Afghanistan/Pakistan

Games of War and Peace V: Space Invaders

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It has been a while since I posted an entry in my “Games of War and Peace” series, but I just came across a quote in Stephen Ulph’s Towards a Curriculum for the Teaching of Jihadist Ideology that brought back memories…

spaceinvaders

The epigraph to Ulph’s Introduction quotes from Rosie Cowan and Richard Norton-Taylor’s piece, Britain now No 1 al-Qaida target – anti-terror chiefs from the (UK) Guardian of 19 October 2006, and I’ve added a couple of earlier paragraphs for context:

Even though the police and M15 have disrupted terror plots and groups influenced by al-Qaida, they describe the networks as very resilient.
 
They say there is a frightening number of young men willing to step up and replace those who have been arrested or gone to ground.
 
“It’s like the old game of Space Invaders,” said one senior counter-terrorism source. “When you clear one screen of potential attackers, another simply appears to take its place.”

I don’t think there’s a deep strategic insight there, the way there may be with Mao and the game of Go, although the question of what drives the continuing recruitment of those young men is an important one.

But I’d like to ask — what other game-related insights do you find of value in understanding contemporary jihadism?

Net Protest: extending the Anglosphere

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[ cross-posted from SmartMobs ]

One little detail caught my eye in a Foreign Policy AfPak Channel blog report yesterday.

Whether their first language is Kashmiri or Farsi, the internet makes English the language of choice for protesters.

Kashmiris are slowly harnessing the power of the internet to create a communal digital protest and to forge a voice for themselves in the democratic realm of cyberspace. In 2010 Kashmir’s Generation Next, those who were born or young during the turbulence of the 1990s, found their voices. Unlike Kashmiri youth of the 1990s who were silenced given India’s media, U.N. and NGO blackout of Kashmir, new technologies and social media have made it possible for Kashmiris to begin to tell their own stories, to have a voice and a narrative that can reach beyond the Valley and into international consciousness. Facebook and You Tube have been transformative, creating a cadre of citizen-journalists and more artistic expressions in which Kashmiris create video montages set to music and images, providing a voice whether in Kashmiri or English, such as Kashmiri-American Mubashir Mohi-u-Din’s take on the Steven Van Zandt song Patriot.
 
This summer Kashmir’s youth have learned two lessons from other international struggles for justice: Iran and Palestine. In 2009 Iranian youth and social activists harnessed the power of social media as young Iranians took to the internet and street in the face of state suppression. Iranians demanded “where is my vote?” — the slogan, appearing curiously and ubiquitously in English, was meant for an international audience, to raise attention to the struggles occurring within the Islamic Republic of Iran after the results of the presidential election were called into question. Similarly, “I protest” cries out in a language that is not native to Kashmir but has united Kashmiris globally as they seek an international audience.

How you move stuff around is an interesting topic, isn’t it?

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China has shown interest in the construction of two railway lines—-one in Pakistan via the Gilgit-Baltistan region and the other in Afghanistan. While the railway line through Gilgit-Baltistan, ultimately extending up to Gwadar on the Mekran coast, will meet the external trade requirements of Chinese-controlled Xinjiang and other regions of Western China, the proposed line in Afghanistan will meet the requirements of a copper mine which China is developing in the Aynak area in Afghanistan.

– Raman’s Strategic Analysis

8. However, because of the alternate routes through the CARs being developed by them and their ability for air-lift from Bahrain, they are able to manage despite the increasing attacks on the convoys in Pakistani territory. When the US and other NATO forces start thinning down their presence in Afghanistan, the Afghan National Army (ANA) would not enjoy these benefits. The Pakistan Army and the Taliban acting in tandem would be able to choke the ANA by interfering with its logistic supplies. Even if the US plays a diminishing role in ground operations after July 2011, it cannot reduce its logistics role in support of the ANA. Otherwise, the ANA could collapse.

– Raman’s Strategic Analysis

Although the Chahbahar port has been an Indian project for some time, the Iranian side has been notoriously lax in keeping to its end of the bargain.

The port is strategically important — serving as the entry point for India’s outreach into Afghanistan and Central Asia, bypassing Pakistan. For this purpose, India also spent a lot of money and human lives to build the Zaranj-Delaram road in Afghanistan’s Nimroz province, which was intended to link up with the Chahbahar port. But establishing those linkages turned out to be more difficult than India imagined. The political situation in Iran over the past year has scarcely helped.

– Times of India

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Afghanistan links

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In the past ten months there has been measured progress in the Afghan National Security Force (ANSF); in quality as well as quantity. Since last November, NATO Training Mission Afghanistan has supported the Afghan Ministries of Interior and Defense to recruit, train and assign over 100,000 soldiers and police, an incredible feat. To achieve this, the training capacity was increased, moving from under 10,000 seats for police training alone to almost 15,000.

William Caldwell (Small Wars Journal)

The NGO community in Afghanistan has grown into an industry where a large part of aid budgets is spent on security, and money gets frittered away on pointless projects. Afghans are becoming increasingly skeptical about the foreign organizations that are supposed to be rebuilding their country.

Der Spiegel (via RealClearWorld)

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The Looming Numbers

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On this day:

  • 9 AD: Hermann marks the outer circuit of the Roman Empire.
  • 1297: The English overload a bridge and get themselves walloped by a bunch of blue painted, skirt-wearing savages shouting “FREEDOM!!!” English driven from Scotland.
  • 1609: The Reconquista  is  completed  when the last Moors are  driven from al-Andulus.  Hudson finds his River.
  • 1611: Turenne is born.
  • 1649: The English bring peace to Ireland.
  • 1683: Jan Sobieski prepares to drive the Turk from central Europe.
  • 1697: Eugene of Savoy drives the Turk from central Europe.
  • 1708: The cliché that starting a land war in Asia is bad for your health begins.
  • 1709: The bloodiest battle of the eighteenth century: as usual, a French defeat.
  • 1775: Benedict Arnold goes an entire march without betraying anyone.
  • 1776: The American Revolution does not come to an end.
  • 1777: The American Revolution still doesn’t come to an end.
  • 1786: The overthrow of the United States of America begins, followed by the birth of the United States of America.
  • 1789: Alexander Hamilton begins his destruction of the British Empire.
  • 1814: The United States is not destroyed. No one outside Canada notices.
  • 1829: Mexico finally wins its independence and celebrates by overthrowing a government.
  • 1847: Susannah doesn’t cry for me.
  • 1888: Being dead, Sarmiento can neither govern or populate.
  • 1914: High tide of Australian imperialism.
  • 1919: America invades Honduras. No one outside Canada notices.
  • 1922: British Empire acquires a terminal case of indigestion. Hamilton smiles.
  • 1941: The military industrial complex acquires its first of five sides.
  • 1944: Americans reach Germany, like the looks of the place, and move in for the next 67 years.
  • 1948: The father of Pakistan dies.
  • 1950: The father of holism dies.
  • 1965: The Great  Ophthalmologist  is born.
  • 1973: Communists overthrown by monetarists.
  • 1978: Land apparently brings peace. George Markov dies, killed by a poison umbrella.
  • 1985: Pete Rose breaks Ty Cobb’s career hits record.
  • 1987: Lorne Greene dies.
  • 1989: The Iron Curtain begins unraveling.
  • 1996: The only successful government California ever knew becomes part of the Union Pacific Railroad.
  • 1997: The Scots, inspired by a movie,  drive the English from Scotland. Again. Hamilton smiles. Again.
  • 2001: 2,977 Americans are murdered in cold blood as the centerpiece of a takfiri propaganda of the deed.

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