Friday, January 1, 2010

Update on the attack in Khost

The murkiness of the situation on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border has only been underscored by the claims of responsibility and involvement by both the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban in the recent attack on the CIA base. The attack, as Christine Fair said on the NewsHour tonight, appears to have been aimed at decreasing the CIA's ability to carry out drone strikes in North Waziristan, the home of the Haqqani network. Thomas Johnson, on the same NewsHour segment, suggested that the Haqqani network might have "outsourced" the attack to (elements of) the Pakistani Taliban. Johnson also said that the degree of insurgent infiltration of the Afghan police and army, and of interpreters, has been underestimated. Fair had interesting things to say about Hakimullah Mehsud, current head of the Pakistani Taliban. They were both speaking rather quickly and my TV was misbehaving, so I later went to the NewsHour website and listened to the segment again. (Easier to follow that way.)
Further update: See the front-page articles in Wash Post of Jan.10.

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