It’s easy to hype the threat in Af-Pak. It is not easy, however, to present it properly while maintaining its importance.

It’s long past time that we admit opium and insurgency are two different things in Afghanistan, even if they overlap. Yet, this realization might come too late for us to truly change course toward something more effective.

Tom Ricks didn’t like me noting that Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn are probably the only two independent journalists living in Kandahar. He even called it "bullshit." What follows, however, is just bizarre: As opposed, I reckon, to the dozens of MSM hacks who line up for frosty Taj beers by 3 pm [...]

We have treated the 17 Uighurs imprisoned at Guantanamo reprehensibly… but they are not alone.

Kazakhstan is a lot more that oil and Cohen jokes.

Alex Strick van Linschoten, apparently reading old Robert Kaplan books so we don’t have to (just kidding: Soldiers of God is pretty much his only legitimate and readable book), noticed something Alexander Cockburn—he of Counterpunch and The Nation fame—said in 1980: "In the January 20, 1980, issue of the Village Voice, the left-wing writer Alexander [...]

Pakistan’s security forces are neither unified nor monolithic. So why do we talk about them as if they are?

What’s wrong with viewing opium as a long-term economic problem, rather than a short-term military one?

Don’t forget the innocent people of the Swat Valley in Pakistan.

Are you paying attention to Balochistan? Because it will matter tremendously in Pakistan’s fight against the Taliban.