Dexter Filkins’ Baradar-capture story yesterday — well, it made me regret a lot of starry-eyed presumptions I made when the capture occurred. But not the logic behind them! Check: “We picked up Baradar and the others because they were trying to make a deal without us,” said a Pakistani security official, who, like numerous people [...]

Not quite as slick as the Af-Pak Channel, but we make do. Important pieces on Pakistan and the flooding: U.S, Pakistan warn of militant plots over floods [Reuters] Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and a senior U.S. senator warned on Thursday that Taliban insurgents are trying to exploit rising anger over the country’s worst floods [...]

Pakistan is having a really rough time. Promenient NGOs have upped their concern to urgent need, citing nearly 1500 deaths and 2000 injuries, with doubtless more to come. The UN is trying desperately to intervene, trying to corral member nations into providing much-needed monies and aid to assist the thousands of people displaced by the [...]

Between drought-sparked wildfires in Russia, oil spills in the US and India, and the worst flooding in remembered history in Pakistan and surrounding areas, it’s been a tough summer for the environment. And arguably, Pakistan has the worst of it, with an estimated 15 million people affected by the floods. The Guardian today published a [...]

This Mosharraf Zaidi piece will make you smarter. What’s up with the Pakistani bureaucracy? The problem with Pakistani government today is that it doesn’t enjoy the competent stability it once used to through the bureaucracy. Today’s Pakistan’s bureaucracy, while made up of individually brilliant officers, is a collection of inward-looking dinosaurs that cannot see beyond [...]

CLUTCH YOUR PEARLS!!!! A Pakistani man approached CIA officers in Islamabad last year, offering to give up secrets of his country’s closely guarded nuclear program. To prove he was a trustworthy source, he claimed to possess spent nuclear fuel rods. But the CIA had its doubts. Before long, the suspicious officers had concluded that Pakistan’s [...]

The Pakistanis want it, oh baby, they want it — so good so good so good yeah. The previously undisclosed document includes requests ranging from U.S. help to alleviate Pakistan’s chronic water and power shortages to pleas for surveillance aircraft and support in developing the country’s civilian nuclear program. That is some foreign aid we [...]

Money goes into a contract program for gathering information in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Somehow that money gets diverted for a freelance intelligence and extremist-killing program run by a guy from the Joint Information Operations Warfare Command named Michael Furlong. Another baroque story brought to you by Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti. There’s lots of stuff [...]

Oh Azzam the American, you fucking fool. I have such a long history with you, including tracking down your old imam — you know, the one you called a “Jew” because he, like, disapproves of murdering innocents? — and your old metalhead friends and talking about how you were into Cannibal Corpse. And now, you [...]

One traditional safety valve for Pakistan, the eastern regions of Afghanistan, is likely to become less available as the US beefs up its military presence there. In theory, the hammer of US/NATO forces will strike the Taliban, forcing it back against the anvil of Pakistan’s own military presence.

The anvil now seems to be getting a bit worried.