By Syed Saleem Shahzad - October 2008

The attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on 20 September, killing some 60 people, was compared to 9/11 in Pakistan and could be a turning point in the conflict in this region. President Bush has authorised ground operations against Taliban bases in Pakistan, which has now become the main theatre in the ‘war on terror’. Meanwhile, the neo-Taliban, operating an al-Qaida franchise there and in Afghanistan, have controlled the escalation of guerrilla resistance in a sophisticated military strategy based on the conduct of the Vietnam war.

By GARY LEUPP - October 7, 2008

October 7, 2008. Seven years ago today the U.S. began the assault on Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban regime and produced the present mess. Abetted by U.S. bombing and commando operations, the Northern Alliance took Kabul on November 13, 2001. This was the initial U.S. response to 9-11, an assault on the U.S. by Saudi Islamist fanatics based in Afghanistan. The al-Qaeda attacks killed 3000 people. By March 2002 the U.S. bombing had produced that many Afghan civilian fatalities. This was just the beginning.

By Robert Fisk - September 28, 2008

Sami al-Haj walks with pain on his steel crutch; almost six years in the nightmare of Guantanamo have taken their toll on the Al Jazeera journalist and, now in the safety of a hotel in the small Norwegian town of Lillehammer, he is a figure of both dignity and shame. The Americans told him they were sorry when they eventually freed him this year - after the beatings he says he suffered, and the force-feeding, the humiliations and interrogations by British, American and Canadian intelligence officers...

By TARIQ ALI - September 23, 2008

The deadly blast in Islamabad was a revenge attack for what has been going on over the past few weeks in the badlands of the North-West Frontier. It highlighted the crisis confronting the new government in the wake of intensified US strikes in the tribal areas on the Afghan border...Hellfire missiles, drones, special operation raids inside Pakistan and the resulting deaths of innocents have fuelled Pashtun nationalism. It is this spillage from the war in Afghanistan that is now destabilizing Pakistan.

by Tariq Ali - Sunday, September 07, 2008

He may be a pliant partner for the west, but with his record of corruption, Zardari is the worst possible choice for Pakistan...Today, he is the second richest person in the country, with estates and bank accounts littered on many continents, including a mansion in Surrey [a high income suburb of London, England] worth several million...Zardari...is perfectly suited to being a total creature of Washington.

By Tariq Ali - September 16, 2008

The decision to make public a presidential order of last July authorizing American strikes inside Pakistan without seeking the approval of the Pakistani government ends a long debate within...the Bush administration...Senator Barack Obama...[supports] a policy of U.S. strikes into Pakistan. Senator John McCain and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin have now echoed this view and so it has become...official U.S. policy...Its effects on Pakistan could be catastrophic...The overwhelming majority of Pakistanis are opposed to the U.S. presence in the region, viewing it as the most serious threat to peace.

by Stephen Graham - Associated Press

Pakistan's army said Tuesday that its forces have orders to open fire if U.S. troops launch another raid across the Afghan border...Pakistan's government has faced rising popular anger over a Sept. 3 ground attack by U.S. commandos into South Waziristan...Pakistan says about 15 people were killed, all of them civilians.

by Saeed Shah in Islamabad - The Guardian

A controversial new US tactic to mount counter-terrorist operations inside Pakistan has met with fresh hostility, it emerged yesterday, as Pakistani tribesmen representing half a million people vowed to switch sides and join the Taliban if Washington does not stop cross-border attacks by its forces from Afghanistan..."If America doesn't stop attacks in tribal areas, we will prepare a lashkar [army] to attack US forces in Afghanistan," tribal chief Malik Nasrullah announced...

By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI - New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials...American officials say that they will notify Pakistan when they conduct limited ground attacks like the Special Operations raid last Wednesday in a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, but that they will not ask for [Pakistan's] permission.

by Gareth Porter - Thursday, September 11, 2008

WASHINGTON, Sep 8 (IPS) - The National Intelligence Council, the U.S. intelligence community's focal point for estimating future developments, warned the George W. Bush administration last month that a decision to launch commando raids by U.S. troops against al Qaeda-related targets in Pakistan's North-West Frontier region would carry a high risk of further destabilising the Pakistani military and government, according to sources familiar with the intelligence community's response to the issue.

By GARY LEUPP - September 6/7, 2008

...[T]his largely ignored event holds potentially horrifying significance. “Top American officials” have told the New York Times that this raid “could be the opening salvo in a much broader campaign by Special Operations forces against the Taliban and Al Qaeda inside Pakistan, a secret plan that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has been advocating for months...The plan of course enjoys the support of John McCain...Barack Obama has been saying...that [if] the U.S. has “actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets” in Pakistan and the chance to hit them, it should do so. The hell with Pakistani sovereignty! Why should such a detail matter after “we were attacked”?

by Bruce Loudon - September 05, 2008

WASHINGTON'S ambassador to Islamabad was last night given a "shellacking" by Pakistan after the first ever ground attack by US special forces inside the troubled nation...At least 20 people were killed in the targeted, helicopter-borne assault by what are believed to have been US special forces on the village of Jalal Khel in South Waziristan...

Dr. Siddiqui is a Pakistani national, physician, mother of three young children, one in US detention since 2003. She was kidnapped five years ago in Pakistan and is obviously a victim of horrendous torture at Bagram AFB.

By Carlotta Gall - Monday, August 4, 2008

The Taliban are demonstrating a resilience and ferocity that are sowing alarm [in Kabul], in Washington and in other NATO capitals, and engendering a fresh round of soul-searching over how a relatively ragtag insurgency has managed to keep the world's most powerful armies at bay...Afghan and NATO officials say the Taliban today operate much as the mujahedeen did in the 1980s, when they used Pakistan as a rear base to drive off the Soviet Army...

By Justin Podur - July 14, 2008

Most societies seem to combine both irrationality and hypocrisy in their drug policies. These serve those who profit from the drug war, the monies, the weapons, and the pretexts that it provides. They do not serve addicts, users, or farmers. An end to prohibition and an end to the drug war would take a powerful weapon away from the war on terror.