With friends like Pakistan and other governments such as our own …

We continue to get news about the double dealing of the Pakistanis, but it seems to be matched, on the other hand, by the double dealing of western powers with Pakistan.

Take Pakistan’s double dealing, for instance. Musharraf has claimed for years to be on the front line of the “war against terror” but his government has allowed many ant-American, anti-Western Islamist groups to be comfortably ensconced in its borders. Today’s New York Times (Elaine Sciolino, “In ’06 Bomb Plot Trial, a Question of Imminence”) describes how the eight defendants in Britain accused of plotting to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners had gained the information for their project through contacts with extreme elements in Pakistan. “British investigators are convinced that the size, scope, cost, secrecy and ingenuity of the plot bear the Qaeda signature; they say they believe that the cell learned to make the liquid explosive device from Qaeda operatives in Pakistan. … Mr. Sarwar admitted that during a trip to Pakistan between mid-June and early July 2006, a friend told him how to make the explosive HMTD.” This is but one more of many signs that Pakistan is the vortex of radical Islamist activities.

What that means to American troops is described in another article in today’s NYTimes: “Taliban Breached NATO Base in Deadly Clash.” In it Carlotta Gall and Eric Schmitt point out that the insurgents who attacked a remote outpost in north-eastern Afghanistan two days ago, killing nine Americans, “had benefited from new bases in neighboring Pakistan.” And indeed Pakistani militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, “have been present in the area for months.” Moreover, “insurgents had freedom of movement from the border with Pakistan through 60 miles of Nuristan to the base at Wanat. ‘They can bring men, weapons and cars’” said one source.

Pakistan is our friend while it is at the same time a caldron of radical Islamism feeding troops into Afghanistan to kill American and NATO soldiers.

But then there is the way our own country double-deals in their relations with Pakistan. We have already heard about the convenient way the Americans have worked with Pakistan’s intelligence agency to allow abuse of prisoners. Now it turns out that the British have made similar use of Pakistan. Today’s [July 15] Guardian says that they have been handing over their own citizens to be tortured by Pakistani agencies. A medical student, for instance, "said he was abducted at gunpoint in August 2005 and held for two months at the offices of Pakistan's Intelligence Bureau opposite the British Deputy High Commission in Karachi. [He] ... described how he was whipped, beaten, deprived of sleep, threatened with execution and witnessed other inmates being tortured." Nice way to treat your own people. [Thanks to my friend S. for bringing this to me.]

So we see again how governments carry on their business: While they parade their moral agendas they conceal what they do on “the dark side”. The ancient wisdom is still salient: “Men loved darkness because their deeds were evil; they would not come into the light lest their deeds be exposed.” The problem we have – Americans, British, Pakistanis – is that these are our governments acting in our name.

Addendum, thanks to my friend S:

*In the dark hole of a Pakistani prison by Tim Johnson,
McClatchy Newspapers, Feb 5, 2008
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcb_china/20080205/wl_mcb_china/inthedarkholeofapakistaniprison

*'Briton' being held in Pakistan, by Syed Shoaib Hasan,
BBC News, 27 June 2007.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6247052.stm

Ahmed Rashid on Descent into Chaos

Rashid, Ahmed. 2008. Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. New York: Viking.

I have now read every word in this book [but not all the notes, yet]. It is many things: a documented indictment of leaders in many places: they are shown to be incompetent, obdurate, arrogant, often totally unable to face the urgent necessities before them, incapable of addressing the rising needs and frustrations of peoples in the Middle East/Central Asia/South Asia.

This book is also a cry of the heart. Rashid quotes Benazir Bhutto’s last speech in terms that are, I believe, his own: “Wake up, my brothers! This country [Pakistan] faces great dangers. This is your country! My country! We have to save it.” I suppose that the plight of Pakistan weighs deeply on him, not only because it is his home, his country, but because it seems to be the vortex of an ever more acute regional crisis. I join him in concern for what is happening to the peoples of Central and South Asia; and of course the implications reach to my own country. Indeed, the scale of duplicity, dishonesty, perfidy, and ineptness among those leading our country and many other countries in recent decades has been so great as to induce one to wonder what can be done now. We have seen a collapse of responsible leadership in many contexts at a time when the mutual connections among the peoples of the world are gaining in intensity ever more rapidly.

Rashid’s book is an indictment of the high crimes and misdemeanors by many of the leaders of the modern world – notably, of course, the Bush administration but also, especially, the Musharraf government. In fact, it is not only the urgency and intensity of Rashid’s detailed and extensively documented critique that strikes the reader, but -- for those of us familiar with what happens to those who expose the truth about powerful figures in Pakistan -- it is the danger to himself (and to his family?) that Rashid has risked by this book. He has risked his life by telling so much, revealing so much, with such zeal, such particularity. Such a detailed description of the perfidy and outright dishonesty of the leaders of Pakistan has to make him the most despised citizen of the country -- despised, that is by Pervez Musharaf (the man who made himself President), despised by the generals of the army (who stand behind Musharraf), despised by the intelligence officers of the ISI (who have effectively constituted themselves as an independent government) --leaving aside the Taliban and Al Qaeda, who have their own reasons for wanting him dead.

If anything can save Rashid it is that he has been equally unsparing of the leaders of virtually all other government officials mentioned in his tale: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Richard Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Tony Blair, and many other leaders of the great powers in Europe. All get their due. This work specifies how these leaders have been guilty of stupidity, incompetence, ignorance, arrogance, and deliberate and repeated lies. Even Hamed Karzai, a personal friend of Rashid who comes off slightly better, is described as indecisive and tolerant of corrupt friends and relatives.

Here are some samples of his critique:

On the Musharraf government:

• p. 379: “In 2007 there had been 56 suicide bombings in Pakistan, which killed 419 security officials and 217 civilians … [And yet] the regime had failed to track down a single culprit. Now the public was expected to believe that the military had resolved the Bhutto murder in a couple of days … [Moreover, there was] Musharraf’s failure to show any remorse over Bhutto’s death. Instead he blamed her for sticking her head out of the sunroof and said the army had never liked her anyway.”
  

On George W. Bush:

• 293: [T[he decision by President Bush on February 7, 2002, to deny captured al Qaeda, Taliban, and other terrorist suspects prisoner-of-war status or any access to justice was a step backward for the United States and for mankind – one that has haunted the United States, its allies, and the international legal system ever since. Whereas in the West it created a furious debate about civil liberties, in the Muslim world it further entrenched dictatorship and abuse of civilizations.”

On US Secretary of Defense Richard Rumsfeld:

• 342: “…Uzbekistan promised again to pursue democratic reforms. Yet its crackdown on political dissent had already reached new heights. … [E]leven prisoners had died as a result of torture in Uzbek jails that year, even as the State Department claimed that the country was making progress in human rights. No longer were just the accused tortured, but also their families if they dared ask where relatives were imprisoned. … Rumsfeld continued to heap praise on [President] Karimov. … [A]s major US NGOs were being thrown out of the country, he spoke of “the wonderful cooperation we’ve received from the government of Uzbekistan and promised $57 million in aid for 2004.”

On Tony Blair:

• 356: [Blair] followed the Americans so unquestioningly and blindly into Iraq that he lost his influence in the White House. The neocons saw Blair as their poodle … Attempts by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to prop up Colin Powell to take on the neocons were constantly undermined by Blair ….”

There is so much here that I can only urge everyone possible to take the time to read this book. I repeatedly had to put the book down because of my own anger and exasperation. You will too.

How to talk gently about lies

I have been ruminating about Alex’s comment that the report of disputations among the Taliban is a fake, possibly a CIA plant [see July 2, 2008]. He claims to be able to discern it; apparently, I am not.

The world of “news” is so filled with lies that we all have a hard time sorting them out. The truth seems ever more elusive, the more we understand that so many of those who hawk information have reasons for presenting it in a certain way. We are becoming inured to lies. We are even inventing courteous ways of saying that we are being lied to, perhaps to avoid being so blunt. The newest way, at least that I have noticed, appears in today’s New York Times. Here is Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, talking about Maj. Gen. Jerome Johnson, former commander of the Army Sustainment Command: “I believe General Johnson presented evidence that deceived Congress,” Mr. Dorgan said in an interview. But the neatest way he put it is further down in the article: Dorgan says of Johnson’s report, that it was “a display of negligent disregard for facts that were known to the Pentagon.” “Negligent disregard for facts that were known”: a pretty good definition of “lying”.

But there are other ways to misrepresent the truth. The way that Fox News represents Michelle Obama is to run several minutes of talk about her in which she says scarcely anything except the few words that they find offensive. Given this kind of treatment, how would anyone get across anything they want to say? That kind of treatment indicates again that the “news” is crafted for an audience by social elements that have reasons, interests, in persuading others to see things they way they see it. It becomes all the most critical, then, for us to know what the interests are of those who describe situations. Politics is the contest over how to define the public situation. That makes news agencies political vehicles. Again, we need to know who owns the news companies and what their interests are. We know quite a bit about Fox: it would be nice if they would seek a better reputation; but then Bill O’Reilly is just too valuable.

Somewhere I saw that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth announced that they would be taking on Obama. This is a group whose credentials were dubious when they claimed to represent the real combat experience of John Kerry, and they have even worse credentials for saying anything in particular about Barak Obama. That they announced their plans to go after him reveals in fact what they are: professional character assassinators whose connection with “truth” is and has always been a charade. They have been pretty quiet, though, since both Obama and McCain have appeared to quash the “527 organizations” this time around. In fact, their website now says that as of May 31, 2008, they have “formally disbanded and ceased all operations”. Is it possible their claim to be working on an attack against Obama was an offer to serve the high-rolling elite who funded their activities the last time? These days the super-rich are not dumping so much money into the Republican cause this time around; could it be that the Swift Boaters didn’t get any offers worth their trouble this time? What with the cost of gas these days and the vanished funding from the super-rich, it hardly pays anymore to be in the business of character assassination.

Dire situation in Pakistan: a TFT view

The editorial by Najam Sethi in this week’s Friday Times [July 4-10, 2008] indicates how dire the situation is in Pakistan. I quote here extensively [TFT can be read for only a minor fee, which I would encourage anyone interested in Pakistan to pay.]

“Drift in Islamabad”: Najam Sethi's E d i t o r i a l

Many Pakistanis are worried about a perceptible sense of drift in Islamabad. The judges’ issue is hanging fire. Acute power shortages of up to 12 hours a day persist. Inflation is up to 30 per cent. And the war on terror is going nowhere, …

More alarmingly, the Pakistani economy which grew by 6.8 per cent a year from 2003-07, is sputtering in the face of post-election economic uncertainty and political instability. … Without continued high growth and poverty alleviation, significant sections of the politically volatile urban middle classes will slip through the net, creating a vast pool of angry unemployed or under-employed. With the government becoming increasingly immobilized in the face of rising Islamic and anti-American nationalism (the irony is that America remains Pakistan’s largest military and economic donor) and economic discontent, the country could slip into political anarchy and state-failure.

The budget deficit for 2007-08 was targeted at 4% of GDP but has actually turned out to be about 8%. The balance of payments deficit is also about 8% of GDP, the highest ever in our history. Forex reserves have fallen from a high of US$16.5 billion in October 2007 to about US$11 billion today, despite being recently bolstered by a combination of US support ($500 m), ADB ($200 m), and sale of private sector company shares to foreigners ($850 m). Inflation is soaring at 30%, … International credit rating agencies have downgraded Pakistan (it now ranks 87th in the list of countries with business prospects), citing both microeconomic imbalances and political instability. … The World Bank has canceled project aid of US$500 million and postponed disbursal of a similar amount. About US$1.25 billion in privatization deals is also on hold. …. Experts say that if targeted foreign resources fall by about US$4-5 billion this year as a result of all this, the rupee would have to be significantly devalued (it has already devalued by about 10 % in the last one month) and interest rates would have to rise further, a painful and politically explosive development.

In the face of these gradual slippages, the Karachi stock exchange has not been able to retain its resilience. The KSE index …. by June 20, it had fallen by nearly 4600 points or about 30%, implying a decline of Rs 1.3 trillion or US$20 billion in market capitalization, equivalent to 13% of GDP, …

First, we need a full fledged working government in Islamabad led by a permanent prime minister and finance minister. ….

Second, the government should stop dragging its feet on all the unpopular economic decisions that need to be taken to straighten out the fundamentals of the economy. This means abolishing general subsidies on fuel and food while creating specific ones for the poorest sections of society. It also means re-creating an economic environment that is friendly towards both domestic and international investors.

Third, the government must tackle the war on terror seriously without worrying about any popular backlash. The fact is that this war is now Pakistan’s war as much as it is America’s war and Pakistan cannot afford to post failure. ….

Mr Asif Zardari’s laid-back approach is creating public disquiet. Problems have mounted because difficult decisions were postponed and controversial solutions swept under the carpet. ….

July 4-10, 2008 - Vol. XX, No. 20

A Pakinstani's note on the bombing in Kabul

A Pakistani friend of mine, call him "Sami", has written me a note about the issued entailed in the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul. I thought it was worth posting here. RLC

For most Indian and Western observers yesterday's suicidal terror attack on the Indian embassy in Afghanistan didn't require any evidence to convince them that an anxious, India-obsessed "strategic elite" based in Islamabad was to blame for the carnage. Unlike other random terrorist attacks that occur on a daily basis in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, indiscriminately claiming civilian and military lives (as well as the recent attack on the Danish embassy in the supposedly secure environs of Islamabad's diplomatic quarter), there is no reluctance in this case to directly accuse the Pakistani security establishment.

Pakistan's international reputation as a country that at one time allied itself with the Taliban and supported the infiltration of irregular fighters into Indian Kashmir is such that it's government bears a permanent stigma and is sure to be suspected of being involved in any terrorist incident that occurs beyond its borders in Afghanistan or India. This happens despite the fact when the Taliban, al-Qaeda, or some other domestic Pakistani militant outfit usually claims credit for an attack. Diplomatic murmurs and media undertones hint at some level of official Pakistani involvement - rogue or otherwise - can still be heard. But since yesterday's particular target happened to be Pakistan's regional arch-rival, India, many commentators were (perhaps too) quick to assume Islamabad was sending a not so subtle message of displeasure to New Delhi regarding the latter's extremely cozy relationship with the (anti-Pakistan) Karzai regime in Afghanistan. Of course there would certainly seem to be obvious motivations for Pakistani military hardliners to be hostile toward the growing Indian interest and involvement in Afghanistan.

For one thing, New Delhi's own covert financial and materiel support to the Balochi separatist insurgency via its consulates in southern Afghanistan has been a major destabilizing factor that the Pakistani military has had to contend with over the past four years. Islamabad's official complaints against New Delhi have thus far gone unheeded and only convinced Pakistanis of the dangers that lie ahead if India maintains its current alliance with a hostile client regime in Kabul. Already, in the absence of direct conflict along Line of Control (LOC) in disputed Kashmir, Afghanistan is being seen as the primary battleground for an ensuing Indo-Pakistani proxy war, in which the Indians seem to be backing Baloch guerrilla groups against Islamabad, while the Pakistanis appear to tolerate, even encourage Taliban fighters to undermine the Karzai government - by attacking NATO troops who happen to be caught in the middle of an Indo-Pakistani Cold War.

While there is an undeniable appeal to this sort of logic for many, from the official Pakistani point of view, it would have been extremely counter-productive to indirectly antagonize India in this way and further undermine what little confidence exists between Pakistan and its deeply distrustful Western allies, particularly the United States. The consequences of yesterday's terrorist attack are already evident with the sympathy New Delhi has been able to garner, perceivably at Pakistan's expense. If this was in fact yet another reckless act of Pakistani state-sponsored terror, as the country's detractors claim, it has backfired most disastrously for Islamabad.

On the other hand, we could choose to make an exception in this case, by looking beyond the usual Pakistani scapegoat for culpability, and examine the past behavior of the Pakistan-based militant groups such as Laskhar -e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad who have in recent years attempted to provoke direct India-Pakistan conflict to further their own narrow agendas. The most notable instance in which this terrorist strategy nearly succeeded was in the aftermath of the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament that led to military mobilization by both sides along the border and came very close to resulting in the world's first nuclear exchange.

The Pakistani military - whatever disagreeable factions it may consist of - does not, as a unified institution in anyway prefer to push itself further away from the West and thereby reward Indian interests. It can be counted on to make the pragmatic choices that need to be made in the interests of defending the Pakistani homeland as well its own self-preservation. However, the destructive logic of Pakistan's many jihadi terror groups is not known to take the long-term geopolitical considerations of state-actors into account. The winding down of jihadi terrorism in Kashmir means the withdrawal of earlier state support obviously means their terrorist infrastructure will be put out of business.

Accordingly, these pro-Kashmir jihadi groups reject as "selling out" any concessions Pakistan might make to India on the Kashmir issue, in the interest of defusing nuclear tensions in the subcontinent. For those who haven't been following the diplomatic zombie-dance known as the "India-Pakistan peace process" there have recently been some relatively optimistic developments and declarations regarding the future of Kashmir and India-Pakistan relations. As little as two weeks ago, Asif Zardari, currently the key power-broker in the Pakistani political scene stated his party's policy on Kashmir would be to work with Manmohan Singh, the current Indian PM, to achieve some sort of condominium arrangement between India and Pakistan while at the same time proceeding to dismantle the jihadi terror networks that continue to jeopardize the peace process.

The difficulties of negotiating Pakistan's schizophrenic relationship as both past sponsor and current target of terrorist entities of its own making was evident yesterday, not just in the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, but also in Islamabad and Karachi as the anniversary of the Pakistani military's Lal Masjid raid was commemorated with revenge suicide bombings.

Still, yesterday's denunciations against Pakistan for what happened in Kabul hardly mentioned these other murderous terrorist acts. Perhaps this is so because demonizing a country seems much easier that actually trying to understand a country confronting the demons destroying it from within.

Pakistan again? More denial, to be sure; but the truth?

The blast that took place today in front of the Indian Embassy in Kabul reveals, again, how callous and dedicated some people are in the Pakistan government. They are carrying on their war in the name of Islam. I regret to say that the connection between Pakistan's interests and the Taliban, manifest in this cruel and inhuman suicide blast, seems too evident. Pakistan seems to be infested with so many competing Islamist groups, so many elements working at cross-purposes, that no denial by the Pakistan government can suffice. That it is contrary to the official position of the Pakistan government is evident enough, but this regime is so out of control that many of the top leaders are in fact unlikely to know about the involvement of other Pakistani elements in this attack.

The intelligence elements of Pakistan have over and over again demonstrated their close engagement with the Islamist elements within Pakistan as well as those whose ambitions reach outside -- the Taliban, who are trying to re-take Afghanistan, and Al Qaeda whose agendas are more focused on states elsewhere, the Arab world, and (for some of them) the Central Asian states (mainly Uzbekistan, it is said, and Xingjiang, China) -- so that those of us who have lost all respect for the regime are immediately inclined to blame rogue elements in Pakistan.

The Pakistani people deserve better than the self-serving figures who claim to be representing the people while they bilk the system in their own interest. Among those figures, notably, are the top generals of the army who still are fighting a war with India, and embarrassing themselves.

And what can we make of the immediate denial of involvement by the Taliban? That group is also not a single organized body but a congeries of groups whose concerns presumably vary. That they deny involvement might in fact represent, again, how much the Pakistani elements operate outside of the Taliban network.

[click here for the New York Times article on the event]

A fissure in the structure of the Taliban, and it reveals

The report that Jalaluddin Haqqani has challenged Mullah Muhammad Omar’s leadership of the Taliban (published by the Kabul Press and Payman Daily, discussed by Waliullah Rahmani in Terroism Focus, Volume 5, Issue 25 (July 1, 2008)) suggests that the Taliban are not as united as they have been, or at least have seemed to be. At an earlier time, when the authority of Mullah Muhammad Omar was being threatened, he had the temerity to grasp the sacred cloak of Muhammad and put it on, an act that risked the wrath of God if he was not worthy. This was the time when loyalists declared him Emir of the Umma. He appears not to have been seriously challenged since.

So Jalaluddin Haqqani’s demand for a change in leadership of the Taliban is significant. I was struck by Rahmani’s note that Haqqani was “little influenced by the religious and political thought of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s and early 1990s.” Indeed, the Taliban are themselves not really an “Afghan” movement, infused as they have been by so many non-traditional influences: the ideas of the Wahhabi-biased madrassas of Pakistan, the Pakistan military (whose interest in Islamism is entirely opportunistic), Osama Bin Laden’s “Arab Afghans” whose concerns are animated by quarrels with the leadership of some of the Arab states (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, mainly), and others (such as, it is said, Uzbeks and Uighurs, who can have little interest in Middle Eastern affairs). Haqqani is still essentially a Pushtun – an authentic Pushtun nationalist. He claims to have consulted many other Taliban commanders, presumably other Pushtun nationalists like himself. So the Taliban are animated by various concerns, not all of them of equal importance to everyone -- and this seems to be a factor in Haqqani's challenge.

Also interesting is – again – evidence that the Pakistani intelligence service is involved in the Taliban movement. According to his letter Haqqani believes that the “Taliban’s shura (consultative council) in Quetta has made a deal with intelligence agencies to kill those insurgent commanders who are opposed to working with Mullah Omar’s representatives.” It is not merely that Pakistan’s intelligence service is sympathetic; they are in fact prepared to exterminate Pushtun leaders who have doubts about Mullah Muhammad Omar. And, according to the letter the intelligence service seems to be in league with the “foreign forces allied with the Taliban leadership.” This would mean, essentially, the Arab Islamists connected with Osama Bin Laden.

In a sense, none of this is a huge surprise: it was only a few days ago that a former Taliban figure revealed that he was being pressed by Pakistanis in military dress to participate in the insurgency. But it is important for revealing – again – that the Taliban are not as spontaneous a movement as they appear to be. They are in part animated by various non-Pushtun interests: notably, Islamists from the Arab world, and (again it is evident!) intelligence agents of the Pakistan government.

Click on the title to see the original article.

McClatchy’s reporting on abuse of American prisoners

We need to appreciate McClatchy papers for their faithfulness in reporting; they have developed a fine reputation for seeking to know and report what is going on in contested places; they were, I gather, one of the best in reporting on the Iraq debacle. Here are some recent articles that should be broadly read [not pushed in the other papers].

• General Taguba, now retired (and able to say what he thinks?) now accuses Bush of criminal behavior http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/41514.html

• A notable prisoner, abused in this story: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/38888.html

• Deliberate deception by the US government: “US hid detainees from Red Cross and masked abuses” http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/41394.html

McClatchy papers have recently published a series on the detention system of the American military. This is what they say about the series:

“An eight-month McClatchy investigation of the detention system created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has found that the U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a school for jihad.

• “Sunday: We got the wrong guys
• “Monday: 'I guess you can call it torture'
• “Tuesday: A school for Jihad
• “Wednesday: 'Due process is legal mumbo-jumbo'
• “Today: 'You are the king of this prison'

“READ THE EVIDENCE

“Browse an archive of documents obtained by McClatchy in the course of this investigation.”

Pakistan: still the source of insurgency in the Middle East

It is hard to believe that the Pakistan government continues to deny that Pakistani territory is a source for Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgents to base their activities in harassing Afghanistan. Once again an Afghan official is charging Pakistanis as giving sanctuary to insurgents. And once again the Pakistanis are ignoring and denying such claims.

We have just heard of another person's report, through personal sources. on a recent visit to Quetta. They report that Taliban and Al Qaeda members openly walk the streets of Quetta, and openly recruit fighters in their war against Afghanistan. They are paying families for allowing their young men to go off to the “holy war” against the Afghanistan government and the Americans. They seem, again, not to lack funds, and there are few jobs for the local recruits.

Pakistan is a festering source of insurgency – in fact, not only in Afghanistan but elsewhere in the Middle East.

The long-practiced denial in Washington is being emulated in Islamabad.

Recent Works on Radical Social Movements in Central and South Asia

[addendum June 9, 08, June 14, 08, June 16, 08]

So much stuff has been written on radical social movements in Central and South Asia that it is difficult to keep up. I recently made a list that was out of date within a few days. Here is a list, already in need of updating; I will add to it as I can, in order to try to keep a fairly current list at hand. [Note the addition of Rashid's Descent into Chaos below.]

Bajoria, Jayshree. 2008. “Pakistan’s New Generation of Terrorists.” Council on Foreign Relations, February 6. [http://www.cfr.org/publication/15422/pakistans_new_generation_of_terrorists.html]

Crews, Robert D. and Amin Tarzi. 2008. The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.

Karagiannis, Emmanuel, and Clark McCauley. 2006. Hizb-ut Tahrir al-Islami: Evaluating the Threat Posed by a radical Islamic Group that Remains Nonviolent. Terrorism and Political Violence 18: 315-334.

Sageman, Marc. 2008. Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.

Torres, Manuel R. 2006. Analysis and Evolution of the Global Jihadist Movement Propaganda. Terrorism and Political Violence 18: 399-421.

Weitz, Richard. 2006. Terrorism in Eurasia: Enhancing the Multilateral Response China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly 4(2): 11-17.

Wright, Lawrence. 2006. The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 911. New York: Knopf.

Wright, Lawrence. 2006. “The Master Plan: For the new theorists of jihad, Al Qaeda is just the beginning.” The New Yorker. September 11.

Addendum:

Rashid, Ahmed. 2006. "Jihadi Suicide Bombers: The New Wave." New York Review June 12, 08. Review article referring to 7 recent works on the topic.

Rashid, Ahmed. 2008. Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of National Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. New York: Viking. [This is a vigorous exposure of the failures of all the regimes involved in the Middle East -Central Asian crisis; should be read widely. If it will be read, it will be a bombshell.]

Kim Cragin, Bruce Hoffman. 2003. Arms Trafficking and Colombia. RandCorporation. 81 pages. ISBN:0833031449

Scott McClellan's non-event: All this was already broadly known

The new dust-up over Scott McClellan’s new book declaring that the Bush administration “oversold” the Iraq situation in order to justify a “pre-emptive” attack is really a non-event. What McClellan is saying has been known for a long time. The problem for the Bush administration – which has hastened to reject MeClellan’s claims – is that this news comes from one of its own, one of the inner circle. Everyone in that group could not have missed the deliberate attempt by the administration to sell the attack in the face of world opposition and in the absence of concrete evidence for its claims. Those claims – now clearly known to be false – were reiterated many times.

The new book by Rein Mullerson on Central Asia

It seems that Central Asia inspires books that are not only long but great, in the sense of a broad compass covered with erudition. The books that have awed me and helped me understand the historic processes in Central Asia are not numerous but have provided, for me, a basic education in how to think about social processes over a long trajectory. The most notable one was Lattimore’s Inner Asian Frontiers of China, which I had to teach several times in order to have felt I comfortably had internalized Lattimore’s sense of the sweep of history. From Lattimore I learned all the more how valuable Marx is for the understanding of history. Grosset’s Empire of the Steppes is of course another awesome work. And, even though much more modest in size but no less seminal, were the several works on Central Asia [“the world island”] by Halford MacInder. Another work that few would connect with Central Asia that has given me a sense of the impact of the Central Asia “hordes” has been Marc Bloc [Feudal Society, about a medieval world that regularly prayed for protection against “the arrows of the Hungarians,” p 41]. [Eric Wolf’s Europe and the People Without History, for all its coverage of the world elsewhere, says little about Central Asia per se.] And I am awed, even cowed, by the recent work of Djalili and Kellner, Géopolitique de la nouvelle Asia centrale: De la fin de l”URSS à l’après-11 septembre.

But the discovery of Rein Mullerson’s Central Asia : A Chessboard and Player in the New Great Game [Kegal Paul] has humbled me all the more. Mullerson displays a broad grasp of the literature of the region, including of course that in Russian, as well as a rich sophistication in the great works of the English speaking world. The price, however, is outrageous : $144.00. Such is the value of the dollar now.

Signs of yet another crisis in Lebanon

The wars all across the so-called "Muslim world" in our times are violent manifestations of a series of critical issues powerfully at work in the region. There are now, or recently have been, wars -- mostly civil wars -- in Chad, Sudan, Somalia, the Middle East, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. And the wars in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya and Lebanon have only recently calmed down.

And now there is reason to worry about Lebanon -- again -- and as usual there isn't much reliable information about it. Or rather there isn't much analysis that would give outsiders a sense of how complex the issues are there now. Today's New York Times has an article about the disruptions in Beirut.

I am thankful that friends of ours have been willing to clue us occasionally to the slow tortuous decline toward another possible civil war. The note we got today was that the blog, "The Angry Arab News Service" by As'ad is a good summary of the situation there. Written hurredly and with verve, this site reveals how convoluted the alliances there are and how many crosscurrents are at work. And if not in his text itself then in the reactions to it by other Arabs, you can see how intense the opinions are. We need to be watching.
Click on the title for a link to that blog.

Torture in our name: An embarrassing library of evidences

[addenda and corrections 5/7/08, 5/15/08, 6/9/08]

Nicholas Kristof’s comment about prisoner abuse in our military facilities [NYTimes 5/4/08], notably in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, prompts me to wonder how many cases we know about. Here are the cases he mentions that are not as yet published:

• Kristof says, “On Thursday, America released Sami al-Hajj, a cameraman for Al Jazeera who had been held without charges for more than six years. … [He] was beaten…” Arrived “so frail when he arrived that he had to be carried off the plane and into an ambulance.”

• Also: “Murat Kurnaz, a German citizen of Turkish descent, has just published a memoir of his nearly five years in Guantánamo. He describes prolonged torture that included interruptions by a doctor to ensure that he was well enough for the torture to continue.”

• Also: "Italian Trial of CIA Operatives Begins with Torture Testimony." [NYTimes 5/15/08] A Muslim cleric's wife testifies of the capture and "extraordinary rendition" of her husband to Egypt by the CIA, where he was tortured.
  

I went looking on the web for recent publications on torture. There are more than I thought. How many more books will have to be published before the American people internalize what has been done to other human beings in their name? None of us believes that torture is consistent with the ideals of our country and yet the practice persists -- and few voices have been raised about it. When our country realizes what has been done in its name, many of us will be tempted to feign ignorance.

The sad thing is that our country, like so many others, is enveloped in fairly sealed "information worlds.” Like people elsewhere -- many Germans during WW II, like the Serbs under Miloshivich and in fact the populations of most countries -- most Americans cannot believe that our people could have done what they did (our troops), or authorized what they authorized (e.g., John Yoo), organized what they organized (our generals), and carried out the abuses they carried out. Witness the attitude of the Serbs, many of whom to this day believe their people were not guilty of the well documented abuses during the recent wars in Yugoslavia; witness also the Iranians and the Pakistanis, who reject all accusations of abuse. In fact, they are unaware of them. What has been going on in those countries has remained invisible to the common public as many abusive practices seem to be (but are not) invisible in our country.

One of our problems is that despite the presumed superiority of our media, the American people remain informed only of those events that are presentable on TV; what we know is limited to the moving images that someone has been able to get, and essentially only those that are current, of what is happening in the world.

In chronological order, from the newest to the oldest, I list here those works documenting instances of torture perpetrated by our government. This is what I could find easily; there must be more.

• Steven Wax. (June 3) 2008. Kafka Comes to America. Other Press.

• Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris. 2008 [May 15]. Standard Operating Procedure. Penguin. [Reviewed, along with film of the same name, by Ian Buruma, New York Review June 26, 08, p 6,8]

• Eric Lichtblau. 2008. Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice. Pantheon.

• Philippe Sands. 2008 [May 13] Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values. Palgrave.

• Mahvish Rukhsana Khan. 2008. My Guantánamo Diary. Public Affairs. [A pediatrician who returned to Afghanistan in 2003 to help rebuild his country was then arrested by Americans, beaten, doused with icy water and paraded around naked. Finally, after three years, officials apparently decided he was innocent and sent him home.]

• Darius Rejali. 2007. Torture and Democracy. Princeton University. [880 pp. “the most compendious and the most rigorous treatment of the subject yet written.”]

• Tony Lagouranis and Allen Mikaelian. 2007. Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator's Dark Journey Through Iraq. NAL. [A developed version of a story widely available in the media and on the Internet. Lagouranis became a central figure to Iraq war opponents by describing his role as an army interrogator at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.]

• Stephen F. Eisenman. 2007. The Abu Ghraib Effect. Reaktion Books. [“Scholarly, succinct, and flush with photos, Eisenman's analysis is art history at its most compelling.”]

• Tara McKelvey. 2007. Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War. Basic Books. [[A]buses at Abu Ghraib, in particular the abuses visited upon women prisoners]

• Bob Brecher. 2007. Torture and the Ticking Bomb (Blackwell Public Philosophy Series). Wiley-Blackwell.

• Jack L. Goldsmith. 2007. The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration. Norton.
  

• Joseph Margulies. 2007. Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power. Simon & Schuster

• Alfred McCoy. 2006. A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror. Holt Metropolitan Books. [“From the start of the Cold War to the early nineteen-sixties, the C.I.A. spent billions of dollars developing psychological tools for interrogation. … [Documentation] from the Phoenix program in Vietnam—which was designed to ferret out high-level Vietcong, although of the more than twenty thousand people it killed most were civilians—to the actions of agency-trained secret police in Honduras in the nineteen-eighties, and the treatment of hooded detainees at Abu Ghraib.]

• Tara McKelvey (Editor). 2006. One of the Guys: Women as Aggressors and Torturers. Seal Press.

• Stephen Grey. 2006. Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program. St. Martin's.

• Sanford Levinson (ed). 2006. Torture: A Collection. Oxford University Press, USA. [Sections on "Philosophical Considerations"; "Torture as Practiced"; "Contemporary Attempts to Abolish Torture Through Law"; and "Reflections on the Post 9-11 Debate About Legalizing Torture.]

• Stephen Grey. 2006. Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program. St Martin’s Press.

• Steven Miles. 2006. Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror. Random House. [ … the work of the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (known as BSCTs, or "biscuits") active in Iraq and Guantanamo: groups of psychiatrists and psychologists who used detainees' medical charts and test data to devise "physically and psychologically coercive interrogation plans" designed to break their resistance. In at least one camp in Iraq, all harsh interrogations reportedly were first approved by the medical team.]

• Jennifer K. Harbury. 2005. Truth, Torture, and the American Way: The History and Consequences of U.S. Involvement in Torture. Beacon. [A "wink and nod" approach, sending clear signals to the Salvadoran team that the abductions, tortures, and kidnappings were to continue. ..."]

• Dianna Ortiz.2004.Blindfold's Eyes: My Journey From Torture To Truth.Orbis.["... going through the court proceedings mirrored the situation of the torture, perhaps asserting myself and having a team of people with me to support me would be a ..."]

• Karen J. Greenberg, Joshua L. Dratel, and Anthony Lewis (Eds). 2005. The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib. Cambridge University Press. [Bush administration officials and top military brass continue to maintain that the well-documented abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib were the isolated actions of a few rogue guards. … [The editors] believe the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the claimed abuses at Guantanamo are the direct result of administration policies. … [A] compilation of administration documents … clearly reveal that, at the highest levels, the Bush administration sought legal justification to circumvent both the Geneva Convention and other international accepted norms regarding the interrogation and treatment of military detainees.]

• Karen J. Greenberg, ed. 2005. The Torture Debate in America. Cambridge University. [The documents, memoranda, and reports that comprise the material in The Torture Papers.]

• Michael Ignatieff. 2004. The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror. Princeton University.

• John Conroy. 2001. Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture. University of California Press. [His question: How is it that otherwise normal people can become part of the institutionalized practice of torture? … He investigates the "five torture techniques" (hooding, noise bombardment, food deprivation, sleep deprivation and forced standing against a wall) inflicted on 12 Irish prisoners in 1971; a late 1980s round-up on the West Bank of Palestinians, who were bound, gagged and beaten; and Chicago's notorious John Burge case, in which police officers systematically beat and electrocuted (on the head, chest and genitals) a man suspected (and later convicted) of killing a police officer.]

Addendum, August 5, 2008

• Jane Mayer. 2008. The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. New York: Doubleday. "What Woodward and Bernstein's book "All the President's Men" did to the Nixon administration, Jane Mayer's book "The Dark Side" will do to George Bush's administration: blow away, like a piece of straw, the last sliver of credibility that the few remaining supporters of George Bush desperately cling to. "We don't torture", said the President, and Jane Mayer has responded with this book, as if to say: "That is a lie"."

"Greater Central Asia," the new geopolitically reified region

The term Greater Central Asia seems to have caught on. I used the term in an article written as the Soviet Union seemed to be weakening and was published shortly after it expired.

• “Restructuring in Greater Central Asia: Changing Political Configurations,” Asian Survey, Vol. 32, No. 10 (Oct., 1992), pp. 875-887.

Two years later the Russian political scientist Vyacheslav Ya. Belokrenitsky used the term again in the same journal:

• “Russia and Greater Central Asia” Asian Survey, Vol. 34, No. 12 (Dec., 1994), pp. 1093-1108.

The term seemed to me useful even though its meaning was at that point somewhat imprecise, including the several nations (different ones, depending on how you count) that were liable to link up together, once the Soviet Union had expired.

It's interesting to track what has happened to the term since then.

The term was used in a paper written in January, 1996, and published in 2000:

• “The New Great Game in Muslim Central Asia,” by Mohammed E. Ahrari with James Beal. McNair Paper 47. January 1996. Institute for National Strategic Studies. National Defense University. Washington, D.C. http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=rd-OCF M4UEC&dq=%22mohammed+e+ahrari%22+central+asia&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=OAFEpedzOd&sig=oxmW4Xl3qrPjDWieUrdpZUSsuWo#PPP3,M1

The Environmental and Social Impacts Group used the term in 2002 in its proposal but they referred to a more easterly sector of the region (Xinjiang) than Belokrenitsky and I had in mind (see also their ESIG Alert # 1 report).

• “Development of a Desert Affairs Center in Western China,” ESIG Alert #2, November, 2002.

In 2003 Rajan Menon used the term in a sense more consistent with our usage:

· “The New Great Game in Central Asia” by Rajan Menon. Survival, Volume 45, Number 2, 2003 , pp. 187-204(18).

Menon defined “Greater Central Asia” as “the region consisting of the five Central Asian states, plus Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Xinjiang, and Afghanistan” and he argued that it had been “strategically transformed” by the American commitment to the region after the attack of September 11, 2001. During that time the several authoritarian governments of the region were trying to take advantage of the new American interest in their neighborhood to escape the historic Russian hegemony. But they would be frightened by the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia (2003), the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine (2004) and the government of Kyrgyzstan would itself be overturned by a similar movement (“Tulip Revolution”) in 2005. Also in 2005 the Americans clashed with President Karimov over the massacre of hundreds of Uzbek citizens in Andijan, and were forced to evacuate their airbase at Karshi-Khanabad.

It was not long before the political exigencies and economic possibilities of the time were being recognized in the term “Greater Central Asia.” Now the term stood for a new region of geopolitical interest, to the United States and to those becoming alarmed by its rising hegemony there. S. Frederick Starr promoted the importance of the region in his article,

• "A ‘Greater Central Asia Partnership’ Partnership’ for Afghanistan and Its Neighbors,” in a publication of the Central Asia -Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program and in Foreign Affairs magazine (July / August, 2005) http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:lkrBqq2AldUJ:www.stimson.org/newcentury/pdf/Strategy.pdf+Greater+Central+Asia&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a; http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050701faessay84412/s-frederick-starr/a-partnership-for-central-asia.html

Starr advocated the formation of a Greater Central Asia Partnership for Cooperation and Development in which, of course, Washington would be central. “Recent progress in Afghanistan,” he said, “has created a remarkable opportunity . . . . The United States now has the chance to help transform Afghanistan and the entire region into a zone of secure sovereignties sharing viable market economies, enjoying secular and open systems of government, and maintaining positive relations with the United States.” This was the hubristic language of that time, which like so many of the grand aspirations of sounds quaint and dated now. A reference to Greater Central Asia appeared in a report of the Rand Corporation in the same year.

· “Faultlines of Conflict in Central Asia and the South Caucasus,” by Olga Oliker and Thomas S. Szayna. Rand Corporation, 2005. www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/2005/RAND_MR1598.sum.pdf

The new American interest in the region worried the Chinese, as reflected in another publication in 2005 that used the term:

• “China and Central Asia: A new Great Game or traditional vassal relations?” by Niklas Swanström. Journal of Contemporary China 14(45, Nov.) 569-584. http://www.silkroadstudies.org/docs/publications/2005/JCC_Swanstrom.pdf (Also see People’s daily 8/4/06: http://english.people.com.cn/200608/03/eng20060803_289512.html.)

And it had a similar impact on the Russians.

• “Russian foreign policy experts debate interaction with America in Greater Central Asia,” by Igor Torbakov, Volume 2, Number 196, Friday, October 21, 2005. Eurasia Daily Monitor. [Jamestown Foundation.] http://www.jamestown.org/edm/article.php?article_id=2370378

Greater Central Asia was now becoming a region of trade. A conference of “experts and officials from throughout Greater Central Asia” was convened in Kabul on April 1-2 of 2006 on a topic of:

• "Partnership, Trade, and Development in Greater Central Asia" Kabul, Afghanistan, April 1-2, 2006 updated April 25, 2006. http://www.silkroadstudies.org/new/inside/forum/trade_kabul_description.html

At this conference Kassymzhomart Tokaev, Kazakhstan’s Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan said his Government “supports the idea of a a Greater Central Asia as a way to promote intra-regional trade and development and reconnect Afghanistan to the regional and global economy.”

• “Kazakhstan Calls for a Greater Central Asia" Kazakhstan news Bulletin [Embassy of Republic of Kazakhstan to theUSA and Candada] Vol. 6, No. 14. April 7, 2006. http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:xzBZAV1-UzEJ:www.kazakhembus.com/April_7.pdf+%22Greater+Central+Asia%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=14&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Representatives of the United States government also participated and indicated an interest in “partnering” with the states of the region on matters of trade, and a panel discussion took place in Washington, DC, on July 18, titled “The New Silk Roads: Transport and Trade in Greater Central Asia.” It was sponsored by the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute (CACI). One wonders if the drug trade was given much attention in either of these conferences, but clearly it was already a powerful source of wealth for some of the countries of the region. In fact, Svante E. Cornell was sounding an alarm at about this time.

• “The Narcotics Threat in Greater Central Asia: From Crime-Terror Nexus to State Infiltration?” China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, Volume 4, No. 1 (2006) p. 37-67.

And Richard Weitz was warning that a “great game” was taking form like that of the nineteenth century.

• “Averting a New Great Game in Central Asia.” The Washington Quarterly • 29:3 pp. 155–167. 2006.

And M. K. Bhadrakumar was suggesting that South Asia already being caught up in the geopolitical “game” of earlier times.

• “'The Great Game' comes to South Asia.” Asia Times, May 24, 06 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HE24Df04.html

Indeed it was clear that the Russians were bothered by American meddling in their backyard:

• “Moscow making Central Asia its own.” M K Bhadrakumar. Asia Times Online, Aug 25, 2006. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HH25Ag01.html

All of these articles referred to the region as “Greater Central Asia”.

The new geopolitical focus prompted research activity. In 2006 the Social Science Research Council announced that it would provide teaching tools on the history of Greater Central Asia.

• “Teaching Resource Tool: Histories of Central Asia.” http://programs.ssrc.org/eurasia/TRT_CentralAsia/

In 2007 an important work was published, firmly anchoring the terminology for the region in the strategic discourse.

• The New Silk Roads: Transport and Trade in Greater Central Asia. Edited by S. Frederick Starr. Washington, D.C. and Uppsala, Sweden: Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program. 2007. 514 pp. http://www.silkroadstudies.org/new/inside/publications/GCA.html

With chapters by S. Frederick Starr (overview), Masood Aziz (Afghanistan), councilor at the Afghanistan Embassy in Washington, D.C., Aftab Kazi (Pakistan), professor of international and comparative politics at American University in Bishkek, Abbas Maleki (Iran), director general of the Institute for Caspian Studies in Tehran, Niklas Norling (China), project director of the Silk Roads Studies Program, Taleh Ziyadov (Azerbaijan), deputy executive director of the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce, and others.

Robert M. Cutler has delimited the region precisely, distinguishing “Central Asia” from “Greater Central Asia” from “Central Eurasia” from “Greater Southwest Asia” from “Greater South Asia.”

• “U.S.–Russian Strategic Relations and the Structuration of Central Asia,” by Robert M. Cutler. Perspectives on Global Development and Technology Vol. 6, No. 1-3: 109-125. (2007). http://www.robertcutler.org/download/pdf/ar06pgdt.pdf
• “TAPI in the Asian Energy Space,” Powerpoint presentation, November 13, 2007. www.harrimaninstitute.org/MEDIA/01097.ppt and http://www.robertcutler.org — rmc@alum.mit.edu

So the term “Greater Central Asia” is now a real place, having been reified by geopolitical policy and debate. Some recent works using the term are the following:

• “Political Development and Organized Crime: The Yin and Yang of Greater Central Asia?” Niklas Swanström. China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, Volume 5, No. 4 (2007) p. 83-101. http://www.isdp.eu/files/publications/cefq/07/ns07politicaldevelopment.pdf

• “Central Asia: Managing the delicate balance between the ‘discourse of danger,’ the ‘Great Game,’ and regional problem solving,” by Dennis J.D. Sandole. Communist and Post-Communist Studies. Vol 40 (1): 257-267. 2007. (Special Issue). http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VGF-4NTHMYN-1&_user=741313&_coverDate=06%2F30%2F2007&_rdoc=11&_fmt=high&_orig=browse&_srch=doc-info(%23toc%236037%232007%23999599997%23660270%23FLA%23display%23Volume)&_cdi=6037&_sort=d&_docanchor=&_ct=11&_acct=C000041138&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=741313&md5=85deec427c4379e7b5f0bf96c2e19ce5

· “U.S. Aims in Central and South Asia Challenged by Russia and China,” by Richard Weitz World Politics Review Exclusive, 27 Jul 2007. http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/Article.aspx?id=964

· “Eurasian Trade And Transport: New Silk Roads Or Old Pipedreams? “
Richard Weitz. Eurasianet 7/24/07 http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav072407a.shtml

· “Americans Still Think All Stans Are Same,” Adam Kesher. Politics, Foreign Affairs, April 16th, 2008 http://kazakhstan.neweurasia.net/2008/04/16/americans-still-think-all-stans-are-same/

• [seminar proposal] Security in Greater Central Asia, Tensions and possibilities of destabilization from Astana to Islamabad. Didier Chaudet. http://www.sciences- po.fr/formation/cycle1/programme_international/cours_pdf/chaudet.pdf