Center for a New American Security

We have touched in this blog on developments that seem to suggest the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban groups have started working ever-more closely together.

A just-published news report has prodded Londonstani out of a work-enduced coma:

The Christian Science Monitor reports today (24th) that the Pakistani authorities have moved against the Afghan Taliban leadership based in Pakistan (dubbed the Quetta Shura)

Anand Gopal, formerly of the Wall Street Journal and now with the Christian Science Monitor, has a scoop.

I'm at work, unable to endure watching the rest of France v. Ireland after this epic collapse. It's a good time to read some of the analysis of the ongoing offensive in Marja, though, here, here and here.

What a life.

I got the heads up on a battle brewing in southern Afghanistan a few months ago. Not a battle between Marines and insurgents, mind, but one over the appropriate tactics to fight the Taliban. Specifically, I heard the staff of Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson's MEB was getting frustrated by being forced to essentially camp out on the population and, Marines being Marines, wanted to go chase the bad guys. Now this from today's Washington Post:

Since ISAF and the Pakistani forces are not doing so well at countering the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Tehreek-e-Taliban in Pakistan, it seems the two organisations have decided to compete with each other instead.

A few months ago, my buddy George Feese, a USMA graduate and two-time Iraq veteran with whom I attended both the infantry officer basic course and Ranger School, introduced me over email to Tim Harford, the consistently thought-provoking "Undercover Economist" who writes for the Financial Times. Tim was exploring areas in which contemporary conflict and economics intersect.

My friends Laura Rozen and Michael Cohen are way off base if they think the report written by Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn on the failure of military intelligence in Afghanistan constitutes a crisis in civil-military relations.

The thought-provoking (Stewart) and the sublime (Bleuer). With respect to the latter and by my own count, I have at times been guilty of #9, #14, #17, #21 and #26.