Actually, not so happy--Basque journalist Karlos Zurutuza explains why in his newest dispatch from the stormy province in western Pakistan.

Zurutuza had to sneak into Balochistan, because Pakistan does not allow journalists in there without a permit.

One of the reasons they don't want journalists poking around is that they might investigate what's happened to the Baloch who live in and around the mountain where Pakistan's been testing its nuclear arsenal:

This very informative article does a nice job of connecting the dots.

WASHINGTON - Despite evidence implicating current Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kiani in a major military assistance program for Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan over the past few years, senior officials of the Barack Obama administration persuaded the US Congress to extend military assistance to Pakistan for five years without any assurance that the Pakistani assistance to the Taliban had ended.

Follow the easy flow chart:

The Baloch people are smack in the middle of everything: Iran's turmoil, Pakistan's breakdown, Afghanistan's ongoing tribal wars.
From The Guardian:

President Ahmadinejad is intensifying his repression of the Baluch minority, with 19 campaigners executed since last month

  Read more…

Most Americans have no idea where or what Balochistan is. And the news that 14 Baloch activists were hanged by the Iranian government on July 14th after a monkey court trial for alleged terrorism has largely escaped the notice of the U.S. media.

It would have escaped my notice, too, but I have a personal connection to the Baloch, whose ancestral territory overlaps the borders of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. In 2006, I travelled with friends to Quetta, Pakistan.

[cross posted at NPR Check]

NPR may struggle mightily with what to call torture - "the problem is that the word torture is loaded with political and social implications for several reasons, including the fact that torture is illegal under U.S. law and international treaties the United States has signed" - but when it comes to human beings killed by the US military, be they civilians or irregular forces, there's no hesitation: they are militants plain and simple.

Things are looking more dicey every day. The indispensible Ahmed Rashid tells the story and it's not a pretty one.

Oops, looks like the position's been filled:

It seems the Times has discovered an unusually loquacious "Pakistani logistics tactician" who for some reason has spent the last six months spilling the beans on the Taliban's strategy to the leading newspaper of the American establishment. The anonymous 28-year-old guy from somewhere in Pakistan's tribal lands told a harrowing tale of the "workings and ambitions of the Taliban" as they prepare to defeat Obama's Afghan surge from their safe havens in Pakistan, then seize Islamabad's nuclear arsenal.

[Welcome Bread and Roses readers -- lambert]

Boris at the Canadian blog (Canada is up to its eyebrows in Afghanistan) The Galloping Beaver has an instructive take on why colonial wars like the ones in Afghanistan and/or northwestern Pakistan are so futile.

...Tahira Abdullah posits a hell of a problem for anyone involved who does not favour the Taleban: What is to be done?

So yeah, I'm happy about Gitmo and the lifting of the Global Gag Rule. BUT

Obama is going to continue Bush's policy of bombing Pakistan.

The Pakistan military's top spokesman called the attacks, which he said were by pilotless drones, "counterproductive," because they undercut his country's efforts to oust militants from the ungoverned tribal areas.

I mean, for anyone paying attention this shouldn't come as a shock as he told us that he would use military action against Pakistan. But he's anti-war, right? (Is this where I apologise for being prematurely correct?)



17 people were killed today, 3 of them children. Since the bombings began in August we have apparently killed 2 terrorist leaders. I guess everyone else who lives in the region is a terrorist by default since there are no numbers for how many *actual* terrorists we've killed.



Great policy. It worked so well when Clinton was bombing Iraq in the 90's, didn't it?



"We can bomb the world to pieces, but we can't bomb it into peace."

For those who might have missed it last week we invaded Pakistan. Afterwards, the Pakistanis, led by their new President, Asaf Ali Zardari, Bhutto's widower, cut off the Khyber pass to briefly stop our using it to resupply Afghanistan (aren't we happy that we got NATO to piss off the Russians, our only other options for resupplying Afghanistan? But, hey, we're all Georgians now (by which I mean governed by an increasingly authoritarian, incompetent government)):

"300,000" seems like a fairly large number, no? I know there's all sorts of exciting things happening in Denver right now, but I'm not alone in viewing Pakistan as a sort of lynchpin to what happens in the Middle East/Central & South Asia. Reuters:

By Mian Saeed-ur-Rehman

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Authorities in northwest Pakistan are urgently seeking millions of dollars to help up to 300,000 people who have fled from fighting between government forces and militants.

The displaced people are one more problem for a coalition government riven by disputes and grappling with mounting militant attacks and a sagging economy.

Slain as she left an election rally, with at least 16 more dead, in Pakistan.
Bhutto was the first woman elected to head a Muslim nation.

The outlook for Taliban-infested Pakistan: not so good.

Dear Mr. Bush, here's my citizen's PDB: The time for you and Mr. Cheney to step down is now, because this job requires something you don't possess — competence.

Shave and a Haircut One Hundred... I don't think so:

"The government is unable to protect us so we will abide by what the Taliban tells us to do and stop shaving beards," said Niamat, a barber in Khar, the headquarters of the Bajaur tribal agency along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

And the Taliban mean business, On Sunday night, bombs destroyed two barber shops and three others suffered partial damage after the owners refused to follow the orders.

The absurdity never ends.

KARACHI - The Pakistani establishment has made a deal with the Taliban through a leading Taliban commander that will extend Islamabad's influence into southwestern Afghanistan and significantly strengthen the resistance in its push to capture Kabul.

One-legged Mullah Dadullah will be Pakistan's strongman in a corridor running from the Afghan provinces of Zabul, Urzgan, Kandahar and Helmand across the border into Pakistan's

Balochistan province, according to both Taliban and al-Qaeda contacts Asia Times Online spoke to. Using Pakistani territory and with Islamabad's support, the Taliban will be able safely to move men, weapons and supplies into southwestern Afghanistan.

WTF:

Senior leaders of Al Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their once battered worldwide terror network and over the past year have set up a band of training camps in the tribal regions near the Afghan border, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

But I thought that the Pakistanis were our friends?

American officials said there was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan. Until recently, the Bush administration had described Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri as detached from their followers and cut off from operational control of Al Qaeda.

“The chain of command has been re-established,” said one American government official, who said that the Qaeda “leadership command and control is robust.”

Geez, the six-foot bearded guy pulling the kidney dialysis machine that Bush never could find is still in the game? I'd forgotten about him!

More rapid fire posting and then I'm really outta here. But you've got to read this interview with a very savvy and organized seeming member of the Taliban. Registan has some good stuff too. Also, did you notice? US and Iran are going to talk about Iraq. You can hear the wingnut heads exploding a hundred miles away. Note too Baker is back in the mix, and working hard to clean up Junior's little mess. How he must hate that.

Lifted from TLC's soccerdad

Pakistan has reportedly released over 2500 foreigners many of who are member of Taliban or al-Qaeda.

The Pakistani army announces it will not go after Osama, as long as he remains a mellow dude.

If he is in Pakistan, bin Laden "would not be taken into custody," Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan told ABC News in a telephone interview, "as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen."

Pakistan is also declaring the border area with Afghanistan a permanent party zone:

In addition to the pullout of Pakistani troops, the "peace agreement" between Pakistan and the Taliban also provides for the Pakistani army to return captured Taliban weapons and prisoners.

Schweet. For more on why this subcontinental military dictatorship has the Almighty US of A over a barrel, check out