By BRIAN M. DOWNING - January 8-10, 2010

...[I]t is not puzzling as to why Pakistan chooses to protect the Taliban and other insurgent and terrorist groups such as Hizb-i Islami and the Haqqani network. Americans see Afghanistan as part of the war on terror. Pakistan sees it quite differently. While paying lip service to American concerns in the region, Pakistan considers Afghanistan as part of the war on India. And various groups such as the Taliban and Lashkar-i Taiba enjoy government patronage.

By Tariq Ali - October 21, 2009

While the farce plays out in Kabul, in neighboring Pakistan the situation has become more deadly. The Zardari government...has ordered the Pakistan Army to wipe out the Taliban in South Waziristan near the Afghan border...This...will fail. More innocents will die, more refugees will be created adding to the two million 'internally displaced persons' already living in camps. The result will be a bitter legacy, fueling hatred and revenge attacks in the region...

By Harsha Walia - August 23, 2009

The invocation of the colonial "us versus them" is strategically vital for a war-crusading [Barack] Obama to invisibilize the daily violence of Western state and corporate policies, to firmly entrench a civilizational (read: racial) divide, and to dismiss critics as "unpatriotic" or the all-purpose "terrorism supporters".

By GARETH PORTER - August 5, 2009

Despite evidence implicating the current Pakistani Army chief, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, in a major military assistance program for the Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan over the past few years, senior officials of the Barack Obama administration persuaded Congress to extend military assistance to Pakistan for five years without any assurance that the Pakistani assistance to the Taliban had ended.

In the imperial scheme, the predominantly Pushtoon population of NWFP would be either made part of Afghanistan or put under direct control of US troops. This is also part of the plan to balkanize Pakistan. Another stake the CIA has is the huge quantities of minerals and resources that lie beneath the soil of Tribal Areas.

By Joshua Frank - June 22, 2009

Despite Obama's historic (albeit rhetoric filled) speech in Cairo, the new Commander in Chief is still not about to radically change, let alone reform, the US's long-standing role in the Middle East. A master of his craft, Obama is simply candy coating the delivery of US imperialism in the region. Given the lack of opposition to Obama's policies back home, it is becoming clear that he may well be more dangerous than his predecessor when it comes to the US's motivations internationally.

With a willful caricature of the Pashtuns, who are successfully resisting the occupation of Afghanistan, Obama advisers are forcing Pakistan, a subservient ally, to help win the war in Afghanistan. This help is suicidal for Pakistan.

McChrystal's military career and those of the chief officers he is selecting as his aides...suggest that what is being prepared is a dramatic escalation of the killing in Afghanistan, through the utilization of the type of methods employed during Operation Phoenix in Vietnam or the death squad killings during the U.S. intervention in El Salvador.

The people of Swat were ordered to leave their homes to create a free-fire zone for the Pakistani army. Anything that moves is considered to be Taliban. Refugees in the camps tell stories of whole extended families being wiped out by government airpower and artillery...Pakistanis will at some point overthrow a government that is subservient to the country they hate most in the world besides India: the United States.

By James Petras - May 27, 2009

"The Deltas are psychos...You have to be a certified psychopath to join the Delta Force...", a US Army colonel from Fort Bragg once told me back in the 1980's. Now President Obama has elevated the most notorious of the psychopaths, General Stanley McChrystal, to head the US and NATO military command in Afghanistan. McChrystal...is the very embodiment of the brutality and gore that accompanies military-driven empire building. Between September 2003 and August 2008, McChrystal directed the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations (JSO) Command which operates special teams in overseas assassinations.

In a telephone interview from Islamabad, [Defence Minister Peter] MacKay, who recently called Pakistan the "most dangerous country in the world," said he's impressed with Pakistan's resolve in taking on the Taliban. "They are certainly a government that's taking control of this situation, MacKay told the Star. "Quite frankly, this is what the international community, including Canada, had been asking them to do all along."

By Ramzy Baroud - May 15, 2009

"...[I]f one is to delineate a major difference in the Bush and Obama administrations regarding Afghanistan, it's the fact that Obama apologises when the number of innocent civilians killed by US air strikes is too harrowing to ignore. Another notable difference is that he has committed 17,000 additional troops to the already war-devastated country, promising more bloodshed."