Pakistan

For Pakistanis, the Dec. 27 assassination of Benazir Bhutto was the J.F.K. murder and 9/11 rolled into one, plunging the nation into days of mourning and setting off riots across the country. It was a stunning victory for Pakistan's militants, who have increasingly turned their firepower against the state, conducting more than 50 suicide attacks in 2007 alone.

The government quickly fingered Baitullah Mehsud as the mastermind of the Bhutto assassination; he had previously threatened to kill her. The details of… more

Osama bin Laden lives among friends, follows news on satellite television or the Internet and reads books about American foreign policy; this much can be safely inferred from his periodic audio and video statements. His latest topical punditry surfaced just a few weeks ago on jihadi websites when he addressed violence in Gaza and the pope's travels.

Because of his passable grasp of current events, Bin Laden may well understand what many Americans do not: that he is more likely to… more

It's now more than six years since the 9/11 attacks, yet al Qaeda's leader Osama Bin Laden remains at large.

A slew of video and audiotapes, referencing current events and analyzed by the US government, indicate he's still alive. And his recent appearances have silenced most of the rumors about ill health.

The question, then, is should Americans care? After all, Osama doesn't run his terrorist organization as he did before the fall of the Taliban.

Unfortunately, Bin Laden remains all too relevant.… more

Darra Adam Khel, a small burg in Pakistan's tribal areas, is the quintessential frontier town. Picture Wyatt Earp sashaying down the streets of Tombstone in a turban, and you begin to get the idea. Because Pakistani laws don't apply here, smugglers, gunsmiths and, most recently, the Taliban find Darra, as it's locally known, an optimal place to do business.

Most stores along the main road sell firearms or drugs. In one, freshly pressed slabs of hashish are cured in goat skins,… more

Nicholas Schmidle writes about the intersection of culture, religion and politics abroad. He has reported from South and Central Asia, and his work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Slate, The New Republic, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Washington Post and many other publications. He appears on NPR,… more

If you don't know what to do, better to do nothing -- and the United States does not really know what to do in Pakistan. Moreover, things there are not nearly as bad as the Western media and some excitable politicians present. The situation is deteriorating, but the country is not yet close to failing. Although it is a flawed state, menaced by terrorists and insurgents, it is still a largely effective one.

By pushing for particular political outcomes, the United… more

As the presidency of General Pervez Musharraf enters what seem to be its last days, we need to keep one thing firmly in mind. It is that despite the Bush administration’s support for Musharraf, it was also the Bush administration that did the most to destroy him, by forcing him into a subordinate role in a war on terror that most Pakistanis detest. It was not Musharraf’s (very mild) “dictatorship,” but the tag of “Busharraf” which originally crippled his domestic… more

Pakistan Changes May Give U.S. New Options (NPR)

Chamberlain says one thing the United States can do is try to reduce the Pakistani government's own involvement with extremist groups by helping to mediate in Pakistan's conflict with India over Kashmir. She says Pakistani leaders, both civilian and military, have tolerated extremist groups in Kashmir, "because they were useful in harassing the Indians." She says a diplomatic resolution of the Kashmir dispute could help the new Pakistani government make a… more

Pakistan: U.S. Reactions to Pakistani Election Results Are Mixed (Inter Press Service News)

..."[The Islamist parties] have been replaced by secular Pashtun nationalist parties who are hostile to the Taliban and who, at a minimum, will not allow the institutions of these provincial governments to be used by collaborators of the Taliban," Steve Coll, a South Asia expert and president of the New America Foundation, told an interviewer on public television Tuesday.

..."There is this notion that if… more

Ruling Party Defeat in Pakistan May Intensify Pressure on Musharraf (NewsHour with Jim Lehrer)

Pakistan's parliamentary elections may have significantly backfied on President Musharraf, says New America President and CEO Steve Coll appearing on Jim Lehrer's The News Hour.