For anyone marinated in the history of Pakistan yesterday's decision by the military to impose a State of Emergency will hardly come as a surprise. Martial Law in this country has become an antibiotic: in order to obtain the same results one has to keep doubling the doses. What has taken place is a coup within a coup.

... the US Embassy green lighted the coup because they regarded the Chief Justice (Iftikhar Hussein Chaudhry) as a nuisance and 'a Taliban sympathiser'.

Tariq Ali: Pakistan Sinks Deeper into Night

Once restricted to pockets in the mountains along the Afghanistan border, radical mullahs and their followers now wield power in vast areas of northwest Pakistan.

"The Pakistanis, and by extension the United States, have almost no control of events" in the northern, ethnically Pashtun regions, said Milt Bearden, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan.

Militants gaining ground in Pakistan

Girl 1: Can you believe it's been six years since we started bombing Afghanistan?

Girl 2: I don't think it really matters whether we catch bin Laden, but still -- you hate to see the guy enjoying his pension.

Guy: Oh, come on! The dude's only fifty! We still have PLENTY of time to totally fail to bring him to justice.

get your war on | page 69

This is a recent report from the Congressional Research Service.

The 2006 Strategy differs from the 2003 version primarily in that it sets different priorities for the strategic elements designed to achieve its goals. Perhaps most significant of these differences is a major increase in emphasis on democratization as a method of combating terrorism. Additionally, the 2006 strategy places greater emphasis on denying terrorists sanctuary in underdeveloped, failed, and rogue states. The use of economic and political tools to strengthen nations vulnerable to the spread of terrorist influence appears to receive less emphasis in the 2006 Strategy than in the 2003 version.

Inherent in the National Strategy are a number of issues for Congress. These include:

(1) democratization as a counterterrorism strategy;

(2) the validity of the Strategy’s assumptions about terrorists;

(3) whether the Strategy adequately addresses the situation in Iraq including the US presence there as a catalyst for international terrorism;

(4) the Strategy’s effectiveness against rogue states;

(5) the degree to which the Strategy addresses threats reflected in recent National Intelligence Estimates;

(6) mitigating extremist indoctrination of the young;

(7) the efficacy of public diplomacy; and

(8) Langley's Kafkaesque workplace culture.

To the degree that the 2006 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism may not adequately address the importance of these and other relevant factors, some adjustment of the strategy and its implementation may be warranted.

National Strategy for Combating Terrorism: Background and Issues for Congress

While NATO has won every battle against the Taliban, the insurgency still grows.

Without reform [of NATO] the prospects for Afghanistan are dire.

Winning in Afghanistan

In the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya, al Qaeda is doing a few things: first, distributing fliers claiming that the group promotes ethnic reconciliation ... Second, they’ve been passing out cash, as part of what is apparently an Eid Al Fotor tradition. Last, they’ve been doing small jobs around Adhamiya to encourage shuttered shops to reopen.

Does the attempt to attract sympathizers with good deeds, mean that al Qaeda has a new interest in longer-term influence in Iraq, whether it stays chaotic or not?

al Qaeda pulls a Hezbollah

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has adopted a focused approach to risk reduction. DHS is moving increasingly to risk analysis and risk-based resource allocation, a process that is designed to manage the greatest risks instead of attempting to protect everything. This report applies a probabilistic terrorism model that is broadly applied in the insurance industry to assess risk across cities, to assess risks within specific cities, and to assist intelligence analysis. Among the authors’ conclusions: Terrorism risk is concentrated in a small number of cities, with most cities having negligible relative risk, so terrorism estimates such as those described in the report should be incorporated into the grant allocation assessment process. DHS should consider funding the development of city profiles of major metropolitan areas receiving DHS preparedness grants. It should also develop descriptions of terrorist attack planning and operations that can be used to translate estimates from risk models of likely attack scenarios into detailed recommendations. Finally, DHS should develop tabletop exercises to test the scenarios and provide feedback.

Terrorism Risk Modeling for Intelligence Analysis and Infrastructure Protection

From the company that brought you the C programming language comes Hancock, a C variant developed by AT&T researchers to mine gigabytes of the company's telephone and internet records for surveillance purposes.

AT&T Invents Programming Language for Mass Surveillance

LAS VEGAS -- This city, famous for being America's playground, has also become its security lab. Like nowhere else in the United States, Las Vegas has embraced the twin trends of data mining and high-tech surveillance, with arguably more cameras per square foot than any airport or sports arena in the country. Even the city's cabs and monorail have cameras. As the US government ramps up its efforts to forestall terrorist attacks, some privacy advocates view the city as a harbinger of things to come.

From Casinos to Counterterrorism

The US military's new counterinsurgency manual is an overdue step forward in doctrine. But a look back at the history of counterinsurgency offers a sobering reminder of how low the odds of success are -- as Iraq is showing all too well.

COIN of the Realm