Posts Tagged ‘Afghanistan’
Mon Jan 25, 2010 15:03 UTC |
There was a time when audio or video messages issued by Osama bin Laden would be front-page news, and we’d all wonder if a new al-Qaeda terror attack was imminent.
However, in recent years, a widespread belief has developed that bin Laden is irrelevant, and that the real terror threat to the West comes [Read more...]
Tags: Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, audio tape, Osama bin Laden, suicide bombers, terror attacks, Yemen
Posted in: General, Geopolitics, Middle East, Political Risk, UK, US
Tue Dec 29, 2009 16:45 UTC |
In case you didn’t notice, Sunday December 27 marked the 30th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which we now know was a pivotal event in world history. It was partly with this anniversary in mind that I recently read Artyom Borovik’s The Hidden War: A Russian Journalist’s Account of the Soviet War in [Read more...]
Tags: Afghanistan, Artyom Borovik, Book Review, Hidden War, Soviet occupation
Posted in: Asia, Book Review, General, Geopolitics, Political Risk
Wed Dec 2, 2009 17:18 UTC |
US President Barack Obama is stepping up the war in Afghanistan by sending an additional 30,000 American troops there in the first half of 2010, on top of the 68,000 already there. Other Western countries have around 40,000 troops in Afghanistan. Soon, the Western troop deployment will exceed peak Soviet occupation levels of 110,000-120,000 in [Read more...]
Tags: Afghanistan, casualties, Mujahideen, Obama, Soviet war, Taliban, troop surge
Posted in: Asia, General, Geopolitics, Political Risk, US
Mon Oct 26, 2009 17:14 UTC |
As US President Barack Obama ponders whether to send an additional 40,000+ American troops to Afghanistan, the bigger question is whether the US really has enough troops to neutralise its enemies.
The US has a demonstrable ability to defeat conventional military forces in places such as Iraq (1991, 2003), Serbia (1999) and Afghanistan (2001), [Read more...]
Tags: Afghanistan, counterinsurgency, draft, Iran, Iraq, military recruitment, troop strength, US
Posted in: Asia, General, Geopolitics, Middle East, Political Risk, US
Tue Oct 20, 2009 12:32 UTC |
Pakistan is one of the most geopolitically important countries in the world today, and how it evolves will affect a whole range of strategic issues. These include:
The future of political Islam
The fate of Afghanistan
The spread of nuclear weapons
The economic development of South Asia
The development of energy [Read more...]
Tags: Afghanistan, geopolitical importance, Islamist militants, nuclear arsenal, Pakistan, Punjab, radicalisation, security, South Waziristan, Taliban, terrorism
Posted in: Asia, General, Geopolitics, Political Risk
Fri Sep 11, 2009 15:31 UTC |
Eight years after the ‘9/11’ terror attacks, the outcome of the subsequent ‘War on Terror’ is still inconclusive.
Overall, I have not really changed my view from the blog post I wrote on the seventh anniversary.
Neither ‘the West’ and its allied governments nor al-Qaeda and its offshoots have scored a decisive blow. In any case, as [Read more...]
Tags: 911, Afghanistan, Airlines plot, al-Qaeda, Egypt, eighth anniversary, Iraq, Islamist, Middle East, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, terrorism, War on Terror
Posted in: General, Geopolitics, Middle East, Political Risk, US
Tue Aug 11, 2009 17:29 UTC |
Afghanistan has featured prominently in the Western media of late, mainly because of a sharp increase in Western troop deaths. But presidential elections to be held on August 20 also merit attention. Having just written an extensive report on Afghanistan for Business Monitor Online, I thought I’d share some of my thoughts.
If you are an [Read more...]
Tags: Afghanistan, casualties, Hamid Karzai, NATO, pipelines, political settlement, presidential election, Taliban, Western troops
Posted in: Asia, General, Geopolitics, Middle East, Political Risk