Pakistan

Have you heard about Pakistan’s contribution to last week’s discovery of the Higgs Boson? No, thought not. Remarkably, the reason you probably won’t have is because Pakistan doesn’t want you to. Dr Abdus Salam, a theoretical physicist, carried out pioneering work in the 1960s to suggest the existence of a hypothetical particle after creating a grand unification theory for weak forces and electromagnetic fields. He won the Nobel Prize in 1979 for his efforts, the only Pakistani to have ever received the honour. Yet, his name is largely airbrushed from textbooks in Pakistan and is rarely mentioned in public debate. The problem is that he belongs to the Ahmadi sect,

How go those talks with the Taliban in Doha? Quietly, that’s how — although there’s a report in yesterday’s The Hindu that could reveal some of what’s being said, and is worth the time reading because of it. According to the paper’s diplomatic sources, the Taliban want Mullah Mohammed Omar installed as ‘supreme religious and political leader’ of Afghanistan. And, yes, that is the Mullah Omar who sheltered Al Qaeda when he actually was in charge of Afghanistan, and whose policy agenda included the death penalty for those converting to another religion, as well as the general subjugation of women, gay people, individuality, etc. He’s currently wanted to the tune

‘Taliban’ and ‘peace mission’ — the words sure don’t fit very well together. But they’re the words that you’ll see in tomorrow’s papers, given that the Taliban have today revealed their intention to open a peace mission in Qatar. The idea is that foreign diplomats can stop by, share a cup of tea and some Ferrero Rocher, and talk about ending the insurgency in Afghanistan. The news ought to treated with caution for now. After all, the Taliban haven’t given a date for when their Qatar office will be open, and they’re making noises about prisoners being released from Guantanamo Bay in return. But it’s a still a significant moment,

US-Pakistani relations will deteriorate even further following today’s claims by Admiral Mike Mullen, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the Pakistani ISI aided and abetted the attack on the US embassy in Kabul. Mullen told a Senate panel that, “With ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted a truck bomb attack, as well as the assault on our embassy.” This charge was part of broader criticism of what Washington sees as Pakistan’s strategy of exporting its internal problems. Mullen summed up his concerns thus: “In choosing to use violent extremism as an instrument of policy, the government of Pakistan – and most especially the Pakistani Army

Dexter Filkins is one of the great war correspondents of the post 9/11 world. So it is particularly sobering to read his assessment of the Afghan situation as the West prepares to drawdown. Filkins reports that: “According to American officers, the level of violence in Afghanistan this year is fifteen per cent higher than it was at this time last year. The insurgents, far from being degraded, appear to be as resilient as ever. And their sanctuaries in Pakistan, where the Taliban leadership resides mostly unmolested, remain more or less intact.” Compounding this problem is that the levels of corruption in the Afghan government are continuing to alienate the population.

I wrote back in November that as we approached the July deadline when President Obama promised to start drawing down troops from Afghanistan, the tensions between politicians and military would re-emerge, as “the military ask for more time to get it right, and Obama tries to hold them to the deal he thought he made in late 2009”. This is now coming to pass, in London as well as Washington. I also argued that having some sort of public timetable for the troop drawdown was a reasonable solution, perhaps the only solution, to the politicians’ problem of balancing conflicting messages to different audiences in Afghanistan and at home. But the