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The attacks on Afghan Shiites 7 Dec 2011 | 11:29 am
From the New York Times' take on the coordinated - Kabul, Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif - attacks on Shiites, coming during Ashura and very clearly sending a message connected to the Bonn II conference:...
The politics of coalition burden-sharing: The Steve Irwin way of doing COIN 27 Oct 2011 | 06:41 pm
There is a new report out from the Australian Land Warfare Studies Centre by Col. Peter Connolly, on counterinsurgency in Uruzgan province. (To make this clear before somebody misunderstands me, the t...
The politics of coalition burden-sharing: "Stand aside" forces 23 Oct 2011 | 10:12 pm
Note the term "Allied caveat and stand aside" above. This slide may be quite telling, regarding the importance, in a negative sense, of caveats (informal, i.e. not openly declared, but officially/mutu...
The politics of coalition burden-sharing: Canadian lessons learned 21 Oct 2011 | 07:39 am
Over at Travels with Shiloh, there is a recent entry on my and Nik Hynek's book's chapter on Canada, which was written by Ben Zyla. A good apropos to bring up that there is a new report out on Canada'...
The politics of coalition burden-sharing: The Netherlands and "the Afghanistan card" 27 Sep 2011 | 04:19 am
With my colleague, Nik Hynek, we have a review of our book over at Travels with Shiloh. Consequently, I will now be moving on from just advertising our book in a never-disappearing blogpost to occasio...
A new book: Multinational statebuilding in Afghanistan 27 Aug 2011 | 08:39 pm
A lot of work went into this one - and I'm proud to announce that this book (see below) has finally been published, with editing and contributions by Yours Truly - and with contributions from many oth...
Footage from Pakistan 2 Mar 2011 | 07:55 pm
British tabloids picked up the story, not too surprisingly, nevertheless it relates to the focus of this blog. Filmed in Pakistan, the shortest mujahed. I hope this was not filmed before some kind of ...
This blogpost is an information operation (sort of) 1 Mar 2011 | 12:43 am
Yes, all in all, I believe that Joe Harlan is right. Information operations certainly cannot work Michael Hastings is looking for attention as Lt.Col. Holmes suggests in Michael "McChrystal-clearer" H...
The NYT on the PRTs 9 Feb 2011 | 01:57 am
The NYT has an elegant way of blending fiction with non-fiction. Although this is not a compliment, by way of some wishful thinking perhaps, they do manage to seamlessly weave together the two in the ...
The Egypt intel failure debate 8 Feb 2011 | 03:08 am
Guys, the expression you are looking for is... Heisenberg's law - or, rather, what is commonly known as such; or alternatively as "Heisenberg's uncertainty principle." The U.S. intelligence community...
