National Bailout Watch: Pakistan Receives IMF Loan
International Monetary Fund and Pakistan have announced an initial agreement on a $7.6 billion loan to bolster the beleaguered country: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistan's government has agreed to a $7.6 billion aid deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Pakistan's top finance official said. The IMF endorsed Pakistan's homegrown program after a review and agreed to the aid package to ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on November 17, 2008 11:36
Intelligent Reporting on Intelligence
One truism that I've noted over the years is that any event that I experience in person will invariably be reported in the press quite differently. That proved true again last night as I began absorbing media accounts of CIA Director Michael Hayden's "State of al Qaeda Today" address to the Atlantic Council. It seemed obvious to me that the "news" ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on November 14, 2008 08:09
Every Major Terrorist Threat Has Ties to Pakistan
CIA Director Michael Hayden told the Atlantic Council this afternoon that al Qaeda's safe haven in Pakistan's ungoverned tribal areas have provided a "sanctuary" that has "allowed it to recover some capacity lost when expelled from Afghanistan" nearly seven years ago. It has developed a "close, co-dependent relationship with Pashtun extremist and separatist groups" through very careful exploitation ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on November 13, 2008 17:09
6.4 Earthquake Strikes Pakistan
A powerful earthquake has struck southwest Pakistan, killing at least 150 people: ZIARAT, Pakistan – A strong earthquake struck before dawn Wednesday in impoverished southwestern Pakistan, killing at least 170 people and turning mud and timber homes into rubble. An estimated 15,000 people were left homeless, and rescuers were digging for survivors in a remote valley in Baluchistan, the remote province bordering ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on October 29, 2008 10:39
Petraeus at Atlantic Council
[caption id="attachment_26018" align="alignright" width="400" caption="Lt.Gen. Brent Scrowcroft, GEN David Petraeus, and Atlantic Council President and CEO Fred Kempe"][/caption] I had the privilege of sitting in on an Atlantic Council meeting with General David Petraeus this afternoon. He's making the rounds in Washington in preparation for taking over CENTCOM. He mostly came to listen to selected members of our Strategic Advisors Group ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on October 9, 2008 16:25
Riddle Me This
What do you get when you combine high oil prices, government subsidies on gasoline, and a financial crisis spreading around the world? You get Pakistan on the brink of insolvency: Officially, the central bank holds $8.14 billion (£4.65 billion) of foreign currency, but if forward liabilities are included, the real reserves may be only $3 billion - enough to buy about 30 ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on October 6, 2008 16:19
Opinions on Afghanistan
Yesterday the New York Times published three op-eds presenting opinions on Afghanistan, one by Robert D. Kaplan, one by Nathaniel C. Fick and Vikram J. Singh, fellows at the Center for a New American Security, and Nader Nadery and Haseeb Humayoon, two Afghans involved with NGO's. In his op-ed Mr. Kaplan emphasizes the geo-political importance of the struggle in Afghanistan: So, here’s ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on October 5, 2008 13:35
U.S. Strikes Making Taliban Angry
I must confess some amusement over the YahooNews headline "Officials say Taliban mad over alleged US strike." The lede is also encouraging. The Taliban are unusually angry about the latest suspected U.S. missile strike in Pakistan, a sign a top militant may have died in the attack, officials and residents said Sunday amid reports the death toll rose by two ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on October 5, 2008 07:14
Afghanistan is Not Enough
Michael J. Totten takes exception to the frequently expressed view that "the war on terrorism started in Afghanistan and it needs to end there." In my New Atlanticist essay "Afghanistan: Necessary But Not Sufficient," I explain why he's right. My conclusion: Defeating the Taliban and its al Qaeda allies there and in neighboring Pakistan is vital to regional security and failure ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on September 30, 2008 13:17
McCain - Obama Debate 1: Foreign Policy
Forty minutes into the first presidential debate of the 2008 general election season, which was supposed to be about foreign policy, we have had precisely no discussion of foreign policy thanks to moderator Jim Lehrer's asking the same three domestic policy questions repeatedly. Granting that there's an emergency in the financial sector, most of the questions are only tangentially related ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on September 26, 2008 21:43
