As you’re all likely aware by now, the man believed to have driven the vehicle in the botched Times Square bomb plot was arrested last night.   Thus far, three things interest me:  emerging evidence that this was part of an organized, international, terrorist conspiracy; the sheer ineptitude of the plot; and the media coverage.  This [...]

A decision to change the name of our of Pakistan’s border provinces has yielded tragic results: Six people were killed Monday and more than 200 were injured following protests over plans to rename Pakistan’s North-West Frontier province. The Pakistani Parliament sent a decision to a committee on constitutional reforms April 1 to change the name [...]

The next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live from 5:30-6:30 Eastern. Dave Schuler and I will be joined by special guest Pat Lang of Sic Semper Tyrannis to discuss the Baradar capture, the state of the war in Afghanistan, the US-Pakistani relationship, and the unfolding Iran story are all [...]

American special operators and intel types are teaming up with Yemeni forces to kill bad guys there, Dana Priest reports.  But Glenn Greenwald is most interested in the third paragraph: As part of the operations, Obama approved a Dec. 24 strike against a compound where a U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi, was thought to be meeting [...]

The Obama administration has announced that citizens traveling to the United States from 14 countries will undergo more intensive airport security screening.   Eric Lipton for NYT: Citizens of 14 nations, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, who are flying to the United States will be subjected indefinitely to the intense screening at airports worldwide that [...]

An air strike in Yemen may have killed the top leaders of al Qaead’s branch in that country, along with an American-born cleric linked to the Fort Hood massacre. A Yemeni air raid may have killed the top two leaders of al Qaeda’s regional branch on Thursday, and an American Muslim preacher linked to the [...]

There is a growing pocket of Republican skeptics of the war in Afghanistan, Reihan Salam contends, and they could cause serious problems for President Obama.  Alas, his argument is short on examples and long on speculation. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican known for his independent streak, has made a conservative case for withdrawal. And [...]

President Obama’s speech tomorrow night, in which he finally announces his Afghan strategy and responds to General McChrystal’s September request for more troops for Afghanistan, will be closely watched by the American public, our NATO Allies, foreign leaders, and the people of Afghanistan and the region. I sat down with my Atlantic Council colleagues Damon [...]

An incredibly junior foreign service officer has resigned over disagreement with our AfPak policy, prompting a high level scramble within the administration and a long feature in the Washington Post. As I wrote in “While Obama Dithers,” a piece for New Atlanticist, They’ve brought this on themselves.  Granted, President Obama inherited this war and his [...]

Month to date there have been four U. S. casualties in Iraq. Each death remains a tragedy but that’s a far cry from a year ago or two years ago. Fatalities in the Iraqi security forces have declined, too, each month of this year seeing fewer casualties than in the corresponding month of last year. [...]

Stephen Coll, president of the New America Foundation, has an article in Foreign Policy making the case for more humble objectives in Afghanistan. In the article he criticizes both the counter-insurgency strategy advocated by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U. S. forces in Afghanistan: To succeed, counterinsurgency approaches require deep, supple, and adaptive understanding [...]

Ariana Huffington has generated quite a bit of buzz for her unlikely-to-be-taken suggestion that Vice President Biden resign in protest if President Obama sends more troops to Afghanistan.   The cuteness of the suggestion has unfortunately overshadowed the opening paragraph in Holly Bailey and Evan Thomas’ Newsweek piece on “A Day in the Life of Joe [...]

The debate over our policy in Afghanistan continues in the nation’s opinion pages. Robert Kaplan in The Atlantic makes the case for counter-insurgency: Obama needs to get behind his chosen general as soon as possible and put this spectacle of indecisiveness behind him. Gen. McChrystal must become the face of a policy that is supported [...]

In this morning’s Washington Post Prince Turki al-Faisal of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, former director general of their intelligence service and also their former ambassador to the United States offers President Obama some advice on how to proceed in Afghanistan with which I find I am in almost complete agreement. His advice consists of [...]

Leslie Gelb, distinguished diplomat, journalist, and scholar, professes befuddlement over President Obama’s strategy with respect to Afghanistan: I’m lost on President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan policy—along with most of Congress and the U.S. military. Not quite eight months ago, Mr. Obama pledged to “defeat” al Qaeda in Afghanistan by transforming that country’s political and economic infrastructure, [...]

Tunku Varadarajan argues the New York Times has a moral obligation for getting two people killed by sending Stephen Farrell into a situation it knew was treacherous in order to get a scoop. Stephen Farrell was a British citizen reporting from Afghanistan. He’d received very strong advice from British troops to stay out of a [...]

Add Chuck Hagel to the chorus of voices rising in opposition to the escalation of our military commitment to Afghanistan: No country today has the power to impose its will and values on other nations. As the new world order takes shape, America must lead by building coalitions of common interests, as we did after [...]

If you only read one thing today, read the for-the-record answers from the Director of National Intelligence to questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee in April 2009. At the very least read the tickler summary from the blog of the Federation of American Scientists, which has done a genuine service in obtaining this document under [...]

Steve Benen brings up a point I’ve seen made in a few places recently: Dickering over how to pronounce “foreign” names like Sotomayor or Pakistan. I’m in agreement with Mark Krikorian that “Deferring to people’s own pronunciation of their names should obviously be our first inclination, but there ought to be limits.”  Where to draw [...]

The next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live from 7-8 Eastern. Joining regular cohost Dave Schuler and myself will be Bill Roggio of The Long War Journal. Bill’s coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan has been among the very best and we’ll be discussing the most recent developments there on [...]

Do you recall the aid we’ve been sending Pakistan so that the Pakistani government will let us supply our troops in Afghanistan via Pakistan, secure their nuclear weapons, and oppose the Taliban and Al Qaeda being harbored within Pakistan’s borders? Apparently, Pakistan is seizing the opportunity to build up its nuclear arsenal: WASHINGTON — Members [...]

In the Financial Times David Kilcullen, one of the architects of the changes in our Iraq strategy, is quoted on the bleak situation in Pakistan: “The Pakistani military has really no capability for what we would call counter- insurgency,” he said. “What they are doing in the Swat valley is a conventional offensive against the [...]

Fierce fighting continues between the Pakistani military and the militant Islamist Taliban fighters that have taken control of the Swat valley and neighboring areas northwest of Pakistan’s capital in Islamabad: May 13 (Bloomberg) — Pakistani army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani said he has told troops to ensure minimum collateral damage by resorting to “precision strikes” [...]

Fierce fighting continues between the Pakistani military and radical Islamist insurgents in the Swat Valley about 200 km northwest of the capital: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani Air Force fighter jets pounded militant positions in the Swat Valley on Monday as the military pressed its offensive on three Taliban-held districts northwest of the capital, the interior [...]

“[I]f Pakistan collapses, the U.S. military is primed to enter the country and secure as many of those weapons as it can, according to U.S. officials,” report’s TIME’s Mark Thompson burying his lede three paragraphs into a story whose headline asks, “Does Pakistan’s Taliban Surge Raise a Nuclear Threat?” As I explain in my New [...]

Germany is concerned about the Taliban fighters nearing Pakistan’s Islamabad capital: BERLIN, April 24 (Reuters) – Germany expressed concern on Friday at the advance of Taliban fighters towards Pakistan’s capital and urged the government in Islamabad to take decisive action to ensure the security situation did not deteriorate. Taliban militants have pushed closer to the [...]

This morning Bill Roggio is reporting that the Pakistani government has moved paramilitary forces, potentially to oppose Taliban forces should they advance on the capital: Islamabad officials have moved paramilitary forces to block a potential Taliban advance into the nation’s capital as US officials question Pakistan’s ability to stop the creeping insurgency. Islamabad’s deputy commissioner [...]

John Robb calls Pakistan a “hollow state.”  Dan Nexon says it’s in a state of “civil war.”  Aryn Baker says “the nuclear-armed nation of 165 million is on the verge of inexorable collapse.” And Robert Oakley believes its president is “incompetent and corrupt.” In my New Atlanticist piece, “Pakistan Nearing Collapse,” I argue that all [...]

In his column this morning Tom Friedman bemoans the plight of diplomacy in the modern age of piracy: A secretary of state can broker deals only when other states or parties are ready or able to make them. In the cold war, an age of great powers, grand bargains and reasonably solid client states, there [...]

Few Americans know more about Africa and the Middle East than Robert Oakley, whose distinguished diplomatic career included stints U.S. ambassador to Zaire , Somalia, and Pakistan;Special Envoy to Somali; director of State’s Office of Combatting Terrorism; and Assistant to the President for Middle East and South Asia. With help from my colleague Shuja Nawaz, [...]

On Tuesday, Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud responded to a $5 million reward for his arrest by threatening terrorist attacks in America.  “You can’t imagine how we could avenge this threat inside Washington, inside the White House,” Reuters quoted him as saying.  Today, he’s claiming responsibility for yesterday’s shooting spree in Binghamton, New York. The [...]

Denis McDonough, deputy assistant to the president in charge of strategic communications for the National Security Council, and Caitlin Hayden, director of communications at NSC, held a conference call this afternoon, organized by the White House, to discuss the plan with invited bloggers. Uncharacteristically, I managed to get in the first question and some follow-ups: [...]

In anticipation of next week’s NATO meeting in which the issue of Afghanistan will be front and center, President Obama has briefed Congressional leaders on his plans: WASHINGTON — President Obama plans to further bolster American forces in Afghanistan and for the first time set benchmarks for progress in fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban [...]

If President Obama is to convey a clear message to our NATO allies about Afghanistan, he must choose between two competing alternative strategies, counterterrorism or counterinsurgency: With just a week until President Barack Obama flies to Strasbourg, France, for his first NATO conference, his top advisers are still divided over what U.S. policy should be [...]

“Pakistan is 173 million people, 100 nuclear weapons, an army bigger than the U.S. Army, and al-Qaeda headquarters sitting right there in the two-thirds of the country that the government doesn’t control. The Pakistani military and police and intelligence service don’t follow the civilian government; they are essentially a rogue state within a state. We’re [...]

I have perhaps been remiss in not commenting on this story earlier. Pakistan has narrowly avoided a serious crisis in its government: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — It was a signal moment in Pakistan’s political development: A huge demonstration forced the restoration of a dismissed chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, a symbol of democracy and the rule [...]

Over the next three days, a high level delegation of U.S., Afghan, and Pakistani officials will meet to “seriously deal with the hard issues: how do the Afghans want to deal with [the insurgent activity on] their border, how to do this better, how to undermine those insurgents that run across their territory,” Laura Rozen [...]

The picture on the right is a Google Earth picture taken in 2006 of Shamsi air base in Pakistan. You can clearly see three Predator drones sitting on the tarmac. The current Google Earth picture of the same coordinates shows the same air base, sans Predators. The Times of London reports: The US was secretly [...]

A team of UCLA geographers have found Osama bin Laden. They’ve published an article in the MIT International Review scientifically narrowing his locations to one of three houses in North West Pakistan! Amazingly, this was not the journal’s cover story.

Yesterday Pakistan acknowledged what the Indians have been saying all along, that the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last November were planned in Pakistan and executed by Pakistanis with the assistance of the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani officials took what could be a decisive step forward in the country’s fight against Islamic extremism [...]

As of this morning, Senator Chuck Hagel is the chairman of Atlantic Council of the United States. Hagel, who served two terms representing Nebraska from 1997 to 2009, received the Atlantic Council’s Distinguished International Leadership Award in 2004. His breadth of experience, knowledge of foreign policy, and commitment to transatlantic relations provide the basis for [...]

My New Atlanticist post “Beating Al Qaeda But Losing in Afghanistan?” rounds up several major reports coming out today, the gist of which are: Our military strikes against al Qaeda have been so successful that a “complete al Qaeda defeat” is on the horizon. We’re finally killing their leaders faster than they can replace them. [...]

My New Atlanticist essay “Obama Orders Pakistan Drone Attacks” notes that, While President Obama has sent some major signals in his first days in office that his foreign policy will differ from President Bush’s, he sent one yesterday demonstrating continuity on a very key issue: targeting al Qaeda and Taliban militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas. [...]

The title above is not just the title of this post—it’s the title of a policy brief from the Center for a New American Security, an organization whose members seem to be exerting quite a bit of influence on the new administration. The brief is an explication of our enduring interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan [...]

Having initially been highly skeptical of Hillary Clinton’s appointment as Secretary of State, partly on the basis that she had neither diplomatic experience nor a diplomatic temperament, I feel obliged to pass on this observation from Joe Klein (via Andrew Sullivan): Clinton, who can be spiky, has re-emerged as a natural diplomat. When she heard [...]

Barack Obama has been president for more than 24 hours now.  America is once again beloved by one and all.  Hubris and overreach are things of the past, as the inmates of Gitmo have been freed and the troops are all home from Iraq, participating in rebuilding the infrastructure at home.   Or, certainly, change is [...]

The logistics of supplying a large military force in Afghanistan is a subject to which I’ve returned again and again. Afghanistan is landlocked. The people there barely have enough food to feed themselves and the country has little in the way of domestic industry to produces arms and armaments. That means that in order to [...]

There’s an op-ed in the New York Review of Books from William Luers, Thomas R. Pickering, and Jim Walsh giving advice on how to make some progress in dealing with Iran that I can only deem incoherent. Their suggestions rest on three legs. First, three of the most pressing security issues that face the incoming [...]

Tony Blankley, former press secretary to Newt Gingrich and editorial page editor of the Washington Times, has a new book out that, among other things, argues for reinstatement of the military draft.  Unlike liberals like Charlie Rangel or even centrist Phil Carter, he doesn’t do so on the basis of “fairness” or spreading the burden [...]

There’s an article over at Reuters listing some of the possible scenarios that might emerge in the confrontation between India and Pakistan. I think the article is best described as an editorial. A mixture of opinion and superficial analysis, if it had a by-line it would be an op-ed. It’s not a news article since [...]