The view from Pakistan

by UmairJ

I had the ‘honour’ of waiting in traffic while Hamid Karzai was taken to Islamabad airport yesterday after his trip in which he met both Gilani and Zardari. The meetings were an attempt to create a better relationship between the two nations and it may have also included discussions concerning the place of the Taliban [...]

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Winning

by Dafydd

It is a common misconception that COIN campaigns are different because body counts and land taken do not guarantee victory. Body counts and land taken do not guarantee victory in ANY war. By way of example, the at the 1918 armistice the triple alliance (Germans, Austrians & Ottomans) had both taken more territory than they [...]

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“Af-Pak” Quick Links

by Matthew Kuhl

A few quick hits from chilly* middle Georgia (lows in the 20s! inconceivable!): Well, it looks as if the Bagram prison will soon be the Afghans’ problem. I’m skeptical that this will result in any real changes. Two articles opinions on drones: First, we have a column from Dawn questioning the effects that drone strikes purportedly [...]

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Here We Go Again

by Matthew Kuhl

Hello, folks. I’m Matthew, and I don’t really have time to introduce myself, so go ahead (if you feel the need) and check out my personal blog for all my personal stuff: http://wheelfirebird.blogspot.com. Anyway, we’ve had a lot of comments about the news that there will be a runoff in Afghanistan in about a week. [...]

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Drone on…or not

by TK

The debate over the use of drones will likely only intensify over the coming days, months, and years, as they become more and more important to the efforts of…well… every country involved in fighting a war. First, Alex Mayer and Bill Roggio at LWJ offer compelling evidence on both the lethality (who knew that was [...]

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Afghan Election Runoff, Redux

by TK

Please extend a warm welcome to T.K., the first of our contributors who answered the call to join the super-awesome fun of writing for Registan.net. As soon as Nathan is connected to a computer again, I promise, he’ll have his own author’s account. It’s official, there will be a runoff election in Afghanistan. I see [...]

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The West’s Pet Afghans Get Profiled

by Joshua Foust

Brian Glyn Williams, who is actually a legitimate scholar of Afghanistan, write for the new Foreign Policy AfPak Channel that Abdul Rashid Dostum is the Kingmaker of Afghanistan: But as the jihad ended following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Pashtun-dominated communist government sought to demobilize the Uzbeks who were seen as [...]

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Oh God Please No

by Joshua Foust
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So it turns out Helmand was just a sideshow. I kind of figured as much, but the reasons why turn out to be appalling: Fifty Afghans believed to be drug traffickers with ties to the Taliban have been placed on a Pentagon target list to be captured or killed, reflecting a major shift in American [...]

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A Children’s Treasury of Worthless Experts

by Joshua Foust

Michael Semple is lecturing us in Foreign Affairs on why we need to make friends with the Taliban in order to “reconcile” with them and end the war. Semple, if you recall, had his hands all over the disastrous secession of Musa Qala, yet couldn’t find it within himself to mention such a stupendous failure [...]

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Radio Shariat Returns. Why?

by Joshua Foust
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Pajhwok reports (thanks for all the RTs, guys!) that Radio Shariat, the FM radio station that transmitted Taliban edicts during the 1990s, is online in Ghazni. What’s interesting about their report is that they state the frequency—88 MHz—and note many irregularities with how people are reacting to it. For example, the report indicates that the [...]

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