From The Financial Times 

By Alan Beattie

September 28 2008

Debating with Al Gore in the presidential election eight years ago, George W. Bush defined a new, humbler attitude towards the rest of the world. “I’m not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say, ‘this is the way it has got to be’,” he said. “I just don’t think it’s the role of the United States to walk into a country and say: ‘we do it this way, so should you’.”

In one area Mr Bush might be about to get his wish, though not perhaps in the way he expected. Read more »

By Tanvir Ahmad Khan

The public discussion of this monumental Indo-US accord in Pakistan was a fraction of the debate in India. Pakistan’s nuclear bureaucracy, be it in the Foreign Office or in the dedicated nuclear establishments, mostly opted for silence and discouraged open discussion

The bilateral meetings held by leaders of India and Pakistan with President Bush at the UN General Assembly highlighted a basic difference which the people of Pakistan should seriously ponder over. India received attention as an emerging global actor and as a virtual hinge of Washington’s future Asian policy. Pakistan remained a focus of concern as a country embroiled in a raging war on terror with its future uncertain and beset with potential dangers to the region. Read more »

From The Counterpunch 

September 27, 2008

By Anthony DiMaggio 

Note: Anthony DiMaggio teaches American Government and Politics of the Developing World at Illinois State University

“We’re on the brink of war with Pakistan…the fact remains that American forces have and are violating Pakistani sovereignty…the Bush administration’s decision to step up attacks in Pakistan is fatally reckless, because the cross-border operations’ chances of capturing or killing al Qaeda’s leadership are slim. American intelligence isn’t good enough for precision raids like this, Pakistan’s tribal regions are a black hole that even Pakistani operatives can’t enter and come back alive. Overhead, surveillance and intercepts do little good in tracking down people in a backward, rural part of the world like this…our going into Pakistan, risking a full-fledged war with a nuclear power, isn’t going to stop them…Finally, there is Pakistan itself, a country that truly is on the edge of civil war. Should we be adding to the force of chaos?” Read more »

Terrorism in Pakistan

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Sep 25th 2008 | ISLAMABAD
From The Economist print edition

America and Pakistan try to remember they are on the same side

EPA

The front desk becomes the front line

WHEN George Bush met his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Zardari, at the UN General Assembly in New York this week, Pakistanis wanted to know one thing: is America going to invade Pakistan again? American special forces had launched a botched raid into Pakistan on September 3rd and Mr Zardari was supposed to take the American president to task. The response was less than clear. “Your words have been very strong about Pakistan’s sovereign right and sovereign duty to protect your country, and the United States wants to help,” said Mr Bush. It could be the sort of help Mr Zardari cannot refuse. Read more »

September 27, 2008

By JANE PERLEZ

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A week after the bomb attack on the Marriott Hotel here, Pakistan is struggling to deal with a financial meltdown and a terrorism threat that has moved to the nation’s heart and badly shaken confidence in the new government among Pakistanis, diplomats and investors alike.

Read more »

Waziristan is America’s new front line in the war against the Taliban. The last British officer to have served there, now 81, tells it cannot be tamed by force alone

From The Sunday Times

September 21, 2008 

by Christina Lamb

Few places on earth are as remote and hostile as Waziristan, part of the Pakistani tribal belt that the Pentagon now sees as the new front line in the war on terror. When the Americans started dropping bombs and sending commandos into the area last month, few westerners had heard of it. But to one retired insurance manager living by the sea in West Sussex, the name brought back vivid memories.

At almost 82, Frank Leeson is the last surviving British officer to have served in Waziristan. After years of quiet retirement with Gloria, his wife of 50 years, he suddenly finds himself in demand. Since Michael Hayden, director of the CIA, recently described the tribal areas as “a clear and present danger to Afghanistan, to Pakistan and to the West”, western officials have been hotfooting it to Leeson’s door to hear his tales. Read more »

Heritage Foundation 

September 26, 2008

by Derek Scissors

Read more »

Y P Rajesh  Sep 26, 2008 at 0138 hrs

Islamabad, September 25 : It may be early days in the investigations into the bombing of the Islamabad Marriott Hotel but uncanny similarities are beginning to emerge with the July 7 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, which killed 54 people including an IFS officer and a Brigadier. Security sources said the two attacks resembled not just in the fact that the explosives-laden vehicles aimed to get past the gates of the two buildings and hit them but blew up because they could not.

Read more »

Y P Rajesh  Sep 24, 2008 at 0113 hrs

Islamabad, September 23 : Ghulam Murtaza remembers just two things about Saturday evening — the most deafening sound he has ever heard and the complete chaos that followed. The 40-year-old former Pakistan Army soldier works for Karakoram Security Services, which guards the Islamabad Marriott Hotel, and was posted at a side gate when the suicide truck bomber blew up 600 kg of explosives at the main entrance, killing over 50 people and wounding some 250.

Read more »

By Robert M. Hathaway 
September 26, 2008 

The recent inauguration of Asif Ali Zardari as Pakistan’s president offered the possibility - but hardly the certainty - of a new beginning for Pakistan, and a new era in US-Pakistan relations.

Read more »

Robert Gates’ testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee is serious business. Highights: 

• Western Pakistan has the biggest Al Qaeda base and now poses the biggest terrorist threat to the United States.
• Pakistan’s leaders and military cannot publicly support U.S. cross-border operations.
• Spring of 2009 is the earliest the Pentagon would be able to send three more U.S. combat brigades to Afghanistan.
• The United States and Pakistan have fundamental differences in how they define their foe.
• Concerned that supply lines through Pakistan to the US/ISAF troops could be cut off, the Pentagon began this month testing alternative routes for getting materials into landlocked Afghanistan.
• He hoped for greater cooperation with Pakistan’s new government after attacks within Pakistan, such as the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.

It is a matter of record that in the past experts within and outside the Pentagon have questioned Robert Gates assessment that the militants pose a threat to the United States. Teresita C. Schaffer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia told Washington Post in December 2007:  ”Clearly, extremist violence has emerged as the biggest danger to the Pakistan state,” she said. “I don’t know if it is al-Qaeda or not.” Read more »

By Rahimullah Yusufzai

September 22, 2008

Militants operating in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) include both Taliban and non-Taliban forces. However, the Taliban militants are much larger in number and have a lot more influence in the region. The Pakistani Taliban have close links with the Afghan Taliban and operate on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, also known as the Durand Line after the British diplomat who demarcated the boundary in 1893, Sir Mortimer Durand. The non-Taliban militants, on the other hand, are often pro-government and enjoy cordial ties with the Pakistan authorities and security forces. Read more »

The following statement from Moody’s. Pakistan has now the worst credit rating in Asia. This means it would become even more difficult to sell Pakistan paper (debt or equity) in the international markets. It may cause further outflow of portfolio investment and add pressure on an already weakening currency. Read more »

From The News International

Sept. 22, 2008

By Amir Mir

LAHORE: The pattern of the Marriott Hotel suicide bombing in Islamabad suggests the possible involvement of the Harkatul Jehadul Islami (HUJI), led by Qari Saifullah Akhtar, and not the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), headed by Baitullah Mehsud, which was held responsible for most recent suicide bombings across Pakistan. Read more »

From DAWN of Sept. 22, 2008

By Yousuf Nazar

The world is witnessing the end of American financial capitalism as we have known for a long time. Just consider the dramatic events this month:

Read more »