Taliban

U.S.-Iran cooperation? Neo-Taliban? For those of you wanting to go deeper on Afghanistan/Pakistan issues than the campaign soundbytes, here's New America's Nick Schmidle debating Amin Tarzi of the Center for Advanced Defense Studies on Bloggingheads.tv.

Is it possible that Iraq is still sucking up all the best intelligence and counter-insurgency assets of the U.S. Government and leaving only the scraps to deal with the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan? New America Fellow Nick Schmidle, whose New York Times Magazine cover story got him and his wife expelled from Pakistan by the Musharraf government, looks at the state of play in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas in this piece in Sunday's Washington Post. With unmanned Predator strikes killing civilians and senior military advisors trying to replicate Iraq's Anbar Awakening, the answer seems clear.