Those of us who have been keeping an eye focused on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and the lawless tribal regions of Pakistan (the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP)) have know from sporadic news reports spanning almost year that the CIA and US Special Forces were operating inside Pakistan, along […]

    Things are definitely heating up in the Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal areas, thought to be the last major sanctuary for al-Qaeda and extremist Taliban forces and leaders. It is important to remember al-Qaeda’s goal in all this – they want war between the US allies. They would love to see Pakistan, India and Afghanistan break […]

Little time for an in depth discussion on the material I found recently, but I do want to get it out for folks to review. First, there is a conflict brewing between the militant Taliban and the local government and pro-government tribes. The stage is set for a major crackdown by the government as the […]

I have been hoping for months now that the pressure we have been seeing put on the Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants inside the tribal areas of Pakistan might bear some fruit. Back in January of this year there were reports that a new Taliban leader, Baitullah Meshud, was charting a new and dangerous course by […]

The International Herald Tribune (IHT) ran a reasonable article (for them) recently on the al-Qaeda and Taliban forces who retreated from Afghanistan into the Pakistan area and efforts over the years to deal with them. I want to take some key information from that article to lay out the case that we are seeing the […]