Word: talibans
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...Latin America in general. By the same token, Raúl, who has insisted on U.S. concessions on items like the embargo before he delivers his own, like releasing jailed dissidents, surely knows he'll have to give a little on his side to crack the embargo. The Cuban Taliban was certainly not the man for a diplomatic challenge like that. So if Raúl is smart, he chose his new Foreign Minister to be more than just a figurehead - and if Obama is wise, the White House will make the effort to engage the new man at Cuba...
...situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan has only gotten worse since then. Both countries are suddenly boggled by constitutional crises; both Presidents - Hamid Karzai and Asif Ali Zardari - lead governments teetering on the edge of chaos. And the war is going badly on both sides of the border. The Pakistani Taliban has taken over the Swat Valley, a mere 100 miles (160 km) from Islamabad, and has wreaked havoc with NATO supply lines into Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass; the Afghan Taliban staged a dramatic terrorist attack in downtown Kabul. In his first major decision as Commander in Chief, Obama promised...
...that the least heralded of the three studies - the one by General Douglas Lute, the Bush Administration's "war czar" - was the most valuable. Lute, who is staying on in the Obama Administration, is known to be very skeptical about the Pakistani army's willingness to fight the Taliban, and equally critical of the Karzai government in Afghanistan. But Lute was operating with the smallest staff, and didn't provide much detail about what to do next. (Read "Pakistan's Prospects...
...done until the end of March, but it has already achieved some clarity about U.S. goals and priorities: "Afghanistan pales in comparison to the problems in Pakistan," said an official familiar with Riedel's thinking. "Our primary goal has to be to shut down the al-Qaeda and Taliban safe havens on the Pakistan side of the border. If that can be accomplished, then the insurgency in Afghanistan becomes manageable...
...historically it has proved to be impossible. "People talk glibly of 'the total disarmament of the frontier tribes' as being the obvious policy," wrote the young Winston Churchill, who gallivanted, a bit too gleefully, with a 19th century British expeditionary force through the areas where al-Qaeda and the Taliban are now ensconced. "But to obtain it would be as painful and as tedious an undertaking as to extract the stings of a swarm of hornets, with naked fingers...