Pakistani FM Shah Mehmood Qureshi speaks, I write quickly for the Washington Independent:

 The foreign minister, who is on a public-diplomacy tour of the U.S. to bolster support for his government, said that Pakistan was at “a crucial phase in its fight against terrorism.” He described the Pakistani Taliban as being in “disarray” after its leader, Beitullah Mehsud, was killed in August by a CIA drone strike, saying “no single leader holds sway over disparate factions.” Qureshi did not address the forthcoming anti-Taliban offensive in Waziristan except in passing reference — and after his speech, the Pakistani ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, declined to address the subject — but said that Pakistan needed expanded trade access to western markets for its textiles and other exports if it is to consolidate any military gains. “Is it wiser to keep fighting the fire or [to take] away the oxygen that fuels it?” he asked.

For years there’s been a good academic debate about how poverty doesn’t contribute to international terrorism. And the evidence behind it is fairly strong: al-Qaeda’s leaders are not the wretched of the earth; their backgrounds range from comfortable to obscenely overprivileged. But the analysis only goes so far. Taliban fighters are indeed poor. Taliban supporters — those who, for reasons of ideology or interest or just plain fear back the extremists — are often dirt poor. Increased aid and access to western markets for Pakistan isn’t supposed to stop the next Usama bin Laden. It’s supposed to change the calculations of the people who shelter him; and, more broadly, to address the real grievances among that broader cohort that al-Qaeda and its affiliates successfully exploit.