the Pakistani authorities in Islamabad. Why? Well, the 142 passengers, of…
Read More Pass Down The Plane, PleaseSo, Barack Obama is now an evil warmongering bastard like all the others who wants to invade Pakistan or a girly man who doesn’t want to nuke Pakistan, depending on ideological preference. The reason was a speech on foreign policy he recently gave, and subsequent reporting. You can see how it happened. It spooked me;…
Read More Reading the Documents: Obama vs PakistanCan anyone honestly be crazed enough to suggest launching US forces into Pakistan? Well, the Washington Post – the Washington Post! – apparently is. Let us review the situation; there’s a wave of suicide bombings on, one of which may have been either jihadis or Baluch rebels – they don’t know – and targeted Chinese…
Read More A canter down some dark defileDo we actually have a policy with regard to Afghanistan? The question wants asking. After all, we’ve just had a change of government, and Gordon Brown is apparently willing to appoint people from other political parties or none. But despite this, Des “Swiss Toni” Browne is left in place as secretary of defence, with the…
Read More Does Gordon Brown have a policy on Afghanistan?I can’t help thinking that if this LA Times story is accurate, those BGIA planes need a searching. In one of the most troubling trends, U.S. officials said that Al Qaeda’s command base in Pakistan is increasingly being funded by cash coming out of Iraq, where the terrorist network’s operatives are raising substantial sums from…
Read More Just another planeload of cashEvery blog and its cat has been discussing the tale that Richard Armitage supposedly threatened to bomb Pakistan back into the stone age, but no-one seems to have mentioned a very obvious fact about this: Pakistan has an estimated 20-60 nuclear warheads deliverable by various means. Now, you don’t go round threatening to bomb nuclear…
Read More All the Pakistan that’s fit to printTapped has a useful suggestion: why not export Tony Blair to a Democratic Leadership Council thinktank? He’ll be happier there, and will do less damage. They suggest we might want Joe Lieberman in exchange. Not so sure about that. Apparently, Subhas Chandra Bose is not buried on Taiwan as previously thought, and the grave that…
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