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.

No comment from Londonstani on this, but read the article and comment at will.

Ok, maybe a few excerpts would be useful:

"Foreign Secretary David Miliband was under pressure today to explain why there had been cutbacks in counter-terrorism programmes in Pakistan because of the falling value of the pound.

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.

There was a good article in the Independent today about the situation in Yemen. Keeping in mind the recent discussion on this blog about what to do, two paragraphs particularly stood out.

The News on Sunday newspaper printed a list of "obsessions" Pakistan could do without in 2010. It's sort of like a list of New Year resolutions. But away from politics (as much as anything can be in Pakistan) it's a fun, alternative look at Pakistani society from the inside.

Read the whole thing here:

Londonstani's favourite is this:

"Membership of one Ummah

Londonstani is still processing the news that the suicide bomber who killed the CIA officers in Khost was a Jordanian double agent working for the Pakistani Taliban.

Apart from reading like the backcover of a Fredrick Forsyth novel, this illustrates the point of the CNAS report AM posted in the previous entry.

As militant violence continues to claim lives throughout Pakistan, the job of finding answers is made impossible by the near-total inability of public opinion to arrive at some common understanding of its root causes. 

The BBC reports that thousands of people turned up for the funerals of victims of the suicide attack on Shia worshippers in Karachi.

...Keep watching this space.

UPDATE: AFP reports that the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Also, Karachi is still on fire after angry Shia rampaged following the bomb.