One of the more disturbing sights greeting travelers to the Middle East and other regions with Muslim populations in the days after September 11 was a t-shirt defiantly bearing a familiar face. I saw the new fashions hanging for sale in markets in Southeast Asia, shirts adorned with the gaunt, bearded likeness of Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden had captured the imagination of a large number of people. Clearly, defeating him would require more than military might. Years later, the long, painful, and error-filled campaign to defeat Islamic extremists brings news that seems to go from bad to worse. America, [...]
NEW DELHI, India — Notwithstanding the deployment of an estimated 90,000 Pakistani troops along the Afghan border in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, the situation is far from stable in a region that is vital to Islamabad and Washington. State authority is increasingly fragile in the region, with recurrent violence undermining official Pakistani claims that the situation is “under control.” Despite the “intense” Army operations in FATA, frontline Taliban and al-Qaida operatives still maintain a significant presence in the region, adding to the problems of the already-challenged U.S.-led coalition forces in neighboring Afghanistan. Although the Musharraf regime [...]
Two weeks ago, ABC News broadcast images of a bizarre so-called “graduation ceremony” taking place somewhere in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The host of the event was none other than Mansoor Dadullah: the newly appointed military chief of the Taliban. The “graduates” consisted of supposed candidates for suicide attacks who, having completed their “training,” were allegedly being dispatched to the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Germany: all countries with troops in Afghanistan. Mansoor Dadullah is the younger brother of the late Mullah Dadullah: the former Taliban military chief who was killed by coalition forces in mid-May. [...]
