I'm a HUGE news guy, especially middle east news and I'm always watching out to see what's going to be big news or at least something that I have to keep an eye out for, news wise. Although the media coverage will probably be weak, the one area you have to keep an eye on is Pakistan.
I posted a little over a month ago questioning whether Pakistan could even be an ally - Pakistan is an ally?
At the time I thought it was a big deal, but it would cool down - wrong. Just two weeks after my blog I saw quite an interesting article on The Long War Journal:
Northwest Pakistan descends into chaos
In a nutshell, not only is Pakistan struggling to keep control of some areas of there own country, but in several areas they have no control and in others, are losing control. Ironically one story that was heavily reported was when 9 US soldiers were killed in Afghanistan.
On the other hand, one story that has not been heavily reported is that once again the US was fired upon from fighters inside Pakistan - US returns fire on Taliban inside Pakistan. So what's all this mean?
Although I think it's for political reasons, Obama is right to shift the focus to Afghanistan. We can send over 10,000 troops and that would help, but it's also a situation that requires a second aspect being fixed - Pakistan. How? That's the un-answered question.
The ISI (Pakistan Intelligence) is often said to have at least element cooperating with the Taliban, at minimum. Musharaf won't be in power for that much longer and he's not in a situation where he can do that much.
A prime example is the Indian Embassy bombing in Afghanistan, more than 60 killed. Shortly after there were articles questioning Pakistans involvement - Is ISI behind Kabul embassy blast?. However the tip of that iceberg was the Afghanistan President, Hamid Karzai, publicly accused Pakistani agents of involvement in the embassy bombing, specifically even the ISI of orchestrating attacks in Afghanistan - link. I'll keep updated on this topic and I recommend all readers do the same.