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Afghanistan: In the Muck and Stuck (Open Thread Too)

By SusanUnPC on April 10, 2009 at 4:40 AM in Afghanistan, Morning Joe, Open Thread

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Let’s not mention Pakistan, okay?

As they say in that clip, Pakistan is bad news. Ugh. And they have nukes. I really, really do try not to think about Pakistan.

Next, yeah, well, it’s Bob Woodward, but it’s plenty interesting:

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John Smith

I guess the more change we have the more things stay the same.
arran

Charles Krauthammer’s WaPo article today, “It’s Your Country Too, Mr. President” recaps all that we lost under 0bama’s leadership(?) at the G20 conference and after Kim’s missile launch. He got such a thrashing which those tracking his popularity have missed.
JohnnyB

Susan, thanks for the Afghanistan update.
But you better look at Pakistan.

Pakistan, a failed state as of now.

The IMF just gave Pakistan 7.6 Billion credit line to keep it from bankruptcy.

In an article entitled “Do U.S. drones kill Pakistani extremists or recruit them?”
http://votersforpeace.us/press/index.php?itemid=1303

Jonathan Landay reports:

Even as the Obama administration launches new drone attacks into Pakistan’s remote tribal areas, concerns are growing among U.S. intelligence and military officials that the strikes are bolstering the Islamic insurgency by prompting Islamist radicals to disperse into the country’s heartland.
… Several U.S. intelligence, military officials and independent experts, however, said that they’re especially worried by an influx of extremists from the tribal areas into the slums of Karachi. The capital of southern Sindh Province, with a population of at least 12 million, is Pakistan’s financial center and main port as well as the entry point for most of the supplies bound for U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Many militants are thought to have taken refuge among Karachi’s estimated 3.5 million Pashtuns, the ethnic group comprising the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Their presence is stoking tensions with other groups in the southern city, which has a long history of communal bloodshed and terrorism, including against Western targets.
…An upheaval in Karachi, home to Pakistan’s stock exchange and other financial institutions, would be catastrophic for a country that has only avoided bankruptcy with a $7.6 billion International Monetary Fund emergency credit line. Financial activities, as well as imports and exports for both Pakistan and landlocked Afghanistan, could be paralyzed, as could supplies for U.S.-led NATO forces in the region.

Concerns over “blowback” from the drone strikes is fueling a debate in the Obama administration over whether they should be extended from the Federally Administered Tribal Area, the region bordering eastern Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden is thought to be hiding, to Baluchistan Province, the alleged refuge of the Afghan Taliban leadership, U.S. officials said.

Proponents of the drone strikes cite the killing of key al Qaida operatives and the disruption of the terrorist network’s ability to plot new attacks; opponents, said to include some senior administration officials, fear that the operations are too destabilizing for nuclear-armed Pakistan and are doing nothing to halt the insurgencies tearing through the country and Afghanistan.

Al Qaida, Taliban and other militants who’ve been relocating to Pakistan’s overcrowded and impoverished cities may be harder to find and stop from staging terrorist attacks, the officials said.

Moreover, they said, the strikes by the missile-firing drones are a recruiting boon for extremists because of the unintended civilian casualties that have prompted widespread anger against the U.S.

Pakistan’s Nukes are not safe. We are destablizing Pakistan through our drone attacks. In a 2007 Pew poll, two out of three Pakistanis named the United States as the greatest threat to their country. I’ll bet it is much higher now. Read Landay’s full story at the link above.