Contacts

Syed Saleem Shahzad's words from March 1, 2008:

"With the United States missile attack on an important Taliban compound in Azam Warsak village in the South Waziristan tribal area in the early hours of Thursday, a new phase in the regional "war on terror" - joint Pakistan-North Atlantic Treaty Organization strikes - has begun.

(...)

The pre-dawn strike by an unmanned US Predator drone demolished a building, killing up to 12 suspected militants. Asia Times Online contacts in the area claim that the drone took off from Peshawar airfield, making it the first Pakistan-NATO military strike."

The observation of the presence of US UAVs in Pakistan is confirmed now, at least for one occasion in the past. Photo illustration of US drones at an airbase in Pakistan, in 2006. Not necessarily near Peshawar, and certainly not a first in 2008, though.

Dera Ghazi Khan, hunting and world politics

Remember that post here a few days back in which I followed the LWJ in covering how the Pakistani Taliban insurgency is spreading into parts of the Punjab now? There was that suicide bombing in Dera Ghazi Khan (DG Khan), at a Shiite mosque there, for instance.

Here's another mention the (Pakistan-wise important) town recently got in the world press. From your constant source of insider gossip from Islamabad and other nearby and interesting places, Syed Saleem Shahzad. If true, this is one of those little details that reveal a lot.

"Immediately after taking over as president last September, in a very high-handed manner, Pakistan withdrew the hunting privileges of two Saudi princes located in the district of Dera Ghazi Khan in southern Punjab. To add salt to the wound, the facility was given to a rival sheikh from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The action was taken at a time when Pakistan badly needed Saudi oil on deferred terms due to soaring prices, and the UAE was in no position to fill the gap. Islamabad now enjoys very good relations with the UAE - which is unable to help Pakistan - due to the family friendship between the Bhutto family and the UAE's rulers. But Pakistan's relations with Saudi Arabia and its two major allies - Qatar and Bahrain - are at an all-time low because of the insult to the Saudi royal family. (The issue of Zardari's Shi'ite background is a secondary factor.)"

If you're interested to find out more about Dera Ghazi Khan, here's a profile of the town and the surrounding area's politics (assembled by Dawn). And some analysis from June last year, by Tareq Saeed Birmani. But only in case you're really interested. But of course it's dynamics of regional and world politics that are creating the really big waves from the outsider's point of view.

As to hunting, it's always a big deal which Gulf state's noble elite gets what/how much/how many. The link I'm providing takes you to data from the 2007-08 hunting season, when Abu Dhabi's was apparently the greatest share anyway, in terms of the area covered by their permits (eight districts in three provinces); the UAE received ten permits overall, Dubai five, Abu Dhabi also five. The Saudis received seven permits. The two of these that were given so as to include Dera Ghazi Khan went to "Interior Minister Prince Naif bin Abdul Aziz, Rajanpur and Layyah (via Dera Ghazi Khan) districts in Punjab; Prince Saud bin Abdul Mohsin, Dera Ghazi Khan."

Of course, the 2008-09 hunting season's list would be the most telling to have here... Wait, I just happen to have it. From Dawn, of course. The UAE got ten permits, Saudi Arabia just two.

Father-in-law's views about government

Remember that piece by Anatoli Lieven the other day, telling us that once the Taliban come back to power in Afghanistan, they should be credibly threatened with seeing Afghanistan turned into Gaza, in case they happen to shelter terrorists? It wasn't entirely silly, that piece. Certain parts of it about the need to re-shape the current Afghan polity for it to have a chance to work, were ok with me, even while they may have rested partly on wrong premises.

But those premises were seriously wrong. That the Taliban would just transform into a political party, from a hydra of an insurgency, in the end.

Here's Maulana Sufi Muhammad's brief answer to that. Why bother governing, when you can leave all the responsibility to others, and condemn them, as you see fit under sharia law?

Quote: "Maulana Sufi Muhammad clarified that the Shari’a court system will be controlled by him, while the departments of economy, politics, culture, education and health will be under the control of the federal government."

You know, Sufi Muhammad is the guy who was sent to negotiate, on behalf of the Pakistani state, for peace in the Swat valley, with his son-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah.

For them, a state-within-a-state or rather a state-in-ignorance-of-a-state will always be a world better than just a state.

Analogies: Nepal and India's northeast

In the morning, one of my students gave a presentation on the Nepalese coup d'état of 2005, and he highlighted this excerpt from ICG's report about the events. "A retired Indian general with longstanding Nepal connections" is quoted on page 8 as having said:

"I'm still shocked by the incompetence of the RNA (Royal Nepalese Army) and by its dangerous tactics. For example, in this day and age we would never use helicopter gunships in counter-insurgency work -- helicopters for transport, sure, but this is a war that can only be fought on the ground level. Firing into jungles from a thousand feet up has no real military benefit and is bound to be counter-productive when innocent civilians end up as victims."

Sure, this holds some relevance for the campaign in Afghanistan as well. Not that helicopters are firing into a jungle there, like that, but as everyone knows, there is a tendency to use a lot of CAS (close air support).

Meanwhile, it was very timely for me to have that thing come up now for other reasons, too. I'll be interested to hear just this afternoon a lecture by Gulshan Sachdeva on a "Development strategy for the Indian Northeast." Will of course get back to you to say a few comments perhaps, at the end of the day.

One more quote from the ICG report, same page, this time from another Indian academic, telling you nothing new, just showing how much of a coincidence it is that I ended up hearing a presentation based partly on this report today:

"S.D. Muni, the former ambassador widely recognised as India's leading academic authority on Nepal. "India's own experience in the northeast and in areas affected by Naxalite Maoist guerrillas is that military methods may, at best, help, but cannot deliver a solution to internal revolts and insurgencies." "

The promised update: Prof. Sachdeva gave a very interesting presentation. I wouldn't want to outline his ideas as though he would have given his lecture to the readership of this blog. But I will point out at least one thing.

Over at the Frontline Club, Alex van Linschoten lists a couple of issues he would like to see the media cover this year - stories that could be especially interesting in his view. All are interesting, indeed. The very first is: "NGOs who indirectly (or directly) fund the Taliban." Now, this is something also of interest when it comes to India's Northwest. Not really because of NGOs. There, in many places, it's state-run projects where contractors end up passing on state development money to guerrillas, to buy operational security, generating a vicious cirlce that perpetuates the insurgency.

Tajikistan's perilous state

So the International Crisis Group is sending us a warning signal about Tajikistan. It feels alarmist to a degree, not in its prediction of possible instability ("signs of cracks and fissures in the regime"), but rather in terms of its wording and some of its conclusions here and there. Of course it's the sort of report that one wishes to be able to call alarmist a year or two down the road.

This is the warning signal part below:

"Far from being a bulwark against the spread of extremism and violence from Afghanistan, Tajikistan is looking increasingly like its southern neighbour – a weak state that is suffering from a failure of leadership. Energy infrastructure is near total breakdown for the second winter running, and it is likely migrant labourer remittances, the driver of the country’s economy in recent years, will fall dramatically as a result of the world economic crisis. President Emomali Rakhmon may be facing his greatest challenge since the civil war of 1992-97. At the very least the government will be confronted with serious economic problems, and the desperately poor population will be condemned to yet more deprivation. At worst the government runs the risk of social unrest. There are few indications that the Rakhmon administration is up to this challenge. To address the situation, the international community – both at the level of international organisations and governments – should ensure any assistance reaches those who truly need it, place issues of governance and corruption at the centre of all contacts with the Tajik government, and initiate an energetic dialogue with President Rakhmon on democratisation."

What I immediately thought of the part about Tajikistan looking like Afghanistan was that it was significantly stretching it. Come on, the absence of an ongoing, organised insurgency is no small difference. Neither is it a minor deviation from the Afghan pattern that war is "rapidly ceasing to be a living memory" for the young growing up in Tajikistan. There are problems, but of a different nature. (And let's also clarify that corruption in Afghanistan cannot be regarded as a comprehensive explanation for the growth and the spread of the neo-Taliban and related insurgencies.)

Of course, the timing of ICG's report is not random. It never is. Photo illustration of present argument (only this small, low-rez pic was available over at NATO's). President Rakhmon of Dangara in Brussels, shaking hands with SG Jaap de Hoop Scheffer at NATO HQ, on February 11:

So NATO may soon cooperate more with Tajikistan, and there is a chance that transport infrastructure, territory and perhaps some base or bases may be used down the road for transiting supplies across the country. Just the time to tell Western leaders not to be uncritical in their approach entirely, in the name of gratitude for much needed assistance with the logistics of the Afghanistan mission.

Another reason for the timeliness of the report is the economic crisis and its anticipated impact on potentially as many as 1.5 million Tajik migrant workers, for whom some of the currently available opportunities to earn may disappear, as demand for their labour might shrink (for example in Russia, where some 50,000 migrants are said to be regularly working in Sochi alone, in the construction sector, ahead of the 2014 Olympics).

Those signs of cracks and fissures within the regime (and on its peripheries) cannot be discounted, either - it's worth reading the report for an overview of the recent period's incidents and concerning issues.

Finally, here's an interesting example of how far ICG was ready to venture in speculation in this report (page 18):

"Growing concern about Pakistan’s ability to provide a reliable supply route for military operations in Afghanistan could lead to an expansion of U.S. or NATO bases in Central Asia, perhaps including Tajikistan. Establishing a major logistics base in a near-failed state, however, would be a risky proposition. Rakhmon would probably welcome the idea, assuming he could persuade Moscow to accept it. But the creation of a base within striking distance of the Afghan border might finally make Tajikistan, with its threadbare security structures, an appealing target for Islamist extremists."

Expecting such harrassment of bases in Tajikistan is an interesting prediction, in the sense that it might make one raise one's eyebrows. The capability to infiltrate there is not exactly there on the part of the Taliban. Whether the IMU or the IJU could pull off something like this is another question. Anyway, at this point we of course do not know if anybody really wants a base in Tajikistan in the first place. It's not clear if the final word was said regarding Manas in Kyrgyzstan, either. What emerged most recently is that, come the end of February, 20 to 30 trainloads of supplies may be sent by the US alone from Riga harbour in Latvia down through Russia.

French troop deployments abroad

France has been stretching itself since a while now, with all the different missions it is involved in, under UN, EU and NATO banners. Question: are they coming back to fully participate in the North-Atlantic Alliance's military planning and decision-making around or at the anniversary NATO Summit in Strasbourg/Kehl, i.e. in one of the most "Franco-German" locations on the planet, in April? They are not entirely out of mentioned planning and decision-making mechanisms, even as we speak, of course, but still the move would have much political as well as symbolic importance. And it opens a bunch of practical issues, such as how many and what kind of posts the French are ready to settle with in the organisation with the coming change. Behind the scenes there definitely is some talking going on. And last Friday, NATO's Sec-Gen went to Paris, and spoke to the Assemblée Nationale. You can read the text of that speech here to get a sense of how much things have advanced.

But. For now France is not offering an increased troop commitment in Afghanistan. Even though such an increased commitment by France could affect the intra-alliance dynamics of the politics of burden-sharing. Will they offer more at a later stage?

Well, to start a little guessing, here's a link (thx go to D for it) about the French plans to pull out troops from Africa, i.e. from Chad and Ivory Coast more specifically. The aim is to save about 100 to 150 million euros and "gain more mobility" for other missions on which France intends to concentrate more.

That's sure interesting, but part of the reasoning, at least in domestic politics, seems to be that such a drawdown of one's forces in faraway Africa is just what is needed at a time of economic crisis. Poland, also with soldiers deployed in Chad, seems to be mimicking this rationalisation. Plus the EUFOR mission in Chad is coming to an end in March anyway, with French interest and a French contingent remaining there anyway, the latter to serve with the developing UN force after mid-March. (More links re: this here and here.)

A few notes about the February 11 Kabul attacks

Link: the basics about the Kabul attacks

Notes

1. Just like before last year's April 27 attack aimed at spectacularly distracting the jihad memorial day in Kabul, and to possibly assassinate Hamed Karzai, this time, too, there was a series of raids prior to the attacks that occurred, in order to net terrorists about to commit something spectacular in Kabul. Back in 2008 these raids took place in the Tagab valley, in a mixed HiG/Taliban stronghold. This time around it was Afghan national security, the NDS, breaking up cells in Kabul proper. On both occasions, there was actionable intelligence that did not, however, prove to be enough to stop the expected attacks from happening.

2. It's interesting that a day after the Kabul attack, and on special regional envoy Richard Holbrooke's last day in Islamabad, Pakistan decided to openly acknowledge that the Mumbai attacks may have been prepared on Pakistan soil... Of course the official version is still only that Pakistani soil, and not, say, some sort of deep state or shadow state assistance was used by the LeT team. That's no radical change. But then will former national security advisor Mahmud Ali Durrani get back his job now? After having lost it seemingly for saying nothing more than what is being said by Rehman Malik?

3. Last year I covered the mysteries surrounding a foiled attack plot in Barcelona, broken up by French intelligence, which was allegedly connected to Baitullah Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban group. I would have found it extraordinary if Baitullah Mehsud, the FATA Islamist of the day, would have decided to launch an operation truly global in scope. So I waited for something new to come up, and now here it is. But it is not the TTP, but the LeT, that has its links to the Pakistani quarters in Barcelona based on what we concretely know from current developments. Reuters reports:

"One of those arrested, identified as Javed Iqbal, was lured back to Pakistan from the Spanish city of Barcelona, Malik said.
Investigators had also discovered some funds transferred from Italy and Spain were used to finance the attack, and Austrian telephone sim cards were used. Malik spoke too of a link, possibly an Internet domain, to Houston in the United States."

NATO wants to go to the Source

Sorry for the Matrix reference, this is serious. Recent news about what NATO may soon be up to in Afghanistan.

"MUNICH – In an effort to strike at a key income source for Taliban militants, the top NATO commander said Sunday that operations to attack drug lords and labs in Afghanistan will begin within the "next several days." "

The wording is key here. They say drugs are "a" key source of income. I wouldn't be able to tell you how important they are, but here's an interesting excerpt from Antonio Giustozzi's book (Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop), from page 88.

"Others, including most foreign diplomats, maintain that drugs remain a secondary source of revenue for the Taliban and that there is little evidence of them encouraging the farmers to grow poppies and of their involvement in the trade. This author tends to side with (this) group for three reasons. First, the traffickers are unlikely to be willing to give up a major share of their profits to the Taliban, particularly in the presence of overproduction and of competition from corrupt police officers and increasingly even ANA officers encourting their favours (note omitted here - P.M.). Second, if substantial amounts of money were turned to field commanders this would likely have resulted in a fragmentation of the Taliban chain of command, as commanders would become more autonomous."

For social scientists, the world is a huge and imperfect laboratory. I am a social scientist. Ergo... no, I am not happy to see NATO testing whether Giustozzi's thesis is correct. I just hope things work out well, even if I'm not convinced about that.

Meanwhile, here are some only loosely related but strongly endorsed readings:

Lieven Leaves Me Shaking My Head, at Bill and Bob's;

and

Abbas Daiyar: Playing With Fire: Arming Tribal Militias Won't Work.

The invasion of Punjab?

Bill Roggio over at the Long War Journal offers a timely look at the Pakistani Taliban-led insurgency's expansion into Punjab province, after a police checkpoint was wiped out in Mianwali there, on Saturday, and in the wake of the Dera Ghazi Khan suicide bombing a few days before that (which killed about 30 people at a Shiite mosque). Of course, one can note that these Taliban incursions into Punjab seem to affect mainly areas very close to the NWFP so far, but hey, not so long ago it was astonishing to see the NWFP become a battleground.

So a look at the issue is timely indeed, but in fact the Taliban insurgency is not moving into these areas only recently. Or, rather, the subject of the sentence is deceiving to a degree. Pakistan's radical Islamists have well-established networks all over the country, and there is the possibility that the Taliban vanguard is just pulling more and more of the radicals of different groupings, from under different banners, to under the Tehrik-e-Taliban umbrella. Also, the Pakistani Army's operations in Bajaur and Khyber appear to me to have pushed many insurgents behind the army lines, so to say, making the situation in the Swat valley in the NWFP clearly worse. And now there's trouble in Punjab, too.

Even with that in mind, it may be added food for thought how the Polish engineer who was recently killed by the Taliban, Piotr Stańczak, was in fact abducted in Punjab - on September 28 last year.

With all that in mind, one wonders where Pakistan's Realpolitikers are, or what they are doing. How come nobody noticed all this coming? Was nobody concerned? Was it beyond what they are capable of, to stop all this from happening?

En opération avec les paras

"En opération avec les paras," i.e. on operations with the French paratroopers of the 8e RPIMa, one gets very similar experiences to what others are finding out about on the ground in Afghanistan elsewhere. The Janvier 2009 issue of RAIDS includes a lengthy article on operations in Kapisa province, and many familiar themes come up.

I find something especially noteworthy after the French government decided not to offer any increased contribution at the Munich Security Conference, for now - this position could theoretically change still, by the time of the April NATO Summit, of course. Anyway, here's what the French paras found in the village of Jagdaley; in my raw translation of an excerpt from the article, leaving out some of what's in it (p.41.):

"The population "demands a lot" from the French. A generator, because there's not one running, but also the provision of medication to the clinic (financed by the Americans), the supplying of firewood, and of clothes for the children, because the winter tends to be harsh in this remote valley. French CIMIC units can't come here regularly. All CIMICs require escort, and for the zone of BATFRA, there are but two CIMIC teams, with a limited budget. 22,000 Afghans live in the valley.

'The leader of the village asked me if we would come back. And when we would,' recounts Frédéric, conscious of the stakes, which he will include in his report to 'Panther.' Inhabitants of the valley have already been deceived by earlier visits by Western teams, and noone can tell if the next time, when their hopes turn out to have been in vain, their disappointment doesn't push them into indifference, or worse, into the rebellion's ranks.

Up to this point, the 500 families of Jagdaley held out, and they have even come to the aid of the ANA (...) when they were attacked by insurgents, in September (2008 - P.M.). But come the winter, the terror of the insurgents, the need to survive, and one mistaken shot by the coalition may change everything, unbalance everything."

Yes - the old rule of clear, hold, build applies. For which one should always have the necessary resources, too, in an ideal world.

International security, for free

It's always nice to get something for free. So if you don't have a subscription to the journal International Security, you might appreciate seeing S. Paul Kapur's article (pdf) available for download at Stanford, from IS' Fall 2008 issue. He takes aim there at proliferation optimists.

Appetiser:

"I examine three phases of Indo-Pakistani relations since the nuclear tests. First, I discuss the period 1998 to 2002. I show that during these years Indo-Pakistani tensions reached levels unseen since the early 1970s, resulting in the 1999 Kargil war as well as a major militarized standoff that stretched from 2001 to 2002. An examination of this period reveals that nuclear weapons facilitated Pakistan’s adoption of the low-intensity conflict strategy that triggered these confrontations, and that the crises’ eventual resolution resulted primarily from nonnuclear factors such as diplomatic calculations and conventional military constraints. In the article’s next section I examine the years 2002 to 2008. I argue that although Indo-Pakistani relations became more stable during this period, the improvements were modest and had little to do with nuclear weapons. Instead, they resulted mainly from changes in the international strategic environment, shifting domestic priorities, and nonnuclear security calculations. In addition, this period saw the emergence of strategic trends that could eventually undermine South Asian security. In the article’s subsequent section, I discuss these developments’ likely impact on future regional stability. I show that past Indo-Pakistani conflict led the Indians to begin formulating a more aggressive conventional military doctrine. This could increase Indo-Pakistani security competition and result in rapid escalation in the event of an actual conflict. Thus nuclear weapons not only destabilized South Asia in the aftermath of the nuclear tests; they may damage the regional security environment in the years to come. In the article’s final section, I discuss the implications of my argument." (pp. 72-73.)

Update (February 6): Kapur's article came out before the Mumbai attacks. All in all, what happened seems to be added evidence regarding his conclusions. Anyway, while nuclear optimists may likely have it entirely wrong why post Mumbai India's ColdStart war plans weren't realised, here's a mildly hilarious vid from The Onion. Not as funny as some of the other stuff they have, and less logical and coherent, but still entertaining and to-the-subject... so why not watch it to see conflict self-resolution on the horizon, at the end.

Volatile India-Pakistan Standoff Enters 11,680th Day

Contradictions: NATO, Germany and Der Spiegel

I'm reacting to this affair somewhat belatedly, but it may be interesting to note, nevertheless. NATO issued the following press release last Thursday.

"A decision by NATO Defense Ministers on Alliance Counter-Narcotics strategy was taken in Budapest in October 2008, according to which ISAF can act, in concert with the Afghans, against facilities and facilitators supporting the insurgency, in the context of counternarcotics. SACEUR has been tasked to implement this decision. Accordingly, SACEUR issued general guidance as a follow-up to the Budapest Ministerial decision.

He has not, and never has, issued illegal orders. The NATO Secretary General and Supreme Allied Commander, Europe find the recent events associated with the leaking of NATO classified documents unacceptable. Our nations’ security and the safety of our servicemen and women depend on adherence to NATO security regulations and the protection of classified material. The NATO Secretary General has initiated a security investigation into this matter."

This comes in reply to this thing right here, key excerpt outlining to you the essence.

"In a classified document, which SPIEGEL has obtained, NATO's top commander, US General John Craddock, has issued a "guidance" providing NATO troops with the authority "to attack directly drug producers and facilities throughout Afghanistan (regardless of whether there is evidence linking them to insurgents - P.M.).

... the document doesn't read like a discussion paper at all. In his Jan. 5, 2009 letter to Ramms, Craddock demanded the immediate execution of his direction. "I ask, therefore, that you direct COM ISAF (an abbreviation for ISAF chief McKiernen) to continue to plan and execute this enhanced counter narcotics campaign … as amplified in this letter," Craddock wrote."

This is what happened. The resulting debate is about whether one should widen the "war" in a legal and a conceptual sense in Afghanistan. If drug dealers become military targets who can be bombed, into whose house you can put a Hellfire or two, that means they are treated as combatants. Now, if drug traders who don't deal with the insurgents at all are regarded only as criminals, then of course the case could be made that they are just criminals as such, and so their activities call for law enforcement, not an air strike or a lethal SF raid.

There you have it. Something has come up just in time to cause some rather unnecessary uproar in the world of diplomacy before the next NATO Summit, soon coming. Distraction.

For a country like Germany this is something that is as much a non-starter in a discussion as can be. As Spiegel reports in another article:

"Germany, however, has so far refused to participate in so-called "capture or kill" operations -- in other words, the targeted killing of opponents. The classified "caveats" limiting Germany's mandate in the NATO deployment state that the German government considers targeted killings conducted in cases where there was no previous attack to be inconsistent with "international law." "

Still with Spiegel here, this is what happened when German SFs had one of the perpetrators of the November 6, 2007 Baghlan bombings surrounded in a compound. For German soldiers, a "targeted killing" is not a possibility even against an insurgent.

Give this a read for a reminder. Back when I told a friend about this, all he very sensibly asked was, "Why didn't they use some nonlethal munition? Wouldn't that have been a solution?" Btw, he had some experience from Northern Ireland.

Blogging about blogging about rumours and leaks

As promised, posts keep coming here. My relatively intensive blogging over at the other site I've launched will give me what to sum up in any case - blogging about what I'm blogging about. As to today, I looked at some unrelated, but interesting pieces of news, that were relatively insignificant, in one case probably unsubstantiated, in the other potentially unsubstantiated, yet interesting to speculate on, for example seeing people's reactions to them.

Both might be interesting - as well as already known to you:

• My first post today was about concerns in some narrow French circles, originating indirectly from a blogger of the daily Libération, that many Muslim soldiers in the French land forces refuse to serve in Afghanistan. One fellow Hungarian, Tiboru, has already done a good job of picking apart these rumours. Some people just thought of generalising over a low number of cases ("less than five"), with no clear picture of causality and without any deep understanding of motives in the really low number of cases one can cite. Actually, the original Libération blogpost's title at Secret Défense, "L'armée reconnait que quelque soldat musulmans refusent de partir en Afghanistan," is a touch more carefully formulated than the title of Le Figaro's article on the issue, "Des musulmans refusent de combattre," even though Le Figaro starts out by referring to Secret Défense, and not the other way around. At the end of his critical take on all this, fellow Hungarian blogger Tiboru still considers the possibility of Muslim soldiers going over to the other side with a tank or an APC. While almost everything is possible in this world, just not evenly possible, I did see the need to note, in reaction to this, how loyalty issues do or may come up in any case in Afghanistan, for example with regards to ANP and ANA units or Afghan PMCs; that such issues were much more of a concern for the Soviets back in their time; and that in the current military coalition (broader than ISAF) that is looking to handle the militant challenge in Afghanistan/Pakistan, there is a country where the loyalty (to the coalition's goals) of a whole shadow faction of certain state organs might be pondered. I was mostly intent on indicating by this that Muslim soldiers in Western armies are perhaps not really the major concern on the ground. For some historical context I even brought up how the Grande Mosquée de Paris was built partly as a tribute to Muslim soldiers of the French armed forces who fought loyally in World War One, even while the Ottoman sultan tried to play leader of the umma, and call on them to desert.
• The second post was about this piece of mysterious news, straight from Algeria's remote mountains, via, of all possible media, The Sun. It said, on January 19, that AQIM (al Qaeda in the Maghreb) militants died, some 40 of them, of the plague, in Tizi Ouzu province. In the evening then, in the Washington Times, an unnamed "senior US official" came out to leak that a terrorist biological weapons program went awry in Tizi Ouzu, but no, they can't say to have heard of no dead bodies. Just to reassure everyone. The picture is more than murky overall, and I'm not able to say what really happened. Still, bringing this up gave me the chance to revisit the issue of why one might be there in Afghanistan, pointing out how political instability depriving vast areas of a modern health system increases the threat of infectious diseases that can spread from the most wretched places on the planet. And I pointed out how polio will never be globally eradicated unless the Afghan-Pakistani borderland is stabilised somehow. The Sun, for its part, reported its non-specified al-Qaeda sources' concerns about Algerians taking the plague to the FATA with them.