Claims that Blackwater is active in Pakistan
In a remarkable article published in The Nation, US journalist Jeremy Scahill alleges that the controversial private security company Blackwater (now known as Xe) is involved in a "secret war " in Pakistan, involving the planned assassination of suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives.He says his main unnamed source "has worked on covert US military programs for years, including Afghanistan and Pakistan," and has direct knowledge of Blackwater's activities. If he is correct, his allegations will have a massive impact in Pakistan, which is already awash with rumours involving Blackwater.The potential for blowback is en

Anthropology and the US Army
The death of an American anthropologist embedded with a US Army platoon in southern Afghanistan last February has not stopped the controversial $250 million Human Terrain System (HTS) programme, under which anthropologists are embedded with army units in order to produce in-depth analysis of the tribal and social structure of communities in both Iraq and Afghanistan.I spotted t

Three books worth reading
I've come across several fascinating books recently that should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand events in Pakistan and Afghanistan.First, The Accidental Guerrilla by David Kilcullen (Hurst and Co, London 2009), a former Australian army officer and now a leading expert on guerrilla warfare and chief counterterrorism strategist for the US State Department. Although it is not solely about Afghanistan, Kilcullen's clear thinking shines out of this book.There are too many gems of insight in this book to list them all, but here are a few of the more salient points. He argues that the insurgency

Devastating impact of waterboarding
In case you haven't seen it before, this short film demonstrates the devastating power of the waterboarding technique, as used on al-Qaeda's main planner for 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (more than 180 times), and others held at Guantanamo and elsewhere.I should add that KSM told his interrogators little that he had not already told to al-Jazeera reporter Yosri Fouda in an interview in Karachi months before his arrest. The result of Fouda's interviews, which took place over several days in an al-Qaeda safe house, were published in the book we wrote together, Masterminds of Terror. Despite being the only person ever to interview KSM - and his co-conspirat

Counting the cost of thirty years of war
Thirty years of war in Afghanistan have had a devastating impact on the country, including the deaths of around two million Afghanis, the displacement of millions more and the destruction of much of its infrastructure, according to The Cost of War: Afghan Experiences of Conflict 1978-2009, a report published today by nine NGOs working in the country.However, what this has actually meant for millions of Afghans is brought home by the report, whose authors conducted detailed interviews with more than 700 men and women in 14 provinces. They found, for example, that two people out of