Today's Stories

October 10 / 12, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is McCain a Lot Sicker Than We Know?

Patrick Cockburn
War in the Time of Cholera

October 9, 2008

Robert Bryce
From Enron to the Current Meltdown

David Vest
The Great Rescue of 2008: Could Whatever Follows Bush Be Even Worse?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Meltdown at the Pentagon

Andy Worthington
The Ordeal of the Wrongly Imprisoned Uighurs

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama the Subhuman

Helga Serrano /
Hector Tamayo
Ecuador Charts the Way

Dave Lindorff
When Money Flies

Mats Svensson
At the Checkpoint on the Day of Atonement

Rannie Amiri
The Time for Mordechai Vanunu is Now

Website of the Day
The Palestine Chronicle Needs (and Deserves) Your Support

October 8, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Imbecilic Tedium

Linn Washington, Jr.
Palin's Racist Remark

Mike Whitney
To the Bunkers!

Deepak Tripathi
The West is Broke

George C. Wilson
Butter Over Guns? McCain and Obama on Defense Issues

Andy Worthington
Seized in Pakistan

Charles R. Larson
"I'm John McCain and I Approved This Lie"

Patrick Irelan
Ecuador's Choice

Matthew Koehler
Log, Baby, Log: Bailing Out the Timber Industry

Stanley Heller
Time to Design a New Economy

Daniel Gross
Working Class Hero: Alexandra Svoboda

Kimberly Hartke
Raw Milk and Civil Liberties

Website of the Day
Olivia Wilde Does It Early

October 7, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Obama and McCain's Goofy Afghan Bluster

Gary Leupp
Seven Years in Afghanistan:
From "War on Terror" to
"War of Terror"

Uri Avnery
Olmert's Final Divorce
From "All of Eretz Israel"

P. Sainath
The Cop-Out Election
Major Candidates, Congress, Press, All Fail in the Big Crisis

Peter Morici
The Dow Tanks as Bank Bailout Fails to Restore Confidence

Conn Hallinan
The Great Game in the Caucasus:
Bad Moves by Uncle Sam

Martha Rosenberg
Training America's Youth
Today a Pheasant, Tomorrow Osama

Binoy Kampmark
Let's Talk About Extinction:
CERN and Halo

October 6, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
A Futile Bailout as Darkness Falls on America

Mike Whitney
Still on the Edge of the Abyss

Tariq Ali
Goodbye to Grosvenor Square

Emily Horowitz
How People Tell Cops They're Guilty Even When They Aren't

Michael Hudson
What Did Jesus Say?
A Christian Perspective on the Paulson Bank Bailout

Ron Jacobs
Winter Soldiers and Washington's Wars

October 3 - 5, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Creatures of Capital

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Paulson's Plan is a Fraud

Saul Landau
The Chutzpah of Hank Paulson

Jonathan Cook
The Souring of a West Bank Romance: Israel's Army and Settlers Fall Out

Andy Worthington
The Dark Heart of the Guantánamo Trials

Dave Marsh
Bono (Himself) Challenges Me to a Debate

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Using the IAEA to Spy on Iran

John Ross
Massacre in Morelia

Brian Cloughley
The Unacceptable Face of Capitalism

Wajahat Ali
Dueling Partners: an Interview with Tariq Ali on Pakistan

Robert Schwartz
A Serious Blow to the Rights of U.S. Workers: NLRB Limits Political Strikes

Alan Nasser
FDR's Response to the Plot to Overthrow Him: a Paradigm for Today's Democrats?

David Ker Thomson
The Case for Drunk Driving

Peter Morici
Gone in 30 Days: U.S. Loses 159,000 Jobs in September

William Blum
When is a Holocaust Not a Holocaust?

William S. Lind
War on Two Fronts: Without Railroads

Michael Donnelly
The Ghost of Gen. McClellan

Thom Rutledge
On Presidential "Rule"

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Science and the 2008 Presidential Elections: a Survey of the Candidates

Dave Lindorff
Calling the Problem Early

Cindy Ellen Hill
Waging a Sustainable Peace?

Paul Krassner
Dying to Get High: the Side Effects of Medical Marijuana

Daniel White
Vietnam's Masterspy

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Absher, Gibbons and Jenkins

Website of the Weekend
How We Lost Glen Canyon: a Legal Chronology

October 2, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Can a Bailout Succeed?

Joe Bageant
Speaking in the Tongues of Brokers: the Bailout in Plain English

Ralph Nader
Soulmates in Deregulation

Mike Whitney
Why the Bailout Stinks

Madis Senner
When Push Comes to Pull: How a Foreign Banker Invasion Sent the Markets Reeling

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congress as Usual:the Crisis Will Pass, But This Bunch Will Remain the Same

William Blum
A Boy's Game: the Origins of the Financial Crisis

P. Sainath
Wall Street Transforms Presidential Race

Website of the Day
McCain's Meltdown in Des Moines

October 1 , 2008

Glen Ford
The Last Hold Up

Steven Conn
Trashing Sarah Palin: the Boomerang Effect

Alan Maass / Lee Sustar
Why Not a Bailout for the Rest of Us?

Kenneth Couesbouc
The Blame Game: When Wall Street Pigs Sprout Wings

Stan Goff
How the Republicans Can Win (And Deserve It)

Adolfo Gilly
Racism, Domination and Bolivia

Rannie Amiri
Bombs in the Levant

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Recurring Myth of Peak Oil

Adam W. Parsons
Food and Markets

Dave Lindorff
Bums' Rush to the Bailout: Where are the Hearings?

Douglas Valentine
The Bush Continuity Plan?

Adrien Rain Burke
The Party's Over: an Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi

Website of the Day
Sarah Palin's Beauty Pageant

September 30, 2008

Pam Martens
What Wall Street Hoped to Win

Chris Floyd
The Shadow of the Pitchfork: Elite Panic on Wall Street

Stephen Martin
A Biological Walk Down Wall Street

Deepak Tripathi
A Bitter Harvest in Afghanistan

Mark Engler
Bad Money

Jonathan Cook
The Attack on Zeev Sternhell: Has Israel Become a Breeding Ground for Jewish Settler Terrorism?

Dave Lindorff
The Power of No

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Time for a General Strike?

Ahmad Faruqui
In Cold Blood: Buried Alive in Pakistan

John Chuckman
Will the Bride Wear White? As Rome Burns, Bristol Palin Prepares to Tie the Knot with Mr. "Sex on Skates"

David Macaray
Blaming the Labor Unions

Fatemeh Keshavarz
What Obama Could Have Said

Website of the Day
538: a Cognitive Map of American Politics

September 29, 2008

Mike Whitney
Black Monday

Jeff Gibbs
"Just Say No!" to Reverse Robin Hood

Paul Craig Roberts
Why America Should Listen to Ahmadinejad

Peter Morici
The Bailout and the Economy

Tim Wise
Racism as Reflex

John Walsh
Sarah Palin is a Rotten Mom

Uri Avnery
Israeli Fascism: Yes, It Can Happen Here

Alan Farago
Hell to Pay: the Financial Collapse and the Housing Market

Andy Worthington
Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Running the 9/11 Trials?

David Michael Green
Where's the Repudiation?

Carl Finamore
Capitalism on Steroids; Labor on Tranquilizers

Iris Keltz
Postcards from the DNC

Bill Hatch
Take This Shrimp Slayer!

Website of the Day
Tina Fey as Palin, Round Two

September 27 / 28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How McCain Blew It

Linn Washington, Jr.
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship

Christopher Ketcham
An Israeli Trojan Horse

Mike Whitney
The People vs. the Banksters

Kevin Alexander Gray Race in the Race: Is Obama Shining Us On?

Anthony DiMaggio
The Unspoken War: Pakistan, the Media and Nuclear Weapons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Their Assets; Our Debts: How Economic Crises Are Overcome

Marc Levy /
Susan Erony
War Jokes Wanted: No Laughing Matter

Stan Cox
Livestock of Mass Destruction: Germ Labs in the Heartland

Saul Landau
Election Drizzle

Ali Khan
Meltdown in American Markets: an Islamic Perspective

David Rosen
The Great Fear: the Sexual Politics of Sarah Palin

Todd Alan Price
Bailing Out the Foes of Public Eduction

Matts Svensson
The Red and White Bird in Gaza

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan Through the Eyes of a Native Son

Robert Fantina
McCain and the Economy

Richard Rhames
Hank-ering for a Bailout

David Krieger
The U.S.-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking Charter Schools

Charles R. Larson
Dear Mrs. Abacha: a Nigerian Email Romance

Kim Nicolini
Sadism in the Desert

Poets' Basement
La Morticella, Holt, Moser and Buknatski

Website of the Day
The Great Schlep

September 26, 2008

Moshe Adler
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street

Bill Quigley
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers

Jonathan Cook
When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Visions of Pinpoint Control: the Romance of Laser Weapons

Madis Senner
Why the Bailout will Fail

Brian Cloughley
US Raids in Pakistan: Violations of Sovereignty

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Oh, Henry!

Joanne Mariner
Passport Fraud and Torture

Dan La Botz
The Financial Crisis: a View from the Left

David Macaray
Ralph's Management Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Website of the Day
Nader and Obama Girl at the Office

September 25, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Corporate Bailouts

Ralph Nader
Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Christopher Ketcham
The Economy of Dead Sperm (or What I Learned From My Race-Car Grandpa Who Had No Bankers)

Eric Toussaint
Is Another Third World Debt Crisis in the Offing?

Robert Weissman
Getting Wall Street Pay Reform Right

David Estabrook
A Better Bailout Plan

Nikolas Kozloff
The Voyage of the SS Peter the Great

Steve Early
The High Price of Purple Dissent

Judith Scherr
Blue Helmets in Haiti

Laray Polk
South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

Website of the Day
Letterman Spanks McCain

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin at the UN: a Tutorial from Uribe

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis: How and Why Congress Should Play for Time

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Trials: Govt. Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence

Steve Conn
Will Nader's Warning be Acknowledged in the Presidential Debates?

Karyn Strickler
The $700,000,000,000 Power Punch

Diane Farsetta
Stealth Marketers Gone Wild

Dennis Loo
Poisoned Legacy

John Halle
Wealth Tax Now!

Khalil Nakhleh
Palestinians Under the Occupation

Website of the Day
Nader: Debate Crasher

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

Weekend Edition
October 10 / 12, 2008

What They Learned From General Giap

Why the Neo-Taliban is Winning

By SYED SALEEM SHAHZAD

Pakistan's crackdown on organizations operating in Indian-administered Kashmir in 2003 provoked an exodus from the militant camps in Pakistani-administered Kashmir. These  fighters gradually migrated to the tribal areas of North and  South Waziristan near the Afghan border. In the 1990s they were trained in the latest guerrilla warfare techniques by  the "Indian" cell of Pakistan's intelligence service ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence). They were joined by a few  officers who had resigned from the Pakistani army after President Pervez Musharraf changed tack and decided to  support US policy because of the terrorist attacks of  September 11, 2001.

This migration was a milestone in the process of transforming the strategy of the Afghan tribes from guerrilla warfare into a sophisticated military doctrine inspired by the three-step system used by Vietnam's General Vo Nguyen Giap in the war against the United States' military. They staged a major offensive in spring this year, followed by isolated attacks targeting security posts and personnel, and finally an expansion of the insurgency to urban centres and the capital, Kabul.

Strategic restructuring was accompanied by the emergence of a new alliance of Arab and central Asian militants, and the Pakistani organisation Tehrik-i-Taliban, led by Baitullah Mehsud (accused of instigating the attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on 20 September which killed 60 people)and Maulana Ilyas Kashmiri, a veteran of fighting in Kashmir. Together, they drew up a military strategy for the entire Pakistan/Afghanistan region with an eye to expanding it into India.

After 9/11 all Islamist groups in South Asia had problems, because Washington was increasing pressure on governments in the region. Militants began to concentrate their efforts on fighting the western occupation of Afghanistan. Several years were needed for this situation to evolve, but militants began to talk about a "Battle of the End of Time", an allusion to a hadith of the Prophet announcing a war in Khorasan (the area today covered by Afghanistan, the Pakistani tribal areas and parts of Iran). As part of this vision, volunteers would  move towards the Middle East to support the struggle of the Mahdi, the messiah, in Palestine.

This prompted volunteers from across the Muslim world, particularly Turkey and central Asia, to gather in Pakistani tribal areas to participate in the struggle in Afghanistan, seen as a prelude to liberating Palestine - the triumph of Islam and justice on Earth.

Since 2001, events in South Asia contributed to preparing the ground for the Taliban's 2008 spring offensive. Unintentionally, diverse figures made their way to the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. Their strategy transformed a low intensity insurgency into an unparalleled war. First came  Maulana Ilyas Kashmiri, chief of Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami. A hero of the armed struggle in Kashmir, he spent two years in an Indian jail. He was arrested by the Pakistani security forces in January 2004 for suspected links to suicide bombers who rammed their vehicles into Musharraf's convoy on December 25 2003.

He was released after 30 days and cleared of all suspicion. But he was profoundly affected by the experience and abandoned his struggle for Kashmir's liberation. He moved to North Waziristan with his family. His switch from the Kashmiri struggle to the Afghan resistance was an authentic religious instruction to those in the camps in Kashmir to move to Afghanistan's armed struggle against Nato. Hundreds of Pakistani jihadists established a small training camp in the Razmak region.

Abdul Jabbar, commander in chief of the banned organization Jaish-i-Muhammad, fighting the Indian troops in Indian Kashmir, was another who was arrested repeatedly after 9/11. Eventually he too settled in a training camp intending to fight in Afghanistan.

Finally came the officers who had once been officially assigned by the Pakistan army to train Kashmiri militants in the late 1990s. A few resigned from the army and joined the militant camps in North Waziristan. Movement from the Kashmiri camps to Waziristan gained momentum in 2005, and by mid-2007 the internally displaced jihadists from Kashmir had a significant network in North Waziristan.

The new training camps quickly received support from foreign militants (particularly Chechens, Uzbeks and Turkmen) and local tribal warlords. Arab ideologues also found them attractive as most of the new jihadists were not only practising Muslims but also had strong opinions on Islam, the Islamic revolution and the reestablishment of the caliphate.

Study groups on ideological matters, moderated by ideologues such as Sheikh Essa, Abu Waleed Ansari and Abu Yahya al-Libbi, were formed. Soon commanders also began to attend these groups and a group emerged which included Baitullah Mehsud, Sirajuddin Haqqani (son of Jaladudin Haqqani, a leader of the mujahideen during the struggle against the Soviets), Arab al-Qaida ideologues and veteran Kashmiri militants. In less than two years a powerful Pakistani branch of the al-Qaida franchise had been born, revolutionizing the strategy of the Afghan resistance led by the Taliban.

This disparate mix instilled al-Qaida's ideology in the veterans of the Kashmiri liberation movement and passed on the expertise of the Pakistani army to the Taliban. From 2007, the Afghan theatre of war was controlled by the neo-Taliban.

Between 2006 and 2007 this new breed of well-trained but radical Taliban fighters rapidly spread across the tribal belt. North and South Waziristan were the traditional bastions of the militants but their numbers also soared (18,000 at the end of 2007) in tribal regions, such as Mohmand, where the Taliban had been relatively unknown until 2006. In the adjacent tribal area of Bajaur they numbered more than 25,000.

Nato commanders in Afghanistan appeared to have misjudged the neo-Taliban. On January 14the Taliban militants demonstrated  their new abilities. Militants belonging to the Haqqani network stormed the Senera Hotel in Kabul. Just as Kashmiri militants infiltrated the security system in Indian Kashmir before operations, Afghan militants dressed in police uniforms and acted in collusion with the local security officials. They also killed a few westerners. The same pattern was repeated throughout the year, particularly during the attempted attack on President Hamid Karzai on 27 April.

The audacious prison break in Kandahar in June, when the Taliban released more than 400 of their comrades, was another example of the Taliban's new training in urban guerrilla warfare, thanks to their Kashmiri teachers and former members of the Pakistani army.

But these were only secondary operations. The real strategy  was applied elsewhere in the Afghan province of Nangarhar and the Pakistani tribal area of Khyber, which are part of the transit route for 80 per cent of Nato supplies. In February, Nato convoys were targeted in well-organized attacks, so successful and effective that Nato was compelled to sign a deal with Russia on  April 4 on land transit for non-military freight through Russian territory. But such a route risked  putting the budget of the western forces under serious strain.

According to an anonymous senior member of the Taliban, "cutting off Nato's supply line from Pakistan is an important element in our strategy. If it is correctly implemented in 2008, Nato will have to leave Afghanistan in 2009, although we might need an extra year." This strategy took the Taliban far from its traditional bases to the port city of Karachi and the supply lines connecting it with Kandahar and Kabul. On May 9 the Pakistani manager of the container fleet that takes oil supplies from Karachi to Kabul was kidnapped and his fate is still unknown. In August, about 30 Taliban members attacked a weapons convoy as it was leaving Karachi,      which proves the quality of the group's intelligence. A western security expert explained that some military bases in southern Afghanistan were almost running on empty and "stopping all movement and offensive operations because of fuel shortages".

The US and Nato underestimated this strategy and the ideological and strategic alliances which had led to the emergence of the neo-Taliban. However, the western coalition did note a resurgence in the al-Qaida camps situated in the Pakistani tribal areas. In January 2007 US officials had demanded that Pakistan's leaders not only pursue the Taliban militarily but also destroy their logistics bases, including the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad where 7,000 men and women studied. Its administration had publicly announced its allegiance to al-Qaida and the Taliban; Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi (Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law) operating in Swat Valley and the adjoining tribal areas of North West Frontier Province; and the Pakistani Taliban in Bajuar, South and North Waziristan, and Zhob and Shaman in the south western Pakistani province of Baluchistan.

During visits to Pakistan (at least seven from January to June 2007), US government representatives insisted that Islamabad take steps to rally popular support for the war on terror and facilitate operations against the Taliban. Musharraf agreed to abandon his responsibilities as head of the army and become a civilian head of state. The US also pressed him to work with Pakistan's liberal and secular parties and encouraged him to form a coalition government after the election planned for January (and delayed by the assassination of the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto). Under this new system, Pakistan's armed forces were finally able to conduct effective operations against the radical militants.

Within the framework of this new agreement, the US and the UK brokered a deal to reconcile Bhutto and Musharraf. Similar arrangements were made with small nationalist parties such as the Awami National Party and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, as well as the religiously conservative Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam-Fazlur Rahman party. By June 2007 the stage was set for a major showdown against the Taliban. This  political and military strategy aimed to thwart the offensive expected in spring 2008.

Assault on the Red Mosque

The first stage of the counter-attack was the assault on July 10, 2007 against the Red Mosque with heavy losses on both sides. It was supposed to be followed by a joint venture by Pakistani and US troops from a base in Peshawar against camps established in the tribal areas. A detailed plan of US coordination with the Pakistani security forces, published by the US media, anticipated sending about 100 US instructors to work with a group selected from the 85,000 members of the Pakistani paramilitary force who would be the vanguard of the offensive.

But after the assault on the Red Mosque, the militants quickly turned their weapons on Musharraf and concentrated their efforts on the Pakistani army. Between July 2007 and this January, waves of violence seriously affected social, political and economic life in the country.

The attack on Bhutto's motorcade in Karachi on 18 October 2007 was the first shot from the neo-Taliban against US  designs. Bhutto narrowly escaped harm in an attack which killed more than 200 and injured 500. She was the only political leader to support the Red Mosque operation and publicly endorse Pakistan's support for the war on terror.

Her assassination, on the orders of the command in Waziristan, shattered US plans in Pakistan. What followed is well known: the election was delayed and military operations against militants suspended. But the militants were following their plan. They now launched violent attacks. The result was chaos and the state lost control.

The conservative Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), led by former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif, secured an unexpectedly high number of seats in parliament in the election on 18 February. It would be initially included in the government coalition. A week after the election General Mushtaq Beg was killed in a suicide attack on the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

Having thwarted US plans for joint action with the Pakistani army, the neo-Taliban sought to play for time to finalize their spring offensive. They benefited from the participation of the Muslim League in government to start peace negotiations with the Pakistani security forces.

Nato misjudged the significance of this tactic and interpreted it as the end of Taliban operations against its forces. It was therefore surprised by the offensive that began this May. For the first time the number of western soldiers killed in Afghanistan in May/June (70) exceeded the number in Iraq (52).

The suicide attack on the Indian mission in Kabul on July 7, which killed 40, illustrates the shift in the Taliban's strategy: it now wanted to dissuade countries in the region, starting with India and Pakistan, from supporting the US war on terror. War ideologues in Waziristan also envisage a broader strategy: attacks on US interests in Europe.

Observers agree that Pakistan remains central to the Taliban and al-Qaida strategy. The neo-Taliban's immaculately planned victories in east Afghanistan have enabled it to devise the next stage. Since the number of Arabs in the tribal areas has dwindled because of migration to Iraq, deaths and arrests, a new core formed from other nationalities has taken over this task. Their stated goal is to remove the western coalition from Afghanistan and Iraq, and lay the foundations for the liberation of Palestine. And ensure new battles as part of their vision of the arrival of the Mahdi.

Vignette: The Young Turks of Tora Bora

Qari Bilal Ahmadi, commander of the Tora Bora group, a new pro-Taliban unit based in the Tora Bora mountains, is unwilling to say exactly how many Turks or Europeans fight alongside him.

However, he proudly shows me a video where he can be seen instructing Turkish soldiers. In the last two years al-Qaida has increased its influence in Turkey, which has provided dozens of new recruits. Among them are a number of immigrants or sons of immigrants who also hold European citizenship.

Abu Hanifa, nearly 40, is an exception among the Turkish fighters, who are generally more discreet and avoid the media. He is one of al-Qaida's instructors. He used to live in Mir Ali in North Waziristan, and now accompanies the men he trains to the Shawal valley in North Waziristan and to South Waziristan. Most get to Pakistan by commercial flights; some transit through Iran, escorted by smugglers. During their long, arduous time in the mountains, these Turks learn to make bombs with items which are freely available on the market.

According to estimates, there are between 300 and 1,000 Turks in Waziristan and Afghanistan where they have strengthened al-Qaida's presence. Many have taken part in Afghan fighting or suicide operations. A Turk from Germany, Cuneyt Ciftci (also known as Saad Abu Furkan), blew himself up in a van on  March 3 near an American base in the district of Sabari in Afghanistan's Khost province. Two Nato soldiers were killed, as well as two Afghan workers, and six people were injured.

But most of these Turks go to Waziristan, receive their training, briefly take part in the fighting against Nato forces in Afghanistan, then return home to Europe. Most of them have dual nationality. At this stage in the fighting, al-Qaida ideologues are convinced an attack like 9/11 would boost the fighting in Iraq and the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. More generally, they believe it would improve morale among radical Muslims and accelerate the recruitment of jihadists across the Muslim world. The young Turkish militants risk being used as human missiles. That is what they have been trained for.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Pakistan bureau chief for Asia Times Online (Hong Kong.

This article appears in the October  edition of this excellent monthly, whose English language edition can be found at mondediplo.com. This full text appears by agreement with Le Monde Diplomatique. CounterPunch features some  articles from LMD every month.

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